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Showing posts from September, 2017

A free, teacher-less university in France is schooling thousands of future-proof programmers

https://qz.com/1054412/a-french-billionaires-free-teacher-less-university-is-designing-thousands-of-future-proof-employees/ Paris When you walk into École 42, a teacher-less coding school in Paris, a few things leap out at you: a killer collection of provocative street art, including an illustrated condom machine at the front desk; iMacs as far as the eye can see; and a palpable buzz from the roughly 1,000 students bustling around the building. It is week two of la piscine (the “swimming pool”), a one-month, Hunger Games -like test students must endure to get a place at the school. No degrees or special skills are required to apply, and those who are accepted attend for free for three to five years. Around 80% of students get jobs before they finish the course; 100% are employed by the end. The school is the brainchild of Xavier Niel , a French billionaire who has so far spent about €48 million ($57 million) on the Paris campus and an additional $46 million on a scho

Why Is It Important to Study Math?

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/math/why-is-it-important-to-study-math What’s the point of learning math? Why is it so important that kids are exposed to mathematical thinking? And what do parents and teachers need to know about learning real math? Keep on reading to find out. Today is a very special episode of the Math Dude. To begin with, it’s episode 300. And because we humans have 10 fingers, we love to give special meaning to multiples of 10. But while that’s fun, it’s not the big news of the day or what makes this episode special to me. The big news is that this 300th episode is my last. Between my day job as a physics and astronomy professor and my day-and-night job of being “Dad” to an awesome and bustling 3-year-old, my free time for Math Dude duties has dwindled. And although I will surely miss all of you math fans, after seven years on the job, it's time to say goodbye. But before I go, I have one more thing to say—and I think it’s the