TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S): Google Calculator / Understanding University Success

Howdy, y'all, and greetings once again from deep behind the orange curtain in beautiful Irvine, California, an event that occurs when a program or process tries to store more data in a buffer than it was intended to hold. :P

I apologize for Tourbus' absence last week. Because your email inbox was getting hammered by those two viruses, I thought it best to pull our little bus of Internet happiness over to the side of the road last week and wait for the traffic to die down a bit. I hope you don't mind.

TOURBUS is made possible by the kind support of our sponsors. Please take a moment to visit today's sponsors and thank them for keeping our little bus of Internet happiness on the road week after week.

On with the show ...

Google Calculator

Our first stop is kind of "geeky." Well, no ... to tell the truth it is *REALLY* geeky. Really *REALLY* geeky. But it is a cool kind of geeky.

Google now has a built-in calculator! No, really! Go to Google.com and instead of keying in a word or search phrase, key in a math problem like

2 + 2

or

72 / 3

and Google will automatically show you the answer! That in an of itself is cool (and geeky), but Google's calculator will also solve simple, non-variable algebra and trigonometry problems like

4^2 + 7

and

cosine(75 degrees)

That little pointy thingy -- the ^ -- is called a carat, and it is used in ASCII to signify exponents. So 4^2 is actually four squared.

And, if that isn't geeky enough for you, Google's calculator also has a built-in unit converter. For example, try keying in

0b1111 in hex

or

100 feet in astronomical units

Neat, huh? According to Google,

The calculator can evaluate mathematical expressions involving basic arithmetic (5+2*2 or 2^20), more complicated math (sine(30 degrees) or e^(i pi)+1), units of measure and conversions (100 miles in kilometers or 160 pounds * 4000 feet in Calories), and physical constants (1 a.u./c or G*mass of earth/radius of earth^2). You can also experiment with other numbering systems, including hexadecimal and binary.

To prove once and for all that your fearless bus driver has no social life and entirely too much free time, here are just a few of my favorite Google calculator searches:

speed of light in knots 5 smoot - 2 angstroms 1.21 GW / 88 MPH Answer to life the universe and everything

[Special bonus points go to those of you who caught the Back to the Future and Hitchhiker's Guide references.]

The folks at Waxy.org win for best search, though, for using Google's calculator to find the answer to

life, the universe and everything multiplied by the speed of light divided by three teaspoons

[I *TOLD* you this was geeky!]

For a pretty good list of every math function and unit of measure that Google's calculator supports, check out

http://dustgun.homeip.net/weird_stuff/google_convert.txt

Finally, for those of you who are Grandpa Simpson fans, I am sorry to report that Google's calculator doesn't yet convert rods to hogsheads ... but I'm sure the math geeks at Google are frantically working on fixing that oversight. :P

Understanding University Success

[This next stop is a repeat visit to a site we visited back in March. With so many students starting college over the next couple of weeks, I thought you'd appreciate seeing this again.]

As a recently retired professional college student, I have a question for you: what do you need to know in order to be successful in college?

One might be tempted to answer my question with squishy answers like "a strong foundation in math, science, and literature" or "a thirst for knowledge" -- answers that may sound good but that provide precious little guidance or information.

And I'm not talking about what you need to know in order to pass the SAT or ACT. Your local bookstore is overflowing with books that will help you prepare for the college entrance exams. And I am also not talking about what you need to know in order to succeed in college interviews.

No, what I'm asking is what *SPECIFIC* skills and knowledge do you need in order to be a successful college student?

Tough question, isn't it? But it is an essential one to ask because most high school students have no clue what college is like and most college freshmen are shocked and surprised by the knowledge and skills that university professors expect of them.

So, back in 1998 the Association of American Universities [with the assistance of the Pew Charitable Trusts] decided to identify what students need to know and be able to do in order to succeed in entry- level university courses at America's research universities.

Five years later, the results have been published in a free, 82 page booklet and accompanying CD-ROM titled "Understanding University Success." Included in the booklet is something called "Knowledge and Skills for University Success" [KSUS],

a comprehensive listing of what university faculty expect from students in entry-level courses. KSUS is divided into six academic disciplines: English, mathematics, natural sciences, social sciences, second languages and the arts ...

... To ensure that the material is widely available, the project is mailing the ... booklet and accompanying CD-ROM to each of the nearly 20,000 public high schools in the nation, as well as to state education departments and university leaders.

In addition,

The College Board has licensed Knowledge and Skills for University Success to be used as a foundational element in the development of College Board examinations, including the SAT, PSAT and Advanced Placement exams.

[all quotes shamelessly stolen -- out of order -- from http://www.s4s.org/05_pressroom/pdf/S4S_Press_Release.pdf]

In short, Understanding University Success is a pretty important little booklet. So, how can you get *YOUR* hands on a copy? Easy! Just point your Web browser to

http://www.s4s.org/03_viewproducts/ksus/index.php

You can download the entire booklet for free in Adobe Acrobat PDF format or order the booklet (US$15.00), CD-ROM (US$5.00), or both (US$18.00). If you do decide to download the booklet, I have two small warnings:

1. The booklet is 4.2 Mb so it will take about 10 minutes to download over a 56K modem and 20 minutes over a 28.8 modem.

2. The downloading process is a little convoluted -- it requires two pop-up windows and then you can't really right-click and save as. Your best bet is to either get the zipped version or, after the PDF file has loaded, click on the floppy icon in Acrobat (under your browser's address bar) to save the PDF file to your hard drive.

If all this sounds too complicated, you can always read the booklet online at

http://www.s4s.org/03_viewproducts/ksus/intro.php .

No matter what way you use to get the booklet, note that each subject area has two subsections:

1. Foundations -- a macro-level look at the skills and attributes of successful students in this subject area.

2. Standards -- specific subject area knowledge and skill sets

The standards lists for each of the six subject areas are probably the most important educational documents to be produced in a long while. These lists show the skills and knowledge that America's research universities expect from entering freshmen. Not to put too fine a point on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if, over the next couple of years, most states begin to align their K-12 curriculum to align with the standards in this booklet.

By the way, one thing that the CD offers that the booklet doesn't is

a library of more than 250 work samples and syllabi that illustrate the quality of work that AAU-university professors expect of freshmen in entry-level courses.

According to David Conley, Director of the Standards for Success project,

We have collected real-life examples of student work from freshman classes along with course syllabi, assignments, lab exercises and tests ... Teachers can use the course syllabi, assignments, and student work samples as reference points as they devise their own curricula.

Cool, huh? But what if you don’t want to cough up the five bucks for the CD-ROM? Well, you can download the university work samples for each subject area for free at

http://www.s4s.org/03_viewproducts/samples/index.php .

Just choose the subject area on the left side of the page. You'll still have to navigate the two pop-up windows, though. And if you thought the booklet was big, wait until you try to download the work samples. [The English work sample book has 480 pages and weighs in at a staggering 6.9 Mb.]

Big? Yes. Valuable? ABSOLUTELY!

If you or a loved one is headed to college any time soon, Understanding University Success is going to be a godsend if for no other reason than it answers the question I posed at the start of today's post: what do you need to know in order to be successful in college?

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That's it for today. Have a safe and happy week, and we'll talk again soon. :)

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