Data Anxiety

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“Tech journalists: Stop hyping unproven security tools”

Journalists love human interest stories

Kobeissi presents the kind of human interest story that journalists dream about: A Lebanese hacker who has lived through 4 wars in his 21 years…

This is about Cryptocat.

Cryptocat was here on tumblr, might still be. They were friendly, enjoyed math, probability, random number generator humor. I followed young (and cute) Kobeissi on Twitter.

Cryptocat is a proto-type. Read Mr. Kobeissi’s biography. He is bright. He is getting a fine education. I think he just completed a bachelor’s degree program in computer science at a good school in Canada, and has received funding from someone to do further work on Cryptocat. No problem there.

However, Wired Magazine, AND The New York Times, are not behaving responsibly. In my sometimes-not-so-humble opinion.

The New York Times really, REALLY needs to hire (or have on retainer) someone with credible training, education and experience in information security if they intend to cover  cryptography-related news.

As for Wired, well, I just don’t understand what they were thinking.

The Cryptocat media hyperbole reminds me of TechCrunch at its worst, e.g. when one of their staff attempted to do financial reporting or investigative journalism, but didn’t have the knowledge or time to do a good job. TechCrunch is a glorified blog though. They make mistakes, and that’s okay. They aren’t the Paper of Record. They aren’t Wired Magazine, which has been a decent specialty publication for over two decades.

What’s going on? A possibility: Business problems e.g. diminished advertising revenues and an increasingly desperate need for page views and circulation volume. I worry about that, for all mainstream news sources.

YES!!! Algebra IS Necessary!

“As American students wrestle with algebra, geometry and calculus — often losing that contest — the requirement of higher mathematics comes into question.”

WRONG, Professor Hacker! It does NOT ”come into question”!

This is why the article author, political science professor Andrew Hacker thinks algebra is useful:

“Algebraic algorithms underpin animated movies, investment strategies and airline ticket prices. And we need people to understand how those things work to advance our frontiers.”

He seems to have overlooked every type of engineering, as well as medicine, physics, computing, accounting (yes, accountants use algebra too!) and most skilled trades.

Chart via L.A. Times

Context: Illustrative example of Los Angeles public school system test results for ninth grade mathematics students (first year algebra).

Time stamp: January 2006.

Maybe things have changed in the interim… we have the power! Algebra is EVERYONE’S friend, if you just make room in your heart.

Algebra should be considered a “gateway” subject. It leads to the wonders of calculus, differential equations, engineering mathematics…

emanuelderman:

Trading desks at investment banks often have substantial positions in a broad range of long-term or exotic derivative securities which can be marked to market only by means of mathematical models. Verifying the fair value of these securities is an increasingly important issue, and involves more than just mathematics and a model. It requires software, skill and common sense, all embedded in a suitable organizational structure. This article describes a multi- faceted approach to verifying the prices and hedge ratios of derivative securities. 

Your keyboard contains a number of other characters, most of which are not properly punctuation marks at all, and very few of which are normally used in formal writing, except in certain specialist disciplines. Here are the ones which are found most commonly, or which can be produced with a word processor; such special symbols are often informally called dingbats…

via the web page ofLarry Trask, Department of Informatics at University of Sussex, last update: 1997.

I found the entire Guide to Punctuation from a link provided by Donald Knuth. If I had to guess, I would say it is highly likely that the link above is part of the free online version of

Trask, R. L. 1997, The Penguin Guide to Punctuation. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

What has happened since 1980?

2,400 technology, Internet and telecom I.P.O.’s.