dispatches from the dean
Hey, Riverbats! How about becoming a Bevo? UT’s College of Education may be just the magic you need!
Join us Thursday, January 30, 4:00 to 8:00 PM, for a recruitment fair at the Highland Campus, building 4000 Courtyard. Meet department reps, hear from UT Ed students, get admission info, find out how to transfer seamlessly to the C of Ed—everything you need to know about becoming a Bevo!
Spread the word. Tell your friends and fellow Riverbats!
Planning to come? Let us know on Facebook.
Now that LA Gateway-designated courses are appearing in the course schedule, people are asking: What is the LA Gateway? Here’s the philosophical framework, distilled.
The Liberal Arts can save civilization by equipping students to thrive in a pluralistic society through deep engagement in our disciplines.
Build opportunities to practice these verbs into your course, talk about them explicitly, and model them every class period.
Welcome to the next edition of the Liberal Art Department’s Professor Profile Series. This edition is unique as we wanted to highlight an Honors Course Professor. Meet Professor Bryan Register, Professor of Philosophy.
Welcome to our series, Professor! We are interested in hearing about your course.
Continue reading “Professor Profile: Bryan Register”The Apostrophe is English’s most duplicitous punctuation. Does this title mean “three is company” or the company three keeps?
I can look at just about any number and tell you, almost immediately, if it’s divisible by three. How do I do it? It’s not superior brute-force calculation. It’s a number theory trick.
Just add all the digits of the number. If the result is divisible by three, then the number you started with is, too. For instance, the forbidding number 67,392 is divisible by three, because 6 + 7 + 3 + 9 + 2 is 27, which is divisible by three. My ACC office telephone number, 512.223.2630, considered as a number, is not. (But my number without the area code is. Try it for yourself.)
Now we come to the curiosities aspect of this post: Why does this work? Or more importantly, why doesn’t it work for any other number, like 7? It’s easy to show that it doesn’t work for 7: Consider 49, or 63. Both divisible by 7, but the sum of their digits isn’t, so it doesn’t
Here’s one way to explain the magic of 3. Think about any number in base 10. It’s laid out like this: a,bcd, which means:
(a * 1000) + (b * 100) + (c * 10) + d
This is the cornerstone of the decimal system, in which “places” represent powers of 10. But you can also write the number above like this:
a * (999 + 1) + b * (99 +1) + c * (9 + 1) + d
which amounts to this:
(999a + a) + (99b + b) + (9c + c) + d
Now think about this. If 999 is divisible by 3, then 999 times a is too. Same with 99b and 9c. The sum of numbers divisible by 3 is divisible by three (Why?), so 999a + 99b + 9c is divisible by 3. What’s left of our original number? Just this:
a + b + c + d
So if this sum is divisible by 3, then the whole number we started with is divisible by 3. That worked for the number a,bcd, but with a little mathematical induction, we can make it work for every number.
And I’m actually even lazier than summing. When I’m looking for divisibility by 3, I ignore all the digits that are divisible by three, and sum the rest. Consider my phone number again: 512.223.2630: Ignore the 3’s and 6’s and add up the rest: 14. Not.
This consummate laziness is brought to us by number theory: The sum of numbers divisible by 3 is also divisible by 3, so we actually don’t need to know exactly what that sum is to know whether it’s divisible by 3. But I don’t like to think of this as laziness. I call it the Principle of Least Effort, and accomplishing things with the least effort was Nature’s intent when she gave us this big brain.
All of which is to say that any number is divisible by 3 if and only if the sum of its digits is divisible by 3. QED.
While we’re here, what does QED mean? We use it to indicate that a proof or argument ended successfully. It’s an acronym based on the Latin phrase, quod erat demonstrandum, which means “what was to be demonstrated.” This phrase caught on just at the end of the Renaissance and was popularized by people like Galileo and Spinoza.
But this all started with Greek mathematicians and philosophers like Euclid and Archimedes, who were studied by people who wrote in Latin a lot. They wrote the Greek phrase ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι at the end of a chain of reasoning. There’s a slight difference in meaning, though, because a reasonable (but stilted) translation of the Greek phrase is “the thing it was needed to prove.”
QED. Or if you prefer, ΟΕΔ.
Today is January 8, my birthday. While it’s customary to receive birthday greetings, this year I’m sending you a greeting. Indulge me.
Those of you who know that I’m a closet number theorist won’t be surprised at the observation that the number 108, the month and day of my birth, is the product of the first two primes each raised to the power of itself:
108 = 2^2*3^3
The fact that the fifth-grade me was enchanted by this discovery should tell you something about me. I’m still enchanted by the secret lives of numbers, by the way.
A birthday can be a moment of reflection, a sort of “state of life” self-assessment. I’m not one to waste heartbeats on regrets — there’s far too much to be done! — but I don’t mind investing a few heartbeats in gratitude.
I’m grateful for the many, many people who have made my life richer by sharing their excellences with me, and I’m grateful for all the people I don’t know who nevertheless enrich our lives through their work and inspiration and dreams. And failures. In my best moments, I cherish failure as a trusted friend — the kind who loves you enough not to lie.
I’m especially grateful for all the people who disagreed with me in matters large and small. I’ve grown far more with you in my life than I would have without you. You encouraged me to take a larger view and helped me see the smallness in my own perspective. Idolatry isn’t pretty, no matter where you find it (or how comfortable it may seem).
Nature distributes her gifts unevenly, and I am grateful for the gift of a temperament that is too naive to be afraid to try new things. As an early teen, Heinlein introduced me to Lazarus Long, who taught me that specialization is for insects — a sentiment that would make me an appropriate epitaph. Lazarus also taught me that one lifetime is not nearly enough. Later, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra would teach me that if one lifetime is enough, then there’s no one to blame but myself.
I’m grateful for the privilege of serving ACC as a philosopher, trouble-maker, department chair, dean of humanities and communications, and defender of the liberal arts. I’m grateful for the meandering path that led me to this point — even when I felt lost, and especially when I was lost. I feel a little like Odysseus — but not nearly as sad about being far from home.
Today is a day to celebrate for our Communication Studies department! As a result of efforts to integrate SPCH1315 with workforce program requirements, we have a “combined” course so students can take either SPCH1315 or COMG1009.
Even better, we just registered our very first workforce student!
This is a great example of the way we can serve student pathways when we think outside the academic box.
Thanks to Theresa and the CommS gang!
The Austin Mosaic Guild was founded a little over a decade ago in the heart of Austin. A dedicated group of students took a dream and turned it into a reality. Today, the Guild boasts numbers in the hundred and regularly participates in local and out of state community projects. I had the pleasure of sitting down with one of it’s founding members and Communications Director, Dianne Sonnenberg, and Susan Ribnick, Co-President.
Mosaic is so intricate and beautiful- tell me more about this ancient art.
Continue reading “The Austin Mosaic Guild”A title like this prompts us to consider the end of civilization. I recently had a professor tell me that if his section were canceled, it would be the coming of the End of Civilization. My response was that I’d like to offer the section again in the 12-week session, thereby postponing the End of Civilization by a few weeks.
That’s not the End I have in mind.
Rather, I want to talk about the end of civilization in that other sense: end as telos, as in teleology. As in, What is civilization for?
Continue reading “LAHC Convocation 2019: The Liberal Arts Gateway”Attention ACC! Our French program is growing to meet the demands of the digital world. For the first time, we’re offering French 1411 online through Distance learning in Spring 2020. We’re also creating an online 1412 for the following semester for those looking to go further into the program. This program is being built from the ground up for all students.
Reasons to learn French are immense. On top of the overall benefits of learning a 2nd language does to our brains. French is the 6th most spoken language and the 2nd most learned language in the world after English. French is the official working language of the United Nations, NATO, UNESCO, EU, OECD, UIA, the International Olympic Committee, the International Labor Bureau, & the International Red Cross. If you’re looking to get into the Tech world, France is a major exporter of High-end technological products to the U.S. French is also a fast-growing language as Africa is projected to expand into an economic powerhouse. French is spoken in 31 African countries as a 1st or 2nd language.
Continue reading “Cultural Benefits of learning French”Welcome to the Liberal Art Department’s Professor Profile! This monthly series will highlight a different faculty member and their passion for education.
In this month’s feature we spoke with Professor J. Wade Allen, Professor of Philosophy and Ethics at ACC.
Welcome to our series Professor. How long have you been teaching at ACC? What brought you here?
I’ve been teaching and tutoring at ACC since 2009 and, before that, I was teaching at Houston Community College. What brought me to ACC was twofold: (a) ACC’s Department of Philosophy, Religion, and Humanities is incredibly rich, lively, and diverse, in which the quality of the faculty is comparable to the faculty at a 4-year institution, and (b) I always wanted to live in Austin, with its incredible music scene and outdoor activities.
What originally attracted you to Philosophy and Ethics?
Continue reading “Professor Profile: J. Wade Allen”
