Only had a couple minutes to try this but I'm already confused by a couple things.
- "UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE" I guess this is a joke but I don't really get it, just seems like a weird thing to have there.
- In the first popup, the "audio transmission" is significantly different than the printed text.
- "The Earth is a sphere." - this is not true, I think it should be classified as a hypothesis
- "The universe is expanding." Isn't this a theory? I don't think it can be called "a basic statement", it is a well-tested theory based on a lot of observational evidence.
- "Humans and gorillas evolved from a common ancestor species." This is obviously a theory, it's like THE theory when you need an example of what a theory is. You cannot establish this by experiment or observation.
- "Light is an electromagnetic phenomenon described by Maxwell's Laws" Why is this classified as a theory?
etc.
The categorization of this first lesson seems very arbitrary, and often contradictory with the "knowledge database" on the left.
Edit: Did you AI-generate these questions and then not proofread them?
I do agree much of the categorisation is baffling (I could nitpick several others). In that respect it's a shame to start off with that lesson when some of the others are so much more relevant to the mission concept, interesting and less debatable
There are photos of the Earth taken from the neighborhood of the Moon. They show something that is indistinguishable from a sphere to the naked eye.
Sure, with instruments you can measure it and find that it deviates from a perfect sphere. But every object that is made of atoms multiple atoms is not a perfect sphere.
I don't think it's a pedantic point, this is supposed to be a site about learning math that NASA scientists use, and the exact shape of the Earth is very relevant to them.
I just think it shouldn't be used as a canonical example of a fact when you'll probably learn at some point that it technically isn't true.
[deleted][deleted]
"If I jump out a window I will die"
Is not a fact: I have never died jumping out of a window, thus it is a hypothesis (because it is testable, though that raise epistemological problems in of itself)
specifically I got hit with "chimpanzees and humans have common ancestor" (or something like that)
definition for a "fact" (supposed correct answer) given on the page ("A basic statement established by experiment or observation. True under specific conditions.") seems to me akin to "direct result of some experiment"
meanwhile, determining common ancestry - in my mind - took a lot of work, comparing anatomy, digging out bones and stuff... all the correlation, all the composition
surely it's more of a theory that's supported by many facts?
Introducing Space Math Academy!
Reimagined NASA’s Space Math curriculum (https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/) as an immersive game, instead of static PDFs. Students solve the same problems real scientists face daily -- calculating orbits and trajectories, dealing with space weather, etc. -- in an interactive way that goes beyond worksheets (or just sending PDFs to an LLM).
Powered by Gemini for storytelling and text-to-speech (TTS). Links to the GitHub repo and live link that you can play above, thanks to Google Cloud Run. Please file feature requests, if there's enough interest will add more missions and a leaderboard.
Seems fun but unusable on mobile. Windows are not responsive enough.
General design seems fun though
>Math
But the first exercise is about judging statements based on nebulous definitions, definitely unrelated to mathematics?
Mathematics is concerned with a lot more than arithmetic and computation. Beyond the most basic levels, a mathematician will profit greatly from being aware of this type of epistemological vocabulary and a strong sense of their underlying meaning. Whether reading or writing mathematics, we're constantly dealing with propositions, and correctly taxonomising those propositions can really help keep your mental workspace clean.
I do question the effectiveness (and accuracy) of this exercise, but its learning objectives I think are quite apt.
To be honest I do not think that these word games are helpful at all. Throughout all of my mathematical education what has always helped me to keep my "mental workspace clean", was to never abandon the model.
> and correctly taxonomising those propositions
The correct taxonomy for a proposition is true/false and proven/unproven.
I can not even fathom a mathematical model where distinguishing a "law" from a "fact" is meaningful.
And the idea of defining a "fact" as something empirically demonstrated is just ridiculous, I totally reject it.
Only had a couple minutes to try this but I'm already confused by a couple things.
- "UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS IS A FEDERAL OFFENSE" I guess this is a joke but I don't really get it, just seems like a weird thing to have there.
- In the first popup, the "audio transmission" is significantly different than the printed text.
- "The Earth is a sphere." - this is not true, I think it should be classified as a hypothesis
- "The universe is expanding." Isn't this a theory? I don't think it can be called "a basic statement", it is a well-tested theory based on a lot of observational evidence.
- "Humans and gorillas evolved from a common ancestor species." This is obviously a theory, it's like THE theory when you need an example of what a theory is. You cannot establish this by experiment or observation.
- "Light is an electromagnetic phenomenon described by Maxwell's Laws" Why is this classified as a theory?
etc.
The categorization of this first lesson seems very arbitrary, and often contradictory with the "knowledge database" on the left.
Edit: Did you AI-generate these questions and then not proofread them?
Looks like NASA is to blame for these https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/weekly/2page23.pdf
I do agree much of the categorisation is baffling (I could nitpick several others). In that respect it's a shame to start off with that lesson when some of the others are so much more relevant to the mission concept, interesting and less debatable
There are photos of the Earth taken from the neighborhood of the Moon. They show something that is indistinguishable from a sphere to the naked eye.
Sure, with instruments you can measure it and find that it deviates from a perfect sphere. But every object that is made of atoms multiple atoms is not a perfect sphere.
I don't think it's a pedantic point, this is supposed to be a site about learning math that NASA scientists use, and the exact shape of the Earth is very relevant to them.
I just think it shouldn't be used as a canonical example of a fact when you'll probably learn at some point that it technically isn't true.
"If I jump out a window I will die"
Is not a fact: I have never died jumping out of a window, thus it is a hypothesis (because it is testable, though that raise epistemological problems in of itself)
viz. this evergreen gem: https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2018/12/13/we-jumped-from-planes-w...
I'm so confused by the first task...
specifically I got hit with "chimpanzees and humans have common ancestor" (or something like that)
definition for a "fact" (supposed correct answer) given on the page ("A basic statement established by experiment or observation. True under specific conditions.") seems to me akin to "direct result of some experiment"
meanwhile, determining common ancestry - in my mind - took a lot of work, comparing anatomy, digging out bones and stuff... all the correlation, all the composition
surely it's more of a theory that's supported by many facts?
Introducing Space Math Academy!
Reimagined NASA’s Space Math curriculum (https://spacemath.gsfc.nasa.gov/) as an immersive game, instead of static PDFs. Students solve the same problems real scientists face daily -- calculating orbits and trajectories, dealing with space weather, etc. -- in an interactive way that goes beyond worksheets (or just sending PDFs to an LLM).
https://space-math.academy https://www.github.com/dynamicwebpaige/space-math
Powered by Gemini for storytelling and text-to-speech (TTS). Links to the GitHub repo and live link that you can play above, thanks to Google Cloud Run. Please file feature requests, if there's enough interest will add more missions and a leaderboard.
Seems fun but unusable on mobile. Windows are not responsive enough. General design seems fun though
>Math
But the first exercise is about judging statements based on nebulous definitions, definitely unrelated to mathematics?
Mathematics is concerned with a lot more than arithmetic and computation. Beyond the most basic levels, a mathematician will profit greatly from being aware of this type of epistemological vocabulary and a strong sense of their underlying meaning. Whether reading or writing mathematics, we're constantly dealing with propositions, and correctly taxonomising those propositions can really help keep your mental workspace clean.
I do question the effectiveness (and accuracy) of this exercise, but its learning objectives I think are quite apt.
To be honest I do not think that these word games are helpful at all. Throughout all of my mathematical education what has always helped me to keep my "mental workspace clean", was to never abandon the model.
> and correctly taxonomising those propositions
The correct taxonomy for a proposition is true/false and proven/unproven.
I can not even fathom a mathematical model where distinguishing a "law" from a "fact" is meaningful.
And the idea of defining a "fact" as something empirically demonstrated is just ridiculous, I totally reject it.