Special Blog Assignment #1

WolframAlpha
After watching the Dr. Strange's video, Did You Know?, it seems to be that this video is throwing us when facts to prove the United States is inferior to countries such as India and China. However, are we really interpretating the facts correctly? Two slides in the "Did You Know" video reports, "It is estimated that 18 million Chinese speak English now and 300 million are learners. So...if the "learners" do learn English there will be more people in China speaking English than the ENTIRE population of the United States." Once comparing the populations of India, China and the United States on WolframAlpha, my astonishment to the information in the "Did You Know" video died down.

The population is a key factor when looking at the data provided to us. The total population in China is 1.35 billion; United States is 309 million. Assuming that the entire 319 million Chinese succeed at learning English, the percentage of English speaking people in Chinese is 23.6%. Nearly 92% Americans speak English. Yes, there are more English speaking people in China than the total population in the United States. However, China has a larger population and therefore the numbers are about equal.

Two WolframAlpha Searches
"Students in Public vs. Students in Private Schools in Mobile, AL."
Public: 35,293
Private: 12,003

"Student/Teacher Ratio in Public vs. Private Schools in Mobile. AL."
Public: Mean= 16.35
Private: Mean= 18

WolframAlphra is a search engine offers sources of information regarding Mathematics, Statistics, Weather, People and Places, Culture & Media, and many more. This is a great resource to provide my students with doing research papers and answering questions they are unsure about. I have never even heard of WolframAlpha before now, but after playing around with the comparison of public vs. private schools it is bookmarked and a tool I plan to reference back to.

Gary Hayes
The Social Media Chart Gary Hayes created was astonishing to watch! The rapid speed of the increasing information is so fast, it's almost unbelievable. The information that caught my eye was the amount of text messages that were sent worldwide in just one minute; 11,415,525. It's sad to me that the personal interaction between people have decreased. As a teacher I hope to keep in mind the importance of personal interaction. I also recognize with the rapid speed of technological change, I need to stay up to date with all the latest technological advances. There's no telling where things will be in only a couple of years.