Can't do the math? Blame your brain!

It's dyscalculia.

The curse of math instructors everywhere.

A few years ago, students at the community college, where I taught, petitioned to have math removed from the list of courses that were required for a degree. Part of the reason, they argued, was that one student claimed that he shouldn't have to take math because he had dyscalculia.

(Dyscalculia is like dylexsia, except that it makes it harder for people to do arithmetic. )

The math instructors argued that they weren't going to eliminate requirements for a "fictional disease."

Now, it appears that miscalculations do have a biological basis and researchers at University College London have been able to show it.

Using fMRI, the authors found differences in brain activity, in a specific region of the brain, between people with dyscalculia and people without the condition.

I'm willing to bet that in the next few years, we clone the gene. But can you calculate the probability?

Beer, Glorious Beer!

I’m taking a brief time out from slacking-off from blogging to point out a nice summary of the world’s favorite beverage from Roger Protz in The Guardian.

Having seen what the New York Academy of Sciences recently did with this topic, I’m thinking of trying to put together a future Cafe Scientifique on “The Science of Beer”. Hopefully, any speaker I get will be able to span the same range of opinions as Protz regarding U.S. beer, ranging from open disdain

Prohibition in the 1920s and 30s destroyed a brewing industry with a rich heritage of British and German-style beers. Only a handful of giants, led by Anheuser-Busch with Budweiser, saturated the vast market afterwards with thin and insipid interpretations of lager. The label on a bottle of Bud, for example, announces it is brewed from the finest rice, barley malt and hops. Rice is tasteless and sums up the beer. Other giant breweries use large amounts of cheap corn.

to outright adulation

… And Goose Island IPA from Chicago, on sale in Britain, may just be the best beer in the world.

Speaking of beer….

The Dream