Required for next week: April 2, 1996
-
"Lani 'Quota Queen' Guinier: Voting, power and mathematics". A short
article from the book A mathematician reads the newspaper, J.A. Paulos,
Harper-Collins, 1995. The jacket for this book says "Even if you hated
math in high school, you'll love the numerical vignettes in this book."
- "A paradox in the ranking of figure skaters", J. Bring and K. Carling (1994),
Chance 7(4), 34--37.
Essay: due April 9
The range of topics for essays is very broad, so it is hard to give
specific guidelines. But some basics may be helpful.
Your spelling and your grammar should be carefully checked.
When you are making explicit reference to source material in the text of
your essay, you should include a reference in the text: for example
"Jones and Kenward (1990) conducted a study of college students and
concluded ...", or "it is argued by Smith (1995) ...". The source
articles that you directly refer to should all be included in
the bibliography. The bibliography should be prepared in a standard
format (there are several conventional ones) and each entry should
include the title of
the article or book, the authors, year of publication, journal name,
volume and page numbers for a journal article, publisher for a book.
When you are quoting or paraphrasing from a book or article, indicate that
in the text either using quotation marks (for short quotes)
or indented paragraphs (for long quotes).
Your essay should have an introductory section, explaining the background for
your topic and introducing the material that follows, and a concluding section,
summarizing the main points of your research, and/or drawing conclusions,
and most likely two or more sections in between.
The appropriate goal for
many topics is to synthesize and summarize the current state of knowledge
in an area, with reference to a few key sources.
You don't need to be an expert on the topic, but you should
play the role of an educated layperson. Some essay topics are more
specifically directed to a particular thesis, and for these the writer is
serving as an expert, trying to persuade the reader of the validity of the
thesis. Most essays will I think be more effective if they are addressed
to a potential readership of, for example, 199Y students (as opposed to be
addressed directly to me).
In the Globe and Mail this week
- ``Breast cancer risk linked to Hodgkin's treatment'', Mar. 21,A6 (Reuters).
``Women who had childhood Hodgkin's disease and were treated with radiation have
a much higher risk of developing breast cancer and some other types of solid tumours, according
to a new study published in today's New England Journal of Medicine.
The research, which shows a breast cancer rate 75 times higher than in the
general population,...'' An important question touched on in the article but
not discussed in detail is
whether the radiation treatment causes breast cancer, or
whether the two diseases are related in some other way.
Can they really mean 75 times higher?
- ``Alzheimer's memory testing effective'', Mar. 22,A9 (D. Lipovenko).
``Memory testing predicts more accurately which elderly
people will get Alzheimer's within two years than does a blood test for a
gene linked to the disease, a new study shows.'' The blood test is for
the apo E4 gene associated with late onset Alzheimer's. This gene was discovered
by University of Toronto researcher Peter St. George-Hyslop.
- ``Suicides plague French police forces'', Mar. 22, A16 (B. James,
International Herald Tribune).
According to this article a record 60 police officers killed
themselves last year -- 50 per cent more than the average for each year since
1988. Although interior minister Michel Debre said that
the number of police officers taking their own lives
is not proportionately greater than in the
population as a whole, the ministry has plans to increase the number of
psychologists and social workers working on the force.
- ``Reorganized Peruvian rebels returning to deadly old ways'', Mar. 22, A16
(D. Koop).
An article on the Shining Path guerilla movement, which should win a prize
for the most ghoulish graphic: a time series of number of people killed per day by
Shining Path between 1980 and 1996.
- ``European partners ban U.K. beef'', Mar. 22, A1&A10 (D. Wallen).
This story is making huge waves in Europe, especially Britain. It is not
clear whether a new strain of Creutzfeldt-Jakob brain disease is linked to
`mad cow disease' (bovine spongiform encephaly). Much of the evidence is
statistical: in particular there seems to be an elevated rate of C-J disease
among farm workers handling cattle feed. Half of Britain's schools
have already introduced a ban on beef in children's meals.
Another article on Mar. 25 (A16) reports that the British government
acknowledged for the first time a possible link between C-J disease and
BSE. The most recent 10 cases of C-J disease are believed to have been
acquired from beef that was infected before the
government introduced safety measures on the handling of meat in 1989.
Because the disease has a latent period of 15 months to 30 years, the
potential size of the problem is completely unknown.
Canada banned beef imports from Britain in 1990.
- ``Book stirs debate on synthetic chemicals'', Mar. 20, A1&A8 (New York
Times).
A new book called Our Stolen Future provides warnings that
synthetic chemicals pose new and serious health threats. The book has been
criticized by many scientists, and this article is a balanced account of the two
points of view.
- ``Quebeckers `worried about future' '', Mar. 23, A1 (R. Mackie).
Léger and Léger still going strong.