Happy Pi Day 2013

Today is Pi Day.

Just what is Pi Day? Well since the value of Pi is considered to be 3.14 then today date of 3-14-13 is this year’s Pi Day.

The number Pi (or π, if you’re using the Greek letter) is a mathematical constant. It’s technically the ratio of any circle's circumference to its own diameter. For general use, Pi is the number you get when dividing 22 by 7. It’s approximately equal to 3.14159.

What’s special about Pi? Well here are a few interesting things:

•  Pi is an irrational number. In irrational number is one that can’t be written exactly as a ratio of two integers. That means when people say Pi is just 22/7, they’re technically not correct. 

•  Pi is a transcendental number, which means that despite thousands of years of people trying to do it, it is impossible to solve the ancient challenge of “squaring the circle.” It means using the tools of a compass and straight-edge to construct a square with the exact same area as a circle.

•  Pi has a decimal pattern never repeats. So far, nobody has been able to distinguish a pattern of repeating numbers in the digits that flow to the right of the decimal point, despite having been calculated out to more than a million decimal places.

                Here’s an example: 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716.

As a vocational college, we find that most of our students are adults who use everyday math just fine but have forgotten some of the things they learned in secondary school. Geometry and the concept of Pi are concepts not only used in specialized fields but also around us all the time if you just look for them.

Events like today’s Pi Day are good reminders of how fun math can be and how to keep on learning.

And, since any celebration includes some type of dessert, here is an easy recipe for making your own Pi pie on Pi Day. Its measurements use the value of Pi and it includes Greek yogurt for the Greek letter. Ok, that might be stretching it some but we’ve got to get in the spirit of these things and it sure does make a good no-bake cheesecake pie.

EASY As PI - PI-Day Cheesecake Pie

Ingredients:

3.14 ounces of plain Greek yogurt (can be rounded to 3 ounces)

3.14 ounces of sugar

6.28 ounces cream cheese, softened (can be rounded to 6 ounces)

6.28 ounces of thawed whipped topping (can be rounded to 6 ounces)

3.14 ounces of sugar (can be rounded to 3 ounces)

Splash of vanilla

Instructions:

Mix cream cheese, yogurt, and sugar together until smooth. Add vanilla. Gently fold in whipped topping until well combined. Do not over-mix or the air will come out of the whipped topping and the pie will be too dense. Pour into pie crust shape (see below for recipe). Chill for 1 hour in refrigerator and serve. Top with remaining whipped topping if desired.

Make Your Own Graham Cracker Pie Crust

Ingredients:

2 cups graham cracker crumbs

1/2 cup butter

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Using heavy duty aluminum foil, pinch out the PI Greek letter π to form at least 1 inch wide “legs” and 1 inch wide top bar. The lengths should be approximately four inches each. Spray well with nonstick cooking spray.

Combine all ingredients.

Press over bottom and up sides of foil form. Chill for half an hour, using crumpled aluminum foil around the form to support the shape until it sets. Bake at 400° for 10 minutes.

More Rational Pie

Hostess Workers Get Retraining

According to a US Department of Labor news release, 18,000 former Hostess workers (the makers of Twinkies and Ding Dongs) are now eligible to apply for Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) training funding.

The federal TAA program, created in 1974, provides support to those workers who lost their jobs due to foreign trade.  To allow Hostess workers to receive this benefit, the Department of Labor had to determine whether the big layoff event that occurred in January (and caused a run in grocery stores for the snack foods) met the eligibility criteria spelled out in the Trade Act of 1974. The department’s investigation found that increased imports of baked products from other countries contributed to the company's sales declines and workers losing their jobs.  As a result, the TAA eligibility was granted to Hostess workers in 48 states, including the Hostess bakery stores in Modesto and Turlock.

The TAA eligible workers were engaged in activities related to the production, distribution and sale of baked goods such as bread, buns, rolls, snack cakes, doughnuts, sweet rolls and similar products.

 As part of the rules, the TAA program can be implemented if the federal Department of Labor finds that a significant number of workers at the company age 50 or over possess skills that are not easily transferable and that competitive conditions within the industry are adverse.

What do they get?

Those who qualify may receive case management and re-employment services, training in new occupational skills and/or trade readjustment allowances that provide income support for workers enrolled in training. Workers may also receive job search and relocation allowances, and the Health Coverage Tax Credit.

There are three different tracks an unemployed person under the TAA may follow:

1) Occupational Skills or Vocational Training

•Often offered through a  technical college: this includes college-level degrees or certificate programs along with necessary prerequisite courses through a TAA eligible training provider.

•Apprenticeship programs and skill focus training.

2) Remedial Education

•Remedial Education includes Adult Basic Education often in areas of math, English or reading skills, obtaining a High School equivalency credential (GED or HSED), or pursing a program titled English as a Second Language (or ESL) classes

3) Employer Based Training or On-The-Job (OJT) Training

•Contracts can be established between an employer and the participant of the TAA program to provide for training to take place at the employer site, for a set period of time. Payment is made to the employer to reimburse them for the cost they incur to provide training for their job openings.

While TAA is open to eligible workers of all ages, workers 50 years of age and older may elect to receive Re-employment Trade Adjustment Assistance instead. If a worker obtains new employment at wages less than $50,000 and less than those earned in the trade-impacted employment, the RTAA program will pay 50 percent of the difference between the old wage and the new wage, up to $10,000 over a two-year period. RTAA participants may also be eligible for retraining and the HCTC.

TAA can provide fully funded training, a health coverage subsidy, extended income support, and other benefits to dislocated workers whose companies move production or outsource to another country, or are forced to lay off workers or close plants due to increased imports and foreign competition.

Community Business College has trained students eligible for TAA assistance but usually as a result of manufacturers who moved their plants to other countries.

By the way, the snacks for which they were famous might be making a comeback as the remnants of the Hostess company announced in February that they are close to selling their Wonder Bread brand to Flowers Foods. Can the resurrection of Twinkies be far behind?

For more information on TAA and the range of the Department of Labor's employment and training services, visit the Community Business College educational site at http://www.cbcwebcollege.com/taa.htm .

Why Does My Computer Hum?

A while ago, one of our Community Business CollegeQuickBooks students asked this question?

“Why is my computer humming?”

The answer?

The ACTUAL reason?

In this case, the real reason the humming sound was coming from the computer was some a bundle of cables inside the main computer’s tower case had shifted and the internal cooling fan was brushing against it.

Laptops don’t have to worry about this kind of thing since they don’t have the cables that the desktop tower computer has.

Want to learn more? You can take one of the CommunityBusiness College online classes on Basic Computer hardware (This is also the Comp TIA A+ Certification prep course that is a good start if you want to take your computer hardware knowledge further).

Best Memory Tool - A Final Thought

This was our final thought for the end of this week. It was presented at our student meeting.


This was our final thought for the end of this week. It was presented at our student meeting.

The importance of taking notes is often overlooked. It’s as if it were an archaic remnant of days gone by, replaced by tablets and cell phones with audio recorders that can record sessions for unlimited playbacks.

As wonderful as those tools are, nothing can replace the taking of good notes. Why? For one thing, after you capture the information you need, retrieving a specific detail later on can be a hassle if you have to fast forward through 37 minutes of lecture to find the point you’ve forgotten. Even transcribing software gives too much information. Important points are captured but they’re buried under a lot of detail that’s not always needed.

 The best notes are those that capture just the important points, briefly and concisely.

 

As an added benefit, the act of hearing something and writing it down is a memory booster that helps train the brain. To take a note, someone must hear it, have an understanding of how it translates to paper and then command the correct body part to make the notation.

Student Note Taking

Of course students especially need to be good note takers. We find at Community Business College that the best student performers tend to be the ones who take the best notes. Instructors share their wisdom and context of the information they are sharing.

Good note taking means students send messages to their future selves of what is important to remember.

 

Takes Notes When Starting A Job

Some new newly hired candidates will go through the first day of orientation and listen attentively to how their jobs are supposed to be done without taking notes. Why? Some believe that if they’re taking notes, it looks like a weakness. Or that it might be rude.

 

Here’s some advice, if you think it might be rude, ask permission first. That not only reinforces with the new boss that you’re about take the information you are about to receive seriously, but it also shows courtesy, a practice that has fallen too much out of favor these days.

 

As to being a weakness, it generally has the opposite effect. It lets an employer know that the new employee is taking the instruction seriously. Watch the boss’ eyes. After seeing something written down, the boss will probably follow up with some more supporting details. Most new employees who have taken notes make stronger first impressions.

Otherwise, the boss might believe that nothing shared is about to be remembered.

 

So, take note – note taking is an excellent way of preserving what you need to know for the future. A better future, after all, is what self-improvement is all about.

 

The animation of this final thought is available on YouTube here - http://youtu.be/9nPrEf4Y5eA

Rain with a 50% Chance of Narcissus

It rained today but the narcissus plants are showing their colors.

The flowers are blooming and making the outside of the medical office classroom smell wonderful. Their blossoms are oasis of white and yellow in a waving sea of green leaves

The flowers were a gift from 5 years ago. We planted them in the Community Business College campus landscaping and they have taken root and multiplied.

They have survived people kicking ties way through the planter, frosts, and heat waves.

These flowers are also know as “paperwhites” and they sure seem to like Modesto soil and weather.

Once they finish blooming, they will give birth to new bulbs. If anyone is interested in getting a couple of them, contact the school’s main office.

The thought that Community Business College is spreading beauty through flowers out in the world the way we spread knowledge is a neat idea. :-)

The Question: "What non-English language will be most useful for my child to know in 20-30 years?"

The question came up today, "What non-English language will be most useful for my child to know in 20-30 years?"

Here's the Community Business College answer:

   The answer to "What non-English language will be most useful for my child to know in 20-30 years?" depends on what your child's goals are. As an intellectual exercise, it is a good idea to pick the first language as one that is similar to the one they already know (e.g.  Spanish or French). Then the next language can be something completely different (e.g. Mandarin, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian, etc.) that uses different characters and grammar rules.

     It’s tempting to say that Mandarin will be a dominant language 20 years from now but I remember people saying that about Russian and the language spoken in India while I was growing up. I even had a teacher who pushed Esperanto. Needles to say, I don’t think we can call that one useful for everyday use.

     If your child is going to learn it, you might want to start learning it as well. It's much easier to learn a new language if you have someone with whom to practice in an everyday setting.

     As far as languages other than English for use in the adult world, it will make a difference where your child plans to live and work.

    For example, our college set up inexpensive online language classes for our graduates with the primary purpose of helping English speakers start to learn Spanish. Having multiple languages improves their employability but for most of them, they plan to stay in California's Central Valley with a large population of Spanish speakers. More details are at http://www.cbcwebcollege.com/LearnALanguage.htm.

     That said, we have had a couple of people who wanted to take Arabic and Japanese. There aren't as many speakers of those languages in this geographic area, but the students chose those languages for personal reasons. That is one of the best motivations for learning a new language. Motivation is an important factor when choosing a language to learn because it’s a skill that requires constant practice.

   If you look at the globalization caused by the Internet, there will always be the need to be able to communicate in other languages, even though the translation software is getting better and better. The key here is to understand the nuance of a language, which means not just learning the mechanics of a language, but keeping the skill fresh with constant usage and practice.

 

Is Cyber Week (Formerly Cyber Monday) The New Normal?

With today marking the official close of “Cyber Week” it’s a good time to reflect on the trend that seems to have invaded and completely taken over the last days of November.

What’s the Deal With “Cyber Monday?”

“Cyber Monday” is a term for the Monday after Thanksgiving with the idea being that many people take two days off from work for Thanksgiving - Thanksgiving Day and the following Friday. That Friday following Thanksgiving has become known as “Black Friday” because stores that may have been losing money and “in the red” all year make so much money with the surge of sales on this day that their books are now “in the black.”

Around the year 2005, online retailers started noticing a surge on online sales on the Monday after the Thanksgiving holiday. It made sense because the shopping mood carried over to the first day back at work and people who work with computers were using their work computers to do online shipping.

The day became known as “Cyber-Monday” as the popularity of online shopping increased and became mainstream. The first day back at work after the Thanksgiving holiday has become a holiday of sorts in and of itself. It has since grown into one of the biggest shopping days of the year. In fact, the reports are that Cyber Monday 2012 has been the best CyberMonday ever in terms of dollars spent on goods purchased.

Since most people shop online the first week after Thanksgiving, it has now become "CyberWeek." A lot of people do this at work (whether the boss is watching or not).

Even Community Business College decided to pitch in by offering 26% off the tuition of all its classes. This will last all week and be the school's CyberWeek 2012 deal.

The “week” in Cyber Week is only 5 days, of course. Monday through Friday based around the fact that most office workers only work those days of the week.

Cyber-Week is being broken down into its component days.

One group is promoting “Small Business Saturday.” Small Business Saturday is supposed to encourage holiday shoppers to patronize local “real” brick and mortar businesses with an emphasis on the small business shops.

There’s “Green Tuesday,” which is supposed to inspire consumers to make thoughtful, purposeful, environmentally minded shopping choices.

Sofa Sunday is named for the place and time where many people shop with their iPads.

Push Back

It's gotten so exreme that some brave retailers are now declaring Thanksgiving Day to be fair game and have started calling it “Black Thursday” with stores opening during various times on Thanksgiving Day in order to get the early, early crowds. Is that taking things too far? Some think so. As with so many things now, there are always people who try to counter the trends.

This push back is taking different forms.

Landing on the same day as Green Tuesday (there are only so many days in the week from which to choose) is Giving Tuesday, an event designed to encourage people to donate to worthy causes.

And even Buy Nothing Day on the Friday after Thanksgiving being championed by a Canadian activist group where instead of buying things, people are encouraged to not buy anything.

Still, with more tools at hand than ever before, savvy shoppers can get good deals online all the way through the end of November now before the big Christmas rush.

What can defeat this spreading of extreme shopping?

Technology might provide the answer with making stores adapt every day to “Black Friday” deals.

There are, of course, the daily deal websites such as Groupon and LivingSocial and SweetJack. They allow individual retailers to offer more specialized deals every day.

And now smartphones are getting into the act. There are now apps that allow you to price compare on items while you are in the store. That means if you find something you like in the local department store, you can search to see if it’s cheaper on Amazon or even down the street. But stores are getting wise to it and have started sending the ability to send coupons immediately to your smartphone to keep you in the store.

Decide.com 

The website Decide.com is all about leveraging data and technology to help shoppers predict and get the best deals. It uses a text mining algorithms across the world web to enable shoppers to get the best deals on their items possible.



Decide.com



They offer “Decide Score” which is a product rating system. It incorporates millions of user and expert reviews, recency of reviews, and scores from previous models to bring you the most data-driven, unbiased and useful product recommendations.

Decide advises you to buy or wait based on our proprietary price and model predictions. Our price predictions are right 77% of the time, and when they are we save you $101 per product on average.

Someday you may never have to worry about paying a price only to find it cheaper somewhere else at a later time. Price predictions help you pull the trigger on a sale with confidence and save money. Decides prediction algorithms utilize billions of observed price movements and over 40 distinct factors. Another feature allows you set up sales alerts for your future product purchase to be in the know about price changes, rumors and product releases.

So while all the competition is for getting your shopping dollars on Black Friday, CyberMonday and the holiday shopping seasons that follows, maybe in the near future we’ll see these types of deals all year round. Would you really miss getting up at 4 AM on the Friday after Thanksgiving to go stand in long, cold lines? And on the following Monday, you could not worry about missing a great deal while the boss peers over your should to see if you’re working or shopping.