Amazon Rising

Just finished watching "Amazon Rising" from CNBC. Always infatuated with any thinking-outside-the-box initiatives from Amazon. Their P/E ratio is several hundreds or even thousands and still is a teacher's pet of Wall Street. They can afford to lose billions of dollar in shipping just to win over customers' confidence. Amazon never hesitates to have strong-arm tactics against their own 3rd-party suppliers by using cunning playbook. And they plan to have 1-hour drone delivery probably after FAA approves commercial usage of drone at least five years from now.  Amazon Rising

Baumol's cost disease

1787年莫札特的弦樂五重曲需五個人彈奏，現在還是需要五個人。醫護人員幾百年前，一次只能看一個病人。現在還是。他們的生產力幾百年來並没有增加 (所謂的 Baumol's cost disease)。但產品生產人員，四十年來生產力就成長了 250%   教育也是 Baumol's cost disease 最常被提到的例子之一。和醫療不同的例子是 MOOCs 很可能改變這幾千年來教育一成不變的 "一對數十個人的局面"，尤其是大學教育。
Wisconsin 大學商學院院長曾開玩笑說 "以後全世界可能只需要四個人教微積分，一個人用英文，一個人用中文，一個人用法文，另外一個人待命在其他人死亡時可隨時接替"

Sotomayor, People's Judge

Pretty impressed by the comments from Supreme Court Judge, Sotomayor, in ABC's "George Stephanopoulos for This Week" in this morning. Sotomayer, dubbed as "People's Judge" commented about her strong support for the affirmative action in college admission and dismissed some of the comments on the Internet against affirmative action as "In the fast-paced Internet world, reporters are no longer reading about cases before they comment on them."   Sotomayor Interview with ABC's Stephanopoulos

Moonshot Factory

Google does not have R&D Center, they just have "moonshot factory". I love this term since "moonshot" connotes the pride of being in the skunkworks projects which "factory" hints its path to the final product.
Moonshot Factory

Handwriting learns more than verbatim laptop note-taking

Taking handwritten notes will learn more and have better test performance than verbatim laptop note-taking. Though I take it with a grain of salt, I strongly agree that, by handwriting, it forces you to ruminate constantly what the teacher just delivers. That listening-while-thinking will definitely facilitate the learning process.
http://www.nj.com/mercer/index.ssf/2014/06/princeton_university_study_finds_students_more_likely_to_learn_by_taking_handwritten_notes.html

Nuanced aptitude distinction from common-core education

Recent NYT has an article about the impact of standard common-core education in NY state. The test score in 2013 (after common-core) is 58% worse than in 2012 (before common-core). The common-core guidelines seem to be just the basic training and it proves that US students have lagged behind way too long. By adopting the rigorous common-core, according to NYT, only the strong dedication from teachers can make a difference. Typical 4th grade math question under common core is as follows: "A club’s first meeting was attended by 28 people. The first meeting was attended by 4 times as many people as the second meeting. How many people attended the second meeting?" The question should be pretty easy but it stumps many 4th-grade students in NY city.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/education/common-core-in-9-year-old-eyes.html?_r=0

Reflection of personality from Facebook posts

Want to know your personality? Go to http://labs.five.com/ and it will evaluate your Facebook posts and display the scores of your openness, neuroticism, conscientiousness, agreeableness and extraversion. Then, you can compare your scores with scores of Bill Gates, Obama and Zuckerberg.
Test your personality from Facebook posts

10-to-10 schedule in Xiaomi

When 100k Mi3 smartphones were sold out in 86 seconds, it is not surprising to witness Xiaomi is in the ascendant. What it impresses me is the hard-driving entrepreneurship of its founder, Lei Jun. Is that really true that everyone needs to work 12 hours a day in Xiaomi (so-called 10-to-10 schedule)?
Xiaomi smartphone in the ascendant

Only 4 calculus professors are needed in the whole WORLD

"Winners-take-all" and "disruptive innovations" may evolve online education into a touch-and-go world. A sobering question is asked in today's NY Times, “How many calculus professors do we need in the WORLD?” The answer is 4: one to teach in English, one in French, one in Chinese, and one in the farm system in case one dies.
Business Schools, Disrupted

You are watched by your instructor in online learning

A new interactive online learning in Harvard Business School will make its debut in June, 2014. It has 60 HD TVs, each a stand-in for an off-site student. 
Harvard Business School new online learning