Six questions that predict success

 Carol Dweck, a Stanford psychologist famous for her research on growth mindset, is coauthor of a new study.

To test the theory, the researchers asked student participants six questions and asked them to rate themselves on a 1 (never) to 5 (always) scale.

• When you are stuck on something, how often do you ask yourself, "What are things I can do to help myself?"
• Whenever you feel like you are not making progress, how often do you ask yourself, "Is there a better way of doing this?"
• Whenever you feel frustrated with something, how often do you ask yourself, "How can I do this better?"
• In moments when you feel challenged, how often do you ask yourself, "What are things I can do to make myself better at this?"
• When you are struggling with something, how often do you ask yourself, "What can I do to help myself?"
• Whenever something feels difficult, how often do you ask yourself, "What can I do to get better at this?"

What happened? Higher scores predicted higher grades.

And in subsequent studies, higher scores predicted greater success in a professional challenge and in a health and fitness goal.

Five stages of accepting constructive mathematics

 

From a psychological point of view, learning constructive mathematics is agonizing, for it requires one to first unlearn certain deeply ingrained intuitions and habits acquired during classical mathematical training. In her book On Death and Dying psychologist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross identified five stages through which people reach acceptance of life’s traumatizing events: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. We shall follow her path.

Five stages of accepting constructive mathematics is a nifty introduction to constructive mathematics by Andrej Bauer. Mentioned by Martin Escardo on the Agda mailing list. 

Positive Obsession and Furor Scribendi

 

I've just completed reading a trio of books by Octavia Butler: The Parable of the Sower, The Parable of the Talents, and Bloodchild and Other Stories. The latter contains two essays, Positive Obsession and Furor Scribendi, which I heartily recommend. Replace writer by researcher and everything remains true.

Persistence is essential to any writer--the persistence to finish your work, to keep writing in spite of rejection, to keep reading, studying, submitting work for sale. But stubbornness, the refusal to change unproductive behavior or to revise unsalable work can be lethal to your writing hopes.

Octavia Butler, "Furor Scribendi"

Don't Stop ICFP

The ICFP music video is out! Thank you to Youyou Cong and Jose Calderon for putting this together. They've done the community a great service.

Segregated by Design

Systematic racism stunts the opportunities available to blacks, but I've seen few clear explanations of it mechanisms. Segregated by Design lays bare these mechanisms as regards housing, explaining how federal, state, and local policies deliberately fostered segregation in contravention of the constitution. Lucid, to the point, and graphically inventive. Animated by Mark Lopez, based on The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein.

Haskell, Then and Now. Got Questions? Ask them here!

IOHK Cardano Virtual Summit continues. Today's sessions include:

16.00 Fri 3 Jul Haskell, then and now: What is the future for functional programming languages? Prof Simon Peyton-Jones, Prof John Hughes, Prof Philip Wadler, Dr Kevin Hammond, Dr Duncan Coutts.

You can submit questions via Reddit. Register for the summit here. You can log in with your registered username and password here.

Cardano Virtual Summit 2020

I'm participating in four sessions at Cardano Virtual Summit 2020, and there are many other sessions too. All times UK/BST.

16.00 Thu 2 Jul An overview of IOHK research Prof Aggelos Kiayias, Prof Elias Koutsoupias, Prof Alexander Russell, Prof Phil Wadler.

18.30 Thu 2 Jul Architecting the internet: what I would have done differently... Vint Cerf, Internet pioneer and Google internet evangelist, Prof Aggelos Kiayias, panel moderated by Prof Philip Wadler.

20.00 Thu 2 Jul Functional smart contracts on Cardano Prof Philip Wadler, Dr Manuel Chakravarty, Prof Simon Thompson.

16.00 Fri 3 Jul Haskell, then and now: What is the future for functional programming languages? Prof Simon Peyton-Jones, Prof John Hughes, Prof Philip Wadler, Dr Kevin Hammond, Dr Duncan Coutts.

An Incredible Scientific Breakthrough Discovery to Beat Covid

I almost never see masks in Edinburgh, not even in stores or on busses. Brazil has serious problems, but no one in Rio de Janeiro goes outside without a mask. Courtesy of Tom the Dancing Bug.

Haskell Love

I am speaking at Haskell Love, 31 July--1 August 2020,  a virtual event.

Jared Diamond: Lessons from a Pandemic

Another hopeful analysis, from Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, one of my favourite books.

Covid-19 doesn’t represent an existential threat to the survival of our species. Yes, the pandemic will be a serious blow to the world’s economy, but that will recover; it’s only a matter of time. Unlike many of the epidemics of the past, the virus isn’t threatening to cause military defeats, population replacements or crashes, or abandonments of land under cultivation. 

There are other dangers, present right now, that do constitute existential threats capable of wiping out our species, or permanently damaging our economy and standard of living. But they are less convincing at motivating us than is Covid-19, because (with one exception) they don’t kill us visibly and quickly. 

Strange as it may seem, the successful resolution of the pandemic crisis may motivate us to deal with those bigger issues that we have until now balked at confronting. If the pandemic does at last prepare us to deal with those existential threats, there may be a silver lining to the virus’s black cloud. Among the virus’s consequences, it could prove to be the biggest, the most lasting — and our great cause for hope.