Essentials of Algebra ( Answers)

Unit 5 powerpoint[1] algebra (1) from John O'Driscoll

Three PowerPoint Tips, from a man who knows...

I am indebted to Tim Harford, the "Undercover Economist" , presenter of BBC Radio 4's More or Less and Financial Times columnist for these three Powerpoint presentation tips:Microsoft bought PowerPoint 25 years ago. Happy anniversary.PowerPoint has a curious status these days – it’s ubiquitous and yet widely loathed. Both the ubiquity and the loathing are overdone.Here are three tips I’ve found very useful as a speaker.1) There are three things you can do with PowerPoint (or most of its rivals). You can put visual aids on a screen; you can create bullet-point speaker’s notes; and you can produce handouts for people to take home. All of these uses are perfectly legitimate, but you can’t do them all at once. Your speaker’s notes should be on small cards in your hand; your handouts can have contact details, sources, a bibliography, or dense data; your visuals should be simple and look awesome. If you feel you need to do all three, fine: you will need to create three completely different presentations.2) If you don’t have anything useful to display for a particular section of your talk, display nothing. During slideshow mode, press B to show a black slide, or W for a white one. Or if you don’t have direct access to the computer while presenting, insert blank slides as necessary. There’s nothing wrong with giving a talk during which you only show one or two slides – but don’t leave them up as wallpaper.3) You don’t have to use any visual aids at all. You might be surprised at how much people focus on you when you stop competing with yourself for attention.

Essentials of Algebra - Challenge

This is the first instalment of a comprehensive basic Algebra assignment. Try it and look back later in the week for the completed assignment. Best of luck!

Unit 5 pp q only from John O'Driscoll

THE CORNELL NOTE-TAKING SYSTEM.

The Cornell system for taking notes is one I have found useful. Note how the page is divided into three large margins. The area for note-taking is where you write your notes during a lecture, class or lesson. Endeavour to take down key points verbatim or in your own words, phrases or style. This will help your learning and encourage a more productive listening. You will aim to capture a good synopsis of what the lesson has attempted to impart. It should include areas you are not clear on and ideas and challenges that come up in your mind. The recall (Cues) column is for recording a measured review of what you have taken down in your notes, and anything that emerges after a lesson. It could include further understanding that has surfaced, and of course further questions. It may include references to supplementary material that could aid understanding. Above all, attempt to have it as a useful exam preparation aid. The summary area is a synopsis of your notes and hopefully will be something that has cemented your understanding of the topic. Visualise your study of a topic as a layered upside-down triangle where as you approach the apex of the triangle your understanding of a topic is more and more concise and fine-tuned, prompted by short and succinct phrases that are the key to a greater and deeper wealth of knowledge that you have acquired. The building of such a structure in itself is an excellent tool in the journey towards greater understanding.

Closer educational targeting vital to reducing crime rates - The Irish Times - Sat, Aug 25, 2012

Closer educational targeting vital to reducing crime rates - The Irish Times - Sat, Aug 25, 2012:

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BBC News - Do zero hours contracts create real jobs?

BBC News - Do zero hours contracts create real jobs?:

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"Us and them" by Peter Mc Verry S.J.

I have taken the liberty of reproducing Peter McVerry's article around the discourses of crime in our society.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2012/0822/1224322660926.html 

 All of us, whether on the political left or right or in the centre, have a common interest in reducing the level of crime in society.

To develop effective policies, it would seem reasonable to discuss the causes of crime. But such discussion often produces more heat than light – perhaps for very understandable reasons.

First, many of us – probably most of us – have been victims of crime at some point, and some have been very upset or even traumatised by the experience. We may have little patience with efforts to understand what causes crime; we just want the perpetrators punished.

Second, any attempt to understand the causes of crime is frequently – and wrongly – misinterpreted as trying to excuse the perpetrators of crime. However, to suggest that a local authority should eliminate a bad bend on a road, where speeding motorists frequently cause accidents, is not to excuse the reckless behaviour of the motorists who speed round the bend. Third, the debate on crime is, to a large extent, filtered through an ideological lens.

Discussion on crime generally presupposes a distinction between the offenders and the victims of crime: “them” and “us”. However, most of us are both victims and offenders.

If I have ever broken the speed limit, I have broken the law. But we do not consider this offence, which is one that “we” might commit, to be in the same category as joyriding, for example, which is one “they” might commit, even though far more deaths and injuries on our roads are caused by speeding than by joyriding. It is also worth remembering that the greatest suffering inflicted on Irish people in recent years was caused, not by burglars in jeans, but by professionals in designer suits.

Many of those who end up in prison were also, in their earlier years, victims of serious crime. Following a visit to Mountjoy Prison some time ago, I was reflecting on the lives of the nine prisoners I had just met: six were known to me to have been victims of sexual abuse as children, and the other three I did not know well enough to be able to say. As a society, we express a great sympathy for the victims of institutional abuse, but my very conservative “guesstimate” is that at least one prisoner in four is a former resident.

The majority of people in our prisons come from a small number of disadvantaged communities, as John Lonergan, former governor of Mountjoy, repeatedly tried to remind us.

We know from various studies that a totally disproportionate percentage of people in prison have low levels of literacy, lack skills and qualifications, have left school early and never had a job. A high percentage have an addiction to drugs and/or alcohol. The incidence of mental illness among prisoners is also disproportionate; many have experienced homelessness and/or housing insecurity.

This is not to excuse their involvement in crime, as most of those who experience poverty and deprivation do not turn to crime, but it does suggest that if we are really serious about reducing crime then the social deprivation and addiction problems that underlie much criminal behaviour would be a good place to start.

Furthermore, if we want to reduce crime, then the focus of imprisonment must be rehabilitation, given that recidivism plays a major role in crime levels. The recidivist rate in Ireland is high: one in two leaving prison will be back again within four years.

Why should we be surprised? Great numbers of our prisoners spend their time in overcrowded, drug-filled and violent prisons with little or no constructive activity to occupy them. The only skills that many prisoners acquire while in prison are how to commit crime more successfully when they get out.

The boredom, even meaninglessness, of prison life, combined with a ready availability of drugs, creates a drug culture within some of our prisons that is difficult for some prisoners to resist. I personally know of at least 40 young people, who never touched a drug before going into prison, and came out addicted to heroin. Warehousing of prisoners is not conducive to their rehabilitation.

Many people leave prison with no arrangement having been put in place to ensure they have accommodation, access to a social welfare payment, and supports to help them adjust to life outside. When people are in custody, we have a great opportunity to address the personal difficulties that they have experienced in life. We also have a duty of care to ensure that on release they have some chance of not rapidly sliding back into crime.

Ultimately it is society’s attitude to criminals such as “them” that prevents any serious attempt to reduce crime levels. Most people now know that 196 young people died in, or shortly after leaving, the care of the State in the decade 2000-2010.

Most died from unnatural causes – drug overdose, suicide, violence. There was an investigation and a report, followed, quite rightly, by widespread outrage at the failure of the State to adequately care for them.

The need to rectify the deficiencies in the system and provide the necessary resources to do so was agreed by all political parties.

However, in the same decade, 135 people died while in prison or within one month of leaving prison. In other words, at the time of their death they were, or had recently been, in the care of the State.

Most died from unnatural causes – drug overdose, suicide, violence. But there was no investigation, no report, no outrage, no comment from any politician and, of course, no commitment to dealing with the deficiencies in the system that may have led to some of these deaths.

Some will read this opinion piece through their own ideological lens and write it off as typical left-wing liberalism. But through my ideological lens, it is common sense. And this is where most discussions on crime end up.

---

Fr Peter McVerry SJ is a director of the Peter McVerry Trust and a member of the Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice team. He will be speaking at the conference Re-imagining Imprisonment in Europe, Trinity College Dublin, September 5th-7th 2012. For information visit www.jcfj.ie

The Stolen Child by William Butler Yeats with music by the Waterboys

This is a magical poem put to music beautifully by Mike Scott and the Waterboys. We all grew up with the myth of the fairies and who knows maybe they do exist. They certainly exist in our imagination. Some say they are the Tuatha De Dannan who were driven underground with the arrival of the Celts to our shores. Yeats paints a dream-like landscape, where one can venture for sometimes this 'world's more full of weeping than you can understand.'






Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water-rats;
There we’ve hid our faery vats,
Full of berries
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim grey sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances,
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And is anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To to waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal-chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
from a world more full of weeping than you can understand.

Spelling, English and Maths websites

I have put together some of, what I consider to be, excellent Internet resources. Have a  look and see what you think!

http://www.commonlymisspelledwords.org/

http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/misspelled_words.html

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0781709.html
All  above courtesy of leavingcertenglish.net

http://www.algebrahelp.com/
For all the algebra topics you will meet. Excellent self-testing exercises are a great feature.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/
BBC GCSE Bitesize is a brilliant study resource for all subjects and utilises all the media that is at the BBC's disposal.


http://www.mathtutor.ac.uk/

Clicking a title from 7 subjects will open up a list of topics, each one having a video tutorial, support text, diagnostic test and an exercise to do. Some topics also have an extension film and/or an animation to accompany them.

Work through at your own pace, pausing, rewinding, testing and exploring until you've grasped the concept. Mathtutor is not a course and does not offer accreditation - but it does offer excellent revision possibilities! So off you go. Get stuck in!'

http://patrickjmt.com/

In his own words: making free and hopefully useful maths videos for the world. 

Rethinking Public Money and Taxpayers' Money.

I have written before about the perennial dichotomy that permeates the political and economic discourse in advanced economies: taxpayers' money versus public money. One former British Prime Minister declared quite cogently and sincerely that there is no such thing as 'public money'. The state has no money of its own. Any of the state's monies are borrowed from our savings or accumulated through the  taxes we pay. Implied in Thatcher's peroration, was the notion that the state is a bit of a leech; grabbing our hard earned money for its own purposes, to justify its existence, as it were. There is a grain of truth in this stance (it's hard to be absolutely wrong).

The binary opposition to this perspective is that taxes are legislated for by a directly elected representative parliament and there is a moral foundation underpinning all that the government does, of which collecting taxes and borrowing money is one of its  major functions. This money is now public money. We, the people, have given the parliament our consent. 

So, roughly speaking, there are the two competing ideological positions around  the role of government. They both have substance and both must be taken on board when deciding and implementing government policy. The parliament must consider that it is not completely its own money it is spending when devising programmes.  Hence, due care must be taken, when allocating public monies. It is the government's job to be a judicious custodian of others, i.e., taxpayers' money, that granted, has been transformed into public money.

Likewise, it is a moral imperative of citizens to pay taxes due to government, a government to which we have given our consent to - a government endowed with a moral raison d'etre. A government which provides  a lot of services and should redistribute wealth in a fair and thoughtful manner. Public money is for the public good.
Hence, a bipolar debate is not helpful. Government finances can be understood both as public money and taxpayers' money. It is not one or the other. And there is a moral compunction on citizens to contribute to public money and for public officials - also citizens - to spend taxpayers' money wisely.

WHAT SORT OF LEARNER ARE YOU?

Compiled By: OnlineCollege.org

'MATHEMAGIC' AND ARTHUR BENJAMIN

THE TEACHER OF THE YEAR

The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost

listen to ‘The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost’ on Audioboo

Test your essential numeracy skills!

Assignment 1 from jfod2

Essays - Skills for OU Study - Open University

Essays - Skills for OU Study - Open University:

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FETAC LEVEL 3 MATHEMATICS SCHEME OF WORK

Scheme of work template 2 from jfod2

Ratio

Ratio from jfod2

Opium of the Masses

I loved being an altar boy. I thought it gave me power. I think it gave me status. It definitely kept my mother happy. I just loved it. It was, believe it or not some of the happiest years of my life. It coincided with my primary school years so it was largely uninterrupted by teenage angst, albeit punctuated with an impetuous spirit for doing the first mad thing that came into my mind.  

I was assigned, so to speak, to the Franciscan Friary  in Carrickbeg, the Waterford half of Carrick-on-Suir. These were the halcyon days of Catholic Ireland; copious masses hugely attended and a battery of priests, brothers and altar boys keeping the show on the road. The priests and brothers treated us extremely well. We all got on well with them and appreciated their commitment as much as we ignored their eccentricities and most of their sermons. There was a certain regimented and institutional feel to the job of an altar boy and it suited me more or less just fine. I loved the uniform. Rich brown soutans that had the same shade as the Franciscan monk's garb with about fifty buttons that you would tie right up to the top. You could wear a pyjamas underneath; this thing covered a multitude. For those of you unfamiliar with liturgical vestments it is    also known as a cassock. Google it and you'll get the picture. However, in case you're thinking, that's a bit plain, over the soutane/cassock we wore a surplice, which is a white tunic kind of fellow with wide sleeves and went down to the knees. When they were fresh back from the Friary wash department they were something to behold. The song could have gone..."the surplice's so white I gotta wear shades". Put it this way, you stand out from the crowd in that get-up.

The next highlight was the roster which tended to cover a month or so. The way it worked was: one Sunday you covered the eight o'clock morning mass, the following Sunday you oversaw the later nine-thirty mass and then a week later you were assigned to the eleven-thirty mass and weekly duties. Weekly duties meant you covered the Sunday teatime benediction and then for the week ahead you held the fort for the daily eight o'clock morning masses. This was a kind of graveyard shift but I revelled in it.
I'd always be there first in the mornings, about half an hour before mass would start and of course Brother Agnelis would have the church and sacristy open already. That man surfaced at a un-Godly hour. I'd say he never slept it out, never mind  had a lie-in. So, essentially you had  the place to yourself. We had a room which housed all the accoutrements, including  incense and charcoal and the thurible. What's the thurible I hear you ask? It's an ornate metal kind of pot and cover suspended by chains that's used to burn the incense at different ceremonies, especially at Benediction. It went into overdrive at Easter.
From our room an open door led into the celebrant's quarters which was right beside the church. There, the priest would have all his stuff. Suitable vestments, the various missals, the chalice etc. All the really important stuff. Just off that room the altar wine and the communion hosts were stored. Bottles of the stuff and hosts that lay in boxes lined with a lovely crisp paper. There were hundreds upon hundreds to a box. Of a winter's morning when I had cycled over I have to be honest and admit I did the odd time partake in a few hosts- unconsecrated I hasten to add- washed down with with a good slug of wine. I'll tell you it fortified the soul on a frosty morning and readied me for the fray. I told you I was impetuous!
Normally three or four of us would serve the mass. We would have to light the candles, place the chalice on the altar, ready the water and the wine into their little crucibles and put the patens out. The patens were the brass plates that were placed under the chin of the person receiving communion. Why, I'll never know, I mean there was nothing going to drip. Not from our side anyway. I'd say I've seen the roofs of half the mouths in Carrick with that job. You had to be very careful that you didn't clout someone on the chin with one of them. They could be quite fine and the last thing you wanted was someone reverently receiving communion and returning to their seat with a split lip.
I loved training in new altar boys. I was a right show-off. Teaching them how to genuflect was my specialty. Keep the back straight and whatever you do, don't slouch. Ringing the bell at various times in the mass was important. If you forgot there'd be dagger looks; and that's just from me. When mass was over, you quenched candles and brought back in all the implements that were used. We'd have to help the priest if it was needed. Generally, just tidy up to try and leave the place as you got it and off you go. All in a day's work.
Easter was a great time for an ambitious altar server. Especially if you didn't mess up on thurible duties. You had to light the little two inch diameter circles of charcoal and  place them in the cup of the thurible and sprinkle with incense. I can smell it as I write. Opium of the masses. Then there were processions at Easter and not forgetting the sojourn around the parish at Corpus Christi where you rubbed shoulders or surplices to be precise with our comrades from St. Molleran's. We in the Friary tended to look down at that lot. They had the privilege of serving at funerals and weddings; the Friary didn't do those. And their palms were duly crossed with silver. Greedy guts. However, we had the annual trip to Multifarnham in Co. Westmeath, home of the Franciscan training college. Over three or four days we were treated like princes. Access to sporting facilities and  generally just shooting the breeze. God we got up to some crack. And we got away with it. That's for another day. 
So, there you have that much, an overview of life as a Franciscan altar boy. And you might agree a good one I was too. I had my flaws but then who's perfect? It's an altar-ego after all.

The Savage Loves His Native Shore

Carrick-on-Suir is the town I was born in. Greystone Street, Carrick  is the street that I took my first steps, plodding down the shiny grey tiled steps while hanging onto my mother's arm. My mother-not a Carrick woman- would probably have been taking me to my paternal Grandmother's house in William Street. To get there one could go through the West Gate and along the Main Street. Then, under the arch at Chapel Street that leads to St. Nicholas' Church adorning the top of William Street, a church resplendent in its Catholic majesty,  replete  with the echoes of Carrick prayers that anxiously float like ghosts in the candle scented air. Or one could saunter along Town Wall or the more modern equivalent Pearse Square with its proud place in the heart of Carrick under the gaze of the Church steeple. The Protestant Church over the road  is sombre and dignified  and now houses a heritage centre. The Protestant fraternity that lie at rest in hallowed soil have the half-prayers of many a wayfarer.
I  loved William Street then and I love it today. My footprints are somewhere there along its three score and ten feet. There was along that small street three thriving shops. Tom O' Keeffe and Sons were merchants of paints and hardware and fine goods. Up the street Lizzy O' Connor ran a grocery store with weighing scales and drawers and glass jars of bulls eyes and bags of flour. Directly across Paulie Stewart and his mother Maggie ran something similar albeit with less attention to detail with the bonus of Barney the flat-backed dog that chased Volkswagens. Once that 'chugga-chugga-chugga' could be heard Barney was out of his slumber snapping at the car for 30 feet or so only to return defeated by his noisy quarry. The famous Clancy brothers were born and reared on that street. Surely when they got to heaven they insisted on a William Street replica and all the old residents would pass them by daily and join them for a drink or a song or a prayer or even  a final breath.
William Street is part of the so-called Tipperary side of Carrick;in the Gaelic: CarraigMor. When I was seven we moved to the so-called Waterford side- Carrickbeg. Only the steadfast Sister river separates them but they are different. The spirit is wilder in Carrickbeg. It is where I reside today, where I lay my head at night and it is where my bones will return to the fecund ground, guarded over by Sliabh na Mban while my ghost will wander o'er the Waterford coast seeking my final destiny in another time and place.
Sometimes I like to walk around Carrickbeg. Down the Yellow Road onto the Co-op Hill and then passing the parish and the famine wall, I traipse up past the Friary. The Friary tabernacle lies bare now after 800 years. The Franciscans finally gave way to the secular impulse and had to move on. The convent once home to so many priests and brothers is now a Respond apartment complex; social housing for senior citizens. They are blessed to reside on hallowed ground and the Christian call while stilled, whispers ceaselessly in the communal setting of Carrickbeg.
My hometown is small; a provincial market town that sprang like rushes beside the river. It nestles among the claims of Tipperary and Waterford while the tiny river Lingaun keeps Leinster at bay. It has a heart like any human being, is hurt and broken, joyous and alive. But just like a beautiful love it holds you and pulls you back into its arms and you are finally at peace. At peace on your  native shore.