To add to what you said about not getting a reply on the high frequency trading job, it seems to be the norm today that employers don’t respond to applicants. This is true even after interviews!

Since it would only take them 2 minutes to send a form letter rejection E-mail using their online application tool, I can only conclude that they just don’t care about employees.

I have narrowed down my target companies to only those that have sent me rejection notices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Flansburg

It was an audio cassette course which I did by myself along with the work book in a couple of hours. I thought the tricks were cool and I definately remember using them throughout high school, but I saw them more as party tricks.

I was lent a copy of Trachtenberg by a friend when I was around 15 and was blown away. Take for instance the “Multiplying by 11” rule (the Wikipedia page doesn’t give it any justice):

“Add the digit to its neighbor (on the right)”

e.g 3425 x 11 (in reverse order):

– 5 + 0 = 5
– 2 + 5 = 7
– 4 + 2 = 6
– 3 + 4 = 7
– 0 + 3 = 3

So the answer is 37675. The calculation is almost as fast as reading out loud the number being multiplied! Show that to Colby and tell me he’s not impressed 🙂

How hard is it to learn? Even though 15 is a lot older than the kids in the Math Team, it should be a piece of cake if they know their times tables (i.e. have instant recall) and have you guys to walk them through the rules. It’s not complete magic though as they’ll have to do lots of excercises to drum it in and it does take time getting used to juggling numbers in your head. But I do think that Trachtenberg is a better alternative to standard artithmetic once fundamentals are solid.

Do I remember them now? Not really. Once I started going into higher math, I generally relied on a calculator unfortunately. Laziness catches up. But now that we’re talking about it, I feel inspired to add it to my Amazon list 🙂

Would you mind telling me what exactly your experience has been with mental math stuff. How hard was it to learn, how old were you, how did you learn it, were you able to remember the techniques, in what ways did it prove useful, etc? Also, why did you like the Trachtenberg method best? I’ve been browsing through a number of similar books, so I’m very curious about how the methods might differ and what might make one superior to the others (assuming they differ much at all).

http://www.amazon.com/Trachtenberg-Speed-System-Basic-Mathematics/dp/4871877094/

j/k, I actually do feel guilty asking your help because I know you are always busy. If it helps, the advice you give and often just talking to you helps tremendously. I think you would agree that I would not be where I am today without your advice. I only hope that I can repay you in some way in the future for all that you have done.

Keep up the good work.

Keep the old feed URL around, introduce the show as “formerly TechZing” for 5 episodes and then make a clean break!

And that’s the only context in which I ever experienced a social network really – my family will call, friends will IM directly, people I work(ed) with will email most of the time, people I went to school with will not even contact me unless they’re in any of the previous categories.

I think FB still has a place where you don’t care about the generations – your “friends” who belong to some group can be anywhere between 10 and 90 – as long as they are part of a real-world group that wants to organise themselves in some way, share pictures from the previous events, or exchange some news related to what they’re doing. It seems like those kind of use cases are ignored in almost any FB-related article. Or maybe what I experience is very far from what other people use it for… what do you think?