Hong-Ngoc Nguyen

Instructor: Mrs. Tiana Marie Escarcida

Coms 100, section 1

1 May 2006

Persuasive Speaking Assignment

Let’s Get A in Math

This is an algebra formula:

that most of us used it over and over again to solve math problems. But so far, I still not find any instance in my life that I can apply this formula, except in the math exams.

At this point, if your major is not math related, you might begin looking at your math notes and thinking: “Probably I went further than what I actually need for my life and profession…so, should I spend my time (my limited time) to try to solve those complicated and boring math problems?” My suggestion is you should.

I think I am credible to speak upon this predicament because I spent approximately two weeks to gather data, analyze the surveys I passed out, and make an interview with a math professor.

Today, I will talk about why we should study math seriously to master all math problems that you have learned or will learn through two main points, first, how math is applied in our daily lives, and second, how math is applied to our professions, even in majors that do not seem to be relevant to math.

To begin, my first main point is how math is applied in our daily lives. I guess you will agree with me that math is everywhere. As stated by Mary Bafumo in the article “Making Math Meaningful” (2005): “Math is one of the easiest subjects to connect to real-life activities.” For example, to maintain our body weight, we may care about how many calories we put in a day by adding up the calories of the foods, then subtracting the calories that you put out through daily activities to get an idea what is going on with our body. Or we may want to know how much we earn a month by simply multiplying the salary per period by the total number of payment periods

Moreover, math contributes an invisible role in your life that you may not recognize. Math help you feel confident with the thought that people cannot make fool of you by misleading you with the wrong information. Good at math forms our confident and independent. If you have ever had the idea of why do we not let the calculator do the math for us, I used to be by your side. Yet I recognized we could not totally rely on the technical, just as our brains, sometimes they did not work well and make mistakes. In addition, having no clue of what is going on can give other people a good chance of making fool of you. For instance, you are at the store and going to make the payment, you have no idea and believe in whatever the salesmen tell you because they prove that is what the computer say, you may lose your money and become a dump human beings.

If you felt ready to face with the above situations that only requires basic math skills, and emerge the implication that you do not need to dedicate your time with the more complicated math, my suggestion is that it is not quite a good idea. In an interview with Professor Waterman last Friday, April 28^th, according to him, “there is certainly a distinction” between what a C student might apply the math lectures to reality and what an A student might be able to. Because we do not always use exactly what we have learned but in an indirect manner, doing good in math reflect the ability of applying lectures in real life.

Now that I have spoken about how Math is applied in our daily lives, I will now speak upon how Math is applied to our professions, even in majors that do not seem to be relevant to Math. In the introduction to the student of the book “Math in Art”, Anne Taylor wrote: “If you open your eyes you will begin to see that what we call Math may also have something to do with Art. The house you live in may have been designed by an architect who probably started designing it with cubes and rectangles. Furniture, lamps, and paintings, even the toys you (used to) play with are probably designed from simple geometric shapes – squares, triangles, circles.” Using Math in Art is using Math to solve Art problems.

Mathematics helping improve solving problem skills that is well recognized by companies and is used to test the applicants’ ability of facing new situations. As stated in the book “Fear of Math: How to Get Over It and Get On with Your Life” by Claudia Zaslavsky: “Entry tests and civil service exams for many jobs, like that for sanitation worker, usually include questions involving mathematics. The employer or agency may justify this practice by claiming that such questions reveal whether the applicant is capable of coping with new situations. More likely, these tests serve as filters to keep out applicants with inadequate educational backgrounds or poor skills in test taking.” Also, by solving the math problems, step by step, trains you to be careful. As you have experienced, it is so easy to make mistakes while doing the math exams. Learning those mistakes helps you form the behavior of being careful. That behavior, definitely, does apply to your work style, a valuable manner that can impress your employers.

Math is critical and logical exercise for our brains. If we care about doing physical exercises to our body, so that our bodies can maintain in good shape, why do we not care about doing exercises to our brains to maintain our perspicacity? Having a lucid thinking skill is the power that can be beneficial to all careers. In an interview with Professor Waterman last Friday, April 28^th, he gave an idea that it does not matter if we forget the mathematical formulas after the exams, because in reality, when a problem arises, we can still open the book or the lectures and look it up, but to get that far, one has to have a certain level of knowledge. Also, what remains in our brain is the critical and logical thinking that we gained through solving mathematic problems. That is why we should take math seriously to be able to do that.

If you are still uncertain in you choice in your major, studying math as much as you can also provides many open options for most careers in science and engineering. Moreover, with a good sense of mathematics, you will have an excellent background, the foundation that gives you the main key to enter many interesting fields of professions.

In conclusion, you should study Math seriously to master all Math problems that you have learned or will learn. Today, I have showed you why we should study math seriously through two main points, first, how math is applied in our daily lives, and second, how math is applied to our professions, even in majors that do not seem to be relevant to math. Consider the formula that I showed you at the beginning, you may not necessarily memorize it until the end of the world. But what remaining in your mind is never forgotten: that is the problem solving skill you gain from doing the exercises using the formula.

Do not let your good chance of training your brain over, especially those who still not take the math courses. Let’s get A’s in math.

Work Cited

Bafumo, Mary Ellen (2005). Making Math Meaningful. Teach PreK-8 35 no4 Ja 2005. The H.W. Wilson Company.

Taylor, Anne (1974). Math in Art. Activity Resources Company, INC. Hayward, California. 5.

Waterman, Peter (2006). Interview.

Zaslavsky, Claudia (1994). Fear of Math: How to Get Over and Get On with Your Life. Claudia Zaslavsky. 31.

Hong-Ngoc Nguyen

Instructor: Mrs. Tiana Marie Escarcida

Coms 100, section 1

31 March 2006

Colorblindness in Dogs

To begin, I'll give you a quick quiz.

members.tripod.com

Could you see the dog with a small red ball in the above picture? Does the dog see the ball in red color?

If your answer is no, Congratulations! You're right.

According to what I have learned from my research, dogs cannot see red color. And I'm going to tell you more: first, what researchers and scientists discover so far about colorblindness in dogs; and second, the reasons why dogs are colorblind.

First of all, I'll talk about what researchers and scientists discover so far about colorblindness in dogs. I'd like to mention a valuable study, "Color vision in the dog", of Jay Neitz, Timothy Geist, and Gerald H. Jacobs, published in 1989, as a continuous examination of Rosengren. As mentioned in their article, "Rosengren (1969) reviewed the studies published up to that time. Of the 16 studies she found in the literature, roughly half had concluded that dogs had some color vision; the remaning studies had either yielded negative conclusions or were ambiguous in outcome. Rosengren ran several simple color vision tests on four cocker spaniels ("a breed of dog with long ears, short legs, and fur that is white and brown or white and black" – Cambridge Dictionary) and concluded that they had the capacity to make some color discriminations." And that's it. So these three author reexamined this issue in a series of behavioral discrimination experiments. The results lead to the conclusion that dogs have dichromatic color vision. You may wonder, what's that?

To get an easier and better understanding, let's take a look at the article "Canine Vision" of Doctor Mark Plonsky, created in 1998, posted on the website of University of Wisconsin. "Dogs are red-green color blind. They see a brighter and less detailed world when compared to humans" (show the audience the color illustration).

uwsp.edu

Now I told you about what researchers and scientists discovered so far about colorblindness in dogs. Now I'm going to talk about the reasons why the dogs are colorblind.

In the article "Color and Acuity Differences between Dogs and Humans", posted in 1998 on University of Wisconsin website, Jennifer Davis mentioned evolution as a concerned reason. "The dog and the human each developed the visual system that worked best for them. Humans have depended on their diurnal ability (being active during the day rather than at night) and a sense of color throughout time to help them find food. Dogs on the other hand, were not originally diurnal animals, until humans domesticated them. Consequently, the ability to see at night was originally more important to the dog than color…,so they are unable to rely on color vision cues as heavily as humans do to find food."

As stated by Sarah Probst, an information specialist, in the article "Through the Eyes of Your Canine", posted in 1998 on the website of University of Illinois College of Veterinary Medicine:: "The diffences begin with the structure of the eye…The retina, which covers the back of the inside of the eyeball, receives light and sends what the eyes see to the brain. The retina contains cones and rods – two types of light-sensitive cells.

mydr.com.au

Rod and Cone Cell

udel.edu

Cones provide color perception and detailed sight, while rods detect motion and vision in dim light. Dogs, which have rod-dominated retinas, see better in the dark than humans do. However, because they have only about one-tenth the concentration of cones that humans have, dogs do not see colors as humans do."

In conclusion, dogs do see color. So far, we went through what researchers and scientists discover about colorblindness in dogs and the reasons why dogs are colorblind (because of evolution and structure of the eye). I hope the information I gave you will be helpful someday, especially when your boyfriend or girdfriend who has a dog wonders about what his or her dog see its world, your response may suprise him or her: "Oh, I thought it just sees in black and white". That's it, you'll get his or her impression.^_^

Work Cited

Davis, Jennifer (1998). Color and Acuity Differences between Dogs and Humans. Retrieved from the web 3/18/06. http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/LA/davis2.htm

Neitz, J., Geist, T. and Jacobs, G.H. (1989). Color Vision in the Dog. Retrieved from the web 3/18/06. http://www.mcw.edu/cellbio/colorvision/cvdog.pdf

Plonsky, Mark (1998). Canine Vision. Retrieved from the web 3/18/06. http://www.uwsp.edu/psych/dog/LA/DrP4.htm

Probst, Sarah (1998). Through the Eyes of Your Canine. Retrieved from the web 3/18/06. http://www.cvm.uiuc.edu/petcolumns/showarticle.cfm?id=116

Other Available Sources

http://www.cvm.uiuc.edu/petcolumns/showarticle.cfm?id=116

http://www.mcw.edu/cellbio/colorvision/res.htm

http://cas.bellarmine.edu/tietjen/images/Rods&Cones!.htm

http://www.eyevet.info/coile1.html

http://ask.yahoo.com/20020902.html

http://hubel.sfasu.edu/courseinfo/SL02/ma2dogcolor.htm

http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/sep99/936759097.Zo.r.html

http://www.pawsoswego.org/level2.php?igh3

http://journalofvision.org/4/3/10/article.pdf#search='dog%20vision%20color'

http://www.psych.utah.edu/psych3120-classroom/09_11_03.pdf#search='dog%20vision%20color'

Hong-Ngoc Nguyen

Instructor: Mrs. Tiana Marie Escarcida

Coms 100, section 1

10 February 2006

Self-Introductory Speech

Study Abroad

I don't know whether any of you have ever studied abroad. If you did, you would know already how it was. As you can see, I'm experiencing that right now. I'm here at this university from a country very far away, Vietnam. Today , I will talk about how my life has changed and what I can learn while spending time in the United States.

news.bbc.co.uk

Studying abroad is an experience that changes my life in many aspects. Stepping back in time, I was never further 200 miles from home without my parents beside me. Duc Nguyen, my father, in a talk with me last Sunday, February 5, said "Oh, I cannot believe it. Not long ago I still hold you in my arms and suddenly you flew away." You can understand that if you know I'm the youngest girl in my family.

from the plane's window

I was not in the habit of reading instructions before doing something. After coming here, I found so many new things that couldn't be explained in a brief time. I had to read a whole bunch of instruction sheets at the beginning of my first semester.

Chatting online was the activity I did not spend much time on. Now it is the easiest and cheapest way to keep track of everybody in my home city.

So far, I hardly deny the benefits of studying abroad. That's my second point. A survey of the Institute for the International Education of Students mentioned by Mary Dwyer and Courtney Peters, "Transitions Abroad" magazine, 2004, from the more than 3,400 respondents, show that "study abroad positively and unequivocally influences the self-confidence of students." That is true, I have to deal with my problems all by my self. I cannot rely on my parents any more to disentangle my stuff as if I were a little girl anymore.

I also know that "The best way to learn a language is to be immersed in its culture." Real living in America gives me the opportunity to improve my English. I must use English to study, communicate and express my feelings in every day life.

Studying and doing all my homework in English is a challenge. It is so since not long ago, I was surrounded by a Vietnamese academic culture. However, how one can grow up if she doesn't have any challenge in her life. Don't you think so?

In conclusion, I can hardly tell you more how excited I am to be an international student. Undoubtedly, study abroad has caused a lot of change in my life. By enduring academic change, I learn and gain many benefits. I hope now you can imagine how my experience has been, even if you have never been far from home. What more I can say? If you have a chance to study abroad, go ahead!

Thanks to Bill who helped edit my speech.

Word Cited

Benefits to studying abroad.University of
Indianapolis. Available online at http://international.uindy.edu/studyabroad/benefits.php

Mary Dwyer and Courtney Peters. (2004, March/April). The benefits of study abroad.  “Transitions Abroad” magazine. Available online at: http://www.transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0403/benefits_study_abroad.shtml