Category: Education

In Praise of Indexes

SAS Press recently discontinued selling physical books, and now offers publications only in an electronic format (EPUB, Kindle, and PDF). I’m sure this is not an isolated incident and many other smaller publishing houses are going the same route.

I recently purchased the 3rd edition of Kirk Paul Lafler’s useful book, PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS. I have the first and second editions of his book in softcover, and I was pleased to find that I could order a physical copy of his third edition through Amazon. After receiving the book, I quickly discovered that the third edition no longer includes an index!

I contacted SAS about the omission of the index, and received a prompt and courteous reply:

“You are correct about the index.  Indexes are no longer a standard part of our print books.  I do understand your concern, and have forwarded your feedback to the appropriate editors. All of our e-books are searchable. If you would like a complimentary copy of the corresponding e-book, I will be happy to forward that to you.”

I learned that neither the hardcopy nor the electronic version of the book contains an index.

I know I am 63 years old, and maybe not as immersed in modern technology as my younger colleagues, but since when did an index become a dispensable part of any non-fiction book?

First page of the index of PROC SQL: Beyond the Basics Using SAS, Second Edition

A good index is like a table of contents, only much more detailed. Sure, you can search a PDF for a particular term, but what if you can’t think of the term you’re searching for? For example, you might not remember that the type of many-to-many join you are looking for is called a Cartesian product, but when you see this term in the index it jogs your memory and you can find it on pages 237 and 242, which then leads you to the term cross join.

Another problem with searching through a document is that I have yet to see any search provide the ability to search for more than one non-contiguous terms at a time on a page or adjacent pages. A well-crafted index is often more effective than one-dimensional searching at finding topics that can’t easily be reduced to a single word or term.

Index subheadings, such as shown for CASE expressions above, are also hard to replace with one-dimensional searching.

Indexing is so important and requires such skill (to do it right) that there is even a professional organization for it: the American Society for Indexing.

I hope you can see now that every non-fiction book, printed or electronic, needs an index to help you quickly find the information you need.

Stevens Point

I visited Stevens Point, Wisconsin for the first time over the Memorial Day weekend and, I have to say, this community of 26,000 is impressive. A great place to stay while you’re there is the Baymont Inn & Suites at 247 Division St. N. It is a short and pleasant walk to the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point campus, the Schmeeckle Reserve (wow!), and the Green Circle Trail. Michele’s Restaurant is only a few blocks down the street. Great food!

I miss living in a college town. It is energizing to interact on a daily basis with well educated, intellectually curious, and cosmopolitan people who are passionate about their work. I lived in Ames, Iowa—where Iowa State University is located—for nearly 30 years, and I feel more at home in Stevens Point, a smaller community, than I do now in Ames. I think Stevens Point is the nicest community I have visited since leaving Ames in 2005. Definitely would be willing to live there someday. UW-Stevens Point even has a physics & astronomy department, an observatory, and a planetarium. Perhaps I could help out in retirement.

Some towns have a lot going for them even without a college or university—around here, Mineral Point and Spring Green come to mind. Some towns are at somewhat of a disadvantage because they have a name that is not particularly attractive. For example, Dodgeville, where I currently live and work, has a moniker that isn’t all that inviting. But there is no place so nice to live as a college town—for people like me, at least.

My primary civic interests are in gradually developing a well planned network of paved, off-road bike paths, walking trails through natural areas, a center for continuing education, a community astronomical observatory, and a comprehensive and well-enforced outdoor lighting ordinance to restore, preserve, and protect our nighttime environment and view of the night sky. Living in a community like Dodgeville, I don’t get the sense that there is enough interest or political will to make any of these things happen. I can’t do it alone.

Tax Choice

Wouldn’t it be nice if you got to choose where some of your income tax money goes? Where you the taxpayer have some say in how your hard-earned tax dollars are allocated?

Here in the dis-United States, about 50% of us want lower taxes, and 50% of us would be receptive to higher taxes provided that it pays for things we believe in like universal health care and low-cost or no-cost education.

Short of amicably splitting up our country (a civil separation), changing our tax policy may help alleviate some of the frustration many of us have that half of the country is keeping us from building the kind of country we want for ourselves and for our children.

Federal income tax, and state and local income tax (where in effect) would be divided into a non-discretionary portion (100% currently) and a discretionary portion.

When you fill out your tax return each year, you would designate the government agencies and programs where you want the discretionary portion of your taxes to go.

Going one step further, I would like to see taxpayers given the option to choose either the standard or a supplemental tax tier. Those who opt to pay higher taxes by choosing the supplemental tax tier would pay a fixed percentage more, regardless of income (like a true flat tax).

To be fair, those paying in at the higher supplemental tax rate should receive additional benefits compared to those paying in at the standard rate. This could mean lower medical costs, lower education costs, or increased social security payments during retirement, for example.

Would this be easier to implement than partitioning the U.S.? Perhaps. Would it be the more effective solution to satisfy those with very different viewpoints about the proper role of government? Perhaps not.

In my view, society is far too reliant on volunteers. If a job is worth doing, and if it is a benefit to society, then, more often than not, it needs to be a paid position. There is so much work of a humanitarian, educational, and environmental nature that needs to be done that cannot and will not be done by any capitalistic enterprise. As members of society, we all have an obligation to help fund these activities through strong government and non-sectarian non-profit partnerships.

I dream of a day when paying for our medical care is no longer tied to having health insurance through an employer, when each of us will have the freedom to work in a variety of capacities, for both profit and non-profit organizations, throughout our careers, and to receive adequate training and pay for those efforts.


Great Courses Launchpoint

The Teaching Company, LLC offers hundreds of video courses under the name “The Great Courses” on just about every subject imaginable, with more being added all the time.

Though offered for personal in-home viewing, these 30-minute lectures (or 45-minute in the case of Robert Greenberg’s engaging music courses) would make a wonderful centerpiece for a continuing education course.

As an instructor, what I would like to be able to do is show my class a Great Courses lecture, and then follow that with discussion and activities that reinforce and expand upon those  concepts during the remainder of a 60-minute or 90-minute class.

Not unlike what a good teaching assistant does in a college recitation section after a lecture by the professor, The Great Courses lecture would provide instructional scaffolding for both instructor and student.

I believe The Teaching Company has a great opportunity here.  Just by allowing an instructor to show a course to students (and charging a reasonable fee to do so), they would be opening up a new market for their products, and would no doubt bring in many new individual customers.

The Teaching Company could provide the courses “as is”, or could make available supplemental materials for the continuing education teacher and their students.

I even have a name for this new offering: Great Courses Launchpoint.

Currently, The Teaching Company doesn’t exactly encourage the use of their materials for face-to-face teaching:

My hope is that they will see the value of incorporating their video lectures into the classroom, and maybe Great Courses Launchpoint will roll out by the time I semi-retire in three or four years.  One of the frustrations of getting older is that my “day job” is taking a greater share of my time and available energy than ever before.  I love teaching, though, and semi-retirement will afford me the opportunity to begin teaching on a regular basis again.  Looking forward to it!