Christopher X J. Jensen
Associate Professor, Pratt Institute

Can mathematics save us from partisan Gerrymandering?

Posted 25 Oct 2018 / 0

Scientific American “Geometry versus Gerrymandering” This is a really well-written article that explains why it hasn’t been easy for mathematicians to contribute to a definition of Gerrymandering… and how using an old mathematical approach to attack the problem could provide clear benchmarks for defining a Gerrymander. I love when math and science can be brought as Read More

A Minor Post, Computer Science, Ethics, Mathematics, Science (General), Social Science

My personal experience that creationists gravitate to anything with even the faintest scent of scientific uncertainty (and what to do about it)

Posted 22 Dec 2015 / 0

Last month, I published a rather long review of William Provine’s last book, The “Random Genetic Drift” Fallacy. The book is pretty obscure and I knew that a lot of other evolutionary biologists had dismissed the book as being a bit on the crazy side, so in the back of my mind I was wondering whether Read More

A Major Post, Belief, Creationism, Data Limitation, Evolution, Fluidity of Knowledge, Hypothesis Testing, Natural Selection, Population Genetics, Web, WordPress

E&E in A&D: Genetic profiling as art?

Posted 13 Feb 2015 / 0

Smithsonian Magazine “Creepy or Cool? Portraits Derived From the DNA in Hair and Gum Found in Public Places” I find a lot of art to be gimmicky. I know as a professor at an art and design school, that could get me into some trouble, so let me explain what I mean. “Gimmicky” art to Read More

A Major Post, Articles, Computer Science, Ethics, Genetics, Human Evolution, Risk & Uncertainty, Science in Art & Design, Sociology

Moodle Tip: Using anchor links to create your own course page menu

Posted 02 Jun 2014 / 17

I love Moodle. It is an amazing tool for delivering course content, assessments, and feedback to students. But if you are a power Moodle user, you know that it can take some instructor massaging to make it as user-friendly as your students prefer. One of the things about Moodle that frustrates and confuses students is the way that different “sections” (usually Read More

A Major Post, Moodle, Teaching Tools

EnviroAtlas is now live, publicly available

Posted 30 May 2014 / 0

For the past couple of years I have been playing around with a really cool tool called EnviroAtlas, a project of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. This past semester I created two classroom activities that use EnviroAtlas, implementing them for the first time in my Ecology for Architects course. The EnviroAtlas tool was in beta-testing Read More

A Minor Post, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Citizen Science, Computer Science, Conservation Biology, Data Limitation, Deserts, Ecosystem Services, Education, Educational Software and Apps, Environmental Justice, Eutrophication, Grasslands, Habitat Destruction, Invasive Species, Long Term Ecological Research, Macroecology, Pollution, Ponds & Lakes, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Quantitative Analysis, Rivers & Streams, Sustainability, Teaching, Teaching Tools, Temperate Forest, Temperate Rainforest, Urban Ecology, Water Supply, Web

US EPA’s EnviroAtlas project promises to give researchers, students new insights into the geography of ecosystem services

Posted 13 Aug 2013 / 0

At the 2012 Annual Meeting of the Ecological Society of America, I first learned about a really interesting initiative of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The project –now dubbed EnviroAtlas — is dedicated to creating a free, interactive online tool for exploring the geography of ecosystem services. I had the opportunity to check out a beta version Read More

A Major Post, Biodiversity Loss, Biomes, Bogs & Wetlands, Climate Change, Computer Science, Conservation Biology, Deserts, Ecology, Ecology Education, Ecosystem Services, Educational Software and Apps, Environmental Justice, Freshwater Ecosystems, Geography, Grasslands, Habitat Destruction, Information Design, Invasive Species, Pollution, Ponds & Lakes, Population Pressure, Public Policy, Resource Consumption, Rivers & Streams, Sociology, Sustainability, Teaching, Teaching Tools, Temperate Forest, Temperate Rainforest, Terrestrial, Tropical Forest, Water Supply, Web

Is this site good enough to clone?

Posted 27 Jul 2013 / 0

I do think that the old adage “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” is apt: if people are willing to copy what you do, they obviously think that what you have done is valuable. So I suppose that I should be flattered by this: Look at bit familiar? Sound a bit familiar? Yeah, that Read More

A Minor Post, Creative Commons, Ethics, Higher Education, WordPress

A fabulous article on the collective efforts that created the World Wide Web and the corporate efforts to destroy it

Posted 20 Aug 2011 / 0

Scientific American “Long Live the Web“

A Minor Post, Articles, Computer Science