Four short links: 25 January 2016

Company Mortality, Geoffrey West Profile, Microservice Toolkit, and Problem-Free Activities

  1. The Mortality of Companies — Geoffrey West paper: we show that the mortality of publicly traded companies manifests an approximately constant hazard rate over long periods of observation. This regularity indicates that mortality rates are independent of a company’s age. We show that the typical half-life of a publicly traded company is about a decade, regardless of business sector.
  2. The Fortune 500 Teller — profile of Geoffrey West. (via Roger Dennis)
  3. Gizmoa microservice toolkit in Golang from NYT. (via InfoQ)
  4. Intellectual Need and Problem-Free Activity in the Mathematics Classroom (PDF) — Although this is not an empirical study, we use data from observed high school algebra classrooms to illustrate four categories of activity students engage in while feeling little or no intellectual need. We present multiple examples for each category in order to draw out different nuances of the activity, and we contrast the observed situations with ones that would provide various types of intellectual need. Finally, we offer general suggestions for teaching with intellectual need.
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