The SAT Question Everyone Got Wrong - Veritaseum

See the full video at The SAT Question Everyone Got Wrong - YouTube.

More Research Links - A Mirror (Credit @s-n-arly on tumblr)

In my previous post on options for research beyond Google, there were a good number of compiled links from a post by Edward Clark. I'll admit I don't know who that is, but I thought the link looked pretty good. Since my previous post has an embed link for tumblr, if the post is deleted or lost the links will also be lost. So I'm going to blockquote some of them here.

• refseek - Academic Search Engine - More than a billion sources: encyclopedia, monographies, magazines.
• WorldCat.org - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where lies the nearest rare book you need.
• SpringerLink - access to more than 10 million scientific documents: books, articles, research protocols.
• Bioline International is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
• RePEc: Research Papers in Economics - volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science.
• Science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
• PDF Drive is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format. Claiming over 225 million names.
• BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): Basic Search is one of the most powerful researches on academic studies texts. More than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.

There was an update post with more search databases and other useful sites. The important point to research is to do the deep work of using many sources that are free from bias.

• Qwant - Search engine with no tracking or advertising
• Ecosia - Search engine that plants trees – has ads and that ad revenue runs the engine while funding tree planting

Academic/Reseach

• Academia - platform that shares academic research
• arXiv - (pronounced archive, apparently) is a free distribution service and an open-access archive for 2,328,899 scholarly articles in the fields of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science, and economics. It is housed by Cornell University
• Astrophysics Data System - The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is a digital library portal for researchers in astronomy and physics, operated by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) under a NASA grant. The ADS maintains three bibliographic collections containing more than 15 million records covering publications in astronomy and astrophysics, physics, and general science.
• REPEAT: BASE (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine): Basic Search BASE is a search engine specifically for academic studies texts, and contains more than 100 million scientific documents, 70% of them are free.
• REPEAT: Bioline - This is a library of scientific bioscience journals published in developing countries.
• Education Resources Information Center - ERIC is a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information.
• JSTOR - academic digital library providing access to more than 12 million journal articles, books, images and primary sources in 75 disciplines.
• PubMed - the National Institute for Health's National Library of Medicine, comprises more than 35 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.
• Research Gate - founded to address the problems in the way science is created and shared. Connects the world of science and makes research open to all.
• REPEAT: Research Papers in Economics - Volunteers from 102 countries have collected almost 4 million publications on economics and related science for RePEc.
• Sci-Hub - research publication library – technically pirated content, but please note that the researchers do not get paid for publication, and will often send you a PDF of their research for free if you ask, it's the publications that want to restrict access to paying readers
• REPEAT: US Government Science Portal - Science.gov is an American state search engine on 2200+ scientific sites. More than 200 million articles are indexed.
• REPEAT: World Cat - a search for the contents of 20 thousand worldwide libraries. Find out where the rare book you need is.

Libraries

• Boston Library History & Political Science - The Boston Library has a ton of history and poli sci resources. Big libraries often have things available digitally for free, even if you aren't in the area.
• Hathi Trust Digital Library – This library provides free digitized books from all over the world.
• Internet Archive - This non-profit library houses millions of free digital books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
• PDF Drive - This is the largest website for free download of books in PDF format, claiming over 225 million names. Caution advised as some users report malware may be hidden in with the valid content.
• Project Gutenberg - This site provides free downloads of digital books, focusing on works with expired US copyright. Note, if you look for out-of-print books on Google, it will try to sell you books that you can actually download free from Gutenberg (I've tested this multiple times).
• Z Library – This digital library provides ebooks for free. ... ... Whoa. This is serious. This domain has been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Understand this. Information wants to be free.

Doing Research? Skip Google (Credit @s-n-arly on tumblr)

Google used to be better. Really.

Years ago, Google's standard search feature always gave the best possible results no matter what you were searching for. And it was a great tool for researchers, teachers and students. There was even a focused sub-domain specifically for research and scholarly pursuits; Google Scholar.

But the years have not been kind. Google is the most popular search engine by far, but as the tool has grown it has become such a strong target for commercialization, advertising, scammers and spammers. At one point, they were very good at deprioritizing these listings, but more recently results are worse. And it is not just me that has been saying it.

• BusinessInsider.com - Google Is Getting Worse As It Loses Fight Against Search Engine Spam
• MarketVantage.com - Google Search Is Getting Worse
• SearchEngineJournal.com - Ex-Googler Answers Why Google Search is Getting Worse

This trend was top-of-mind again recently when I tumbled upon the following post and thread on tumblr. I share it here in near entirety as I feel like it shares a lot of good alternative resources, specifically for researchers.

https://s-n-arly.tumblr.com/post/697929770215899136/skip-google-for-research

Now, in Google's defense, they have always maintained the Scholar sub-domain as the best alternative for actually scholarly research. Whether this separate site still has good results in recent days is something I have not tested, but it's worth keeping if needed.

The Mysterious 30 Year Journey of Apollo 12

List of Educational Websites | Post Index

Based on the following image, I made a series of 13 posts that updated and linked to each of the relevant categories of educational websites. I did this so that the links were fresh for those sites that were still up. In addition, I thought an index of all 13 posts might be helpful.

Index

• Part One: Courses
• Part Two: Videos
• Part Three: Music
• Part Four: Random Knowledge
• Part Five: Lifehacks
• Part Six: Cooking
• Part Seven: Language Learning
• Part Eight: Books
• Part Nine: Programming
• Part Ten: DIY's / How To's
• Part Eleven: Documentaries
• Part Twelve: Other
• Part Thirteen: Math

What other resources exist that should be added to this list? Post them in the comments below.

List of Educational Websites | Part Thirteen

We've made it to the thirteenth AND LAST part of the series of the Ultimate List of Educational Websites. The last category is for...

Math

• Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Intelligence - This is themed as the math search engine. It allows you to enter any math equation and compute expert-level answers using breakthrough algorithms and artificial intelligence.
• Project Euler is a series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve. The problems range in difficulty and expose new concepts as you go.
• mathrun.net - appears down or unregistered.

And now we've reached the end! This has been a fun little project to share a great list of various educational websites that I'm hopeful will be useful for students and teachers.

Sumo - Creative Tools for Curious Minds

I posted about Sumo Paint a while ago (2011), but the same company has expanded their applications in the intervening time and can now be found at Sumo - Creative Tools for Curious Minds. In addition to the expanding featues of their Paint program, they also now have Tunes, 3D, Code, Photo, Audio, Video and Pixel tools. They have a student discount of only $19 per year versus the regular price of $9 per month. Unleash your creativity.

List of Educational Websites | Part Twelve

We've made it to the twelfth part of the series of the Ultimate List of Educational Websites. We are cleaning up the last two categories, starting with a miscellaneous section for...

Other

• Online Etymology Dictionary | Origin, history and meaning of English words
• erowid.org - perhaps at one point a good scientific site for understanding biology and psychoactives, but no longer appropriate for this kid's site
• LessWrong - developy and train rationality, apply rationality to real world problems
• Lizard Point - Learn Geography
• Photo.net/learn - Photography articles, lessons, and tutorials
• Freerice - Learn, Play and Give Back. For each answer you get right, our sponsors send the cash equivalent of 10 grains of rice to the World Food Programme
• Think Tutorial - find help for all of your technology needs
• The Chess Website - Learn, Practice and Play Chess
• Investopedia

We only have one part left, coming soon!

List of Educational Websites | Part Eleven

Let's document that we made it to part eleven of this Ultimate List of Educational Websites. Here are some sites that specialize in…

Documentaries

• Top Documentary Films - Watch Free Documentaries Online
• Watch Free Documentaries Online | Documentary Heaven

I should also mention an additional site that I know of where you can usually connect your local library account and watch up to 10 free documentaries and other movies a month.

• Kanopy - Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries

List of Educational Websites | Part Ten

And now we are on to part ten of Ultimate List of Educational Websites"? Let's get handy and mechanical and learn how to take stuff apart and put it all back together.

DIY's / How To's

• Your for the making - Instructables
• https://www.thedailymiscellany.com/
• wikiHow: How-to instructions you can trust.
• Wonder How To » Fresh Hacks For a Changing World
• HowStuffWorks - Learn How Everything Works!
• Howcast | The best how-to videos

Patatap

I love interactive online musical instruments you can play with.

Have fun full-screen at Patatap.

List of Educational Websites | Part Nine

Whoever thought that we'd get to part nine of this Ultimate List of Educational Websites"? Today is a short list of websites to learn programming.

Programming

• Learn to Code - for Free | Codecademy
• Learn Code the Hard Way redirected from learncodethehardway.com
• HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Tutorials, References, and Articles | HTML Dog
• Pluralsight + Code School: Code Courses | Pluralsight redirected from trypython.org
• RubyMonk - Interactive Ruby tutorials
• CodingBat Java

I don't have to talk about how important programming is for the modern web. Just for a quick example, this website required programming to create.

List of Educational Websites | Part Eight

Now we have part eight of the "Ultimate List of Educational Websites" where we go to one of my favorite subjects.

Books

• Free eBooks | Project Gutenberg - this was a typo as gutenburg.org in the original entry
• LibriVox | free public domain audiobooks
• Homework Help and Textbook Solutions | bartleby
• PoemHunter.com: Poems - Quotes - Poetry

There are so many great sources for books online. Most local libraries also have freely available ebook options now.

List of Educational Websites | Part Seven

Here is part seven of the "Ultimate List of Educational Websites" and we focus on learning languages today.

Language Learning

• Duolingo
• Learn a language. Meet the world. | Memrise
• BBC Languages – Free online lessons to learn and study with - This page has been archived and is no longer updated.
• livemocha.com now forwards to Rosetta Stone
• Busuu - Learn languages online: start for free
• Verbling - The Modern Way to Learn a Language.

List of Educational Websites | Part Six

Here is part six of the "Ultimate List of Educational Websites" where we list out some culinary links.

Cooking

• Cooking For Engineers - Step by Step Recipes and Food for the Analytically Minded
• cooklet.com - site down
• Learn How to Cook Like a Professional - The Reluctant Gourmet
• how2heroes » How-To Instructional Food Videos

Cooking is often referred to as both an art as well as a science. It can seem challenging, but is actually simple and fun and rewarding.

List of Educational Websites | Part Five

We proceed with part five of the "Ultimate List of Educational Websites" and we concentrate this time on habits that may improve your life.

Lifehacks

• zen habits - breathe zen habits
• Lifehacker - Do everything better
• The Art of Manliness - Men's Interests and Lifestyle
• lifehackninja.com - domain has expired

Our day-to-day lives are made up of habits, some that have been purposely well developed and others that are less effective. It never hurts to learn new skills. I'm not sure about recommending a site called "The Art of Manliness" as they may have some outdated concepts for masculinity, but it's worth reading with a critical eye open.

List of Educational Websites | Part Four

Continuing part four of the "Ultimate List of Educational Websites" and my efforts to make it browsable and clickable, we get a miscellaneous list.

Random Knowledge

• Mental Floss
• F*cking Homepage (warning, language)
• Snopes.com - The definitive fact-checking site and reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation.
• Now I Know - Learn Something New Every Day, By Email by Dan Lewis
• Badass of the Week
• Sporcle - World’s Largest Trivia Quiz Website
• ifeveryoneknew.com - appears to be down
• Wikipedia

Of course, I'm a big fan of Wikipedia, and I'm fond of calling it the current repository of the grand sum total of all human knowledge (so far). Sure enough, it really is the encyclopedia that anyone can update. And that is not without flaws. But the fact that anyone can edit it and there are subject matter volunteers curating and moderating most edits, I've found it reliable and trustworthy on most things.

The site Now I Know is new to me, but their catch-phrase of That's Half the Battle is a well-worn meme from my childhood, when the G.I. Joe cartoons were popular.

List of Educational Websites | Part Three

Continuing part three of the "Ultimate List of Educational Websites" and my efforts ot make it browsable and clickable, we move on to one of my favorite subjects.

Music

• JustinGuitar.com | Learn how to play guitar
• musictheory.net - Introductory and intermediate music theory lessons, exercises, ear trainers, and calculators
• ULTIMATE GUITAR TABS - 1,100,000 songs catalog with free Chords, Guitar Tabs, Bass Tabs, Ukulele Chords and Guitar Pro Tabs!
• playbassnow.com - domain was sold
• howtoplaypiano.ca | Learn How to Play Piano
• teoria : Music Theory Web

Music theory sounds complicated, but at it's most basic it's the simple science of what music sounds good to most people and why. Some of it is learned and certainly some of it is cultural.

List of Educational Websites | Part Two

Let's make the following "Ultimate List of Educational Websites" browsable and clickable. This next section includes video sites, lectures and YouTube channels.

Videos

• Khan Academy | Free Online Courses, Lessons & Practice
• TED: Ideas Worth Spreading
• acedemicearth.org - appears to be closed
• unplugthetv.com - no longer educational
• thenewboston.org - redirects to Classpert, an online class search engine
• Crashcourse on YouTube - run by Vlogbrothers, Hank & John Green
• minutephysics on YouTube
• CGP Grey

It's possible that CGP Grey was my first YouTube channel subscribe, but I've been watching TED talks and vlogbrothers for likely just as long. Khan Academy has been around forever and has a good reputation. So check these out.

List of Educational Websites | Part One

I wanted to make the following "Ultimate List of Educational Websites" browsable and clickable, and I thought I'd break it up into a number of separate posts for each section. This first section looks like it would be targeted at college students or adult learners, but good for everyone.

Courses

• Coursera | Build Skills with Online Courses from Top Institutions
• Udacity | Learn the Latest Tech Skills; Advance Your Career
• edX | Free Online Courses by Harvard, MIT, & more
• ureddit.com - seems to be missing

The only one I've used personally was edX and it was excellent at the time.