Showing posts with label questions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label questions. Show all posts

March 14 – International Ask a Question Day

Posted on March 14, 2014

Did you know that asking questions is important?
And that asking the RIGHT questions is even more important?

If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the answer, I would spend the first 55 minutes figuring out the proper questions to ask. For if I knew the proper questions, I could solve the problem in less than 5 minutes.”


Do you know who said that?

It was Albert Einstein, who has been called the “Quintessential Question Asker.






Why is today, of all days, Ask a Question Day?

In order to honor Einstein – it's his birthday!

Einstein also said: “Question everything!” 
And “The important thing is not to stop questioning.”

The people promoting International Ask a Question Day remind us that “Great answers begin with great questions.”

Did you know that today is also Pi Day?
And do you know why?

Pi is the ratio of the distance around a circle to the distance across it. To figure out pi, you divide the circumference of a circle (that's the distance around it) by the diameter of the same circle (that's the distance across it).
A really large circle has a large circumference and a large diameter; a really small circle has a small circumference and a small diameter. But you know what? In both cases, dividing the circumference by the diameter results in the same number.
The exact same number.
No matter how enormous or miniscule a circle is, that division problem results in a number that starts:
                3.14159265358979323846264338327950288...
and then goes on and on, apparently forever, in a non-repeating decimal.
To make it easier on ourselves, we often round this unwritable number as 3.14. And to make it EVEN easier, we just call it “pi.”
Today is Pi Day in the U.S. because it is 3-14 (March 14), which looks an awful lot like 3.14!

How do people celebrate Pi Day?

By eating pie, of course!

Some people wear pi t-shirts, attend pi parties at universities or science museums, or even write songs about pi!

Google gets it, and so do the people at Wiki How



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September 27 – Ask a Stupid Question Day

Posted on September 27, 2013

Sometimes people say, “There are no stupid questions.”

But I'm not sure that's entirely true. For example, I once asked how the doctors and parents knew if a brand-new baby was a boy or a girl. You know, when he or she is first born, before there are clothes or a name to make the sex clear to all.

Okay, yeah, I was a little kid. But I was old enough to know better!

So maybe there are some stupid questions. But one thing I know for sure: we shouldn't worry too much about asking stupid questions. It's far better to ask a stupid question than to never ask a question!

This day was created by people who want kids to ask more questions. If you don't understand something, ask a question. If you aren't sure something is true, ask how someone knows that, what the source is. If you don't know how something works, ask!

(By the way, now that I am an adult, I realize that my stupid question above was not so very stupid, after all, because in 1 out of every 100 births, doctors and parents DON'T know if the child is a boy or a girl.)

Celebrate Questions!

Here are some awesome quotes about asking questions:

No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious. 
– George Bernard Shaw

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer. 
– Bruce Lee

To the dumb question, 'Why me?' the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, 'Why not?' 
– Christopher Hitchens







Here are some fun “stupid questions”:

  • What if the hokey pokey really is what it's all about?

  • How does a thermos know whether a drink should be hot or cold?
Here are some fun not-stupid questions:

  • Which was the tastiest dinosaur?
Actually, real scientists have worked on that last question! And they came up with an answer, too. I wouldn't swear that it is the right answer...

  •  How do we know we are real, and not just someone's dream?
Deep! Did you just watch The Matrix?


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May 5, 2012 - Philosophy Day

In honor of the birthdays of two famous philosophers, Soren Kierkegaard and Karl Marx, today we turn to the study of deep ideas and big questions. 

What is truth? 
What is beauty? 
How should people live their lives?

The study of fundamental ideas is called philosophy, which means “love of wisdom.”

Born in 1813 in Denmark, Soren Kierkegaard is considered the first existentialist philosopher. That is the idea that the starting point of philosophical thinking must be the individual and his or her experiences. Kierkegaard thought that it is the individual person who must give meaning to his or her own life, and that we should all live passionately and sincerely—that is, with great spirit, and always being true to oneself.

Born on the same date just five years later, in Prussia (Germany), Karl Marx is linked with ideas of socialism and communism. He was concerned with the relationship between the people who owned resources and factories and land and the people who labored in those factories and on that land—in other words, the relationship between upper and lower classes. He thought that capitalist societies—those that feature private ownership and in which people create products and provide services in order to earn profits—were unstable and would break down. He said that they would be replaced by socialist societies that planned production according to people's real needs and distributed income according to people's contributions. Eventually, Marx believed, socialist societies would be replaced by communism—a human society without national divisions, without central governments, and without upper and lower classes. (By the way, you probably know that many of the people who have tried to create societies along Marxist lines ended up with some very miserable societies—and, viewing history, we might wonder if Marx was just too idealistic to develop good philosophical ideas.)

Think big. Think hard. Think deep.



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