(CNN) -- A math homework assignment that asked fourth grade students to tally the number of slaves on a ship has sparked outrage among parents and administrators in Manhattan. The assignment was devised by another group of students, after they apparently expressed interest in the transatlantic slave trade. It required fourth graders to calculate the remainder of those not killed by a mutiny aboard the vessel, and to determine the number of times slaves were beaten in one month.

"This is really inappropriate," student teacher Aziza Harding told CNN affiliate NY1 on Friday. "It should not be a homework assignment, and I did not want to make copies of this." Harding was asked to photocopy the assignment by another teacher, but refused because the questions made her uncomfortable and she thought it desensitized students to the horrors of slavery. The first question read: "In a slave ship, there are 3,799 slaves. One day, the slaves took over the ship. 1,897 slaves are dead. How many slaves are alive?" The second question read: "One slave got whipped five times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month (31 days)? Another slave got whipped nine times a day. How many times did he get whipped in a month? How many times did the two slaves get whipped together in one month?"

The worksheet was created earlier this year by another teacher whose students were studying the history of slavery in their social studies class. During a math lesson, they were asked to create word problems on the same topic. Another teacher borrowed the worksheet before leaving for vacation, according to a statement by New York school officials.

"This is obviously unacceptable and we will take appropriate disciplinary action against these teachers," said Connie Pankratz, a spokesperson for the NYC Department of Education. "The chancellor spoke to the principal, and she has already taken steps to ensure this does not happen again." Adele Schroeter, the school principal, said she was appalled and will be meeting with staff as well as families. "I have already met with the teacher and have arranged for training around this issue for the entire staff at my school," she said in a statement. Harding said that instead of students getting desensitized to this type of violence, she wanted them to "have a general idea that wow, this is a terrible thing that happened to a group of people for over 300 years."

Harding, a graduate student at New York University, contacted her professor about the incident, then reached out to NY1. The professor, Charlton McIlwain, who teaches Media, Culture, and Communication, said, "When she first explained what had happened to me, I was in disbelief. I said, 'I don't believe you, send me a copy.' " He said he understood that teachers were trying to integrate subject matter, but felt the math questions did not provide enough context for the students. "It completely trivializes the historical significance, pain and violence of slavery. By extracting that experience into math problems, students role play being slave traders. It's part of a much larger story and you can't get that in a math assignment," McIlwain said.

This comes after a string of similar incidents in schools across the country last year. In January 2012, a Georgia elementary teacher came under fire after using slavery references in math problems assigned to 8-year olds. In March, a teacher in Washington was fired after she assigned math problem asking students to calculate how many Africans, Americans and Indians to bake in ovens for Thanksgiving. In October, a Wisconsin teacher drew criticism for assigning math homework that used a derogatory Native American term for women.

The math worksheet has drawn reaction from the school and the surrounding community, including a New York state senator calling for the immediate removal of the two teachers who assigned the homework. McIlwain said he does not think firing the teachers is the answer. "It would be better to have these teachers go through some kind of productive discipline where they can talk with parents, with students, with the community, about why this is offensive and why the topic is important," said McIlwain. "I hope the dialogue will continue."

After seeing the controversail hit movie Lincoln, a university professor decided to do some digging into Mississippi's record on the abolition of slavery and the ratification of the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. The University of Mississippi neurobiology professor discovered in his research that while the state did not ratify the 13th Amendment in 1865, it also failed to ratify it in 1995 when the issue was revisited. The legislature approved the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1995, but through clerical error had failed to complete the process.

After contacting offices on Washington D.C. to clear up the error, the 13th Amendment beacme law in Mississippi in Feb. 7, 2013.

After seeing the controversail hit movie Lincoln, a university professor decided to do some digging into Mississippi's record on the abolition of slavery and the ratification of the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery. The University of Mississippi neurobiology professor discovered in his research that while the state did not ratify the 13th Amendment in 1865, it also failed to ratify it in 1995 when the issue was revisited. The legislature approved the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1995, but through clerical error had failed to complete the process.

After contacting offices on Washington D.C. to clear up the error, the 13th Amendment beacme law in Mississippi in Feb. 7, 2013.

(CNN) -- If you're sick of cheerful, happy people, it might be wise to avoid Hawaii or Napa, California. They were found to be the United States' happiest state and city, respectively, in a recent study of geotagged tweets.

Researchers at the University of Vermont sifted through more than 10 million geotagged tweets from 2011 to map out the moods of Americans in urban areas. They ranked the locations based on frequency of positive and negative words using the Mechanical Turk Language Assessment word list.

The list includes 10,000 words that have been rated on a scale 1 to 10 according to how "happy" they are. On the lower end of the scale are negative words such as mad, hate, no, boo, smoke and jail, as well as a colorful and thorough assortment of expletives.

Happy words include the omnipresent LOL and haha, as well as good, nice, sleep and wine, and food or beach related words. According to the list, rainbow is one of the happiest words and earthquake is one of the saddest.

Maine, Nevada, Utah and Vermont round-out the top five happiest states list, following rainbow and beach-filled Hawaii. Louisiana was found to be the saddest state, followed by Mississippi, Maryland, Michigan and Delaware. One reason for Louisiana's low cheeriness ranking (they must not have measured during Mardi Gras) is its inhabitants' fondness for profanity.

The study, which was broken down by The Atlantic, also looked at the results for 373 urban areas to rank the happiest and least-happy cities. Vacation destination Napa, California, was determined to be one of the happiest cities along with Longmont, Colorado; San Clemente, California; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Santa Cruz, California.

The five most bummed-out cities according to average word choices were Beaumont, Texas; Albany, Georgia; Texas City, Texas; Shreveport, Louisiana; and Monroe, Louisiana. Again, researchers found liberal use of swear words to be a key factor in a city's overall happiness score.

Coastal areas were more chipper than landlocked areas, and the cities with a higher density of tweets tended to be less happy.

"This suggests that cities with high technology adoption rates (as most geotagged tweets come from devices like smartphones) are in fact less happy than their less technological counterparts," says the study.

The researchers took their results and compared them against census data and found that wealthy areas tended to have higher happiness levels and that areas with high rates of obesity has lower happiness levels.

They looked at obesity rates and food words to create lists of low and high-obesity words. The terms McDonalds, wings, ham and heartburn were popular in high-obesity areas, while words such as cafe, sushi, brewery and banana were more common in low-obesity areas.

The research shows that social networks have a lot of promise for these types of surveys, and also that there are still some major limitations. Researchers point out that only 15% of online adults are using Twitter, and those users don't accurately represent the demographics of the United States.

The group will once again dig into tweets for even more research once the 2012 census data is released.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/19/tech/social-media/twitter-happiness/index.html?hpt=hp_bn5