No one is reporting on this as far as I can tell, but I've been following extraordinary amounts of anti-semitism on the popular Chinese app "rednote."
Chinese users tout the free speech of being able to refer to Jews as "soap," for example. Tons of anti-semitic content, being shared by otherwise seemingly regular users. In reality the app is highly censored, and anti-semitism is one of the only freedoms allowed on the app.
Western users who recently discovered the app are now being propagandized by Chinese users. It's extremely disconcerting.
On our perennial topic of housing, Scott Lincicome provided a link to this article about one way Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire keep building slower and prices higher.
I have a bias that explains why it's so easy to explain away anything that one finds suspect, from numbers to numbscullery in others as opposed to in oneself. It's called confirmation bias. I'm sure of this, and I can confirm that no one here or anywhere else can make me change my mind about that no matter how many studies they study to make their point. Anytime. Ever. There. That settles that.
I'm thinkin' we've been hangin' out here together maybe a bit too long. When you start finishing my sentences for me like we're an old married couple, I'm outta' here. I've already got one wife that can do that.
About ten minutes in, the presenter mentioned that it would be beneficial to avoid using buzzwords and "high concept," and just deal with practicalities. The example was flooding in Florida. Instead of arguing about whether it's global warming or climate change or the sacrificial victims weren't really virgins, just say, "We have a growing problem with flooding. What can we do to reduce the damage it is causing?"
It reminded me of a situation with the Envirothon group. As we were planning the testing event we had yesterday, people brought up a lot of different questions: how should we arrange the tables, what was the time limit, one subject at a time?, what about breaks? Some of questions were settled by considering the circumstances of the real competition, including "no additional time."
Thinking about some of the students who don't read as well as others, one of the parents suggested that, if asked, an adult could read the question to the student. The argument was that, in competition, they will be in teams, and the question will be read by a stronger reader. It seemed reasonable enough, but when I mentioned it to Brenda, she gave me a rant about DEI. "She's always bringing up all this DEI stuff. It makes me so mad!" She also had a reasonable counter-argument, which was that it would be disruptive to the other students, and that the group-test format is harder for a lot of the students, because they all want to read the questions and answers, so they're climbing over each other trying to see.
I said, "Okay," and after more complaints about DEI and unreasonableness of some parents, I said, "When I said, 'Okay," I meant it's okay. I'll tell her we're not going to do it that way."
The point of this rambling anecdote is that the question of, "Would it be a good idea to *do this*?" isn't helped by throwing in DEI as a high concept. It's a practical question. We were talking last night about how to accommodate one of Brenda's sons, who has a very heavy schedule of co-enrolled college classes and swimming practice. That's just as much an individual accommodation as considering a student's reading abilities, but it never occurred to her to call that DEI.
>One webpage affiliated with the hotline, which is available in 240 languages, even lists "imitating someone’s cultural norm" as something "we want to hear" about.<
If I were living in Oregon or Vermont (they're probably gunning for O and he doesn't even know it) or any of those other states, *imitating responsible and appropriate government functions" is something I'd "want to hear" about.
I mean, two hundred and forty frickin' languages?! According to one source, the U.S. has 219 established languages. Maybe they're defraying the cost to the taxpayers by acting as an offshore call center for a few other similarly out-of-their-damned-minds countries. I'm sure someone calling from India would appreciate someone in Oregon speaking Hindi with a heavy American accent.
240. Huh. And Trump just had the Spanish language web page for the White House taken down, just as he did in 2017. Can't be said he's not doing everything possible to save the taxpayers a buck. Or maybe a buck-fifty. Not sure what the cost of having that page up online was.
I just saw your link. Gotta' go feed nags. Will check out a bit later this evening.
Not sure I remember what a serious act of journalism looks like. My Senior English term paper maybe? Got an A+ from a teacher notorious for never giving out more than a thimble full of -As on much of anything. Ever. Guess I had him good and fooled!
Think I might have told that tale here before. If not, it's kind of interesting...
It would be better for the nags if you’d read it to them. They might benefit from some inclusion in the goings-on in the country. Do I have to think of everything around here?
Well, if you're going to take credit for darned near everything around here you should at least be thinking of it yourself.
As to the nags, they hear enough about horses' a**es already... generally me yelling at them and telling them to "Move!" when I'm cleaning their stalls in the AM with them still in them or "I'm gonna' crack you right in your you - know-what!"
Maybe one of the 220th to 240th languages is whatever ones the horses speak. Sounds like they might want to report you for your untoward comments. You know, not everyone wants room service that talks back—especially not abusively!
We often see things differently when it's ourselves rather than others. Brenda once said to me, "We don't try to give our children an advantage!" and I did not reply, "Well, yeah, you do, and I do, too, sometimes, within ethical parameters."
Well heck yeah! What parent worth their salt doesn't? I did all I could do for my kids to get them as good a start in life as possible without going overboard in some direction that would impede them learning how to fend, and fend well, for themselves.
The temperature is up to 4 up north and my outside camera is functional again. Glad to see the bubbler is bubbling away and open water around the dock. Tax training day. Today we learn how to manipulate the software to get the proper state results. There’s always glitches.
I'm innumerate. I memorized my multiplication tables, and then switched schools where they had just implemented "New Math". It was in the 60's. Math became an utterly fuzzy idea. Anyone in here remember The New Math?
Are you kidding? Not that I'm really all that old, but these days I don't even remember the answer to 2+2 unless I've got one of those new-fangled modern tech gizmos handy.
Yes, we "unioned" numbers, and "intersected" numbers. I was lucky. My 3rd and 4th grade teachers said "screw it", and just had us memorize math tables.
We'd answer 100 questions in 5 minutes, then 4, then 3. Then we'd switch to subtraction, do the same. Then multiplication, then division. As I recall, those of us who successfully completed it got a free reading book.
I had to teach my youngest brother real math when "New Math" came out. He was maybe in 3rd grade, me in 10th. Fortunately my tutoring got his really smart brain going. HS dropout ended up radioman on nuclear attack subs Hunt for Red October days. Does really interesting weird stuff for letter institutions
I remember New Math, primarily the existence of non-basr ten systems. But I went to school in suburban Maryland and had solid, older, old school teachers that used common sense.
The non-base 10 methodologies I learned in New Math greatly helped me as I pursued math-based science studies up through college and beyond. However, in 9th grade our math teacher, who had energy as if he drank a case of Monster drink before class (there was no such thing then) and who we adored, was AGHAST that we could not do math in our head. He was literally scandalized. He made it his aim to teach us 'mental math'. He only very partially succeeded in my case. (I still do some arithmetic on my fingers). I developed my own secret method of quickly doing addition & subtraction using mental images of dominoes ;)
Before I retired from teaching, I had some students tell me that they were taught how to do math using their fingers, which in my school days was cause for being sent to the principal's office where something akin to the Spanish Inquisition ensued (I was told by classmates). Hence my resolve to develop my highly secretive methods.
Going beyond "smart" and "stupid" to recognize different processing methods is one of the good things that has happened over the recent years people have griped about "education these days - !"
I don’t think I was directly subjected to New Math, but it’s one of an ongoing series of academic theories from education science that have chased one hair-brained idea after another—and then rolled out the latest academic fashions into the public schools as the Hot New Item.
There was a whole school of reading education that got completely away from phonics—ie, sounding words out, since we use an actual *phonetic alphabet*—was one of the more disastrous recent examples.
I have been following this for some time and it makes me want to beat my head against a brick wall (I know that is not logical).
A system invented to allow communication across distances beyond the capabilities of speech, based on symbols representing speech made on a 2 dimensional surface - how can you teach reading while ignoring its whole purpose and origin???
I know I've mentioned this before, but I think it has more significance than people realize: Rush Limbaugh's radio show was sponsored by Hooked on Phonics.
One other thing to bear in mind: when you multiply the numbers of school systems by the numbers of schools and teachers, you get lits of variation in teaching methods. My children (24 and almost 21) were taught phonics and sight words but aided by parents who knew phonics. The kids who suffer are the ones with parents who themselves don't have the fundamentals.
My father was dyslexic, so he struggled with reading. I was fortunate that I picked it up on my own, but with my family's support.
Lol, one of my issues was reading words my family didn't use, so I often mispronounced them. I thought stomach should be pronounced with a "ch" sound, not a "k" sound. So I like the technology where I can hear a word pronounced.
Yeah, the reading thing absent phonics, like you're supposed to osmotically absorb the words. Disaster, and the stats tell the story. Kids can't read anymore. Over here, English is all phonics. I got 6 year olds reading at a 5th grade level.
I've read where they're finally reintroducing phonics in some schools.
I remember the day in elementary school when New Math was introduced. Our teacher opened the boxes of new textbooks in front of our class. They had shiny bright yellow covers and were so new that they were paperbacks. No time to print hardcover textbooks, I guess. I also seem to recall typos in them, which to my young mind which held education to be a sort of inerrant religion, scandalous.
She said that she had no idea what was in them, she had no training on them, so we would all learn together :) It was all rather exciting.
Much later I realized two things. 1- I deeply regretted not getting a Classical Education. I have had to learn to read, understand, and appreciate (a rather small number of) classical texts on my own, and learn to look up allusions in C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, etc.
2-The New Math experience gave me a fantastic foundation for my computer science and programming experiences.
Although the excitement of something so new and unknown was tempered by the nuclear fallout exercises we occasionally had in class. It wasn't until later I wondered how cowering under our desks would have protected us from getting fried by radiation. Although I believe someone in this comment section a long time ago said it was to protect us from falling building material. Which reduced my lifelong anxiety somewhat. I guess the adults weren't quite as daft as I concluded later ;)
Some of that nuke drill stuff (before my time) was a holdover from the Sputnik scare. Things get rolled out as policy and then they stick there for a long time.
The fallout drills were based on what they understood from the original nuclear testing as safety procedures for the military, if I’m not mistaken.
When it became a political hot button in the Eisenhower administration, the school fallout practices (it seems to me) were a matter of “We must do something!” and “This is something!”
Growing up in Lancaster County, PA we fortunately didn't have tornado drills. Just drills on what to do if the horses took off with the buggy ;)
Actually, I mowed the lawn of an elderly neighbor (not Amish). She told me a story of how as a very young girl the team of horses attached to the farm wagon bolted. She thought she was going to get pulled out of the wagon as she held a death grip on the reins and get crushed. Perhaps 80 years after it happened, she was still traumatized by the experience.
I need to think about this some more, but the second thing that strikes me is that politically active people have more background data on political topics than on, say medical topics. This is not to say that data is accurate, but it does familiarize them with the possible mechanics of the problem and show them how to raise plausible questions. They also know that politically sensitive topics are subject to bias and so they are on the lookout for it.
The first thing that struck me was that the face cream experiment did not take into account the placebo effect: it compared cream vs no cream, not cream with active ingredient vs cream with no active ingredient.
Most people don't know anything about medicine but they do think they know things about politics. What happens when you ask medical professionals about the face cream testing? My guess is that respondents will share more similarities with the gun control participants. Particularly given the lack of a proper control group in the hypothetical study.
Numeracy is a tool, as emotionally engaging as a good hammer (okay, except when it comes to money). But politics is about relationships and relationships involve emotions and emotions predate our knowledge of literacy and numeracy.
There's one other point that bothers me but I need to think about it a little more.
Another way of looking at this is the observation, attributed to Andrew Lang, that people use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support rather than illumination.
It's right. It's why science has diminished authority and credibility.
Hypothesis- is the question sound? Is the question answerable by a single variable? Does the question have all the known variables present? How does
Assessment - data collection. I find Assessment, the single biggest failure of national pundits. And many managers and executives. What's going? Get data. Broadly, widely. Deeply. Ask 6 whys. Design of Experiments.
Analysis - single variable? Multivariate? Cross terms and interdependency? A person or 2? A team? Brainstorming?
Bias - from observation and collection. People. Instruments. Noise v signal.
Placebo effect is real.
There will never be in our lifetime in social sciences, F=ma. Even that is wrong and just a superb estimate.
Discussion obviously can never resolve whether or not gun control works to reduce crime. I see the data and totally believe it does. Others see the same data and says it does not.
Power resolves. And we are in an era where Power will resolve some things for a transient period of time.
And the disposition to say, "I could be wrong. What kind of evidence would support the contention that I'm wrong?" That is, to recognize one's preconceptions and sincerely consider evidence that a different view is correct.
Good morning. We still have snow on the ground and it’s not going anywhere. The temp is -3 degrees and will get no higher than the (positive) teens.
The mothership is surveying the reaction of world leaders to Trump’s regaining office. The FP asks, “Can Trump transform America with a Stroke of his Sharpie?”
Good morning. Cold here, with just enough snow to look pretty.
What I noticed in the video was that, in neither case - skin cream or gun control - does the data show that the variable *caused* the result. In the case of gun control, the people who said things like, "There are a lot of different kinds of crime, not just with guns," are correct.
One lesson, then, is that statistics usually don't have the explanatory power that those deploying them are claiming they do.
Morning! Good point. It’s like the distinction between data and knowledge.
Plus, in order to hi-light the differences in numeracy abilities, they had to make the numbers slightly trickier to parse. Rather than telling a straight forward story with the numbers, they had to make them more obscure.
Maybe what's being illustrated is that when people feel invested in the topic, they think about it more. Suppose, instead of individually talking to the people, the study had a group of, say, three Republicans and three Democrats - none of them kooks - to talk about the gun control "study." I think the outcome might be that everyone would conclude that the numbers don't reveal anything germane to the topic.
From the Xitters:
@AlanLevinovitz
No one is reporting on this as far as I can tell, but I've been following extraordinary amounts of anti-semitism on the popular Chinese app "rednote."
Chinese users tout the free speech of being able to refer to Jews as "soap," for example. Tons of anti-semitic content, being shared by otherwise seemingly regular users. In reality the app is highly censored, and anti-semitism is one of the only freedoms allowed on the app.
Western users who recently discovered the app are now being propagandized by Chinese users. It's extremely disconcerting.
7:47 PM · Jan 21, 2025 - 75.6K Views
https://www.bangordailynews.com/2025/01/20/business/business-housing/maine-is-stifling-this-homemade-solution-to-the-housing-crisis-joam40zk0w/
On our perennial topic of housing, Scott Lincicome provided a link to this article about one way Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire keep building slower and prices higher.
Paywalled in my browser… ☹️
ETA: alternate link:
https://wgme.com/news/local/maine-housing-crisis-maine-is-stifling-this-homemade-solution-to-the-housing-crisis-kbs-builders-manufactured-homes-stick-built-homes-arcane-regulatory-barrier
Sure. We have some beer in the garage.
I'm guessing you put that all the way up here so I'd have to work for it, so to speak? 🍺
BTW... saw this earlier. Thought you might want to save it, just in case you run out of weird feathered critters to write about down here...
https://apnews.com/article/chirping-chorus-waves-earth-magnetic-field-8f4846687863cdc9d88f3d7f2d6744e3
(You know someone's probably just showing off when they start throwing out words in an AP wire story like "perturbations", science, or no science.)
Spooky!
Anakin Skywalker could not be reached for comment.
Good, he's a bore.
Maybe we could get a word from Casper. At least he's kinda' cute. 👻
Raise your hand if you have"
A. A slide rule
B. More than 1
C. Older than half a century
D. All of the above
Bonus questions
1. Used a trig table book
2. Still have the trig table book
3. Used it in HS and College
4. All rhe above
A. Still use said trig book..shock me!
B. You can numerically calculate some
C. You also own a logarithm look up book
D. You like logarithms but expontials are depressing
Any 10 yes answers makes you a fan of Hidden Figures.
Make West Virginia proud!
Nope. Liked the movie, though.
I have a bias that explains why it's so easy to explain away anything that one finds suspect, from numbers to numbscullery in others as opposed to in oneself. It's called confirmation bias. I'm sure of this, and I can confirm that no one here or anywhere else can make me change my mind about that no matter how many studies they study to make their point. Anytime. Ever. There. That settles that.
I *knew* it! That’s *exactly* what I thought you’d say!
I'm thinkin' we've been hangin' out here together maybe a bit too long. When you start finishing my sentences for me like we're an old married couple, I'm outta' here. I've already got one wife that can do that.
Outstanding summary. Give yourself a round of applause!
Thanks.
Question... Can I trade that round of applause for maybe just a couple of beers?
A Special Animal Enemy for Cynthia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didemnum_vexillum
D. vex is vexing the Bay of Fundy, among others. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.7427806
So. If one encounters sea vomit while swimming in the sea, does one just hurl it aside, or what?
Howdy, Midge. Long time, no read. Probably wishing it was longer now, aren't you?
Wow, that's weird. And their taxonomy says Phylum Chordata, which is unexpected *drink*.
Spineless sea vomit would be the stuff of nightmares, if you think about it.
So is sea vomit with, if not a spine, some sort of chordate features.
> Emily Blacklock, a graduate student and part-time scallop and lobster fisher, is among those collecting sea vomit samples for the research. <
Another miserable job for graduate students!
"You want that PhD or not, Emily?"
About ten minutes in, the presenter mentioned that it would be beneficial to avoid using buzzwords and "high concept," and just deal with practicalities. The example was flooding in Florida. Instead of arguing about whether it's global warming or climate change or the sacrificial victims weren't really virgins, just say, "We have a growing problem with flooding. What can we do to reduce the damage it is causing?"
It reminded me of a situation with the Envirothon group. As we were planning the testing event we had yesterday, people brought up a lot of different questions: how should we arrange the tables, what was the time limit, one subject at a time?, what about breaks? Some of questions were settled by considering the circumstances of the real competition, including "no additional time."
Thinking about some of the students who don't read as well as others, one of the parents suggested that, if asked, an adult could read the question to the student. The argument was that, in competition, they will be in teams, and the question will be read by a stronger reader. It seemed reasonable enough, but when I mentioned it to Brenda, she gave me a rant about DEI. "She's always bringing up all this DEI stuff. It makes me so mad!" She also had a reasonable counter-argument, which was that it would be disruptive to the other students, and that the group-test format is harder for a lot of the students, because they all want to read the questions and answers, so they're climbing over each other trying to see.
I said, "Okay," and after more complaints about DEI and unreasonableness of some parents, I said, "When I said, 'Okay," I meant it's okay. I'll tell her we're not going to do it that way."
The point of this rambling anecdote is that the question of, "Would it be a good idea to *do this*?" isn't helped by throwing in DEI as a high concept. It's a practical question. We were talking last night about how to accommodate one of Brenda's sons, who has a very heavy schedule of co-enrolled college classes and swimming practice. That's just as much an individual accommodation as considering a student's reading abilities, but it never occurred to her to call that DEI.
So, maybe DEI doesn't mean what we've been led to believe?
DEI = Decline Equal Interpretation in favor of one's own biased point of view?
Maybe? Just askin'? (See brief confirmation bias rant above.)
Speaking of DEI, Free Beacon commits an act of serious journalism, checking out “bias response hotlines” at the state and local government levels.
https://freebeacon.com/policy/inside-state-run-bias-response-hotlines-where-fellow-citizens-can-report-your-offensive-joke/
Results: 🤯🤯🤯
Holy First Amendment, Batman!!
An interesting takeaway...
>One webpage affiliated with the hotline, which is available in 240 languages, even lists "imitating someone’s cultural norm" as something "we want to hear" about.<
If I were living in Oregon or Vermont (they're probably gunning for O and he doesn't even know it) or any of those other states, *imitating responsible and appropriate government functions" is something I'd "want to hear" about.
I mean, two hundred and forty frickin' languages?! According to one source, the U.S. has 219 established languages. Maybe they're defraying the cost to the taxpayers by acting as an offshore call center for a few other similarly out-of-their-damned-minds countries. I'm sure someone calling from India would appreciate someone in Oregon speaking Hindi with a heavy American accent.
240. Huh. And Trump just had the Spanish language web page for the White House taken down, just as he did in 2017. Can't be said he's not doing everything possible to save the taxpayers a buck. Or maybe a buck-fifty. Not sure what the cost of having that page up online was.
I just saw your link. Gotta' go feed nags. Will check out a bit later this evening.
Not sure I remember what a serious act of journalism looks like. My Senior English term paper maybe? Got an A+ from a teacher notorious for never giving out more than a thimble full of -As on much of anything. Ever. Guess I had him good and fooled!
Think I might have told that tale here before. If not, it's kind of interesting...
It would be better for the nags if you’d read it to them. They might benefit from some inclusion in the goings-on in the country. Do I have to think of everything around here?
Well, if you're going to take credit for darned near everything around here you should at least be thinking of it yourself.
As to the nags, they hear enough about horses' a**es already... generally me yelling at them and telling them to "Move!" when I'm cleaning their stalls in the AM with them still in them or "I'm gonna' crack you right in your you - know-what!"
Maybe one of the 220th to 240th languages is whatever ones the horses speak. Sounds like they might want to report you for your untoward comments. You know, not everyone wants room service that talks back—especially not abusively!
We often see things differently when it's ourselves rather than others. Brenda once said to me, "We don't try to give our children an advantage!" and I did not reply, "Well, yeah, you do, and I do, too, sometimes, within ethical parameters."
Well heck yeah! What parent worth their salt doesn't? I did all I could do for my kids to get them as good a start in life as possible without going overboard in some direction that would impede them learning how to fend, and fend well, for themselves.
I once reminded one of our more curmudgeonly faculty to remember that 12 out of 7 Americans struggle with fractions.
He proceeded to lecture me on how that was in error, and that whoever wrote that study had serious methods flaws.
The next time I saw him I told him 1 out of 3 faculty struggle with humor, and he thought there might be merit to that...
The temperature is up to 4 up north and my outside camera is functional again. Glad to see the bubbler is bubbling away and open water around the dock. Tax training day. Today we learn how to manipulate the software to get the proper state results. There’s always glitches.
I'm innumerate. I memorized my multiplication tables, and then switched schools where they had just implemented "New Math". It was in the 60's. Math became an utterly fuzzy idea. Anyone in here remember The New Math?
Are you kidding? Not that I'm really all that old, but these days I don't even remember the answer to 2+2 unless I've got one of those new-fangled modern tech gizmos handy.
Let's see... um, what was it they're called?
Oh yeah... an abacus.
For some real fun, quiz your nearest LLM on some simple math problems.
Considering some responses to some simple questions I've seen, there's probably more hoots in that than a parliament of owls...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw1Ptk67WAY
Oh yeah. You're sort of the musical type, aren't ya'?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iG7e3Qry-M
Yes, we "unioned" numbers, and "intersected" numbers. I was lucky. My 3rd and 4th grade teachers said "screw it", and just had us memorize math tables.
We'd answer 100 questions in 5 minutes, then 4, then 3. Then we'd switch to subtraction, do the same. Then multiplication, then division. As I recall, those of us who successfully completed it got a free reading book.
"A free reading book" - that's funny.
“Not intended for use as a doorstop or table-leg evener.”
A reading book that's free? A book for use in free reading?
I had to teach my youngest brother real math when "New Math" came out. He was maybe in 3rd grade, me in 10th. Fortunately my tutoring got his really smart brain going. HS dropout ended up radioman on nuclear attack subs Hunt for Red October days. Does really interesting weird stuff for letter institutions
I remember New Math, primarily the existence of non-basr ten systems. But I went to school in suburban Maryland and had solid, older, old school teachers that used common sense.
The non-base 10 methodologies I learned in New Math greatly helped me as I pursued math-based science studies up through college and beyond. However, in 9th grade our math teacher, who had energy as if he drank a case of Monster drink before class (there was no such thing then) and who we adored, was AGHAST that we could not do math in our head. He was literally scandalized. He made it his aim to teach us 'mental math'. He only very partially succeeded in my case. (I still do some arithmetic on my fingers). I developed my own secret method of quickly doing addition & subtraction using mental images of dominoes ;)
Before I retired from teaching, I had some students tell me that they were taught how to do math using their fingers, which in my school days was cause for being sent to the principal's office where something akin to the Spanish Inquisition ensued (I was told by classmates). Hence my resolve to develop my highly secretive methods.
My wife uses a number line in her head. But her seeing is dimensional. She can tell a 0.01 arc minute of level from 30 ft.
Using your fingers!?!!
Going beyond "smart" and "stupid" to recognize different processing methods is one of the good things that has happened over the recent years people have griped about "education these days - !"
I don’t think I was directly subjected to New Math, but it’s one of an ongoing series of academic theories from education science that have chased one hair-brained idea after another—and then rolled out the latest academic fashions into the public schools as the Hot New Item.
There was a whole school of reading education that got completely away from phonics—ie, sounding words out, since we use an actual *phonetic alphabet*—was one of the more disastrous recent examples.
Nerd Doug read dictionaries and encyclopedias... go figure
I read encyclopedias! Used dictionaries, atlases… I wasn’t big on fiction, though, until post-college. Well, unless MAD Magazine counts as fiction.
I have been following this for some time and it makes me want to beat my head against a brick wall (I know that is not logical).
A system invented to allow communication across distances beyond the capabilities of speech, based on symbols representing speech made on a 2 dimensional surface - how can you teach reading while ignoring its whole purpose and origin???
I know I've mentioned this before, but I think it has more significance than people realize: Rush Limbaugh's radio show was sponsored by Hooked on Phonics.
One other thing to bear in mind: when you multiply the numbers of school systems by the numbers of schools and teachers, you get lits of variation in teaching methods. My children (24 and almost 21) were taught phonics and sight words but aided by parents who knew phonics. The kids who suffer are the ones with parents who themselves don't have the fundamentals.
My father was dyslexic, so he struggled with reading. I was fortunate that I picked it up on my own, but with my family's support.
Lol, one of my issues was reading words my family didn't use, so I often mispronounced them. I thought stomach should be pronounced with a "ch" sound, not a "k" sound. So I like the technology where I can hear a word pronounced.
Yeah, the reading thing absent phonics, like you're supposed to osmotically absorb the words. Disaster, and the stats tell the story. Kids can't read anymore. Over here, English is all phonics. I got 6 year olds reading at a 5th grade level.
I've read where they're finally reintroducing phonics in some schools.
I remember the day in elementary school when New Math was introduced. Our teacher opened the boxes of new textbooks in front of our class. They had shiny bright yellow covers and were so new that they were paperbacks. No time to print hardcover textbooks, I guess. I also seem to recall typos in them, which to my young mind which held education to be a sort of inerrant religion, scandalous.
She said that she had no idea what was in them, she had no training on them, so we would all learn together :) It was all rather exciting.
Much later I realized two things. 1- I deeply regretted not getting a Classical Education. I have had to learn to read, understand, and appreciate (a rather small number of) classical texts on my own, and learn to look up allusions in C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, etc.
2-The New Math experience gave me a fantastic foundation for my computer science and programming experiences.
Yeah. Yellow paperback, and I recall the teacher looking kind of confused. I never got over it.
Although the excitement of something so new and unknown was tempered by the nuclear fallout exercises we occasionally had in class. It wasn't until later I wondered how cowering under our desks would have protected us from getting fried by radiation. Although I believe someone in this comment section a long time ago said it was to protect us from falling building material. Which reduced my lifelong anxiety somewhat. I guess the adults weren't quite as daft as I concluded later ;)
Some of that nuke drill stuff (before my time) was a holdover from the Sputnik scare. Things get rolled out as policy and then they stick there for a long time.
The fallout drills were based on what they understood from the original nuclear testing as safety procedures for the military, if I’m not mistaken.
When it became a political hot button in the Eisenhower administration, the school fallout practices (it seems to me) were a matter of “We must do something!” and “This is something!”
We had tornado drills.
We had fire drills.
Now it's active shooter drills. :-(
Growing up in Lancaster County, PA we fortunately didn't have tornado drills. Just drills on what to do if the horses took off with the buggy ;)
Actually, I mowed the lawn of an elderly neighbor (not Amish). She told me a story of how as a very young girl the team of horses attached to the farm wagon bolted. She thought she was going to get pulled out of the wagon as she held a death grip on the reins and get crushed. Perhaps 80 years after it happened, she was still traumatized by the experience.
I grew up in Maryland, not far outside the Beltway. I think "tornados" didn't mean what we thought it meant.
Training related to horses! Lucky you!
I need to think about this some more, but the second thing that strikes me is that politically active people have more background data on political topics than on, say medical topics. This is not to say that data is accurate, but it does familiarize them with the possible mechanics of the problem and show them how to raise plausible questions. They also know that politically sensitive topics are subject to bias and so they are on the lookout for it.
The first thing that struck me was that the face cream experiment did not take into account the placebo effect: it compared cream vs no cream, not cream with active ingredient vs cream with no active ingredient.
Most people don't know anything about medicine but they do think they know things about politics. What happens when you ask medical professionals about the face cream testing? My guess is that respondents will share more similarities with the gun control participants. Particularly given the lack of a proper control group in the hypothetical study.
Numeracy is a tool, as emotionally engaging as a good hammer (okay, except when it comes to money). But politics is about relationships and relationships involve emotions and emotions predate our knowledge of literacy and numeracy.
There's one other point that bothers me but I need to think about it a little more.
Another way of looking at this is the observation, attributed to Andrew Lang, that people use statistics like a drunk uses a lamp post: for support rather than illumination.
It's right. It's why science has diminished authority and credibility.
Hypothesis- is the question sound? Is the question answerable by a single variable? Does the question have all the known variables present? How does
Assessment - data collection. I find Assessment, the single biggest failure of national pundits. And many managers and executives. What's going? Get data. Broadly, widely. Deeply. Ask 6 whys. Design of Experiments.
Analysis - single variable? Multivariate? Cross terms and interdependency? A person or 2? A team? Brainstorming?
Bias - from observation and collection. People. Instruments. Noise v signal.
Placebo effect is real.
There will never be in our lifetime in social sciences, F=ma. Even that is wrong and just a superb estimate.
Discussion obviously can never resolve whether or not gun control works to reduce crime. I see the data and totally believe it does. Others see the same data and says it does not.
Power resolves. And we are in an era where Power will resolve some things for a transient period of time.
Power is a Rock.
Until it's Dust
All of this requires an attention span that most don’t have.
Instant takeism has taken hold!
And the disposition to say, "I could be wrong. What kind of evidence would support the contention that I'm wrong?" That is, to recognize one's preconceptions and sincerely consider evidence that a different view is correct.
Opaque, but evocative!
Thanks!!!
Good morning. Windy, COLD, snow, gloomy. I hear brave souls playing outside - there are lots of outdoorsy children in the neighborhood.
I came across this yesterday:
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/army-soldiers-leadership-course-haikus/
Good morning. We still have snow on the ground and it’s not going anywhere. The temp is -3 degrees and will get no higher than the (positive) teens.
The mothership is surveying the reaction of world leaders to Trump’s regaining office. The FP asks, “Can Trump transform America with a Stroke of his Sharpie?”
Here are 12 less reported EOs Trump signed on Day One:
https://freebeacon.com/satire/12-executive-orders-no-ones-talking-about-that-will-make-america-greater-than-ever-before/
🤣
😂
Good morning. Cold and rainy in FL. I left VT for this?
Reports of 8+" of snow in Florida's panhandle, confirming suspicions of some that it is actually possible for Hell to freeze over.
Excellent
🥴🥶
It's 14’ here in temperate VA. Napoleonic layers of snow and ice. It's getting me down.
I like that "Napoleonic" use!!
Snow is no good unless there are mountains to ski.
Snow is no good unless there's someone other than me (or my wife) to do the plowing and shoveling.
That too.
Good morning. Cold here, with just enough snow to look pretty.
What I noticed in the video was that, in neither case - skin cream or gun control - does the data show that the variable *caused* the result. In the case of gun control, the people who said things like, "There are a lot of different kinds of crime, not just with guns," are correct.
One lesson, then, is that statistics usually don't have the explanatory power that those deploying them are claiming they do.
Exactly!
Correlation does not prove causation. Or, as Mark Twain was alleged to have said, “There are lies, damm lies, and statistics.”
Morning! Good point. It’s like the distinction between data and knowledge.
Plus, in order to hi-light the differences in numeracy abilities, they had to make the numbers slightly trickier to parse. Rather than telling a straight forward story with the numbers, they had to make them more obscure.
Maybe what's being illustrated is that when people feel invested in the topic, they think about it more. Suppose, instead of individually talking to the people, the study had a group of, say, three Republicans and three Democrats - none of them kooks - to talk about the gun control "study." I think the outcome might be that everyone would conclude that the numbers don't reveal anything germane to the topic.
Yes.
Or data and interpretation.
I suspect high intelligence is more cognizant of variables and skewed results, but faith trumps proof, and politics trumps clarity.
We see what we want to see,
Or maybe donald Trumps politics?
I wish it were only he. It seems to be the name of the game these days. Hard to find clarity anywhere.
That's pretty good.
Nice double entendre Ann!!
Haha - I aim to please