tax-blind money, questionable stats, and going to court over bread and hedgehogs
Roth IRAs are teh awesome. You should consider one.
Obviously the gifted kids are not doing the stats: NYC is seeking to use a broader rule to accept 'gifted' students into said programs in the city's public schools. OK, dumbing down TAG programs is disappointing but nothing new. What did confuse me what their math:
"The change, . . . , would guarantee students scoring in the top 10th percentile on admissions tests, as measured nationwide, a slot in kindergarten or first-grade gifted and talented programs. Under new rules announced last fall, only those scoring in the top 5th percentile would have been admitted. The revision would nearly double the number of children guaranteed slots". (my emphasis)
The last time I checked, percentiles did not have equal numbers of data points (in this case, students) in them. Percentiles tend to be computed as a binomial distribtution; in other words, the chart looks like a bell curve, with most data points in the middle (clustered about the mean, so most students are about average). The farther you stray from the mean, the fewer data points there should be. That is why scoring in the 90th or 95th or 99th percentile is a big deal. I'm really interested in seeing the data behind this and how the stats were computed. I'm no stats whiz, but something does not feel right.
But it's for the childrens! Think of the childrens! Food coloring allergies aside, the basis for the call for a Europe-wide ban on food colorings is a bit specious, IMHO. I decided to find this research cited, read it, and due to their methods, believe that the conclusions at which they arrive are difficult to make. There is much desire to arrive there, but they placed stumbling blocks in their own paths. While constructing a perfect experiment can be incredibly difficult, making a better, more robust one is certainly not out of reach, especially when one's research group has the means to hand out the equivalent of $500 to participating preschools and $1000 to participating elementary schools. The authors admit to "lack of control over when the challenges are ingested in relation to the timing of measures of hyperactivity". So, a few other issues:
OK, news of the odd: Man in New Zealand uses hedgehog as weapon. From the article, it seems that a hedgehog can effect a bit of damage. While the hedgehog was dead when collected after the incident, authorities do not know if it was alive when thrown. I think that alive or dead, one must question the mind of someone who uses a small random animal as a weapon.
We can't do it, so you shouldn't be allowed to, either: that is the gist of the suit, IMHO, religious Jewish Israelis filed against (my guess is) secular restaurant-owners and bakery-owners for selling leavened bread during Passover (to be brief, you are not allowed to own leavened bread as a Jew during Passover). That was last year. This year, the convictions were overturned by somebody with some common sense. People were convicted for displaying leavened bread (article says nothing about sales, but my guess is they weren't shellacking all of it or planning to bake and dump it all). The other problem with it? The religious people who sued were unlikely to frequent these businesses at all, so they were basically trying to enforce their way of life on everyone else.
My biggest problem with the article itself was the picture and caption, which are highly misleading. On the day before Passover starts, one is supposed to burn leavened bread, or hamaytz, ritually collected from the house the night before. The picture shows a community-wide observance of this burning ritual, completely removing leavened bread from the property and further preparing the individuals for the holiday. The article fails to note that the Jews in the picture burn their own leavened bread only and of their own accord, not anybody else's bread.
I'm having trouble uploading the article, and it is 8 pages of poorly translated format, even in a cut, so I'll just send it to people or try and figure out why Google docs disconnects with the server when i try to upload it. Probably has to do with it being a .pdf. This does not explain why Tulane's Blackboard site does the same thing. The file is only 181 K.
Obviously the gifted kids are not doing the stats: NYC is seeking to use a broader rule to accept 'gifted' students into said programs in the city's public schools. OK, dumbing down TAG programs is disappointing but nothing new. What did confuse me what their math:
"The change, . . . , would guarantee students scoring in the top 10th percentile on admissions tests, as measured nationwide, a slot in kindergarten or first-grade gifted and talented programs. Under new rules announced last fall, only those scoring in the top 5th percentile would have been admitted. The revision would nearly double the number of children guaranteed slots". (my emphasis)
The last time I checked, percentiles did not have equal numbers of data points (in this case, students) in them. Percentiles tend to be computed as a binomial distribtution; in other words, the chart looks like a bell curve, with most data points in the middle (clustered about the mean, so most students are about average). The farther you stray from the mean, the fewer data points there should be. That is why scoring in the 90th or 95th or 99th percentile is a big deal. I'm really interested in seeing the data behind this and how the stats were computed. I'm no stats whiz, but something does not feel right.
But it's for the childrens! Think of the childrens! Food coloring allergies aside, the basis for the call for a Europe-wide ban on food colorings is a bit specious, IMHO. I decided to find this research cited, read it, and due to their methods, believe that the conclusions at which they arrive are difficult to make. There is much desire to arrive there, but they placed stumbling blocks in their own paths. While constructing a perfect experiment can be incredibly difficult, making a better, more robust one is certainly not out of reach, especially when one's research group has the means to hand out the equivalent of $500 to participating preschools and $1000 to participating elementary schools. The authors admit to "lack of control over when the challenges are ingested in relation to the timing of measures of hyperactivity". So, a few other issues:
- ridiculous amounts of additives in the test drinks;
- ridiculous number of food additives in test drinks (and the amount of each was quite a bit);
- use of parents as monitors and measurers of children's consumptions of drinks and related outcomes. The parents were trusted to make sure that the only source of food colorings during the study were these drinks. As for rating their own child's behavior, I think we each have a bias, especially towards family and especially if there is an outcome we seek or if there are certain presumed conditions. Clinical settings with third parties can help lower or negate these problems. Trying to keep 3 year olds in a clinic for 6 weeks is a problems these days.
- The measurements: for 3 year olds they were "switching activities; interrupting or talking too much; wriggling; fiddling with objects or own body; restless; always on the go; concentration". These 7 parameters have been used before, but are these not average behavior patterns for three year olds? Also, couldn't "talking too much" for one society be reticence or average communication in another?
- The measurements for 8-9 year olds were taken from 8 minute sessions held three times a week for the duration of the study and a different 14-minute weekly test. Parents also made observations, but used a different score sheet than that of the three year olds' parents. At least they did some clinical measurements during the study, but they were done in the same setting (school) for short intervals. The study seems to indicate that parent behavior was measured, which might have been used to weigh scores, though I am not sure how.
- On page 4, the authors say that "The study was powered to detect differences between the active and placebo periods and, accordingly in each case, the effects of mix A and mix B were compared with that of placebo." To reach their desired power, they used 120 children.
- Little background information on other common/known health effects of these food colorings and additives. This could have helped establish correlation perhaps?
OK, news of the odd: Man in New Zealand uses hedgehog as weapon. From the article, it seems that a hedgehog can effect a bit of damage. While the hedgehog was dead when collected after the incident, authorities do not know if it was alive when thrown. I think that alive or dead, one must question the mind of someone who uses a small random animal as a weapon.
We can't do it, so you shouldn't be allowed to, either: that is the gist of the suit, IMHO, religious Jewish Israelis filed against (my guess is) secular restaurant-owners and bakery-owners for selling leavened bread during Passover (to be brief, you are not allowed to own leavened bread as a Jew during Passover). That was last year. This year, the convictions were overturned by somebody with some common sense. People were convicted for displaying leavened bread (article says nothing about sales, but my guess is they weren't shellacking all of it or planning to bake and dump it all). The other problem with it? The religious people who sued were unlikely to frequent these businesses at all, so they were basically trying to enforce their way of life on everyone else.
My biggest problem with the article itself was the picture and caption, which are highly misleading. On the day before Passover starts, one is supposed to burn leavened bread, or hamaytz, ritually collected from the house the night before. The picture shows a community-wide observance of this burning ritual, completely removing leavened bread from the property and further preparing the individuals for the holiday. The article fails to note that the Jews in the picture burn their own leavened bread only and of their own accord, not anybody else's bread.
I'm having trouble uploading the article, and it is 8 pages of poorly translated format, even in a cut, so I'll just send it to people or try and figure out why Google docs disconnects with the server when i try to upload it. Probably has to do with it being a .pdf. This does not explain why Tulane's Blackboard site does the same thing. The file is only 181 K.