Fencepost Error

The whole thing is fun to listen to, but pay attention at about the 2:05 mark.


For a guy who complains about journalists and their math skills, he made a real lulu himself:
2000 pres, 2002 congressional ... 2004 presidential is truly 4 years from first to last. His oh so smarmy "2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 equals five years" is a classic "fencepost error" - it's not five years from 11/2000 to 11/2004, it's four.
11/2000 to 11/2001
11/2001 to 11/2002
11/2002 to 11/2003
11/2003 to 11/2004

That's one, two, three, four.

"And when you try to cover complicated issues, odds are you're going to make a mess of it."

So true.

No Bells - part one

David Wees feels that School Bells Interfere With Learning. I beg to differ.

"I hate being interrupted ..." and "The clock itself isn't evil, but the way we use it in schools has serious ramifications on how our students learn."

I hate being interrupted, too, but this has little to do with the bells and a lot to do with the location of the clock and the habits of the teacher. No matter how long the class is, whether you have a 4x4 block system or 7x50min or 8x40min, 1hr per day, or 2hrs per day, each class needs to end sometime. If the teacher can see the clock, it shouldn't take him by surprise.

Mrs. Curmudgeon's school is considering the switch back to bells every period. For years they had no bells between classes, just at the beginning and end of the day. There were the problems you might expect: groups of kids milling in the hall chatting, kids who show up 10 minutes late because the other teacher didn't notice the time or just wanted to keep going. The bathroom is a favorite excuse.

Students aren't going through the day in lockstep with all of their classmates and we must keep to a schedule so that everyone's time and preparation can be utilized most effectively. One freshman may take Honors Algebra2, Spanish 3 and H.English but the other takes CP English, CPAlgebra1 and Spanish1. The only course they have in common might be a Freshman History. You really can't expect every other teacher to make adjustments to fit that teacher's teaching whim of the day.

"I am always getting interrupted by the bell" and "It just never seems long enough" are not reasons to get rid of bells. "Kids are always late" is not one either. I've taught classes that were 40, 45, 50, 60, 80 and 90 minutes long; seminars and workshops lasting from 15 minutes to 6 hours. They always have definite schedules.

The only way to allow for extended time is to have large time gaps between classes, a la college scheduling. Even in this scenario, few classes are ever extended. You have an hour, so you plan for an hour. Extensions are done during "office hours" or during that time after class when the student catches the teacher and asks a question.

It wouldn't be a proper 21st century school reform piece if it didn't mention the dreaded "factory-model" analogy and dream wistfully about flexibility and "learning opportunities," so here goes:

Clocks are part of the systems world of a school but they have come to rule our life world. We have let ourselves become subject to fixed schedules, daily routine, and the drudgery of a factory-like system. I'm not saying that we can do without the clocks, but maybe we need to find ways for our system to be more flexible, to allow the learning to extend when necessary, and even send off kids early for another opportunity to learn, when their lesson with us is done.

So my group of 15 can't all begin at once because you are keeping 12 of them for a necessary extended learning opportunity? "Necessary" to whom? Will you send them to me when I have my AP calculus kids in their own "extended learning opportunity"?

If any student can be late at any time by merely invoking the "I didn't know what time it was", then what kind of message are we sending about responsibility? When your kids can deliberately steer you into a digression so they can be "legitimately" late to their next class, what societal good are we accomplishing? If promptness no longer matters, then few students will ever be prompt and the school will deteriorate.  You'll accomplish less than you do now and eventually go back.

Maybe we could do the 21st century skills, uber-techno-geek thing and program every student's iPhone, iPad, netbook ... to sound an alarm to signal the end of periods.

Cheating starts with The Administration

From the NYTimes

One day next month every student at Loyola Law School Los Angeles will awake to a higher grade point average. But it’s not because they are all working harder.
The school is retroactively inflating its grades, tacking on 0.333 to every grade recorded in the last few years. The goal is to make its students look more attractive in a competitive job market.

No. The goal is to make the school look more attractive. The student benefit is secondary.

Colleges have been playing this game for years: paying students to retake the SAT to raise the USNews rankings, gaming the enrollments to increase "diversity", fiddling with grading to improve student "satisfaction", and now they're out and out lying about GPA calculated from the inflated grades of watered down courses presented by professors who have lessened their requirements and overlooked more.

Changed to pass/fail so the pressure is reduced but "This new grading system also makes it harder for employers to distinguish the wheat from the chaff, which means more students can get a shot at a competitive interview." Total bullshit.

and we wonder why the students feel entitled?

Fallacy of Relevance - Ad misericondium

When arguing a point, attempting to get out of a traffic ticket or scraping together a passing grade, an appeal to pity can sometimes be effective. Other times you just look stupid.

Case in point, a Yemeni man is held in Guantanamo Bay and the Obama administration won't release him. He might have had a chance but the Christmas day bomber-moron tried to remove himself from the gene pool and take others with him.

"So a Nigerian man tries to set off a bomb on an American plane, and they punish my brother for this?" says Hila's sister, who did want to be identified.

An excellent point, even if she does forget to mention that the Nigerian trained in Yemen. (BTW, the 'I don't want to be identified' part is pretty funny if they mention she's his sister - sign of things to come?) Now the appeal to pity:

"His mother died, his father died, his two sons died, and now his uncle has died," Hila's sister says. "Do they want us to all be dead before they bring him back home again?"

It's a fallacy of relevance because the death of the relatives has nothing to do with the reasons for jail. Still, it can be effective unless you take this fallacy so far. Too much detail tends to ruin the weepy feeling and harden the listener. "Crash!" goes your argument:

"She says the family has endured enough trouble already. Last year, Hila's two young sons died when a grenade they were playing with exploded."

If your two young kids played with a live hand grenade and killed themselves, you're a terrorist. Dude, your unidentified sister is making this too easy.

Source: npr.org.