Don't forget confirmation bias. The lucky business success does all the things you said and then the right things happen at the right time and he is successful. The unlucky one does the same things until he is out of money and out of time. Then he takes whatever work he can get to not end up on the street and he is tioo busy punching the clock to be there to shake the right hand at lunch or because he is a 3rd level flunky, the right person doesn't actually listen to the revolutionary idea he has over lunch.
You'll never hear about that guy. Nobody invites 3rd level flunkies to do interviews.
Skill, good decisions, and a willingness to work certainly can increase your odds, but they are not sufficient.
That reveals the real problem with merit, it's measurement. Best evidence suggests that Gates was an OK programmer, but needs supervision.
Luck got him an in withe IBM. Since he had the in, people assumed he simply MUST be a great programmer. That assumption of merit got him further ins which enhanced the assumption of merit.
In reality, he never actually delivered on his first product, BASIC for the Altair. His first delivery of DOS (which was a hack on someone elses project) had a brown paper bug. But because he had "merit", he got the chance to have other better programmers fix it up and release PCDOS 1.1 in his name.
Bill Gates' actual merit: His mom worked for IBM and his dad sent him to a good school.
No. Nepotism would suggest some sort of familial connection.
The problem isn't merit itself, but the measurement of merit and when that merit is recognized. The guy that kissed ass and got the promotion will soon see every minor accomplishment lauded as evidence of his merit. The guy working his ass off will remain a face in the crowd.
The much brighter kid on the janitorial staff will be ignored until he stops talking about his genuinely better ideas on how to run things. His reward will be a pink slip in a few years when the self cleaning toilets get installed. Then the CEO will deploy his golden parachute and because of the way he meritoriously steered the company into the iceberg, a seat will be pulled out for him somewhere else well before he lands.
Go look at what is actually being taught to the kids. End of the day, that's what actually matters.
But nevertheless, I did follow your link and as a result, I am more convinced than ever that it's a bad idea. What to hell is up with:
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.OA.A.1
Use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve one- and two-step word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.1
How about learn how to ADD? Then learn how to estimate. If you know how to get the exact answer, it's easy to ballpark. If all you know is ballparking, the exact answer will still elude you.
Not at all. I see what they're doing. I also see that they're putting the cart before the horse and wondering why the kids are getting nowhere.
While learning the tables, I learned the commutative property of addition and later multiplication by spotting the pattern in the printed table. That allowed me to halve the amount I had to memorize. Since we were concurrently learning to deal with addition and multiplication in columns with carrying, I also realized that I needn't bother memorizing the 11s and 12s. Through comparing addition and multiplication, it also instilled in me the knowledge that these were not discrete operations, but rather part of an internally consistent system known as mathematics.
A key to that is that I wasn't officially WRONG for not doing it some bass ackwards way involving circles and lines even though I had the correct answer and showed valid work to get there.
If the teachers don't understand it either, it is seriously irresponsible to sacrifice a generation of kids to that while they get up to speed rather than just having the teachers teach what they DO understand so that Johnny will be able to balance a check book.
Actually, I had good teachers. In the '70s. Good enough that I was able to work out decompositions that actually work for me while in upper elementary grades.
Note that in the '70s, we also had a form of "new math", but they sensibly waited until the 5th grade to delve into that AFTER we learned how to do arithmetic properly in order to expand on earlier successes. Of course, they then went on to belabor the point until I was sick of dealing with the obvious.
The common core topic being discussed here is arithmetic, not estimation. That topic was also taught later AFTER we had mastered arithmetic.
Or C, someone (Mom, Dad, older sibling, a tutor, etc) successfully taught the child a different approach that works. B is eliminated by the child demonstrating the ability to solve problems that way in front of the teacher, leaving A or C. In most cases, C is the more likely answer.
OF COURSE I'm talking about arithmetic, the kids learning this are in the 2nd grade! I'm sure not going to insist they learn algebra before they learn to add 2 digit numbers successfully. But note that the educators call this "math" and that's the word they teach to the kids.
And I'm not exaggerating. I wish I was.
As for you, I suggest going back a couple grades further and learning how to interact with people without sounding like a braying ass.
The idea is to teach the algorithm. The child gets to see that it works and gets a sense of accomplishment. Then they learn why and how it works. Then they learn how to do it faster.
That seems a lot more likely to work than hiding the algorithm behind a mysterious process that ALSO gets memorized without understanding, and then expecting a connection to magically happen.
It makes sense once you are already comfortable with doing the arithmetic, it does not make sense when you are just learning to do the arithmetic in the first place.
Even adjusting the figure down to 200 miles range, it's still a bit hard to claim the EV is a full replacement for ICE just yet. There are some EVs that can manage the range part, but they sure won't refuel in 3 minutes.
I'm actually doing the math for myself since I would LIKE to go EV, but there are a few scenarios I may face frequently where it just won't quite cut it. If it was just occasional trips, rental would be an option, but for now it's too frequently a concern.
You must be confused somehow. Long division in the '70s certainly didn't attempt to resolve the least significant digit first. How the hell would you even do that and why?
The algorithm they're teaching *IS* different. It is substantially different and it is more confusing than what they were teaching when I was in school.
For example, they INSIST that to do 8+5 in the second grade, the kid MUST decompose it into 8+3+2, 8+2 = 10, 10+3=13. Decomposing it into 5+5+3 is WRONG, simply remembering that 8+5 is 13 is WRONG.
If the 5 doesn't have two lines coming down at roughly a 45 degree angle with a 2 and a 3 at the other endpoints and a circle around the 8 and the 2, it is WRONG.
Damnit, now I hear the teacher in the wall yelling "WROOOOOng, do it AGAIN!".
I have actually watched simple math problems being solved the common core way. It's cuckoo. Adding the common core way doesn't teach concepts because you need to be able to add BEFORE you can really get the concepts.
If THAT is just standardizing how they've already been teaching math (apparently after my time), it's no damned wonder there's so many people who can't do arithmetic if their battery goes dead.
I know at least how they want people to do addition, and it's crap. Arithmetic needs no circles and lines. It is an algorithmic process.
They attempt to teach the kids mental shortcuts before they even know the long way, and that's why it fails. Worse, they teach the shortcut wrong.
And the nonsense about marking a useful thought process that arrives logically at the correct answer wrong because it's not the official holy thought process is wrong headed in the extreme.
Educators are constantly harping on parental involvement, but then they shove parents out of it by insisting on their odd approach to math where not only do the parents have no idea what the teacher wants to see for an answer, but if they start from scratch and teach THEIR child how to do arithmetic "the old way", the child will flunk even if he never produces an incorrect answer.
It does seem odd that given an apparently working solution they didn't stick with it at least long enough to go around and land or at least return to it, then land.
Actually broken means it is possible to come up with the key in a practical timeframe. Weakness is highly variable and somewhat subjective. In this case, the weakening doesn't look like it will make more progress and notably, it cannot actually be used since even for a 128 bit key you have to store 9 petabytes of data to use the technique (and anyone serious about security is using 256 bits).
All that and you still have to use enough guesses that your grandchildren will be dead before you get the key.
That cries out for a citation much as a man lost in the desert for a week cries out for water. As far as I know, the very best known attacks of AES256 reduce it to an effective 253 bits. That is FAR from broken in any sense.
To say it's broken is like saying you can break a 2x4 with your bare hands as long as it came from a diseased tree and you saw 90% of the way through it first.
Not only is the ability likely more than 10 years out, once it arrives it will be fantastically expensive, and fiddly as hell to keep the things running. You would have to be a very high value target (billions of dollars) to even be worth hacking for a while.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget confirmation bias. The lucky business success does all the things you said and then the right things happen at the right time and he is successful. The unlucky one does the same things until he is out of money and out of time. Then he takes whatever work he can get to not end up on the street and he is tioo busy punching the clock to be there to shake the right hand at lunch or because he is a 3rd level flunky, the right person doesn't actually listen to the revolutionary idea he has over lunch.
You'll never hear about that guy. Nobody invites 3rd level flunkies to do interviews.
Skill, good decisions, and a willingness to work certainly can increase your odds, but they are not sufficient.
That reveals the real problem with merit, it's measurement. Best evidence suggests that Gates was an OK programmer, but needs supervision.
Luck got him an in withe IBM. Since he had the in, people assumed he simply MUST be a great programmer. That assumption of merit got him further ins which enhanced the assumption of merit.
In reality, he never actually delivered on his first product, BASIC for the Altair. His first delivery of DOS (which was a hack on someone elses project) had a brown paper bug. But because he had "merit", he got the chance to have other better programmers fix it up and release PCDOS 1.1 in his name.
Bill Gates' actual merit: His mom worked for IBM and his dad sent him to a good school.
No. Nepotism would suggest some sort of familial connection.
The problem isn't merit itself, but the measurement of merit and when that merit is recognized. The guy that kissed ass and got the promotion will soon see every minor accomplishment lauded as evidence of his merit. The guy working his ass off will remain a face in the crowd.
The much brighter kid on the janitorial staff will be ignored until he stops talking about his genuinely better ideas on how to run things. His reward will be a pink slip in a few years when the self cleaning toilets get installed. Then the CEO will deploy his golden parachute and because of the way he meritoriously steered the company into the iceberg, a seat will be pulled out for him somewhere else well before he lands.
Go look at what is actually being taught to the kids. End of the day, that's what actually matters.
But nevertheless, I did follow your link and as a result, I am more convinced than ever that it's a bad idea. What to hell is up with:
CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.OA.A.1 Use addition and subtraction within 100 to solve one- and two-step word problems involving situations of adding to, taking from, putting together, taking apart, and comparing, with unknowns in all positions, e.g., by using drawings and equations with a symbol for the unknown number to represent the problem.1
How about learn how to ADD? Then learn how to estimate. If you know how to get the exact answer, it's easy to ballpark. If all you know is ballparking, the exact answer will still elude you.
Not at all. I see what they're doing. I also see that they're putting the cart before the horse and wondering why the kids are getting nowhere.
While learning the tables, I learned the commutative property of addition and later multiplication by spotting the pattern in the printed table. That allowed me to halve the amount I had to memorize. Since we were concurrently learning to deal with addition and multiplication in columns with carrying, I also realized that I needn't bother memorizing the 11s and 12s. Through comparing addition and multiplication, it also instilled in me the knowledge that these were not discrete operations, but rather part of an internally consistent system known as mathematics.
A key to that is that I wasn't officially WRONG for not doing it some bass ackwards way involving circles and lines even though I had the correct answer and showed valid work to get there.
If the teachers don't understand it either, it is seriously irresponsible to sacrifice a generation of kids to that while they get up to speed rather than just having the teachers teach what they DO understand so that Johnny will be able to balance a check book.
Actually, I had good teachers. In the '70s. Good enough that I was able to work out decompositions that actually work for me while in upper elementary grades.
Note that in the '70s, we also had a form of "new math", but they sensibly waited until the 5th grade to delve into that AFTER we learned how to do arithmetic properly in order to expand on earlier successes. Of course, they then went on to belabor the point until I was sick of dealing with the obvious.
The common core topic being discussed here is arithmetic, not estimation. That topic was also taught later AFTER we had mastered arithmetic.
Or C, someone (Mom, Dad, older sibling, a tutor, etc) successfully taught the child a different approach that works. B is eliminated by the child demonstrating the ability to solve problems that way in front of the teacher, leaving A or C. In most cases, C is the more likely answer.
I think it's perfectly reasonable to memorize the table for single digit additions. I have no idea where you got 8+13 from.
OF COURSE I'm talking about arithmetic, the kids learning this are in the 2nd grade! I'm sure not going to insist they learn algebra before they learn to add 2 digit numbers successfully. But note that the educators call this "math" and that's the word they teach to the kids.
And I'm not exaggerating. I wish I was.
As for you, I suggest going back a couple grades further and learning how to interact with people without sounding like a braying ass.
The idea is to teach the algorithm. The child gets to see that it works and gets a sense of accomplishment. Then they learn why and how it works. Then they learn how to do it faster.
That seems a lot more likely to work than hiding the algorithm behind a mysterious process that ALSO gets memorized without understanding, and then expecting a connection to magically happen.
Best bet, go to youtube, search on common core math. You'll get pages of relevant videos.
It makes sense once you are already comfortable with doing the arithmetic, it does not make sense when you are just learning to do the arithmetic in the first place.
It could also be a good teacher that knows that isn't working and so went back to the tried and true.
Per tank is the practical measure someone actually driving the car will find useful.
Even adjusting the figure down to 200 miles range, it's still a bit hard to claim the EV is a full replacement for ICE just yet. There are some EVs that can manage the range part, but they sure won't refuel in 3 minutes.
I'm actually doing the math for myself since I would LIKE to go EV, but there are a few scenarios I may face frequently where it just won't quite cut it. If it was just occasional trips, rental would be an option, but for now it's too frequently a concern.
You must be confused somehow. Long division in the '70s certainly didn't attempt to resolve the least significant digit first. How the hell would you even do that and why?
The algorithm they're teaching *IS* different. It is substantially different and it is more confusing than what they were teaching when I was in school.
For example, they INSIST that to do 8+5 in the second grade, the kid MUST decompose it into 8+3+2, 8+2 = 10, 10+3=13. Decomposing it into 5+5+3 is WRONG, simply remembering that 8+5 is 13 is WRONG.
If the 5 doesn't have two lines coming down at roughly a 45 degree angle with a 2 and a 3 at the other endpoints and a circle around the 8 and the 2, it is WRONG.
Damnit, now I hear the teacher in the wall yelling "WROOOOOng, do it AGAIN!".
I have actually watched simple math problems being solved the common core way. It's cuckoo. Adding the common core way doesn't teach concepts because you need to be able to add BEFORE you can really get the concepts.
If THAT is just standardizing how they've already been teaching math (apparently after my time), it's no damned wonder there's so many people who can't do arithmetic if their battery goes dead.
I know at least how they want people to do addition, and it's crap. Arithmetic needs no circles and lines. It is an algorithmic process.
They attempt to teach the kids mental shortcuts before they even know the long way, and that's why it fails. Worse, they teach the shortcut wrong.
And the nonsense about marking a useful thought process that arrives logically at the correct answer wrong because it's not the official holy thought process is wrong headed in the extreme.
Educators are constantly harping on parental involvement, but then they shove parents out of it by insisting on their odd approach to math where not only do the parents have no idea what the teacher wants to see for an answer, but if they start from scratch and teach THEIR child how to do arithmetic "the old way", the child will flunk even if he never produces an incorrect answer.
Why WOULDN'T that produce anxiety?
It does seem odd that given an apparently working solution they didn't stick with it at least long enough to go around and land or at least return to it, then land.
I didn't quote anything. My words were my own. You seem to have not understood them.
Actually broken means it is possible to come up with the key in a practical timeframe. Weakness is highly variable and somewhat subjective. In this case, the weakening doesn't look like it will make more progress and notably, it cannot actually be used since even for a 128 bit key you have to store 9 petabytes of data to use the technique (and anyone serious about security is using 256 bits).
All that and you still have to use enough guesses that your grandchildren will be dead before you get the key.
It's a bit premature to be replacing it.
Facebook announces new C level position, the CS(NS)O, the Chief Sorry (Not Sorry) Officer.
AES is currently broken in a cryptographic sense
That cries out for a citation much as a man lost in the desert for a week cries out for water. As far as I know, the very best known attacks of AES256 reduce it to an effective 253 bits. That is FAR from broken in any sense.
To say it's broken is like saying you can break a 2x4 with your bare hands as long as it came from a diseased tree and you saw 90% of the way through it first.
Not only is the ability likely more than 10 years out, once it arrives it will be fantastically expensive, and fiddly as hell to keep the things running. You would have to be a very high value target (billions of dollars) to even be worth hacking for a while.