In the past few weeks I viewed the movie, "Enron: the Smartest guys in the room" (http://www.enronmovie.com/), and I also did some research on the current mortgage crisis that is a big part of the reason the U.S. economy has slowed and possibly even moved into a recession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis).
In both cases, banks played a major role - they smelled money, got greedy, and behaved unethically. In the case of the mortgage crisis many of the banks are now suffering the consequences (anyone own Citibank stock?), but it pointed out clearly to me that banks, despite their flashy and heartwarming adds, are rarely watching out for your personal interests and really just want your money.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 are computers that are specifically designed for gaming - while the computers that you purchase from Dell, Gateway, etc. are intended for many other functions. So the point of this article is that computers that aren't designed for gaming aren't very good at gaming? Slow news day.
Why do individuals who disagree with Michael Moore's movies always resort to calling him "fat"? I don't see how his being overweight has any relevance for his views on guns, corporate crime, or health care.
How about you address the issue he points out: that too many people in the U.S. have too little access to health care.
The media has only one driving bias: making money. They write what people (buy, read, watch, tune-in). Anything else is a waste of time to them.
So forget about insightful, meaningful, important news stories (e.g., whether or not there were actually WMD's in Iraq during the run-up to the Iraq war), because they don't sell well.
But maybe I'm just a cynic.
Without education, who will you send to the moon? Who will design and build a highly technical moon base? How will the many problems and challenges be solved without well-educated engineers?
I really enjoy space exploration and think it is valuable and important, but it is not more important than ensuring the success of our children in school. The money to improve education has to come from somewhere, and it seems reasonable to put the moon base on hold for a few years to pay for it.
"I'm hopefull. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure" - President George W. Bush, January 18, 2001
You have to live in Australia to participate...doesn't living in Australia already come with enough benefits? And now, the chance to win a Vista T-shirt!?! I'm packing my bags. http://www.microsoft.com/australia/vistafacts/terms.aspx
Actually, most musicians don't make enough to earn a living. Only a few top performers ever turn it into a full-time gig, and of those, only a tiny percentage ever become super-rich. I wouldn't feel bad about Metallica losing a few bucks - but taking revenue from the regional artist who works to feed his family causes me more pause in downloading knowing that if s/he doesn't get paid, s/he won't perform any more.
I've always heard that you tour to support the album sales - that most artists don't make too much money from the tour but do it so they can sell more albums. Of course, this is/., so I don't have any sources...but it would be nice if someone could shed light on this debate with some real evidence.
And here's one from the "other" point of view.
http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/jesusexisthub.html
I think the general consensus of historians is for the existence of the actual person, Jesus. Of course, historians differ in the divinity of Jesus.
Another significant problem with the article is the small number of chimps and humans that were used in the study. It is possible that the 3 chimps who were selected are on the high end of chimp brain function and the 12 humans who volunteered were on the low end of human brain function.
In fact, now that I think about it, I know lots of people whose brains function at a much lower level than a chimp...
The Federal government also provides support to small business in development loans, and local governments often provide financing to support new business growth by waiving certain taxes to encourage the growth of new business.
The philosophy behind providing loans for higher education is that it provides benefits for the country in economical growth and improves the strength of the democracy by providing a large base of (hopefully) educated voters. Seems to be a reasonable way to spend my tax dollars.
One of the biggest issues in the increasing cost of higher education is the same issue faced by many others in the United States - the dramatic and uncontrollable rise in health care costs. The same level of staffing is now much more expensive than it was 20 years ago, because premiums on health insurance are so much more expensive. Many institutions have initiated efforts to cut the cost of a college education, but this is difficult to do without having a serious negative impact on the quality of education received by students.
One additional confounding variable is that my wife and I both rate movies on the same Netflix account. She tends to like romantic comedies, me, not so much. But on Netflix, you would see both romantic comedies and thrillers rated highly, even though for an individual person that connection may not make sense.
So you would also need to build into the model a way to identify cases like mine where the ratings are really the results of two people.
Being poor doesn't mean that you know how to budget your money...in fact, in some cases, some families may become poor due to their lack of understanding of how to create and follow a budget.
You also have to consider that many poor families don't have access to other forms of entertainment other than the television. Attending movie theatres are way too expensive, as are sporting events or community arts events. In some ways, cable is a smart choice for their entertainment dollar in that for $60 a month the entire family gets the entertainment they desire 24 hours a day.
This sounds to me like the typical cycle for any product development process in any company in the world. Have you ever purchased a car only to see a "improved, better, faster" model come out the next year?
I guess I don't see how Microsoft is different (other than near-monopoly status) than any other company or group that is out to make a profit.
I have a couple of friendly 'edits' for your comment:
1) It tells me that ticket prices [for a few events] are, basically, under-priced.
Most events in my region don't sellout, except for a few of the big-name performers. I would argue that most concerts are over-priced, except for the few big names who sellout quickly.
2) It tells me there is a lot of money in live performances.
My understanding of most live shows is that the performers don't make very much money and tour mostly to spur sales of their latest CD.
3) It tells me that Ticketmaster needs to work on developing technology that can limit the number of tickets that can be purchased by any given entity or individual.
I don't think technology is the solution in this case - the law of supply and demand will always win. As long as there is big money to be made easily, no technology can end scalping.
Open ended responses can be scored by computer now too - in fact, many big test publishing companies are either now using computer scoring of open-ended (written) responses or are piloting this technology.
As in every other area of life, computers are revolutionizing the way we test and measure learning.
How about this...insurance companies charge unhealthy people prohibitively high insurance rates so that they are unable to get insurance. Then, the only people paying for health insurance are people who don't need health care, so the insurance company doesn't have to ever pay out any claims! Profit!
There is a big difference between health insurance and car insurance - car insurance is a luxury, whereas I would view access to health care a right.
I appreciate the offer, but I would prefer a new one. It seems that after a few years of use the "rolling action" degrades to the point of frustration...you have old copies of YDKJ you're trying to unload too?
I had a Microsoft trackball explorer and really loved it...but they don't make them anymore. Any thoughts or ideas on where I could locate another one?
It's not clear to me how you would use a Markov chain in this example. Since we are playing against human players, their betting behavior will not be random at all (one of the requirements for Markov chains). It would seem that if the human player knew the algorithm the computer was going to use to play poker the human player could intentionally setup the computer for a big loss (by setting up a particular pattern of betting behavior that the computer would recognize then violating that pattern and going for the big score).
While the margin of error can give us some idea of how accurate the measurement is, it does NOT tell us whether or not there is any practical significance to the result. For that, we need to know the effect size.
Assuming the standard deviation is 15, and the difference in means is 3, this gives us an effect size (Cohen's d) = 0.2, or a "small effect".
I tend to place studies on birth order or gender in the same category and generally ignore them because they focus on small differences in variables that cannot be controlled (like your gender or the order of your birth) while avoiding important variables (like your home environment) that can make a big difference.
Ah, yes...another case of "how to distort the truth with statistics".
Statistically, when you have a large number of individuals in your study (e.g., 250,000 is a huge number) you have a large amount of statistical power to detect minor differences.
In this case, while they detected a significant difference in IQ scores (whether or not IQ scores measure actual intelligence is subject of a different post), the difference may not have any practical meaning - "2 or 3 points" on a scale that has a standard deviation of 15 points is a very small effect (and thus has little practical meaning).
100% worthless.
The author of this little article has NO idea what he is talking about.
Being a psychometrician, I would first like to say that there is a big difference between a mathematician and a psychometrician - so being a "former" mathematician does not necessarily qualify you as an expert on testing.
Nearly all licensure exams now use IRT (item response theory) as the primary scoring approach. These statistical models can be used to account for "guessing" behaviors by recognizing an individual's pattern of responses (for example, you get a bunch of easy questions wrong, but guess correctly on a hard one) - in this case the model will recognize this as "guessing" and will take this into account when giving the individual a score.
Licensure tests are used for one specific purpose - to separate examinees into "pass" and "fail" groups. Licensure testing companies use independent bodies (e.g., they might use actual practicing lawyers for the board exam) to determine the quality of performance needed for a passing score. The testing company then selects test questions that will best determine whether or not the examinee has achieved this level - if the independent board selects a high level of performance, then the questions will be 'hard'. So if you are upset about the difficulty level, either study more or complain those on the independent board about their standards.
The author's post sounds like a case of sour grapes to me, and shows no real knowledge of testing theory.
Slashdot Mirror
In the past few weeks I viewed the movie, "Enron: the Smartest guys in the room" (http://www.enronmovie.com/), and I also did some research on the current mortgage crisis that is a big part of the reason the U.S. economy has slowed and possibly even moved into a recession (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subprime_mortgage_crisis).
In both cases, banks played a major role - they smelled money, got greedy, and behaved unethically. In the case of the mortgage crisis many of the banks are now suffering the consequences (anyone own Citibank stock?), but it pointed out clearly to me that banks, despite their flashy and heartwarming adds, are rarely watching out for your personal interests and really just want your money.
Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems that both the PS3 and Xbox 360 are computers:
http://playstation.about.com/od/ps3/a/PS3SpecsDetails_3.htm
http://xbox.about.com/od/xbox2/a/xbox360specs.htm
The PS3 and Xbox 360 are computers that are specifically designed for gaming - while the computers that you purchase from Dell, Gateway, etc. are intended for many other functions. So the point of this article is that computers that aren't designed for gaming aren't very good at gaming? Slow news day.
Why do individuals who disagree with Michael Moore's movies always resort to calling him "fat"? I don't see how his being overweight has any relevance for his views on guns, corporate crime, or health care.
How about you address the issue he points out: that too many people in the U.S. have too little access to health care.
Genesis has two distinct creation stories:
http://www.sullivan-county.com/identity/2cs.htm
Which one should be taken literally?
The media has only one driving bias: making money. They write what people (buy, read, watch, tune-in). Anything else is a waste of time to them.
So forget about insightful, meaningful, important news stories (e.g., whether or not there were actually WMD's in Iraq during the run-up to the Iraq war), because they don't sell well.
But maybe I'm just a cynic.
Without education, who will you send to the moon? Who will design and build a highly technical moon base? How will the many problems and challenges be solved without well-educated engineers?
I really enjoy space exploration and think it is valuable and important, but it is not more important than ensuring the success of our children in school. The money to improve education has to come from somewhere, and it seems reasonable to put the moon base on hold for a few years to pay for it.
"I'm hopefull. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure" - President George W. Bush, January 18, 2001
You have to live in Australia to participate...doesn't living in Australia already come with enough benefits? And now, the chance to win a Vista T-shirt!?! I'm packing my bags.
http://www.microsoft.com/australia/vistafacts/terms.aspx
Actually, most musicians don't make enough to earn a living. Only a few top performers ever turn it into a full-time gig, and of those, only a tiny percentage ever become super-rich. I wouldn't feel bad about Metallica losing a few bucks - but taking revenue from the regional artist who works to feed his family causes me more pause in downloading knowing that if s/he doesn't get paid, s/he won't perform any more. /., so I don't have any sources...but it would be nice if someone could shed light on this debate with some real evidence.
I've always heard that you tour to support the album sales - that most artists don't make too much money from the tour but do it so they can sell more albums. Of course, this is
And here's one from the "other" point of view. http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/jesusexisthub.html I think the general consensus of historians is for the existence of the actual person, Jesus. Of course, historians differ in the divinity of Jesus.
Another significant problem with the article is the small number of chimps and humans that were used in the study. It is possible that the 3 chimps who were selected are on the high end of chimp brain function and the 12 humans who volunteered were on the low end of human brain function.
In fact, now that I think about it, I know lots of people whose brains function at a much lower level than a chimp...
The Federal government also provides support to small business in development loans, and local governments often provide financing to support new business growth by waiving certain taxes to encourage the growth of new business.
The philosophy behind providing loans for higher education is that it provides benefits for the country in economical growth and improves the strength of the democracy by providing a large base of (hopefully) educated voters. Seems to be a reasonable way to spend my tax dollars.
One of the biggest issues in the increasing cost of higher education is the same issue faced by many others in the United States - the dramatic and uncontrollable rise in health care costs. The same level of staffing is now much more expensive than it was 20 years ago, because premiums on health insurance are so much more expensive. Many institutions have initiated efforts to cut the cost of a college education, but this is difficult to do without having a serious negative impact on the quality of education received by students.
One additional confounding variable is that my wife and I both rate movies on the same Netflix account. She tends to like romantic comedies, me, not so much. But on Netflix, you would see both romantic comedies and thrillers rated highly, even though for an individual person that connection may not make sense. So you would also need to build into the model a way to identify cases like mine where the ratings are really the results of two people.
Being poor doesn't mean that you know how to budget your money...in fact, in some cases, some families may become poor due to their lack of understanding of how to create and follow a budget.
You also have to consider that many poor families don't have access to other forms of entertainment other than the television. Attending movie theatres are way too expensive, as are sporting events or community arts events. In some ways, cable is a smart choice for their entertainment dollar in that for $60 a month the entire family gets the entertainment they desire 24 hours a day.
This sounds to me like the typical cycle for any product development process in any company in the world. Have you ever purchased a car only to see a "improved, better, faster" model come out the next year?
I guess I don't see how Microsoft is different (other than near-monopoly status) than any other company or group that is out to make a profit.
What is the next step in development of this feature? What about using it to prevent the duplication of copyrighted works (sort of a DRM for paper)?
I have a couple of friendly 'edits' for your comment:
1) It tells me that ticket prices [for a few events] are, basically, under-priced.
Most events in my region don't sellout, except for a few of the big-name performers. I would argue that most concerts are over-priced, except for the few big names who sellout quickly.
2) It tells me there is a lot of money in live performances.
My understanding of most live shows is that the performers don't make very much money and tour mostly to spur sales of their latest CD.
3) It tells me that Ticketmaster needs to work on developing technology that can limit the number of tickets that can be purchased by any given entity or individual.
I don't think technology is the solution in this case - the law of supply and demand will always win. As long as there is big money to be made easily, no technology can end scalping.
Open ended responses can be scored by computer now too - in fact, many big test publishing companies are either now using computer scoring of open-ended (written) responses or are piloting this technology.
As in every other area of life, computers are revolutionizing the way we test and measure learning.
How about this...insurance companies charge unhealthy people prohibitively high insurance rates so that they are unable to get insurance. Then, the only people paying for health insurance are people who don't need health care, so the insurance company doesn't have to ever pay out any claims!
Profit!
There is a big difference between health insurance and car insurance - car insurance is a luxury, whereas I would view access to health care a right.
I appreciate the offer, but I would prefer a new one. It seems that after a few years of use the "rolling action" degrades to the point of frustration...you have old copies of YDKJ you're trying to unload too?
I had a Microsoft trackball explorer and really loved it...but they don't make them anymore. Any thoughts or ideas on where I could locate another one?
It's not clear to me how you would use a Markov chain in this example. Since we are playing against human players, their betting behavior will not be random at all (one of the requirements for Markov chains). It would seem that if the human player knew the algorithm the computer was going to use to play poker the human player could intentionally setup the computer for a big loss (by setting up a particular pattern of betting behavior that the computer would recognize then violating that pattern and going for the big score).
While the margin of error can give us some idea of how accurate the measurement is, it does NOT tell us whether or not there is any practical significance to the result. For that, we need to know the effect size.
Assuming the standard deviation is 15, and the difference in means is 3, this gives us an effect size (Cohen's d) = 0.2, or a "small effect".
I tend to place studies on birth order or gender in the same category and generally ignore them because they focus on small differences in variables that cannot be controlled (like your gender or the order of your birth) while avoiding important variables (like your home environment) that can make a big difference.
Ah, yes...another case of "how to distort the truth with statistics".
Statistically, when you have a large number of individuals in your study (e.g., 250,000 is a huge number) you have a large amount of statistical power to detect minor differences.
In this case, while they detected a significant difference in IQ scores (whether or not IQ scores measure actual intelligence is subject of a different post), the difference may not have any practical meaning - "2 or 3 points" on a scale that has a standard deviation of 15 points is a very small effect (and thus has little practical meaning).
100% worthless. The author of this little article has NO idea what he is talking about. Being a psychometrician, I would first like to say that there is a big difference between a mathematician and a psychometrician - so being a "former" mathematician does not necessarily qualify you as an expert on testing. Nearly all licensure exams now use IRT (item response theory) as the primary scoring approach. These statistical models can be used to account for "guessing" behaviors by recognizing an individual's pattern of responses (for example, you get a bunch of easy questions wrong, but guess correctly on a hard one) - in this case the model will recognize this as "guessing" and will take this into account when giving the individual a score. Licensure tests are used for one specific purpose - to separate examinees into "pass" and "fail" groups. Licensure testing companies use independent bodies (e.g., they might use actual practicing lawyers for the board exam) to determine the quality of performance needed for a passing score. The testing company then selects test questions that will best determine whether or not the examinee has achieved this level - if the independent board selects a high level of performance, then the questions will be 'hard'. So if you are upset about the difficulty level, either study more or complain those on the independent board about their standards. The author's post sounds like a case of sour grapes to me, and shows no real knowledge of testing theory.