I think you're looking at this too much from the point of view of the mosquito:)
The comparison you should probably be making is
Method 1: a) Head out into the bush b) Locate mosquito c) Analyse gender of mosquito d) Kill mosquito (if fulfils gender quota) f) Repeat y times
with
Method 2: a) Sort y genetically modified male mosquito larvae using automated mosquito-gonad camera/puffer thingy. b) Wait for mosquito maturity c) Release into wild
Given that you can be doing the next round of 2a whilst 2b is going on, I would suspect that the chances of making y a significant proportion of x are hugely increased by method 2.
I think the problem carbon116 is highlighting is an important one though - how do you actually measure "education and work experience" in a way that's useful to identify experts? Even by post-graduate level, you only tend to have expertise in a very narrow field, and there's been a lot of hooraw in the UK recently over so-called 'expert witnesses' (heads of departments at large teaching hospitals, for example) in jury trials misleading juries by making pronouncements in court on areas they're not experts on (but are closely enough related that the gap isn't obvious).
Conversely, some geeky hobbyist who's spent 50 years studying the Lesser Striped Marsh Warbler in their spare time may know far more than about it than any 'professional' researcher.
And there's always the famous (although admittedly, not recent) example of the patent office clerk who revolutionised physics with a couple of spare-time papers...
But Wikipedia is a knowledge repository, not an intelligence one. I think the OP was just using degrees as an easily accessed (semi-)objective measure of knowledge accumulation.
My 6 year-old daughter might have an IQ of 150, but her knowledge of quasar astronomy is somewhat limited. (Disney princesses on the other hand...)
Perhaps offensive is too strong a word, but the original NYT article does imply that 'toilet' is shied away from in US polite society these days. Certainly when staying with some friends in the US, we were warned not to ask for the toilets (in restaurants, for example), but to seek out the restrooms or bathroom instead (despite wanting neither a rest, nor a bath... OTOH, 'craprooms' might be pushing it)
But as I understand it, the US 'ass' (as in 'bottom') is much milder than the Brit 'arse,' more like the way the British use the word 'bum.'
Also, as a Brit, I'm surprised at how offensive Americans find the word 'toilet' and how inoffensive they find words like 'crap' or 'crappy', which after all mean the same as 'shit' or 'shitty.'
Actually, all that the research can really say is that the average result of an IQ test is higher among a group of men than a group of women. There is little background on how un-biassed IQ tests are, and the limitations of these tests in measuring 'intelligence' across different gender/racial/age groups.
I think the point that is being made is that the purchaser of the drug from the drug company (whether it be an insurance company, individual or government) is still paying far less for that drug in e.g. UK or Canada than they are in the US, even though in the US the purchaser is an insurance company/individual and in the UK/Canada it's the government.
Saying the government is subsidising the cost of drugs in Canada is like saying the insurance companies subsidise the cost of drugs in the states.
Occam's razor has parallels to the use of Unit Testing in Extreme Programming (or rather, vice versa) - you build the simplest model that will pass your tests (observational evidence).
You then write more tests (i.e. acquire more detailed observations) and adjust your original model so that it will pass these new tests, whilst continuing to pass the original ones (e.g. General Relativity extending Newtonian Physics).
This re-iterates the point made some way above that science isn't (primarily) about finding the truth, but about finding the best model for the observations you have, just as Extreme Programming isn't about writing the theoretically perfect piece of software, but the simplest code that will pass all your tests.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you're looking at this too much from the point of view of the mosquito :)
The comparison you should probably be making is
Method 1:
a) Head out into the bush
b) Locate mosquito
c) Analyse gender of mosquito
d) Kill mosquito (if fulfils gender quota)
f) Repeat y times
with
Method 2:
a) Sort y genetically modified male mosquito larvae using automated mosquito-gonad camera/puffer thingy.
b) Wait for mosquito maturity
c) Release into wild
Given that you can be doing the next round of 2a whilst 2b is going on,
I would suspect that the chances of making y a significant proportion of x are hugely increased by method 2.
Conversely, some geeky hobbyist who's spent 50 years studying the Lesser Striped Marsh Warbler in their spare time may know far more than about it than any 'professional' researcher.
And there's always the famous (although admittedly, not recent) example of the patent office clerk who revolutionised physics with a couple of spare-time papers...
But Wikipedia is a knowledge repository, not an intelligence one. I think the OP was just using degrees as an easily accessed (semi-)objective measure of knowledge accumulation.
My 6 year-old daughter might have an IQ of 150, but her knowledge of quasar astronomy is somewhat limited. (Disney princesses on the other hand...)
So where does this leave the (British as far as I know) 'humourous' alliteration: The cat crept into the crypt, crapped and crept out again?
Perhaps offensive is too strong a word, but the original NYT article does imply that 'toilet' is shied away from in US polite society these days. Certainly when staying with some friends in the US, we were warned not to ask for the toilets (in restaurants, for example), but to seek out the restrooms or bathroom instead (despite wanting neither a rest, nor a bath... OTOH, 'craprooms' might be pushing it)
But as I understand it, the US 'ass' (as in 'bottom') is much milder than the Brit 'arse,' more like the way the British use the word 'bum.'
Also, as a Brit, I'm surprised at how offensive Americans find the word 'toilet' and how inoffensive they find words like 'crap' or 'crappy', which after all mean the same as 'shit' or 'shitty.'
Actually, all that the research can really say is that the average result of an IQ test is higher among a group of men than a group of women. There is little background on how un-biassed IQ tests are, and the limitations of these tests in measuring 'intelligence' across different gender/racial/age groups.
I think the point that is being made is that the purchaser of the drug from the drug company (whether it be an insurance company, individual or government) is still paying far less for that drug in e.g. UK or Canada than they are in the US, even though in the US the purchaser is an insurance company/individual and in the UK/Canada it's the government.
Saying the government is subsidising the cost of drugs in Canada is like saying the insurance companies subsidise the cost of drugs in the states.
Surely you mean the wright words when we rite?
Occam's razor has parallels to the use of Unit Testing in Extreme Programming (or rather, vice versa) - you build the simplest model that will pass your tests (observational evidence).
You then write more tests (i.e. acquire more detailed observations) and adjust your original model so that it will pass these new tests, whilst continuing to pass the original ones (e.g. General Relativity extending Newtonian Physics).
This re-iterates the point made some way above that science isn't (primarily) about finding the truth, but about finding the best model for the observations you have, just as Extreme Programming isn't about writing the theoretically perfect piece of software, but the simplest code that will pass all your tests.