I agree, both of them failed to pick the safest possible path. GZ should have stayed in his truck, and he should have looked the other way. TM should have walked directly home.
Depends what criteria you're using for safety. If you're concerned about the safety of the neighborhood, then GZ did pick the safest path.
Note that you looked up the definition of hundred, not 100. I don't think 100 is even in the OED.
Regardless, 100 = one hundred = hundred = one tenth of a thousand. Those terms are all identical.
"One hundred and one" means "101" but "one tenth of a thousand and one" means 1/1001. If they were *identical* as you claim then the two sentences would unambiguously mean the same thing.
Another example would be in military time where "zero one hundred hours" means "1am" but "zero hundred hours" means midnight. Clearly "hundred" != "one hundred".
Aside from military time, if you asked someone for "zero one hundred dollars" I'm quite sure they would assume you were awkwardly asking for "zero thousand, one hundred" dollars and not "zero hundred = 0" dollars.
Germany and Japan attacked their trading partners, not some self-isolating group halfway around the world who was not culturally or religiously connected to their trading partners.
If you knew how many people come here on student visas and just before graduating show up at the local FBI office or something to say "Yeah, hey guys...
That sounds too good to be true. How exactly do YOU know the actual numbers for this?
Umm, Pakistani generals ARE on the US payroll. However, that's irrelevant.
There are plenty of people in Pakistan who support the drone attacks because they do kill high level terrorist targets. You don't hear about their support often because these people are basically disenfranchised and oppressed. The civil society in Pakistan is rather rabidly anti-American which is useful for upping their street cred with terrorists, whom they need to keep on a leash as part of their "deep state" strategy (i.e. using terrorists to influence neighboring India (especially Kashmir) and Afghanistan).
The people in Pakistan who are pro-drone are anti-terrorist. The political parties that oppose drone attacks have a history of supporting terrorists. It's a pretty simple and clear link.
I said "Germany, of course, was one of the most powerful countries in the world before WWI" not post-WW I.
Regardless, between the end of WWI and the start of WWII Germany did a lot of rebuilding. They certainly didn't start their next world war when they were at their most desperate, they built up strength.
The world is divided based on culture and religion. America could shit all over the Middle East and Europe isn't going to disown us and China isn't going to stop trading with us. They're just not connected.
You have a very strange interpretation of your own quoted material, and your choice of article is poor. This [wikipedia.org] is a much better choice.
That's the article I was referring to when I said "Now for what I think is a more realistic reason, look at this from the first article" -- it was the linked Wikipedia article in the post that I initially responded to in this thread. That's the article that I quoted about Toyota technicians wanting to service 825 cars instead of committing to 12000/year like Cobasys wanted.
Chevron, in the person of Cobasys, won a permanent (expiring) injunction against Toyota, preventing them from selling any vehicle whatsoever with NiMH batteries
So you're claiming that the Cobasys Wikipedia article fabricated the claim that they granted a new license the year after the lawsuit was settled (2005) to allow sales in North America in return for royalties? I mean that's certainly possible but it would be great if you had some proof.
I mean the whole thing with licensing and patents and all that is a nasty business, but it's not necessarily a sign of stifling technology. Look at Samsung and Apple constantly trying to get each other's products banned in various countries. Would you take that as evidence that Apple and Samsung are conspiring to destroy the smart phone market? Obviously not, they're both trying to TAKE OVER the smart phone market.
Tesla's case proves that Elon Musk can read judgements, correctly identify a risk, and carefully choose a battery product that can't be banned without shutting down the entire laptop industry
The fact that Toyota didn't try to work around the lawsuit shows that they weren't committed to the all-electric car. That explains why they didn't make more Rav4s, even though as you noted there was a waiting list before the lawsuit. They just didn't care about making an all-electric car. They made enough to satisfy California's fleet emissions laws, and then called it a day.
Here's another thing to consider. Toyota produced the Prius starting in 1997 and sold it worldwide in 2000. Obviously they knew enough about battery technology to work around the ban from the lawsuit since Priuses were sold right here all the way through today. So why didn't they use the same battery tech in Rav4s? Well that mystery is solved -- they just didn't care to.
It seems pretty clear that Toyota canceled the Rav4 for business reasons and decided to focus on hybrids like the Prius, which has made them a lot of money.
I wonder if it's been going that way since women got the vote and became extremely active and important politically. I can't help but think that they must be related since women are generally more risk averse than men.
You made an excellent point about how our system punishes failure, but I don't agree with extending it to A students vs. B/C students. There's a difference between someone who makes a mistake.. mistakenly.. versus someone who makes a mistake because they didn't/don't care about making mistakes, which I think is pretty common among bad students.
Those countries weren't exactly starving in the streets when they tried to take over the world.
Germany, of course, was one of the most powerful countries in the world before WWI and wanted to use the war to consolidate the continent. That's the actions of a superpower, not a desperate street scrapper.
Japan before WWII had been building and modernizing for decades. They were an ally in WWI. They had fought some minor wars in the region earlier, defeating Russia for instance. Again, not a country with some existential threat.
Countries that are powerful can also be dangerous, it's just a matter of attitude. Germany post-WWII has been decidedly anti-war, not due to them having food and energy, but because they were thoroughly humiliated when the world found out about what was going on in concentration camps. I mean really humiliated on every level.
Progress is being made in China, India, and Brazil.
So do you think that China is less aggressive militarily today, with their growing wealth and industrialization and national pride, than 20-30 years ago? I mean there's a lot of tension between China and Japan, and in the seas around China in general. You don't perceive that as a growing trend as they get wealthier and more powerful?
Are you serious? You don't think Mr. 0.999999% might instantly press that button and kill the Joneses that live across the street who he can't quite keep up with?
Then you suddenly realize, rich people aren't idiots and wouldn't want their own lives in the hands of other rich people who are psychopaths and miscreants. I mean if you're going to talk crap about "the rich" then at least be consistent.
This is hardly a fault of Islam since the main tenets of that faith were written down thousands of years ago and have been unchanged since
That's hilarious since that's one the faults of Islam that is most often criticized.
Hate preachers want us all to live in an Islamic Caliphate just because that puts them in charge.
That's one of those tenets of the faith that you were just praising for being unchanging.
We in the west though have similar people who try and twist christianity or democracy or patriotism towards their own ends: We have people who own arms companies who love it when we invade other nations as they sell more guns.
Ahh, bliss, if that were the problem in Islam, that some guys were greedy and wanted to manipulate others to boost their own personal wealth.
The Taliban isn't motivated by money, they're motivated by their Islamic faith and they need money to accomplish their goals.
It could be that you're projecting a bit too much of yourself onto others. You say you're an atheist, so of course you think nobody REALLY believes in God, they just say they do as a ploy to get more wealth.
Yes, time is the critical issue. I don't think there's enough time spent learning math for most students. In North Carolina where I live, the high school graduation requirements for math are Algebra 1 and 2, Geometry, and another math class of the student's choice. Well half the kids will have taken Algebra 1 and Geometry in middle school! And a smaller number will have Algebra 2 as well. So for the smart half of the kids we're talking about 1 or 2 math classes, 3 if they decide to take AP Calculus.
Statistics is barely mentioned in any of those classes. Statistics is, in my opinion, the single most important branch of math for the mathematical literacy needed in today's society. When you read an article about (ahem) education for instance, you'll see stuff about control groups, whether something is statistically significant, confidence levels and confidence intervals, standard deviations, etc. It's so sad to me that so many people see those terms and their eyes just glaze over.
Even looking at how time is allocated within the math classes themselves, I'd argue that e.g. your typical algebra class wastes precious time on stuff like matrix math, which the student won't use again until linear algebra (which isn't even offered as an AP class in this country afaik). Substituting basic calculus for matrix math would be hugely beneficial, both in terms of utility to the student, and interest to the student. It would have a knock-on effect in other science classes too, like the physics book not having to jump through hoops trying to derive things without using basic calculus.
Panasonic EV Energy (PEVE), a joint venture between Matsushita and Toyota begun in 1996, pioneered several advances in large-format NiMH batteries suitable for electric vehicles.
PEVE supplied higher capacity (28Ah-95Ah) NiMH batteries for use in Toyota, Honda, and Ford battery electric vehicles (BEVs) that began production in 1997.[32] PEVE's lower capacity batteries powered the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) Toyota Prius, which was introduced in Japan in 1997, and sold 18,000 units in its first year of production,[33] as well as the first Honda Insight and, with Sanyo Electric Co, first generation Civic hybrid models. BEV production by major automakers ceased in the early 2000s, with most leased BEV vehicles crushed by their manufacturers, and replacement batteries unavailable for remaining vehicles.
A 2001 patent infringement lawsuit brought by ECD Ovonics and Ovonic Battery Company, Inc. against Matsushita, Toyota, and PEVE was settled in July 2004. Settlement terms called for cross-licensing between parties of current and future NiMH-related patents filed through December 31, 2014. The terms prevented Matushita, Toyota, and PEVE from selling certain NiMH batteries for transportation applications in North America until the second half of 2007, and commercial quantities of certain NiMH batteries in North America until the second half of 2010. Additionally, Ovonic Battery Co. and ECD Ovonics received a $10 million patent license fee, Cobasys received a $20 million patent license fee, $16 million of which was earmarked to reimburse legal expenses, and Cobasys would receive royalties on certain batteries sold by Matushita/PEVE in North America.[34]
Licensing terms were expanded in 2005, with PEVE granted further license to sell NiMH batteries for certain transportation applications in North America, in exchange for royalties paid to Cobasys through 2014.[35]
So a few points based on that: * There was cross-licensing and royalties, just like you suggested * Numbers like $20 million and $10 million are not financially crippling to companies like Toyota and Panasonic * Cobasys/Ovonics were reasonable and willing to expand licensing the very next year
How do you think this resulted in a forced shutdown of all-electric vehicles for Toyota on behalf of the oil companies??
Now for what I think is a more realistic reason, look at this from the first article:
Toyota employees complained about the difficulty in getting smaller orders of large format NiMH batteries to service the existing 825 RAV4 EVs
and
Boschert quotes Dave Goldstein, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Washington D.C., as saying this policy is necessary because the cost of setting up a multimillion dollar battery assembly line could not be justified without guaranteed orders of 100,000 batteries (~12,000 EVs) per year for 3 years.
I mean.. clearly an order for 825 vehicles is way less than 12000 per year. What if it REALLY WAS unprofitable for Cobasys to make such a small run of batteries? Why would you assign blame to them rather than Toyota? Toyota has the resources to commit to 100k batteries, that would show they were taking the whole battery thing seriously.
Think of it this way: Tesla did it. They really did. They made an all-electric car better than any other automaker has ever done. So why can't Toyota? Piddly lawsuits? Patents? Evil Oil? It's a bunch of crap and Tesla proves that.
If yes, you are begging the question that a degree from these two schools would not be up to standard because the entrance exam is, like degree mills, is not meaningful.
I wasn't talking about dumbing down JUST the entrance test. Look back at what you originally said:
The objective is to further the education of the next generation. If they have to "dumb down" the university to achieve that,
I see how you could think I was begging the question that a dumbed down entrance exam will inevitably lead to a dumbed down university. But of course that's not what I was saying.. we were both discussing a situation where the entire university is dumbed down to accommodate poor students.
If no, your argument that this particular test as written is necessarily meaningful as to what a degree four years later means falls apart.
Well I think it's inconsequential at this point, but that's also wrong. Just because non-degree-mill degrees aren't equal doesn't mean there isn't a clear separation between various tiers of universities.
A lot of modern math was developed and applied without rigorous underpinnings. For instance calculus was developed by Newton and Leibniz in the 1600s but the rigorous underpinnings of calculus weren't hammered out until almost 200 years later. In the meantime it had been applied successfully to all kinds of fields. The naive understanding of "limit" and "derivative" and "integral" just work for many circumstances with no rigor required.
I think students would be better served being exposed to "cool" math sooner rather than later, even if they don't immediately grasp why it works. Going back to calculus again, I think it would be great for calculus to be taught as part of introductory algebra. As soon as you graph y = x^2, you're ready to do derivatives and integrals and see how they're used in areas like physics.
I disagree. This Ovonic company was a joint venture between Chevron and GM. That sounds to me like an oil company staying true to its word in trying to become an "energy" company instead of an oil company.
They sold batteries to car manufacturers including Toyota.
The company (maybe the technology) has problems.
In 2012 BASF bought it, so clearly Chevron was willing to let it go and let someone else try to make a go at it.
So why exactly are you demonizing oil companies in your post? Sounds like they played a big role in creating these large-format batteries.
I don't know why you think I'm begging the question. I let it go the first time but now I have to wonder what you mean since it seems central to your problem with my reasoning.
When I said "No I'm not considering the degrees that are worthless. Those places are degree mills, not reputable universities that other institutions should aspire to match." which part did you think was my conclusion, and which was a restatement of my conclusion as a premise that leads directly to it? "I'm not considering" is not an argument it's a statement of fact that is indisputable by you unless you want to enter the game of arguing in bad faith and accusing someone of lying with no reason or evidence.
Do you have a problem with "worthless degrees" and "degree mills?" You're admitting with your reply that there is a quality scale for degrees with the reservation that you think it's not a binary scale. I fully agree and I never said it was binary, nor does "worthless" imply binary. So in no way am I introducing a premise that is as questionable as my conclusion (that I'm not considering them.. which isn't a conclusion at all as I mentioned).
I don't get it. Perhaps you can elaborate instead of being so cryptic.
Since you didn't reply to my other points can I assume we agree on those?
Yeah, that or a great argument for more standardization. Why not have a national curriculum and national tests for core classes, and then local leeway for the stuff nobody else should care about like "History of [Your State]," physical education, or stuff that is difficult to grade objectively like creative writing. That stuff shouldn't be counted in your GPA for college either. There should only be a Core GPA of the core nationalized classes.
I mean the curriculum for an AP classes is effectively national since everybody takes the same test at the end. It works well.
But it is likely that out of 24,000 students nobody was smart enough and motivated enough to pass it this time? That none of them studied the tests from previous years and realized that they were already deficient?
No it seems very unlikely but I was responding to your hypothetical that if the problem isn't the test, they're going to run out of students. That is even more unlikely.
Also if the problem IS with the test, in terms of mismatched answer keys or something like that, I think the university would just fix the problem and blame it on computer error instead of temporarily lowering the admission standards and letting in essentially random people.
That's begging the question, the quality of degrees varies significantly throughout the world.
No I'm not considering the degrees that are worthless. Those places are degree mills, not reputable universities that other institutions should aspire to match.
Besides the article suggests that the problem was only with the english mechanics portion of the test, so not particularly relevant to math degrees.
The guy in the article referenced English because that had the biggest drop (formerly required 70% score and dropped to 50%, versus math originally at 50% and dropped to 40%). You don't think missing 60% of the math questions that you're supposed to know at that point in your academic career isn't a problem?
I thought it was funny. Well a serious question then --
I'm far better at being examined on paper than I am in real life. I'm unfairly advantaged, and I'm prepared to admit it.
Why do you feel this way? The only thing I can imagine is that you regularly run into people who are smarter than you but do worse on tests. How do you judge them to be smarter than you? Have you ever asked them to rate your own intelligence? It could be you have low self esteem and/or impostor syndrome and that you're quite smart but despite the evidence you just can't believe it.
In my own experience, in case you're curious, the people I know who did well on tests in school are smart. The people who did badly in school are usually dumb, though there's the occasional person who seems smart but has some secondary problem that prevented them from doing well -- pretty rare. As for myself, I do extremely well on written tests and I'm very smart.
Smart people have the ability to do well on written tests (most of them do), and dumb people only do well on written tests when they put in an enormous amount of effort (most of them don't), so to me it seems like you're looking at the false positive/negative rate and dismissing the entire idea of testing because it's not perfect.
Yeah that's possible, but there might be a genetic basis for the factors you're talking about too. For instance, "stable home and family" might be affected by physical factors like if one group has higher testosterone than others. Let's say that's true -- then indirectly, higher testosterone also leads to lower academic achievement, lower cognitive development, and in the end, a dumber person. There could be a crap ton of those types of secondary effects based on genetics and we don't know because it's not really a studied field. It seems plausible to me.
But that doesn't mean that there are no good athletes in your country, or that they are by definition inferior to athletes somewhere else because some ethnic group is inferior in some areas. That's the fallacy here.
If you're focusing on the absolutes like "no good athletes" or "by definition inferior" then you're right but it's a strawman fallacy. Nobody's saying NO girls are good at basketball, but at the same time, you'd be nuts to say "The awesome basketball playing girls who should make up 50% of the NBA just haven't had time to discover themselves!"
Picking athletes is a terrible example because physical differences between groups based on race, sex, age, etc are widely accepted.
I agree with GP that there is no evidence that intellectual differences don't exist. In fact it's pretty much acknowledged -- the debate is what to do about it, if anything is to be done. As an example, girls and boys learn differently. Even Reader's Digest talks about it. Not very controversial -- though if you read that page, notice how they try to tie it to physical differences where possible, because that's more palatable than intellectual differences. Still they're grasping at straws when they say why girls and boys react to loud voices differently, as if having "finer aural structures" means you interpret noise as aggression. They're grasping at straws there.
I'm a pretty decent programmer. And there are others like me everywhere around Europe. So, by your logic, we should be the coding central of the world. Well, we're not. Because there are equally many (if not more) people around here that are NOT great coders, while there are certainly good programmers in the Americas, Asia, Australia and yes, Africa, with the latter probably having a rather low "good programmer" count, but not because they are "inferior" programmers
You're not taking into account non-ability-related issues like quantity and cost. If money were no object, perhaps Europe would be the coding center of the world.
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I agree, both of them failed to pick the safest possible path. GZ should have stayed in his truck, and he should have looked the other way. TM should have walked directly home.
Depends what criteria you're using for safety. If you're concerned about the safety of the neighborhood, then GZ did pick the safest path.
From the Oxford English Dictionary.
hundred
Note that you looked up the definition of hundred, not 100. I don't think 100 is even in the OED.
Regardless, 100 = one hundred = hundred = one tenth of a thousand. Those terms are all identical.
"One hundred and one" means "101" but "one tenth of a thousand and one" means 1/1001. If they were *identical* as you claim then the two sentences would unambiguously mean the same thing.
Another example would be in military time where "zero one hundred hours" means "1am" but "zero hundred hours" means midnight. Clearly "hundred" != "one hundred".
Aside from military time, if you asked someone for "zero one hundred dollars" I'm quite sure they would assume you were awkwardly asking for "zero thousand, one hundred" dollars and not "zero hundred = 0" dollars.
Germany and Japan attacked their trading partners, not some self-isolating group halfway around the world who was not culturally or religiously connected to their trading partners.
The world's moving so fast away from the mindset of fundamentalists like al-Qaeda
Why do you believe that? The Arab Spring shows quite the opposite.
If you knew how many people come here on student visas and just before graduating show up at the local FBI office or something to say "Yeah, hey guys...
That sounds too good to be true. How exactly do YOU know the actual numbers for this?
Umm, Pakistani generals ARE on the US payroll. However, that's irrelevant.
There are plenty of people in Pakistan who support the drone attacks because they do kill high level terrorist targets. You don't hear about their support often because these people are basically disenfranchised and oppressed. The civil society in Pakistan is rather rabidly anti-American which is useful for upping their street cred with terrorists, whom they need to keep on a leash as part of their "deep state" strategy (i.e. using terrorists to influence neighboring India (especially Kashmir) and Afghanistan).
The people in Pakistan who are pro-drone are anti-terrorist. The political parties that oppose drone attacks have a history of supporting terrorists. It's a pretty simple and clear link.
I said "Germany, of course, was one of the most powerful countries in the world before WWI" not post-WW I.
Regardless, between the end of WWI and the start of WWII Germany did a lot of rebuilding. They certainly didn't start their next world war when they were at their most desperate, they built up strength.
The world is divided based on culture and religion. America could shit all over the Middle East and Europe isn't going to disown us and China isn't going to stop trading with us. They're just not connected.
You have a very strange interpretation of your own quoted material, and your choice of article is poor. This [wikipedia.org] is a much better choice.
That's the article I was referring to when I said "Now for what I think is a more realistic reason, look at this from the first article" -- it was the linked Wikipedia article in the post that I initially responded to in this thread. That's the article that I quoted about Toyota technicians wanting to service 825 cars instead of committing to 12000/year like Cobasys wanted.
Chevron, in the person of Cobasys, won a permanent (expiring) injunction against Toyota, preventing them from selling any vehicle whatsoever with NiMH batteries
So you're claiming that the Cobasys Wikipedia article fabricated the claim that they granted a new license the year after the lawsuit was settled (2005) to allow sales in North America in return for royalties? I mean that's certainly possible but it would be great if you had some proof.
I mean the whole thing with licensing and patents and all that is a nasty business, but it's not necessarily a sign of stifling technology. Look at Samsung and Apple constantly trying to get each other's products banned in various countries. Would you take that as evidence that Apple and Samsung are conspiring to destroy the smart phone market? Obviously not, they're both trying to TAKE OVER the smart phone market.
Tesla's case proves that Elon Musk can read judgements, correctly identify a risk, and carefully choose a battery product that can't be banned without shutting down the entire laptop industry
The fact that Toyota didn't try to work around the lawsuit shows that they weren't committed to the all-electric car. That explains why they didn't make more Rav4s, even though as you noted there was a waiting list before the lawsuit. They just didn't care about making an all-electric car. They made enough to satisfy California's fleet emissions laws, and then called it a day.
Here's another thing to consider. Toyota produced the Prius starting in 1997 and sold it worldwide in 2000. Obviously they knew enough about battery technology to work around the ban from the lawsuit since Priuses were sold right here all the way through today. So why didn't they use the same battery tech in Rav4s? Well that mystery is solved -- they just didn't care to.
It seems pretty clear that Toyota canceled the Rav4 for business reasons and decided to focus on hybrids like the Prius, which has made them a lot of money.
I wonder if it's been going that way since women got the vote and became extremely active and important politically. I can't help but think that they must be related since women are generally more risk averse than men.
You made an excellent point about how our system punishes failure, but I don't agree with extending it to A students vs. B/C students. There's a difference between someone who makes a mistake.. mistakenly.. versus someone who makes a mistake because they didn't/don't care about making mistakes, which I think is pretty common among bad students.
So far it has worked in Germany, Japan,
Those countries weren't exactly starving in the streets when they tried to take over the world.
Germany, of course, was one of the most powerful countries in the world before WWI and wanted to use the war to consolidate the continent. That's the actions of a superpower, not a desperate street scrapper.
Japan before WWII had been building and modernizing for decades. They were an ally in WWI. They had fought some minor wars in the region earlier, defeating Russia for instance. Again, not a country with some existential threat.
Countries that are powerful can also be dangerous, it's just a matter of attitude. Germany post-WWII has been decidedly anti-war, not due to them having food and energy, but because they were thoroughly humiliated when the world found out about what was going on in concentration camps. I mean really humiliated on every level.
Progress is being made in China, India, and Brazil.
So do you think that China is less aggressive militarily today, with their growing wealth and industrialization and national pride, than 20-30 years ago? I mean there's a lot of tension between China and Japan, and in the seas around China in general. You don't perceive that as a growing trend as they get wealthier and more powerful?
Are you serious? You don't think Mr. 0.999999% might instantly press that button and kill the Joneses that live across the street who he can't quite keep up with?
Then you suddenly realize, rich people aren't idiots and wouldn't want their own lives in the hands of other rich people who are psychopaths and miscreants. I mean if you're going to talk crap about "the rich" then at least be consistent.
This is hardly a fault of Islam since the main tenets of that faith were written down thousands of years ago and have been unchanged since
That's hilarious since that's one the faults of Islam that is most often criticized.
Hate preachers want us all to live in an Islamic Caliphate just because that puts them in charge.
That's one of those tenets of the faith that you were just praising for being unchanging.
We in the west though have similar people who try and twist christianity or democracy or patriotism towards their own ends: We have people who own arms companies who love it when we invade other nations as they sell more guns.
Ahh, bliss, if that were the problem in Islam, that some guys were greedy and wanted to manipulate others to boost their own personal wealth.
The Taliban isn't motivated by money, they're motivated by their Islamic faith and they need money to accomplish their goals.
It could be that you're projecting a bit too much of yourself onto others. You say you're an atheist, so of course you think nobody REALLY believes in God, they just say they do as a ploy to get more wealth.
Yes, time is the critical issue. I don't think there's enough time spent learning math for most students. In North Carolina where I live, the high school graduation requirements for math are Algebra 1 and 2, Geometry, and another math class of the student's choice. Well half the kids will have taken Algebra 1 and Geometry in middle school! And a smaller number will have Algebra 2 as well. So for the smart half of the kids we're talking about 1 or 2 math classes, 3 if they decide to take AP Calculus.
Statistics is barely mentioned in any of those classes. Statistics is, in my opinion, the single most important branch of math for the mathematical literacy needed in today's society. When you read an article about (ahem) education for instance, you'll see stuff about control groups, whether something is statistically significant, confidence levels and confidence intervals, standard deviations, etc. It's so sad to me that so many people see those terms and their eyes just glaze over.
Even looking at how time is allocated within the math classes themselves, I'd argue that e.g. your typical algebra class wastes precious time on stuff like matrix math, which the student won't use again until linear algebra (which isn't even offered as an AP class in this country afaik). Substituting basic calculus for matrix math would be hugely beneficial, both in terms of utility to the student, and interest to the student. It would have a knock-on effect in other science classes too, like the physics book not having to jump through hoops trying to derive things without using basic calculus.
I still don't think that's right. This is a bit more detail about it from the Cobasys wikipedia page:
Panasonic EV Energy (PEVE), a joint venture between Matsushita and Toyota begun in 1996, pioneered several advances in large-format NiMH batteries suitable for electric vehicles.
PEVE supplied higher capacity (28Ah-95Ah) NiMH batteries for use in Toyota, Honda, and Ford battery electric vehicles (BEVs) that began production in 1997.[32] PEVE's lower capacity batteries powered the hybrid electric vehicle (HEV) Toyota Prius, which was introduced in Japan in 1997, and sold 18,000 units in its first year of production,[33] as well as the first Honda Insight and, with Sanyo Electric Co, first generation Civic hybrid models. BEV production by major automakers ceased in the early 2000s, with most leased BEV vehicles crushed by their manufacturers, and replacement batteries unavailable for remaining vehicles.
A 2001 patent infringement lawsuit brought by ECD Ovonics and Ovonic Battery Company, Inc. against Matsushita, Toyota, and PEVE was settled in July 2004. Settlement terms called for cross-licensing between parties of current and future NiMH-related patents filed through December 31, 2014. The terms prevented Matushita, Toyota, and PEVE from selling certain NiMH batteries for transportation applications in North America until the second half of 2007, and commercial quantities of certain NiMH batteries in North America until the second half of 2010. Additionally, Ovonic Battery Co. and ECD Ovonics received a $10 million patent license fee, Cobasys received a $20 million patent license fee, $16 million of which was earmarked to reimburse legal expenses, and Cobasys would receive royalties on certain batteries sold by Matushita/PEVE in North America.[34]
Licensing terms were expanded in 2005, with PEVE granted further license to sell NiMH batteries for certain transportation applications in North America, in exchange for royalties paid to Cobasys through 2014.[35]
So a few points based on that:
* There was cross-licensing and royalties, just like you suggested
* Numbers like $20 million and $10 million are not financially crippling to companies like Toyota and Panasonic
* Cobasys/Ovonics were reasonable and willing to expand licensing the very next year
How do you think this resulted in a forced shutdown of all-electric vehicles for Toyota on behalf of the oil companies??
Now for what I think is a more realistic reason, look at this from the first article:
Toyota employees complained about the difficulty in getting smaller orders of large format NiMH batteries to service the existing 825 RAV4 EVs
and
Boschert quotes Dave Goldstein, president of the Electric Vehicle Association of Washington D.C., as saying this policy is necessary because the cost of setting up a multimillion dollar battery assembly line could not be justified without guaranteed orders of 100,000 batteries (~12,000 EVs) per year for 3 years.
I mean.. clearly an order for 825 vehicles is way less than 12000 per year. What if it REALLY WAS unprofitable for Cobasys to make such a small run of batteries? Why would you assign blame to them rather than Toyota? Toyota has the resources to commit to 100k batteries, that would show they were taking the whole battery thing seriously.
Think of it this way: Tesla did it. They really did. They made an all-electric car better than any other automaker has ever done. So why can't Toyota? Piddly lawsuits? Patents? Evil Oil? It's a bunch of crap and Tesla proves that.
If yes, you are begging the question that a degree from these two schools would not be up to standard because the entrance exam is, like degree mills, is not meaningful.
I wasn't talking about dumbing down JUST the entrance test. Look back at what you originally said:
The objective is to further the education of the next generation. If they have to "dumb down" the university to achieve that,
I see how you could think I was begging the question that a dumbed down entrance exam will inevitably lead to a dumbed down university. But of course that's not what I was saying.. we were both discussing a situation where the entire university is dumbed down to accommodate poor students.
If no, your argument that this particular test as written is necessarily meaningful as to what a degree four years later means falls apart.
Well I think it's inconsequential at this point, but that's also wrong. Just because non-degree-mill degrees aren't equal doesn't mean there isn't a clear separation between various tiers of universities.
A lot of modern math was developed and applied without rigorous underpinnings. For instance calculus was developed by Newton and Leibniz in the 1600s but the rigorous underpinnings of calculus weren't hammered out until almost 200 years later. In the meantime it had been applied successfully to all kinds of fields. The naive understanding of "limit" and "derivative" and "integral" just work for many circumstances with no rigor required.
I think students would be better served being exposed to "cool" math sooner rather than later, even if they don't immediately grasp why it works. Going back to calculus again, I think it would be great for calculus to be taught as part of introductory algebra. As soon as you graph y = x^2, you're ready to do derivatives and integrals and see how they're used in areas like physics.
I disagree. This Ovonic company was a joint venture between Chevron and GM. That sounds to me like an oil company staying true to its word in trying to become an "energy" company instead of an oil company.
They sold batteries to car manufacturers including Toyota.
The company (maybe the technology) has problems.
In 2012 BASF bought it, so clearly Chevron was willing to let it go and let someone else try to make a go at it.
So why exactly are you demonizing oil companies in your post? Sounds like they played a big role in creating these large-format batteries.
I don't know why you think I'm begging the question. I let it go the first time but now I have to wonder what you mean since it seems central to your problem with my reasoning.
When I said "No I'm not considering the degrees that are worthless. Those places are degree mills, not reputable universities that other institutions should aspire to match." which part did you think was my conclusion, and which was a restatement of my conclusion as a premise that leads directly to it? "I'm not considering" is not an argument it's a statement of fact that is indisputable by you unless you want to enter the game of arguing in bad faith and accusing someone of lying with no reason or evidence.
Do you have a problem with "worthless degrees" and "degree mills?" You're admitting with your reply that there is a quality scale for degrees with the reservation that you think it's not a binary scale. I fully agree and I never said it was binary, nor does "worthless" imply binary. So in no way am I introducing a premise that is as questionable as my conclusion (that I'm not considering them.. which isn't a conclusion at all as I mentioned).
I don't get it. Perhaps you can elaborate instead of being so cryptic.
Since you didn't reply to my other points can I assume we agree on those?
Yeah, that or a great argument for more standardization. Why not have a national curriculum and national tests for core classes, and then local leeway for the stuff nobody else should care about like "History of [Your State]," physical education, or stuff that is difficult to grade objectively like creative writing. That stuff shouldn't be counted in your GPA for college either. There should only be a Core GPA of the core nationalized classes.
I mean the curriculum for an AP classes is effectively national since everybody takes the same test at the end. It works well.
But it is likely that out of 24,000 students nobody was smart enough and motivated enough to pass it this time? That none of them studied the tests from previous years and realized that they were already deficient?
No it seems very unlikely but I was responding to your hypothetical that if the problem isn't the test, they're going to run out of students. That is even more unlikely.
Also if the problem IS with the test, in terms of mismatched answer keys or something like that, I think the university would just fix the problem and blame it on computer error instead of temporarily lowering the admission standards and letting in essentially random people.
That's begging the question, the quality of degrees varies significantly throughout the world.
No I'm not considering the degrees that are worthless. Those places are degree mills, not reputable universities that other institutions should aspire to match.
Besides the article suggests that the problem was only with the english mechanics portion of the test, so not particularly relevant to math degrees.
The guy in the article referenced English because that had the biggest drop (formerly required 70% score and dropped to 50%, versus math originally at 50% and dropped to 40%). You don't think missing 60% of the math questions that you're supposed to know at that point in your academic career isn't a problem?
I thought it was funny. Well a serious question then --
I'm far better at being examined on paper than I am in real life. I'm unfairly advantaged, and I'm prepared to admit it.
Why do you feel this way? The only thing I can imagine is that you regularly run into people who are smarter than you but do worse on tests. How do you judge them to be smarter than you? Have you ever asked them to rate your own intelligence? It could be you have low self esteem and/or impostor syndrome and that you're quite smart but despite the evidence you just can't believe it.
In my own experience, in case you're curious, the people I know who did well on tests in school are smart. The people who did badly in school are usually dumb, though there's the occasional person who seems smart but has some secondary problem that prevented them from doing well -- pretty rare. As for myself, I do extremely well on written tests and I'm very smart.
Smart people have the ability to do well on written tests (most of them do), and dumb people only do well on written tests when they put in an enormous amount of effort (most of them don't), so to me it seems like you're looking at the false positive/negative rate and dismissing the entire idea of testing because it's not perfect.
Yeah that's possible, but there might be a genetic basis for the factors you're talking about too. For instance, "stable home and family" might be affected by physical factors like if one group has higher testosterone than others. Let's say that's true -- then indirectly, higher testosterone also leads to lower academic achievement, lower cognitive development, and in the end, a dumber person. There could be a crap ton of those types of secondary effects based on genetics and we don't know because it's not really a studied field. It seems plausible to me.
But that doesn't mean that there are no good athletes in your country, or that they are by definition inferior to athletes somewhere else because some ethnic group is inferior in some areas. That's the fallacy here.
If you're focusing on the absolutes like "no good athletes" or "by definition inferior" then you're right but it's a strawman fallacy. Nobody's saying NO girls are good at basketball, but at the same time, you'd be nuts to say "The awesome basketball playing girls who should make up 50% of the NBA just haven't had time to discover themselves!"
Picking athletes is a terrible example because physical differences between groups based on race, sex, age, etc are widely accepted.
I agree with GP that there is no evidence that intellectual differences don't exist. In fact it's pretty much acknowledged -- the debate is what to do about it, if anything is to be done. As an example, girls and boys learn differently. Even Reader's Digest talks about it. Not very controversial -- though if you read that page, notice how they try to tie it to physical differences where possible, because that's more palatable than intellectual differences. Still they're grasping at straws when they say why girls and boys react to loud voices differently, as if having "finer aural structures" means you interpret noise as aggression. They're grasping at straws there.
I'm a pretty decent programmer. And there are others like me everywhere around Europe. So, by your logic, we should be the coding central of the world. Well, we're not. Because there are equally many (if not more) people around here that are NOT great coders, while there are certainly good programmers in the Americas, Asia, Australia and yes, Africa, with the latter probably having a rather low "good programmer" count, but not because they are "inferior" programmers
You're not taking into account non-ability-related issues like quantity and cost. If money were no object, perhaps Europe would be the coding center of the world.