What, are you afraid we will run out of education? If they want to better themselves by learning from America, we should be honored, and humbled, that civilizations more ancient and in many ways richer than ours, consider us worthy of emulation. They do not gain at our expense--they gain at our mutual benefit.
At one time, China had the same problem. They built a Great Wall and burned their fleet (which at that point was the greatest on Earth, centuries ahead of Europe). Ultimately they got their asses kicked by the very foreigners they dismissed, and only now are they beginning to recover.
Orders of magnitude are based on a log-10 scale. When one says "x is an order of magnitude greater than y", one means "log x is 1 greater than log y". For instance, 1000 is an order of magnitude greater than 100 because log 100 is 3 and log 1000 is 4. Likewise, log 2 billion is 9.3, and log 300 million is 8.4. As you may have gathered by now, 9.3 is almost one more than 8.4.
That's a bad metric due to selection bias. An undergrad who struggles in his engineering classes may leave engineering. So some of the people who would fail their engineering exam end up not taking it at all. To have a better metric you would have to train the same group of people in both law and engineering, and have them take both exams. But even this would be flawed since some people might not care about one or the other. Also it's a nigh-impossible experiment that accomplishes little of value.
My point is that I'm commenting on Slashdot, not writing a thesis. Although you bring up a good point, I don't think the difference in how much of the population gets a bachelor's degree is enough to overcome the population difference, and I'm not inclined the study the problem beyond the vague suggestions I've already made.
Yes, forgive me for not doing detailed demographic research for a Slashdot comment. 2 billion to 300 million is enough of a differential to, in most cases, render the others negligible.
Then why did you attribute one of my posts to him? You said:
The original poster claimed that the US only goes to war because it wants to stop war in other places. I called him on it, because that was not the reason for going to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. He countered that there actually was a civil war in Afghanistan
Wrong. *I* was the one who mentioned the civil war in Afghanistan, and I mentioned that because of this lie of yours in particular:
There was no war in Afghanistan, there was no war in Iraq. Then the US showed up, and now there is war in both.
It's possible you were mistaken, but given that you followed that up by lecturing me about the details of the Afghan civil war, it's pretty clear you did know there was war in Afghanistan prior to US involvement.
I don't see where he had a problem with it, either. The difference between you and him isn't that you don't have a problem with it--it's that you aren't curious about why it is. As an academic, it's rather odd for you to assume that curiosity implies anything more sinister.
You're like the sixth person to call me out on a typo. Who could have ever guessed that Slashdotters were pedantic nerds with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than correct a minor error? (Strangely enough, I did, correctly, say that the US population was about an order of magnitude less than 2 billion. 300,000 is about four orders of magnitude less.)
India has a billion people. China has a billion people. America has 300,000 people, which is almost an order of magnitude less than India and China combined. Consider that many of the best grad schools are in America--plenty of Indians and Chinese come to America for grad school, but you don't see as many Americans going to India or China. All in all, Americans are fortunate that we can get the same education next door that other people travel around the world for.
Hey, IBM might require astronomical sums to license the patent, making outsourcing no longer feasible. It's their master plan to save the US labor market while being able to outsource themselves!
The fully expandable Michael Knight insert with Hasselhoff sporting a HUGE clump of chest hair poking out from his unbuttoned t-shirt
I'm unaware that buttoned t-shirts ever existed.
The A-Team reruns I have seen lately are fucking absolutely horrendous. It reminds me of a live action cartoon with ridiculously bad acting and car chases where the "bad guys' cars" inevitably end up on their roofs and the A-Team build a ridiculous battering ram out of a bulldozer and duct tape.
No, the real problem is that people are too cynical for that to be awesome anymore. TV certainly can be high art, but it doesn't have to be, and half the time it tries it falls short and lands squarely on "pretentious".
I did read the thread. I'm not the same person as WheelDweller (the original poster), and I'm the one who called you out on your lie about the war in Afghanistan. Maybe you should pay closer attention?
These kind of people think with their ego's, not statistics. You are looking for a math solution to essentially a psychology problem, not a math problem.
Random order is the standard mathematical solution to the standard psychological problem of cognitive bias arising from ordering issues. It does not solve the political problem of stupid users.
The Newton was never meant to be a PDA, as it was made before that term was even cobbled together.
Actually, the term "PDA" was coined by Sculley to describe the Newton. Sculley was fond of personifying technology ("Personal Digital Assistant", "Knowledge Navigator", etc.)
The Newton was huge for that too, back in the day. But 1990's Apple was unaccustomed to that market, and generally sucked at business, so they never built on that.
Slashdot Mirror
What, are you afraid we will run out of education? If they want to better themselves by learning from America, we should be honored, and humbled, that civilizations more ancient and in many ways richer than ours, consider us worthy of emulation. They do not gain at our expense--they gain at our mutual benefit.
At one time, China had the same problem. They built a Great Wall and burned their fleet (which at that point was the greatest on Earth, centuries ahead of Europe). Ultimately they got their asses kicked by the very foreigners they dismissed, and only now are they beginning to recover.
Orders of magnitude are based on a log-10 scale. When one says "x is an order of magnitude greater than y", one means "log x is 1 greater than log y". For instance, 1000 is an order of magnitude greater than 100 because log 100 is 3 and log 1000 is 4. Likewise, log 2 billion is 9.3, and log 300 million is 8.4. As you may have gathered by now, 9.3 is almost one more than 8.4.
That's a bad metric due to selection bias. An undergrad who struggles in his engineering classes may leave engineering. So some of the people who would fail their engineering exam end up not taking it at all. To have a better metric you would have to train the same group of people in both law and engineering, and have them take both exams. But even this would be flawed since some people might not care about one or the other. Also it's a nigh-impossible experiment that accomplishes little of value.
God forbid! If enough foreign grad students go back home, we might run out of education!
Thank you, Ensign Chekov.
Perhaps we should get rid of those people. You first, paleface.
My point is that I'm commenting on Slashdot, not writing a thesis. Although you bring up a good point, I don't think the difference in how much of the population gets a bachelor's degree is enough to overcome the population difference, and I'm not inclined the study the problem beyond the vague suggestions I've already made.
I don't disagree with that--all I was doing was correcting you on a false claim you made. The US did not start the Afghan civil war.
It looks like a typo to me, and considering what happened the last time I made a typo...
Who cares? What we're paying for is the research, and it's getting done. If you want a subsidy to help get Americans graduate degrees, work for that.
Yes, forgive me for not doing detailed demographic research for a Slashdot comment. 2 billion to 300 million is enough of a differential to, in most cases, render the others negligible.
Then why did you attribute one of my posts to him? You said:
The original poster claimed that the US only goes to war because it wants to stop war in other places. I called him on it, because that was not the reason for going to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. He countered that there actually was a civil war in AfghanistanWrong. *I* was the one who mentioned the civil war in Afghanistan, and I mentioned that because of this lie of yours in particular:
There was no war in Afghanistan, there was no war in Iraq. Then the US showed up, and now there is war in both.It's possible you were mistaken, but given that you followed that up by lecturing me about the details of the Afghan civil war, it's pretty clear you did know there was war in Afghanistan prior to US involvement.
I don't see where he had a problem with it, either. The difference between you and him isn't that you don't have a problem with it--it's that you aren't curious about why it is. As an academic, it's rather odd for you to assume that curiosity implies anything more sinister.
You're like the sixth person to call me out on a typo. Who could have ever guessed that Slashdotters were pedantic nerds with nothing better to do on a Saturday night than correct a minor error? (Strangely enough, I did, correctly, say that the US population was about an order of magnitude less than 2 billion. 300,000 is about four orders of magnitude less.)
Fine, 300,000,000. Which is still about an order of magnitude less than 2,000,000,000.
India has a billion people. China has a billion people. America has 300,000 people, which is almost an order of magnitude less than India and China combined. Consider that many of the best grad schools are in America--plenty of Indians and Chinese come to America for grad school, but you don't see as many Americans going to India or China. All in all, Americans are fortunate that we can get the same education next door that other people travel around the world for.
Hey, IBM might require astronomical sums to license the patent, making outsourcing no longer feasible. It's their master plan to save the US labor market while being able to outsource themselves!
I'm unaware that buttoned t-shirts ever existed.
The A-Team reruns I have seen lately are fucking absolutely horrendous. It reminds me of a live action cartoon with ridiculously bad acting and car chases where the "bad guys' cars" inevitably end up on their roofs and the A-Team build a ridiculous battering ram out of a bulldozer and duct tape.No, the real problem is that people are too cynical for that to be awesome anymore. TV certainly can be high art, but it doesn't have to be, and half the time it tries it falls short and lands squarely on "pretentious".
What really got me is how the CHiPs lived in a trailer park. Did that not have the same connotation back then?
Are you kidding? That's awesome! I think the first mistake of the 90's was taking TV so damned seriously.
I did read the thread. I'm not the same person as WheelDweller (the original poster), and I'm the one who called you out on your lie about the war in Afghanistan. Maybe you should pay closer attention?
Random order is the standard mathematical solution to the standard psychological problem of cognitive bias arising from ordering issues. It does not solve the political problem of stupid users.
Actually, the term "PDA" was coined by Sculley to describe the Newton. Sculley was fond of personifying technology ("Personal Digital Assistant", "Knowledge Navigator", etc.)
The Newton was huge for that too, back in the day. But 1990's Apple was unaccustomed to that market, and generally sucked at business, so they never built on that.