That has nothing to do with curving. If you have people "beating" the test just by reciting things from memorization without understanding it, curving isn't going to fix that. I think what you wanted to say is that curving isn't very effective when there is no variation in scores (ie, when there's an easy test or an incredibly hard test).
Most government programs have incredibly high overheard. You may have seen the public outrage a couple years ago around xmas time when there were reports that only 75 cents on the dollar donated to charities actually goes to the charities' recipients. Unfortunately, government programs are much worse. I did spend a few minutes googling, but I was not able to find a number that accounted for program administrative costs and tax collection costs. I'm guessing you're doubting my figure, so I will take some time tonight to look further. It'd be a good link to have handy anyway, I guess.
The whole point of curving test grades is that people recognize that the test is an imperfect measure. With a curve, you are evaluated on how you perform relative to your peers. That takes the test imperfections out of the equation.
To me, reducing failures means they are not curving test grades, and that is a problem. If they did curve, there would be no change in the percentage of people who fail (by definition).
> That which infuriates me the most about the tech sector is corporate executives > building wealth upon the backs of laboring engineers.... > I have yet to receive an explanation as to why some VP somewhere gets to make > ten times as much myself.
Are you serious? Hey, dude. If you think there's no reason for this disparity, why are you WORKING for the VP instead of starting your own company? There's nothing magic here; it's supply and demand like anything else. Rational people will move to where they make the most money for the work they are willing and able to do. If you aren't making the big bucks that you see these other people making, either you aren't willing or you aren't able. More than likely you don't understand what they do and what they are accountable for.
> The primary reason this sort of research is interesting is because it might give > insight as to how abiogenesis occured
Yeah right. This is just more grant money going to political cronies and left-wing, atheist Washington fat-cats. There has already been enough research on this topic to consider the matter closed.
I was including the application team. Like I said, it's not rocket science; it's over when the people involve agree on the deliverable. Happens every day...
> I have no idea where you're coming from (government?) but in _my_ real world > stakeholders change requirements all the time.
I didn't say anything about requirements not changing. I said the requirements phase ends when the requirements are agreed to by the stakeholders.
> Like daily. And saying "no you can't have this because you signed off on > something last week" is a great way to dramatically shorten your career.
Why would I say that? I would instead say "we will take that and work on an impact analysis for you, and let you know what this will do to the cost estimate." If you are increasing scope without regard to cost, you are either starting off with a huge margin (in which case you will just get underbid by your competitors without mercy) or you are going to end up in the poor house.
> The real world that my stakeholders live in changes all the time, so their > requirements change all the time, so you have to be able to react.
Absolutely. We're not talking about being inflexible. We're talking about the process to handle changes and the recognition of their impact.
> Typically it's when we get to the end of the week/month/year allocated on the > project plan. Awesome. Maybe we've got 50% of the reqs done, maybe not. It'll > be a long time until we find out for sure...
Um, no. Have you ever been involved in a waterfall-style project? The phase is over when the stakeholders agree and sign off on the requirements.
> So we stop when it's "good enough" - according to who? Or more likely, it's > now 1 week to delivery and no-one's written any code yet so we better stop designing!
Again, you are asking very trivial questions. According to whom? According to the stakeholders who mutually agree on the design. This isn't rocket science.
> We're up against it time wise though, because we did such a good job on Reqs > & Design. Let's pull some all nighters and get stuff churned out pronto, who > cares how good it is, no time for that now. That lovely, expensive design > gets pushed aside.
Look, waterfall is not a cure for ignorant management. Bad management will be bad whether it's agile or waterfall or spaghetti-on-wall-see-what-sticks.
> Sure this isn't the waterfall model as published in the text books, but it's > how it works (fails) in real life.
Says who? Says you who very clearly have not been on a large waterfall project with people who know what they're doing? I do this every day. We have to. Our clients demand it. I could take everything in your hyperbole above and turn it around from a cost perspective. If your company is so poorly managed that it could not pull off a waterfall style project, then perhaps you should take a look at some other companies. I could give you a few names...
Oh good, another bad car analogy. Perhaps we should start driving without any thought to where we're going until our pre-fabricated test shows that we finally made it to the shopping mall.
Waterfall doesn't mean you can't adjust requirements after some arbitrary date. That's, you know, living in the real world.
What waterfall does mean is realizing that you need to go back and consider your general and detailed design documents when your requirements change in development.
So are you saying the benefits don't outweigh the costs? (sincere question)
HIPAA requirements currently lead to a TON of office space being wasted just to store records for 7+ years. I think the question of why hasn't the market already done this is a good one, because the cost benefits seem so obvious that it might point to the implementation cost being much more than we might think.
You are forgetting documentation/process costs, integration costs, cost of failed projects, and conversion costs. They will be the largest cost experienced, particularly for providers who already have a EHR system that isn't Obama's.
Also, you seem to be suggesting that the government and/or the health care companies have people who can do this. They don't. The government doesn't do much of anything itself. They will contract the big system integrators to do this for them (some of these firms will be successful, some of them will not).
I am also most concerned with the effect this will have on small medical outfits like the self-employed doctor. The set-up costs to interface with private insurance and Medicaid/Medicare are already outrageous and a deterrent to doctors (who are trying to pay off their education loans) to going out "on their own".
(By the way, I work for a company that would get a huge lot of this system integration work. I still think it's a bad idea for government to be forcing this.)
> On that note, how about making it so that I can choose whoever I want to put > my pre-tax money into vs. whatever firm my employer wants me to use?
Uhhhh, because your employer is paying rather large 401k plan administration fees.
Welcome to the downsides of a convoluted tax code.
> Let me see any doctor I want, and they cover me. Enough with the in network, > out of network bullshit.
You are only looking at it from the perspective of your inconvenience. Do you think this in/out network is completely arbitrary? The insurance company is able to negotiate lower rates for in-network doctors by offering them greater demand for their services, and that savings gets passed on to you. There are PLENTY of plans that allow you to go to whomever you want; but, due to the inescapable and humble arithmetic, YOU PAY MORE.
I love how this argument applies, unless we're talking about moving taxes up the pay scale. Then suddenly it's about how the "rich" have too much disposable income which just gets hidden away in... wait for it... investments.
> the idea to digitalize and standardize health records is painfully obvious and > should have been done years ago
That sounds like a great cost-benefit analysis you've done there; perhaps you should share it since it obviously disagrees with the ones the industry has performed over the last 10+ years.
I love when people like you say that an entire industry, which you probably aren't even affiliated with, is missing something that could so easily increase their profitability. Do you ever stop to wonder that you might not have all the facts on the implementation costs?
> This is just about the best idea I've ever heard from a politician.
I really can't decide if you're being serious or tongue-in-cheek.
Do you realize that 24% overhead beats the crap out of any government program I've ever heard of? 24% might sound ridiculous to you, but when you have welfare programs fighting just to get the majority of their money to welfare recipients (ie, less than 50% overhead), 24% looks pretty damn good.
Also, I can't help but wonder what the number would look like if Medicaid filing requirements weren't incredibly convoluted. To attribute 22 percentage points of the 24% simply to the fact that we don't have standardized EHR -- which is what you implied -- is a little off. Take a look at government regulation of the health care industry and correlate it to the increase in costs. It's not going to be 1.0, but it's sure as hell not going to be 0.0 either.
> No, what's laughable is worker-hating wingnuts arguing points that have > been pre-debunked. So called free trade laws mean that Americans have > to compete with workers that have no overtime laws or health & safety > regulations. I say "free trade" because the agreements are only free on > the bottom: you'll actually find plenty of legal conditions in free trade > agreements, they just benefit big business (see: copyrights and patents).
I'm afraid you aren't making any sense, either. To on the one hand say that the rules put in place by unions aren't to blame and then on the other hand whine about how labor is cheaper elsewhere because they don't have those rules seems a bit contradictory.
Of course, what people like you want is for us to close off our trade borders so that businesses can't utilize the cheaper labor elsewhere, right? I'd like to see your explanation for how that would work.
Yeah, but I guess my point is, how many "legal" permutations are there. I mean, if I have a favicon of a G, shifting it 1 pixel to the left is probably still going get me into hot water if it's a trademark. But at the same time, there's only so much you can do with a 16x16 image.
'"This is a photograph from your yard, the Executive Recycling yard," Pelley told Richter, showing him a photo we'd taken of a shipping container in his yard. "We followed this container to Hong Kong."'
Slashdot Mirror
That has nothing to do with curving. If you have people "beating" the test just by reciting things from memorization without understanding it, curving isn't going to fix that. I think what you wanted to say is that curving isn't very effective when there is no variation in scores (ie, when there's an easy test or an incredibly hard test).
Most government programs have incredibly high overheard. You may have seen the public outrage a couple years ago around xmas time when there were reports that only 75 cents on the dollar donated to charities actually goes to the charities' recipients. Unfortunately, government programs are much worse. I did spend a few minutes googling, but I was not able to find a number that accounted for program administrative costs and tax collection costs. I'm guessing you're doubting my figure, so I will take some time tonight to look further. It'd be a good link to have handy anyway, I guess.
The whole point of curving test grades is that people recognize that the test is an imperfect measure. With a curve, you are evaluated on how you perform relative to your peers. That takes the test imperfections out of the equation.
To me, reducing failures means they are not curving test grades, and that is a problem. If they did curve, there would be no change in the percentage of people who fail (by definition).
Large impersonal classrooms reduce accountability for attendance and decrease overall learning rates. Film at 11.
> That which infuriates me the most about the tech sector is corporate executives ...
> building wealth upon the backs of laboring engineers.
> I have yet to receive an explanation as to why some VP somewhere gets to make
> ten times as much myself.
Are you serious? Hey, dude. If you think there's no reason for this disparity, why are you WORKING for the VP instead of starting your own company? There's nothing magic here; it's supply and demand like anything else. Rational people will move to where they make the most money for the work they are willing and able to do. If you aren't making the big bucks that you see these other people making, either you aren't willing or you aren't able. More than likely you don't understand what they do and what they are accountable for.
> The primary reason this sort of research is interesting is because it might give
> insight as to how abiogenesis occured
Yeah right. This is just more grant money going to political cronies and left-wing, atheist Washington fat-cats. There has already been enough research on this topic to consider the matter closed.
I was including the application team. Like I said, it's not rocket science; it's over when the people involve agree on the deliverable. Happens every day...
> I have no idea where you're coming from (government?) but in _my_ real world
> stakeholders change requirements all the time.
I didn't say anything about requirements not changing. I said the requirements phase ends when the requirements are agreed to by the stakeholders.
> Like daily. And saying "no you can't have this because you signed off on
> something last week" is a great way to dramatically shorten your career.
Why would I say that? I would instead say "we will take that and work on an impact analysis for you, and let you know what this will do to the cost estimate." If you are increasing scope without regard to cost, you are either starting off with a huge margin (in which case you will just get underbid by your competitors without mercy) or you are going to end up in the poor house.
> The real world that my stakeholders live in changes all the time, so their
> requirements change all the time, so you have to be able to react.
Absolutely. We're not talking about being inflexible. We're talking about the process to handle changes and the recognition of their impact.
You can continue laughing now...
I was responding to the "waterfall doesn't work in reality" comment. I didn't say waterfall is the right way to do everything.
> Typically it's when we get to the end of the week/month/year allocated on the
> project plan. Awesome. Maybe we've got 50% of the reqs done, maybe not. It'll
> be a long time until we find out for sure...
Um, no. Have you ever been involved in a waterfall-style project? The phase is over when the stakeholders agree and sign off on the requirements.
> So we stop when it's "good enough" - according to who? Or more likely, it's
> now 1 week to delivery and no-one's written any code yet so we better stop designing!
Again, you are asking very trivial questions. According to whom? According to the stakeholders who mutually agree on the design. This isn't rocket science.
> We're up against it time wise though, because we did such a good job on Reqs
> & Design. Let's pull some all nighters and get stuff churned out pronto, who
> cares how good it is, no time for that now. That lovely, expensive design
> gets pushed aside.
Look, waterfall is not a cure for ignorant management. Bad management will be bad whether it's agile or waterfall or spaghetti-on-wall-see-what-sticks.
> Sure this isn't the waterfall model as published in the text books, but it's
> how it works (fails) in real life.
Says who? Says you who very clearly have not been on a large waterfall project with people who know what they're doing? I do this every day. We have to. Our clients demand it. I could take everything in your hyperbole above and turn it around from a cost perspective. If your company is so poorly managed that it could not pull off a waterfall style project, then perhaps you should take a look at some other companies. I could give you a few names...
Oh good, another bad car analogy. Perhaps we should start driving without any thought to where we're going until our pre-fabricated test shows that we finally made it to the shopping mall.
(Just about as accurate as your analogy.)
Waterfall doesn't mean you can't adjust requirements after some arbitrary date. That's, you know, living in the real world.
What waterfall does mean is realizing that you need to go back and consider your general and detailed design documents when your requirements change in development.
Parent was more right than you gave him credit.
> The trendy crap is just so you can sell the idea to management.
Thanks a lot, jerk. Didn't you ever think that some of our bosses might read slashdot?
Where did you get this number? I don't think there's a chance it's accurate.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I am interested in receiving your newsletter.
So are you saying the benefits don't outweigh the costs? (sincere question)
HIPAA requirements currently lead to a TON of office space being wasted just to store records for 7+ years. I think the question of why hasn't the market already done this is a good one, because the cost benefits seem so obvious that it might point to the implementation cost being much more than we might think.
You are forgetting documentation/process costs, integration costs, cost of failed projects, and conversion costs. They will be the largest cost experienced, particularly for providers who already have a EHR system that isn't Obama's.
Also, you seem to be suggesting that the government and/or the health care companies have people who can do this. They don't. The government doesn't do much of anything itself. They will contract the big system integrators to do this for them (some of these firms will be successful, some of them will not).
I am also most concerned with the effect this will have on small medical outfits like the self-employed doctor. The set-up costs to interface with private insurance and Medicaid/Medicare are already outrageous and a deterrent to doctors (who are trying to pay off their education loans) to going out "on their own".
(By the way, I work for a company that would get a huge lot of this system integration work. I still think it's a bad idea for government to be forcing this.)
> On that note, how about making it so that I can choose whoever I want to put
> my pre-tax money into vs. whatever firm my employer wants me to use?
Uhhhh, because your employer is paying rather large 401k plan administration fees.
Welcome to the downsides of a convoluted tax code.
> Let me see any doctor I want, and they cover me. Enough with the in network,
> out of network bullshit.
You are only looking at it from the perspective of your inconvenience. Do you think this in/out network is completely arbitrary? The insurance company is able to negotiate lower rates for in-network doctors by offering them greater demand for their services, and that savings gets passed on to you. There are PLENTY of plans that allow you to go to whomever you want; but, due to the inescapable and humble arithmetic, YOU PAY MORE.
> You have to spend money to make money.
I love how this argument applies, unless we're talking about moving taxes up the pay scale. Then suddenly it's about how the "rich" have too much disposable income which just gets hidden away in... wait for it... investments.
> the idea to digitalize and standardize health records is painfully obvious and
> should have been done years ago
That sounds like a great cost-benefit analysis you've done there; perhaps you should share it since it obviously disagrees with the ones the industry has performed over the last 10+ years.
I love when people like you say that an entire industry, which you probably aren't even affiliated with, is missing something that could so easily increase their profitability. Do you ever stop to wonder that you might not have all the facts on the implementation costs?
> This is just about the best idea I've ever heard from a politician.
I really can't decide if you're being serious or tongue-in-cheek.
> I agree. I've just never heard of Government as a solution for inefficiency and waste.......
Haha, mod parent up!!!
Do you realize that 24% overhead beats the crap out of any government program I've ever heard of? 24% might sound ridiculous to you, but when you have welfare programs fighting just to get the majority of their money to welfare recipients (ie, less than 50% overhead), 24% looks pretty damn good.
Also, I can't help but wonder what the number would look like if Medicaid filing requirements weren't incredibly convoluted. To attribute 22 percentage points of the 24% simply to the fact that we don't have standardized EHR -- which is what you implied -- is a little off. Take a look at government regulation of the health care industry and correlate it to the increase in costs. It's not going to be 1.0, but it's sure as hell not going to be 0.0 either.
> No, what's laughable is worker-hating wingnuts arguing points that have
> been pre-debunked. So called free trade laws mean that Americans have
> to compete with workers that have no overtime laws or health & safety
> regulations. I say "free trade" because the agreements are only free on
> the bottom: you'll actually find plenty of legal conditions in free trade
> agreements, they just benefit big business (see: copyrights and patents).
I'm afraid you aren't making any sense, either. To on the one hand say that the rules put in place by unions aren't to blame and then on the other hand whine about how labor is cheaper elsewhere because they don't have those rules seems a bit contradictory.
Of course, what people like you want is for us to close off our trade borders so that businesses can't utilize the cheaper labor elsewhere, right? I'd like to see your explanation for how that would work.
Yeah, but I guess my point is, how many "legal" permutations are there. I mean, if I have a favicon of a G, shifting it 1 pixel to the left is probably still going get me into hot water if it's a trademark. But at the same time, there's only so much you can do with a 16x16 image.
How many ways can you create a 16x16 pixel image? At what point does trademark/copyright no longer apply?
> TIME suggests checking out recycling brokers and accredited e-stewards the
> next time you're ready to toss a gizmo.
I guess TIME doesn't watch 60 minutes.
'"This is a photograph from your yard, the Executive Recycling yard," Pelley told Richter, showing him a photo we'd taken of a shipping container in his yard. "We followed this container to Hong Kong."'