source: nicefun.net

One of the required texts for my second language assessment class is J. D. Brown’s Testing in Language Programs (2005). Brown is apparently the big guy for second language assessment, or so I’ve heard. I like the book so far. It is very straight forward and unpretentious (in chapter 1 anyway). Here is a summary of chapter 1.

There are two basic types of language test: Norm-Referenced and Criterion-Referenced. These two types of language test are used for different purposes. On a norm-referenced test students’ scores are interpreted relative to each other in a normal distribution scheme (bell curve). The idea is to spread the students out on a continuum of knowledge/ability in order to facilitate proficiency and placement decisions. Criterion-referenced exams, on the other hand, measure student ability against a predetermined standard, e.g., the learning objectives of a specific course or unit of a course. The interpretation of scores is, therefore, absolute and (with luck) representational of the amount of course material that the student has learned. Criterion-referenced tests are by far the most commonly used by teachers in language courses, as they are used to measure achievement and to diagnose strengths and weaknesses. Norm-referenced tests are used at the institutional level for placement, or to measure proficiency (e.g., TOEFL, TOEIC).

In order to foster reflection on the possible uses of norm-referenced tests (NRT) and criterion-referenced tests (CRT), Brown introduces four categories of decisions that language program teachers and administrators have to make. The first two categories mainly concern administrators and occur at the program level. These are proficiency decisions and placement decisions. Proficiency decisions include decisions on program entrance and exit. The TOEFL is a commonly used English proficiency test that is important in entrance decisions for American universities. The goal of a proficiency test is to assess general knowledge or skills, not progress towards an objective.

Placement decisions differ from proficiency decisions in that they are more tailored to a particular program. Columbia University may accept international students based on their TOEFL score, and then administer an English placement test to determine if and what level of additional ESL instruction they need. The placement test will cover the range of skills and abilities covered in the university’s ESL program, and will therefore be much narrower than a proficiency test, such as the TOEFL.

Both proficiency and placement tests tend to be NRTs, as the decision making is facilitated by spreading students over a continuum for comparison. CRTs tend to be used for two additional types of decision at the classroom level: achievement decisions and diagnostic decisions.

Achievement decisions are decisions about how much of the content of a particular program, course, or part of a course a student has mastered. These decisions are generally made by teachers, and they may affect the ability to move from one level of a program to the next. Diagnostic decisions differ in that the goal is not to measure learning at the end of a class, but to diagnose weaknesses in the early or middle part of the period of study. These tests provide information to students and teachers that help with the allocation of time resources in the classroom and in personal study.

It would be nice if a single test could be used to make proficiency, placement, achievement, and diagnostic decisions. Unfortunately, this is just not practical. If we were to administer the TOEFL, for example, to all students for every exam, the exam would include large volumes of material that is much too easy or too difficult for the students at every retake, which would be exhausting. In addition, the TOEFL might not capture the fine-grade distinctions between level and sub level that more targeted diagnostic exams can offer. For every objective and decision that teachers and administrators make, there is a type of test that best suits the purpose.

Where is Your IQ on the Bell Curve?

While most people do not want to admit it, the vast majority of people are in fact, average.

The bell curve that applies to IQ can also be applied to anything that has a statistical average.  That large blue portion that encompasses 68% of any given population is the area of the first standard deviation on either side of the literal average.  The brown area is the second SD and the light blue area is the third SD.  The grey area is the fourth and is the realm of the extremely exceptional on both ends of the spectrum and in all categories.

Basically, blue is most people, brown is the noticeably above or below average, light blue is very much below or above average and grey is wow on both ends.  This applies to looks, intelligence, creativity, physical strength and a bevy of other qualities which people judge both themselves and others upon.

Most people who are active on the internet have seen this distribution curve before and are familiar with it.

The funny part of “averages” is that when surveys are taken about self-perception of any given personal quality or attribute the average (median) result is that people rate themselves at a 7 out of 10.  That is, the MAJORITY of people rate themselves in the right hand brown second SD area while, obviously, this is not possible.

Not everyone can be exceptional in all areas.  There are a few cases of those who are extremely intelligent, extremely good-looking, creative, physically superior, what have you.  But for the vast majority of the population this is not the case.

Pursuing excellence is always a worthy goal and it is unimaginable that anyone would discourage that.  But it should be tempered with a realistic perception of both ability and potential.  A positive attitude will increase anyone’s chances of success in any field and everyone should encourage others in reaching their goals and pursuing their dreams.

But there is nothing wrong with being average in certain areas.  This is perfectly normal and the perception that it is somehow subpar to actually be average in any area can have a negative impact on people.  Those who excel in one category do not necessarily have time to devote to excelling in others and should not feel inadequate because they are not superstars in 14 out of 15 categories.

It is perfectly ok to be normal

People are Greedy

As proof of this, let me point to three things.

First, of course, is the fall of Communism and other socialist experiments. When a person doesn’t need to work to provide for himself, he ends up hardly working at all. People don’t simply work for the sake of all others without either threat of loss, or promise of gain. The Communists solved this by applying the needed threat. Of course, since you need workers to do this application, this meant that the bullies needed bullies above them, and yet again above them, ending up with a hierarchical system in a land where everyone is supposed to be equal. Other socialist experiments, on the other hand, simply fell apart.

Now you might say that all this proves is that people need threat of impending doom to be made to work–i.e. that people are lazy. But if you look at the modern US, for example, I think you’ll find that no one starves to death. There are probably people who go through their entire life without working a single day and live just fine to their death. True, this is only possible because nearly everyone who can work does, but so why is that? It’s not just random happenstance that nearly everyone chooses to work than live off of the system. We could certainly support a much greater number of unemployed with a fewer number of workers than we currently have, so it’s not threat of hardship that keeps us working. Simply, we all want all the good things that are available beyond simple survival.

And this brings us to the second proof of greed. There are, right now, people starving all around the world. The workers of our nation produce enough that each one of us could support several other desperate people elsewhere on the planet, and yet we all own TVs, computers, lawns, and other things that are entirely unnecessary given the fact that it’s at the cost of people dying elsewhere on our planet. Even if you argue that any extra charitable money was to be expended towards impoverished nations would simply be stolen by bad people, then why isn’t it the greatest priority of our nation to get rid of these bad people? There is nothing preventing a person from working hard and giving away all extra funding beyond just what he needs to survive, nor is there anything preventing him from voting for those whose first priority is in humanitarian causes. But if you look around, I think you’ll find it scarce the person who doesn’t save nearly all his money for ways to improve his own life first, just as you won’t find anyone who votes for the first politician who promises to tax greatly and send all that money abroad in either the form of aid or intervention.

Then if you look at who we do vote for, then we arrive at our third proof. The strongest general predictor of a presidential election, at least within the US, is the state of the US economy during the president’s last year in office, tempered occasionally by high American casualties in war (which drops the incumbent’s share). Correcting for war casualties, the formula for predicting presidential elections is quite simple, and yes based entirely on the state of the individual’s pocketbook. And if you look at Europe, over the last year–due to the global recession–the lead party has flopped in fairly well every country.

When we vote with our incomes, it’s hard to say that we aren’t a principally self-interested species.

But, let me bring back the point that I made in part 1, which is that we are a pack animal. Our self-interest isn’t just for ourselves as individuals. We want good things for ourselves, but also for our family, friends, and country. This may be a selfish desire, but it’s also supportive.

People are Prey to Peer Pressure

As pack animals, what the norms of the pack are is of vital interest to us. We have a need to conform to the norms of the groups that we are in. Take for example premarital sex. Roughly 79% of Americans are Christian. The Bible was interpreted to say that premarital sex was a sin until at least the 1930s, and yet even though there were more Christians in the US before modern day, and even though the closer you approach 1930, the  greater the likelihood that people would hold this to be a similar sin as adultery, the rate has been fairly consistently around 90% for the last 7 decades. While as if you look at Vietnam, the Philippines, and Thailand the rate appears to be something more like 20%.

Another example would be smoking. I can’t quite quantify how “cool” smoking seemed to be by year, so I can’t thoroughly prove this point, but quite certainly people have been aware that smoking was unhealthy for you since at least the mid-1800s, and having this fully proved for them starting with the first major studies starting in the 1930s. It wasn’t until public perception of it as “bad” hit that people finally started to quit.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13contagion-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

This is possibly part of our selfishness. We rely on the team, and so anything which could possibly endanger our ability to participate frightens most of us. Particularly with anything that seems a little thing, fashion, our preferred sport, TV shows, or drinks, we go with what those around us think of as the norm more than we respond to the logical and reasoned responses that we can get by looking at statistics or figuring things through logically.

But the other possible explanation is that this is a generally more efficient method for getting things done. Not everyone can be a leader or we’d never get anywhere. Nor can everyone be expected to figure out everything on their own–there just isn’t enough time in life to find out everything there is to know. With a few independent souls and people who specialize and thus gain reliability can influence those around them, who then influence those around them. The work of a small group spreads to the rest of society without having to explain reasons or directly correspond with them. What needs to get done, gets done. But of course this also means that the populace is prey to whatever it is that the trendsetters are up to at that moment.

We Fall on a Bell Curve

Generally, the bell curve is used to talk about intelligence. And I admit that I don’t have any particular statistics to show this for other things, the method by which evolution works suggests that we would see the bell curve for almost every possible way that a person could vary. There is some average that is preferred, but people will vary to both sides of that, trailing off in either direction. Most people will be of average weight, the actual distribution will be something more like a bell curve.

Going from a random given point and allowing random, free movement in either direction, you end up with this shape.

Hence, while I might say that “People are X”, I am of course simply talking about the center of mass for the distribution. Our personalities are almost certainly as much a part of the curve as our body parts.

But like I pointed out, this is necessary. A team relies on a hierarchy, but for that, you need people who are quite happy to be non-exceptional and take commands, and a varying level of people willing to give/receive those commands, until you get to the one guy at the top.

Though of course, the cost of this is the existence of people with a level of intelligence below that necessary to basically operate effectively, as an example. As I pointed out in part 1, evolution is stupid.

You should not be able to predict the news ‘flavor’ by knowing the news source and the news target

Knowing the news source and the news target should give no more than a 50/50 chance of guessing whether the news is the good flavor or the bad flavor. But if, by knowing the news source and the news target,  you can predict the flavor of a news story 100% of the time, something is likely askew in the “fair and balanced” presentation of the news.

And also – the display of “RESERVED WORDS” like, for example the word “CZAR” ought not be reserved for a  single government administration. Making a CONSERVATIVE use of the word “CZAR” , when its actual use should be “LIBERAL” indicates that the  “READER SHOULD TAKE CARE” while traversing the domain of that/those news source/s.

And when politicians, of a certain “ILK”,  seem fixated on a certain news source, the “reader should take care”.

It takes a lot of news propaganda to transform twenty-years of train-wreck performance into something that is acceptable to citizens in a  high performing, problem solving country. But the common sense “BELL CURVE” of a nation is likely to show that some people stand under the high domed center while other people  stand under the lower left and right of dome center. Any leader can persuade some of a population to his/her following. Adolf Hitler did it.

Politicians, who would want to rip-off what was once the richest country on the globe, would likely have a humongous greed  for money and power – which would likely translate to sex and material things. They would likely want their HEAVEN right here on earth – just in case. And politicians, so inclined would likely use all the tools at their disposal – including news sources to gain control of a nation’s treasury.

News sources, of a particular “persuasion” might then “flood” the news domain with bad news for one politician while being totally quiet about the bad news for another politician.

News sources could “scream like a stuck pig” over one terrorist attempt to blow up an American jet passenger plane while quietly reporting a “mirror image”  of the same act under a desired administration.

Some twenty-four years of neocon “management” of America has taken a toll on American values, ethics, laws, Constitution, Army and illegal cocaine drug trafficking. And while these activities were going on – too many American “news” sources were in a “WHAT, ME WORRY” mode – until the Obama Administration. And then there was someone, in addition to the “less qualified minorities” to blame.

Twenty years of neocon train-wrecks came to the fore of the  “TELL AMERICA press” after the Obama administration won the 2008 election.  All of a sudden the “TELL AMERICA press recognized that America was in recession. All of a sudden the “TELL AMERICA press focused on the Afghanistan war -  almost abandoned by the Bush team in favor of a war with OIL RICH Iraq.

While some news sources do appear to track only the bad news flavor for some American Administrations, this tactic can be readily detected with the CRITICAL READ LATCH.

the world’s a bell curve
she’s nowhere within
she sneered, scowled
strutted, stilettos

get out of my way

Let me start by saying, “I hate grades.  A lot.”  I hate grades because I don’t think they are a good measure of anyone’s ability, their knowledge, or over all future performance, especially not when it’s based on one test in each class for each semester.  Welcome to law school.

Three of my classmates messaged me at various times yesterday and the day before complaining about how grades weren’t yet out and that they wanted very badly to see them.  Unlike them, I’ve been perfectly content to not see them and to wait.  I’m contemplating not looking at my grades until the end of the school year.  That’s how sick grades make me feel.  I don’t want to be judged based on one test in each class at the end of the semester.  Look at all my experience, even now, as a 1L, look at my writing, talk to me.  See that I’m smart, able to think, analyze, write, interact.  Don’t look at my ability to regurgitate information.  In what world does one grade on a test tell you how much I know and understand?  Especially when you don’t know the material specific to that class, and you don’t know how the professor grades, or where the curve is set…and you haven’t seen the test and whether it legitimately tested what we covered in class (dig on my property class)?  How is that fair?  Whoever invented the way law schools work should have been castrated and then died a slow and painful death.

Law school is a beast.  Most particularly in that nearly all law schools have a curve, generally a bell curve (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_curve_grading).  Law schools will set their curve at some grade point, so that most students get some grade right around that number and a few will fall above and below it (see: Law School GPA Curve).  There’s a huge variation in where that curve is set…at my school, it’s abnormally low, though I’m not sure what the exact number is…I think it is around a 2.0.  I don’t think my school has a true bell curve.  I also think it’s set that low so that they can bait people with scholarships for the first year and then take them away the next, knowing that they can’t transfer thanks to their blasted curve.

People are talking about grades.  It makes me sick.  It makes me feel physically ill.  I’ve decided to impose the Bryn Mawr honor code upon myself.  I will not ask anyone about grades, I will not talk about my grades.

Ugh. Grades. I hate them.  When I start my own law school, there will not be a bell curve.  The highest score will get however many points are needed to reach an A+, then all of the other scores will also receive that number of points, and that will be the final grade.  It will be an all women’s law college.  No class will be based on a single exam at the end of the semester, but rather, papers, quizes, and tests through out the semester.  Also, participation will be 15% of all classes because I think it’s important that people participate.  There will also be an honor code and self scheduled exams.  I’d better start coming up with ways to fund my brilliant law school.  I’d much rather go to school there than where I am now.

A Black Swan is basically an extreme event that “lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility” and additionally, “in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurance after the fact, making it explainable and predictable”. I’ll save myself from saying that the book itself was a black swan, because that would make a very cheap joke.

I don’t know, if I got out everything that Taleb wanted to tell me in The Black Swan. What I did get out of it was that anyone that tries to see into the future is stupid (most people, in other words!), making it giant waste of time to read newspapers and listen to economists speculate about this and that. White I never enjoyed news myself, I finally have a reason for not watching when people ask me (Taleb says so!)

He elaborately show us how the bell curve is fantastically stupid and out-dated (or that it never was in-dated) in a section of the book I naturally skipped as I “belong to the category of fortunate people who do not know about the bell curve”. It’s always refreshing when an author tells you not to read what he says.

Mathspig is dizzy with excitement over worldwide interest in recent posts. Mathspig keeps in touch with Sarah Ebner (right )who edits the fabulous and informative   Schoolgate Blog, Timesonline (UK). Sarah highlighted my post 10 Biggest Maths Disasters in the World  last week and the response was overwhelming ( for a pig!)

 It is a part of Mathspig’s Mission to get teachers, students, anyone talking about maths. That happened. 

 Meanwhile, one of Mathspig’s favourite maths bloggers is Jeff Trevaskis ( Right. Sorry, Jeff, it’s my favourite pic of you.). Jeff teachers high school maths in country Victoria, Australia, and finds time to run Webmaths, which tackles both fun issues and serious maths. One of his recent entries was titled SMELLY JOCKS?

A recent survey published in the Courier Mail suggested that more than half Aussie men wore the same undies for up to 3 days in a row. Eghhhhhh! I suggested to Jeff that an anonymous survey of, um, male students would probably produce a Normal Distribution or Bell Curve. But we’ll have to dub this one the SMELL CURVE.

COMING SOON: TWILIGHT MATHS

If every event is a bell curve, how does that tally with the traditional view of the I Ching? As it happens, it tallies very well.

A central axiom of the I Ching is this: when an event reaches its apex, it changes to its opposite. Another way to put it is that when yin reaches its most yin aspect, it invariably changes toward the yang. One side of the bell curve is yin, the other side is yang, and as an event progresses from one side of the bell curve to another, it changes into its opposite.

Each hexagram, with its formation of six lines, is also a reflection of this same bell curve. The first line (bottom one) reflects what is early in a situation. The sixth line (top one), is what is late or even afterward in the situation. Interestingly, the middle of a situation is not the third or fourth line, but the fifth line. That line is considered to be the middle and often the climax or fruition of the situation (there are some exceptions among different hexagrams).

Just as each hexagram embodies a bell curve, a reading where one commonly receives two hexagrams represents two sides of the bell curve. The first hexagram is the situation as it is now or as is rapidly approaching and is therefore one side of the bell curve. The second hexagram is what the situation is changing to. One might say that the individual line readings indicate the factors at the apex of he curve. Thus, in terms of the bell curve, one should read the first hexagram as the basis, understand the individual changing lines as describing where one might be on the curve, and then read the second hexagram to get a sense of what is on the other side of the bell curve.

It can get complicated and it can take sophistication to grasp all the implications of this. At the same time, it’s easy to see that the I Ching concisely graphs out the path of change.

Source: Telegraph

One of the most popular posts on my blog has been about the race and IQ. Since as early as I can remember there have been some very interesting debates around this issue and it still raises as much passion as ever.

Channel 4 are going to starting a series discussing issues around race. The leading programme is  Race: Science’s Last Taboo and is being chaired by Omar Rageh where he challenges the concept of race and intelligence.

Is this Debate Worth Having?

There are a number of people who will wonder why Channel 4,  famous for it’s controversial programmes, will air such a show, especially in Black History Month.  I feel a bit more comforted in that Oona King, has sanctioned this to go through, so it’s more about challenging notions than massaging some twisted right wing thinking.

I personally think the more we talk about the notions around race and especially from a scientific perspective the better. It is a lack of discussion that led to many of the eugenics driven horrors of the holocaust in Germany and the less spoken of differences in the Rwanda genocide. Whilst I do not share the views held by Prof Watson and Rushton I think a concrete argument around this is neccesary.

The Bell Curve

In 1994 the Bell Curve was published. This book written by Harvard psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and American Enterprise Institute political scientist Charles Murray focused on intelligence and success. Their most controversial section focused on race and intelligence and has sparked debate ever since and much of the rest of the book about differing success based on intelligence between the classes.

The thing is this. In many arguments people get incredibly emotive. That’s a given. However if we are ever going to get to the bottom of an argument on this we need to look at all the facts. For example, many people will not lose any hair over the supposed advantage athletes of afro descent have in major games while hardly being represented in swimming (Did I go there?). However when it comes down to IQ well that hits a real sore spot.

Just Watch First

Like many controversial programmes the hype around the programme is always going to create debate.  Let’s not make a judgement before the show has been aired. Watch the show. Dissect the information. Stand away from the emotive side of it and then let’s have a sensible debate around this.

Channel 4’s Race: Science’s Last Taboo season of documentaries begins on October 26 2009.

x being my age, peaking at 28 years. y being the number of boyfriends, peaking at 3 at the same time. xy= the relationship showing number of boyfriends at my various ages. The last plotted point is my current age with 0 boyfriends.

Before the internet, you couldn’t even consider producing a newspaper or a book unless you were sure that a lot of people would read it.  Unless you were ready to lose money and treat it as subsidizing the arts.  Which left professional writers and artists catering to mass taste or to the private taste of the patron.  In our era, its mostly artists-with-day-jobs a.k.a. people with jobs who are really artists.

This blog costs nothing.  A million previously unfundable projects are being produced at this moment.  The bell curve implies that at least a minority of those will be amazing.  I used to worry about how to get my work published, but this is the best medium by a mile (see Pt. 1).

Tightrope Walker by Everett Shinn

Life is risky. What can we do about it? I’ve been thinking of the risks inherit in life and how we as a society mitigate these risks. If you sit down and read the newspaper; you’re inform about violence, crimes, political scandals, wars; everything that is sensationalism and sells. But is this the real world? Of course, it’s the real world,you might say. It’s the news. True, but how the news is presented to you matters. The news is a collection of thousands of stories, which with the help of technology, have made it easier to process into a focus beam of information. However, anecdotes and narratives only pulls your emotional strings, but it’s not reality.

There is other ways of measuring and conveying reality besides the news. But it relies on numbers, mainly statistics. Statistics have been around for a long time, ever since the inception of the notion of the modern State; thus, the name. It has helped administrators make decisions and focus on problems. Anybody with power cannot really judge situations case by case because there is too many people and finite time. It would be impracticable. Statistics, use properly, is a tool that measures a sequence of events and derives a conclusion. Basically, the main idea in the process is what’s call the law of large numbers. If you make enough observations you can stop at a certain point, draw a curve if you want, and induct a relationships from your observations. Furthermore, you have to be careful not to mistake correlation with causation. Just because something is related in a certain way does not mean one causes the other or vice a versa.

Statistics truly shines when measuring certain risks. Although,I am only talking about the sequence of events  we are lucky to be able to measure like life expectancy, car crashes, the Brownian movement of a particle, etc..  For example, if you count the total amount of car accidents year by year you notice a curious thing. They average out; about the same amount of car accidents happen every year. You can plot all of your observations into a neat curve, which resembles a bell. The notorious bell curve. And you can induct a sweeping generalization about your observations. Moreover, you’re aware of the risks, but how do you mitigate them? Insurance solves some of the problems.

Yes, the financial instrument call insurance that fundamentally spreads risk amount a pool of people. If I know there is a chance of me dying from a car accident, thanks to statistics, then I know it would devastate my income and my family, but I really don’t have any control over it. Except, because I live in a society with free agents whom also incur the same risk of a car crash, then I can pool my money and spread the risk.

Moreover, insurance also brings its problems. The most salient being moral hazard, which is just a fancy way of naming the phenomena of people having insurance and taking even more risks. Insurance in its many forms: Life, health, car, house insurance, are financial instruments that protects us against losses we wouldn’t be able to bare by ourselves, but if we pool the risk then is less costly. After all, we all face the same risks.  The insurance companies rely on statistics and probability to figure how much to charge for premiums; how much money to have ready for those cases where the bad happens and continue to make a profit.

If you start thinking more in a statistical manner and mitigate the risks by buying insurance, if you can. Then it’s a waste of time to read sensationalist media about anecdotes, which have a low chances of occurring, specially, after it has happen (i.e., Once a rare event has happen the probabilities are lower of repetition after the fact). If I read about such and such a fellow was murder in central park, N.Y.C., in the early nineties by some crazy. Traveling to the Big Apple would mortify me because this one vivid story made it palpable and real. I can’t help it, like most of us I fall for the sensationalist stories. However, if you are inform and arm your self with the knowledge of statistics. You would have known that since the early nineties, the then Mayor Giuliani, was able to bring crime down so much, it has become one of the safes cities in the world.

Yet people still fear the city because of such stories or anecdotes, which skews reality and makes you live in fear. If your time comes then count the good times, pray to G-D, but if you have a family you better have bought Life insurance; it would be negligent if you didn’t. This is  the reason I don’t read about the latest death cases. Journalist (I’m talking about plebeian Journalist, the ones you watch on television, not the fourth state, which I’m an avid reader) are train to weave a story line and pull you in with narrative and sensationalism. Hey, they have to eat. But rarely to they cite the numbers and inform the public about the real dangers, specially the hidden ones, the ones you can’t insure yourself against.

–So, this has turn into a lengthy ramble. Carpe Diem without fear. : )

Note: I am not advocating risky driving. Do use a seat belt, it greatly decreases the chances of death (thank you Ralph Nader).

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article/article?f=/c/a/2009/09/15/MNOU19N6G8.DTL

This blog was started three weeks ago when I first captured the headlines.  I needed time to process what it was about the article that was necessarily disturbing, discomforting and revealing of how little the data in education seems to point in a meaningful direction.

At the same time this article was written, I had just begun reading the book The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, ISBN 978-0-1410-3459-1.  What I began to realize is that the test  results, while based on PAST notions of what children need to learn to be successful, are not predictive in a linear fashion of student success or even a reasonable measure of progress towards college.

If, as is pointed out in The Black Swan,  this type of data that is based on bell curve scenarios is not a quality predictive indicator, why do we persist in using it and what do we hope to obtain from the data?  If we are looking for a predictive indicator, we will most certainly be let down.  If we are looking for a measure of individual success, we will be even more let down as student learning is not linear, rather it occurs in bursts as the brain acquires enough experiences to process the over all schema.  If we are looking for qualitative measures to substantiate what we do as educators, we are applying narrative, retrospective distortion and Platonifying (over evaluating  factual information) and we will find exactly what we are seeking through interpretation.

This, in my mind, does not mean we should immediately stop all testing of students or using tests as an evaluative technique, but it should not be the exacting measure of all success or failure as indicated in the case example of Malcolm X Academy in San Francisco.   ‘

What I am understanding about myself is that I most definitely believe in Black Swans, know they exist and although we try to plan around them, realize we are victims of the perception that we can avoid what we don’t know is possible.  It is this very part of myself that quite possibly drives others crazy, much in the same way Mr. Taleb explains it in his book.

If tests are the end all of predictive value, there needs to be more than a correlation in the evidence and yet, that is all there is at this time.  I have yet to see conclusive evidence (even by the most hard core believers out there – charter schools such as KIPP and Aspire) which supports test scores translating into something such as the ability to complete/graduate college.  There are so many black swans for students who come from poverty that even the best education can not guarantee success in college – nor should that be the only outcome of an education (thank you Bill Gates). No, Bill Gates was not poor, however, he did not finish college.

There are no studies which definitively indicate a college degree will help you obtain more money during your life time, be rich, be famous, be popular.  The studies I have read indicate there is greater potentiality/possibility for some one to earn more money over their lifetime by having higher education (the higher you go, potentially the more money you can obtain).   All of this is in naught as I have close friends with a PhD who do not have the earning potential they should right now as as it is cheaper to hire a lecturer than a bona fide PhD person to place on tenure track.  I have friends who have taken a royal bath with the fall out of Wall Street even though they have an Ivy Education, including MBA degrees.  There are other friends of mine who were or had been doing moderately well except for the housing mortgage meltdown.  Most of the friends who were ensnared in this debacle would have been fine if they could wait out 10 or 15 years for the economy to right itself and housing to regain momentum instead of moving for a job.  Each item I wrote about in the last four sentences was a Black Swan none of us saw coming when we were undergrads or graduate students.

Which means, all those great grades we  (the people talked about above – and they know who they are if they are reading this blog) obtained in elementary, middle and high school, the SAT’s, GRE’s, etc. were never predictive of our success, rather all those grades and scores were predictive of our future potential.

So, my question remains, what do the results mean?  How should we use these test results to improve education? How should we deliver tests (multiple choice/written, etc.) to obtain results with more predictive value?  Can testing provide predictive value?  The questions are endless.  All I know is education has become something completely counterintuitive to what we know from Piaget, Montessori, etc.   If we really want results, we need to be more longitudinal in our thinking and cope up to the Black Swans out there which will always change the penultimate outcome of our best written and delivered lessons.

Gilles Deleuze

DELEUZE & RACE

Jason Adams

While the relevance of Gilles Deleuze for a materialist feminism has been amply demonstrated in the last two decades or so, what this key philosopher of difference and desire can do for the theorization of race and racism has received surprisingly little attention. This is despite the explicit formulation of a materialist theory of race as instantiated in colonization, sensation, capitalism and culture, particularly in Deleuze’s collaborative work with Félix Guattari.

Part of the explanation of why there has been a relative silence on Deleuze within critical race and colonial studies is that the philosophical impetus for overcoming eugenics and nationalism have for decades been anchored in the conventional readings of Kant and Hegel, which Deleuze laboured to displace. Through the vocabularies of psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and moral philosophy, even the more sophisticated theorizations of race today continue the neo-Kantian/neo-Hegelian programme of retrieving a cosmopolitan universality beneath the ostensibly inconsequential differences called race.

Opposing this idealism, Deleuze instead asks whether the conceptual basis for this program, however commendable, does not foreclose its political aims, particularly in its avoidance of the material relations it seeks to change. The representationalism and oversimplified dialectical frameworks guiding the dominant antiracist programme actively suppress an immanentist legacy which according to Deleuze is far better suited to grasping how power and desire differentiate bodies and populations: the legacies of Spinoza, Marx and Nietzsche; biology and archeology; Virginia Woolf and Jack Kerouac; cinema, architecture, and the fleshy paintings of Francis Bacon. It is symptomatic too, that Foucault’s influential notion of biopolitics, so close to Deleuze and Guattari’s writings on the state, is usually taken up without its explicit grounding in race, territory and capitalist exchange. Similarly, those (like Negri) that twist biopolitics into a mainly Marxian category, meanwhile, lose the Deleuzoguattarian emphasis on racial and sexual entanglement. It would seem then, that it is high time for a rigorous engagement with the many conceptual ties between Foucault’s lectures on biopolitics, Deleuze and Guattari, and Deleuze-influenced feminism, to obtain a new materialist framework for studying racialization as well as the ontopolitics of becoming from which it emerges. While it will inevitably overlap in a few ways, this collection will differ from work done under the “postcolonial” rubric for a number of important reasons.

First, instead of the mental, cultural, therapeutic, or scientific representations of racial difference usually analyzed in postcolonial studies, it will seek to investigate racial difference “in itself”, as it persists as a biocultural, biopolitical force amid other forces. For Deleuze and Guattari, as for Nietzsche before them, race is far from inconsequential, though this does not mean it is set in stone.

Second, as Fanon knew, race is a global phenomenon, with Europe’s racism entirely entwined with settler societies and the continuing poverty in the peripheries. The effects of exploitation, slavery, displacement, war, migration, exoticism and miscegenation are too geographically diffuse and too contemporary to fit comfortably under the name “postcolonial”. Rather, we seek to illuminate the material divergences that phenotypical variation often involves, within any social, cultural or political locus.

Third, again like Nietzsche, but also Freud, Deleuze and Guattari reach into the deep recesses of civilization to expose an ancient and convoluted logic of racial discrimination preceding European colonialism by several millennia. Far from naturalizing racism, this nomadological and biophilosophical “geology of morals” shows that racial difference is predicated on fully contingent territorializations of power and desire, that can be disassembled and reassembled differently. That race is immanent to the materiality of the body then, does not mean that it is static any more than that it is simple: rather what it suggests is that its transformation is an always already incipient reality.

Possible themes:

CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS – Oedipus and racialization – fascist desire – civilization, savagery and barbarism – earth and its peoples – delirium and hallucination as racial – miscegenation

CAPITALISM – faciality – colonization and labor migration as racializing apparatuses of capture – urban segregation – environmental racism

POLITICS – hate speech and law as order-words – D&G, May ‘68 and the third world – Deleuze and Palestine – Guattari and Brazil – terrorist war machines and societies of control – Deleuzian feminism and race

SCIENCE – neuroscience and race – continuing legacies of racist science and the “Bell Curve” debate – kinship, rhizomatics and arboreality – animals, plants, minerals and racial difference – miscegenation – evolutionary biology and human phenotypical variation – vitalism and Nazism

ART – affects of race (sport, hiphop, heavy metal, disco…) – primitivism (Rimbaud, Michaux, Artaud, Tournier, Castaneda, etc.) – vision, cinema and race – music, resonance and bodies

PHILOSOPHY – geophilosophy: provincializing canonical philosophy – race and becoming – decolonizing Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Schelling… – the effect of criticisms of Deleuze (Badiou, Zizek, Hallward) on antiracism Chapters will be between 4000 and 7000 words long.

Arun Saldanha will write the introduction and a chapter called “Bastard and mixed-blood are the true names of race”.

Jason Michael Adams will write the conclusion.

For more details on this project, contact Jason Adams at: adamsj@HAWAII.EDU

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Coincidentally, some people experience more coincidences than others do. As a result, some people live lives with very little or no coincidences, whereas others may win the lottery several times or miss a flight just to meet their future wife on the next one.

The result of this is that those on the side of the bell-curve that experience MORE coincidences are more likely to believe in a deity than the people who barely experience any coincidences.

I’m going to keep this one short.

The Product Life Cycle has been used as a model for marketing execs for years. They use this model to describe the general course that sales and profits for particular products (such as an album, artists, music genre and even product classes -Vinyl, Cassette, CDs, DVDs) will follow.

But I think that this cycle speaks volumes to players outside of the marketing department.
So I have a question and I’m hoping that you’ll share your thoughts.

If the product life cycle is shaped like a bell curve (below) what decisions should a good manager make on behalf of their artist to ensure that the opportunities that present themselves between introduction and decline are maximized?

The Philadelphia Inquirer (6/22, Graham, Woodall) reports that “the pressure to pass students — even those who rarely go to class or can’t read — is pervasive in the Philadelphia School District, teachers around the city say.” According to 15 teachers from nine Philadelphia high schools interviewed by the Inquirer, the “push comes in memos, in meetings, and in talks about failure rates that are too high.” The Inquirer points out that “social promotion — moving along students with their same-age classmates whether they deserve it or not — has plagued the district for decades despite efforts to stop it.” In one case, a high school teacher was pressured by administrators “to pass a student who had 89 absences over a half-year.” Although “reasons for its persistence are unclear,” many “teachers suggest that the” pressure “is especially great now because” schools are judged, in part, on “the number of students who pass.”

Oh for the good old days – wait, what was I thinking…….there were never good old days when it came to grading.  There were good old days when teachers could/would write meaningful anecdotals and parents actually understood in detail what their son/daughter knew, needed yet to learn, was struggling with and why.

Back in the day, before I started teaching, I learned how to write anecdotals (third person, about the Noun, not including the Noun’s name) that were clinical, precise and both quantitative and qualitative.  Those were the days when I was doing clinical work in speech pathology and audiology – situations where solid observations mattered.  Later,  during teacher training and upon receiving my credential,  I found that solid anecdotals were not appropriate at school – except where written in such PC code as to be unable by the best attorney to be mis-interpreted.

The trick was to get one of those little  books that could politely tell a parent your child had substantial behavior issues in a way that protected the parents and childs self esteem – what child could learn if they knew the truth? What parent could parent if they knew the truth about what parenting entailed?  Report cards were developed with pre-slugged comments so teachers need not creatively dilly dally around the issue and comments were ’standardized’ and could be used in a variety of ways.  One could only select the top two or three pre-slugged comments that most fit the situation.

All of this ‘protected’ teachers from telling the truth (and being hated by parents which led to administration having to push back on parents who were not being parents), principals from having to act as administrators and school districts from law suits.  There was so much ‘coverage’ and protection that cumulative folders never got more than the sketchiest of notations and no one could follow why student X or B or Q was still illiterate in Grade 6. No one in the school district knew and there was no blame to place.   The ultimate outcome was abundant social promotion based on issues of self esteem which got us to today with high school graduation rates similar to those of some better third world countries.

I hated those report cards and parent meetings – they were artificial and false.   Sadly it was that or no job.  I remember principals having ’secret’ private meetings with myself and other teachers to see what we could do to obtain more ‘passing’ grades – surely X percent of students in Grade 6,7,8 could not be illiterate or below grade level in science and math – make it ‘appear’ that it happened.  Even when multiple teachers were ‘failing’ student X, one of us had to concede and give student X a passing grade so the kid could not be held back – there was no room.  I was actively coerced so many times by administration, I used to think my arm would require a summer sling.  No matter how well I could support and justify grades for students with work samples, grade books showing class scores, assignments, offering to meet with parents at the beginning and middle and end of school year to provide assistance, it did not matter. Lying did matter. I learned to be as smooth as any Wall Street banker/stock analyst in talking about a student. I was and continue not to be proud of this skill set.

Suddenly it is vogue to provide ‘parenting’ skills classes to parents to help them understand the support their child needs in order to be on grade level. Suddenly in the last 10 years parents are being given lists of benchmarks their child needs to meet by each grade level so being held back is not some big, shocking surprise.  The report cards have not changed……they are still usually pre-slugged.  Teachers are still being asked to subvert the truth so schools can look ‘nice’ on paper. Of course standardized test scores (teach to the test) are the new crystal ball so the truth is still not out there. 

Over the years I have even observed the trend of parents moving or at least ‘moving’ the kid to another school district (get a friends address) so the lag time of the cumulative folder from one district to another was long enough for the receiving school district not to find out the student was held back.   This is another one of the dark secrets not talked about – the missing cumulative folders, the kids who should have an IEP but don’t until mid year because RSP services would be too demeaning.  Even when the cumulative folder is forwarded in a timely manner, it does not matter as the comments left by teachers are so PC as to be almost impossible to interpret the meaning for the students placement.  What these parents don’t understand is any decent teacher can see the writing on the wall well before the cumulative folder arrives and start the student study team process. The one with the perpetuated learning delays is the student.

If  honesty in grading were valued and done effectively, we would actually see more parents on board because there would be REAL repercussions.  The only repercussions that exist right now is how to ’shame’ the teacher and the parents and administrators actively play this game just like Wall Street traders.

Update added 7/13/09:   

http://www.teachermagazine.org/tm/articles/2009/07/08/tln09_brown.h21.html?tkn=NXRFaWxdCc8rti4yURocEeT%252FIAl2etKFF1Ut

The institution of marriage is a very old concept. It was present throughout history, long before Christianity saw the light of this planet. There were different ways of becoming ”bonded”, but the principle remained the same: partnership. The nature of this ”partnership” differed: in some cases it was merely to procreate, in other cases to establish a spiritual bond. The culture that we are living in seems to be set in between the former and the latter. Marriage in the Western world appears to be based upon ”gender role practice” where two people mutually reinforce stereotypical behavioral patterns. What is even more grotesque is the lack of awareness which accompanies the entire process. But marriage itself is neutral – it is an idea, it does not align with anyone. It can be a powerful positive experience as well as a nightmare. Unfortunately, more and more people seem to view marriage as a way of sublimating their urges. There are easier ways of doing the latter – we do not have to get seriously involved and pay the consequences later. This is why for many marriage is a failed institution with no practical application in the eyes of many.

This essay is an attempt at delving into the core of  ”the marriage problem.”

First and foremost, whether marriage reflects its purpose as stated by Jesus and others – no one can be certain. We can claim that marriage is a male idea because Jesus was a man; because priests are overwhelmingly men; and that women are clearly ignored/discriminated despite claiming to the contrary. It is puzzling as to why a woman would consider marriage to be a joyous occasion if it is one of the most significant chapters in her life, sealing her fate to be subjugated by the patriarchal system of the Church and other religions/ideologies? Many women tend to overlook that ”minute” detail or they justify it somehow to feel better about the whole process. What else can they do if entire society has been set a long time before their birth? We can only wonder why the ”fair sex” has problems with grasping their precarious position.

Secondly, most parents want to their progeny to see the sunlight. Once their child is born into this world, the perpetual cycle of despair continues. Behavioral thought patterns that govern the parents are then conferred onto an unsuspecting child before it can voice an opinion. After years of subtle – and not so subtle – conditioning of which the parents are unaware of, it is virtually impossible to think for ourselves.  The victims become perpetrators. Father tells his son to ”treat women well” and ”protect them at all cost” while the mother tells her daughter to ”look for her knight in shining armor” and ”wave her handkerchief whilst her husband marches off to fight the bad guys.” The meme ( a belief spreading akin to a virus ) takes over human lives and thrives, wreaking havoc throughout society. But society is always there to make sure proper terms exist to label people causing problems.

Thirdly, society needs the institution of marriage. Without the latter, it would not be able to sustain itself. No population, no people working for the elderly, et al; chain reaction set in motion. Homosexuality is stigmatized because it leads to societal collapse – not enough people to perform basic functions necessary to maintain the status quo. The way homosexuality is stigmatized involves various tactics, but the underlying principle remains the same: the societial edifice is a selfish creation. Akin to SkyNet, it needs categories, it needs labels. It is a virus which connects everyone under the same umbrella. To see how strong this virus is, just watch a movie depicting an embarrassing situation when others are around you. What is your reaction? Most people would feel rather awkward despite the fact that nothing is really happening to them. Why?

Fourthly, there are different styles of marriage. In some countries, polygamy is the norm but husbands need to make sure his wife is financially secure. Polygamy can also become a dreary custom when dealing with deranged individuals, such as Warren Jeffs who threatened women with eternal damnation if they did not satisfy his sexual needs.

To conclude, there is nothing wrong with the idea behind marriages. It is the execution (sic?)  that counts. Two ‘’soulmates” can form a union from which prolific riches spring.  The definition of ‘’soulmate” as well as what constitutes a ”couple” – these notions are not easy to answer and each culture is going to offer a multitude of arguments as to why they are the only ones who got it all right. The more pervasive a meme is, the more it appears that we are dealing with tacit knowledge rather than speculation set in stone by repetition.

Indeed, are we just walking automatons playing out the message programmed into us by society? If so, who has programmed the programmer?

Our HR professor just busted the use of bell curve in performance appraisal systems…It’s funny how you sometimes just accept some things as norm when they may not be appropriate at all …here’s why the bell curve is flawed…

Reasons:

The bell curve seeks to slot human beings in a standard normal distribution which has the following properties:

a) The objects picked are random

b) The objects picked are homogenous

c) The sample size should be greater than 30 preferably

considering that human beings being evaluated under performance management systems are neither homogenous , nor random, using the bell curve may not be the brightest way to evaluate and grade your team. Interestingly, bell curves were first deployed historically in performance management systems in late 90’s, and their use coincided with companies wanting to get rid of employees in bad economic cycles…