Don't discourage! Conservatives HATE looking at median numbers instead of averages, normally. This is my discovery-of-the-week, the "Median Wealth" by country:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (click on the "MEDIAN" column and sort so that Iceland is at top)

If you think of 'wealth' as "the integral over time of (income - living expenses)", then it's a much better measure of whether your society maximizes the number of people with minimal stress...and on THAT metric of national success, the USA is way below Canada and nine European nations. But economists like Noah Smith still refer to Europe "catching up" with the USA, or "falling behind" based on *average* income changes...when most increases go to just a few percent.

Let's hear it for median economic stats.

D-K just describes the phenomenon. It doesn't excuse the behavior. It's basically an observation that low performers are poor at self assessment of their abilities. This should not surprise people today, and it did not surprise philosophers of ancient Greece.

I'm not aware of such a dementia diagnose. Do you have more information? Sounds fascinating if it exists outside of your own head.

Epidemiology covers the study of this. You would be better served having a population with broad immunity in order to protect a small population of those that lack immunity.

In short, no man is an island. And we need to quite trying to solve every problem as if we are individuals that have no duty or consequences outside of our own doorstep.

Oh, I think I saw that YouTube video!

Generally the "even engineer dads can't make heads nor tails of it" objection is that the engineer dads didn't spend a couple minutes reading the helpfully coloured highlight box in the textbook. There has been a push in math to develop teaching methods that emphasize understanding rather than memorization. Thus 5x3 becomes 5x5x5 or 3x3x3x3x3 instead of "STFU and memorize your times tables."

A better example, also from Internet memes, is a procedure where you add or multiply a pair of larger numbers by breaking them down into component problems. 37 + 55 becomes (30 + 50) + (7 + 5) and some "parent" on Reddit or Facebook with add a comment like "why can't they just do addition like we learned??" Someone sensible will usually point out that people who are good at arithmetic will often use decomposition on harder problems if they're doing them in their head.

The teaching algorithms are pedagogical tools used to increase understanding or illustrate problems from different perspectives, not the final here's-the-algorithm-you-should-always-use".

I said that the 5x3 answer being marked wrong was likely due to a poorly educated teacher. No, primary school children probably won't be multiplying anything non-commutative soon. That was a joke. However, it is important not to instill, and then spend years reinforcing, incorrect facts. You shouldn't tell students things like "multiplication is defined as commutative" because that kind of thing will eventually screw someone up.

Or white mothers are making a lot of noise about nothing. And black mothers are complaining due to systemic problems in the system, problems she faced herself, and she now sees her child facing.

You can't dismiss the "race card" because from the outside the symptoms look the same for all races (parents complaining).

"Of those who responded to the survey, 40 percent of those in the U.S. House of Representatives who have school-aged children, and 49 percent of those in the Senate who have school-aged children, send or have sent at least one of their children to private school.", source: Heritage Foundation

That organization has an agenda to represent the position of so-called "school choice", so I think if anything they would pump the numbers up higher for private school (kind of already have in the phrasing: "at least one of").

That said, I'm willing to accept that 41% of Senators use public school exclusively. That seems realistic. For politicians at the state and local level, it's going to vary far more than a small group that lives in D.C.

I know of some local politicians who have kids in the public school system. But I live (or used to live) in the SF Bay Area, which has several good public schools and many bad ones. Live near a good school, then why wouldn't you send your kids there. If you paid a premium to live in Cupertino, part of that is because it is desirable for its school district (Monta Vista, etc).

No, let's have bands of uneducated losers that have nothing better to do than breaking into our houses and steal our stuff. Then we can invest 10X more money in our police force than we would have in icky socialist public education.

On the plus side, these uneducated rabble will have the right to vote and to own to fire arms. So perhaps after a few generations of this nonsense they'll overthrow our great-grandchildren's regime.

Too many schools are underfunded and too many teachers are overwhelmed with large class sizes, behavioral and disciplinary challenges, lack of administrative support and in-class assistance, and disinterested, unhelpful parents (who are working 2-3 jobs, often at night, and are themselves exhausted and burned out)

The US already pays more per student than just about any other country on the planet for education and we do not get the results.

No, the problem isn't money......

I think a lot of parents are home schooling to get their kids out of the classrooms filled with green/blue dyed hair teachers who are more concerned with indoctrination than education.

The pandemic opened A LOT of peoples' collective eyes as to what was really going on in classrooms that parents didn't have a clue about.

Encouragement of trans....grade school kids exposed to information on anal sex and how a boy can give a blow job were the most egregious examples....but just sets values that didn't set with what parents in general in the US want to impart to their kids.

the US population is generally middle of the road and you screeching green haired instructor is pushing stuff from the far left in many cases.

Parent's saw this and are putting a stop to it.

Frankly I can't blame them.

Journalists kind of suck at communicating science to laypeople, in part because journalists are laypeople themselves, and in part because they suffer from Dunning–Kruger syndrome and are too stupid to realize their their journalism degree doesn't mean their expertise extends to all areas.

Under the Biden administration, you'll see several phrases from the CDC that are more measured. Such as "a path forward" or other variations using the key word "forward". I don't know why anyone would pick up some random journalists, especially one like Maddow who has been more about shock titles and opinion pieces, over some sort of expert, such as an epidemiologist. I guess picking sides based on Left versus Right politics is just how some people's brain works. Forgive my harshness, but that's a stupid way to operate. Rather viewers/listeners should invest in weighing if someone is wholly unqualified to comment and doesn't belong in the discussion (with Maddow*, she rarely belongs in a serious scientific or economic or military discussion).

* Maddow's partner is a wonderful woman and I enjoy her art (photography but abstract?)

It's adorable how they pretend that the 'well being' gap between the people who matter and the ones who don't is some sort of surprise that calls for urgent action; rather than a deliberate outcome carefully achieved.

It's the pandemic-period numbers that are the anomaly, from a period when at times downright existential issues forced people's hands(at least for white collar workers; if you are 'essential' good luck and back to dealing with the public in person); and a lot of work has been put into rectifying that period.

What's next; a comparative analysis of the labor markets of the 1950s and the 1980s that studiously pretends that it's not exactly as Milton Friedman and Neutron Jack intended?

Sure. I think the GP's example, if it was correctly described, is probably a sign of a teacher who doesn't understand what they're teaching.

I was pointing out, educationally I hope, that the GP also doesn't really understand what they're talking about, despite claiming it's "simple." Which, incidentally, makes me suspect the anecdote may not be entirely accurate.

Or maybe they want to prepare the kids so they're not shocked when they start Clifford algebras.

Annoying and overly literal puzzles are my generation's jam. And really any generation going at least as far back as those who read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or the Oz books.

I still haul Zork out once a decade and play at least the first one. I rarely have the energy to power through the second or third. I also occasionally pick up Return to Zork (1993) which is more of a full motion point-and-click game. A genre that really has no equivalent today and is perhaps more obsolete than a text adventure, as the low-res videos and acting have not aged that well.

What I typically do is leave in the no-name AAA alkaline batteries that the remote came with, and it works for a couple of years until I move on to newer gear.

Then after I've left it idle for 15 years, I'll come back and open the remote to discover that the batteries have leaked all over the inside and destroyed it.

No, but 30 years ago people thought I was being paranoid, a crank, or just being difficult (troll, contrarian, etc)