Didn't their society end up collapsing? Yes, the human race went on, but with quite a gap in the ideals of that culture.

Well, it's $5 a month. Lots of people spend about that at Starbucks every *day* of the week, so I don't it's really a show-stopper price...

No, we use 'x' over here, too.

Well, no one was born knowing what the equals sign represents. In fact, it's been around only for 500 years. My personal opinion is that until we start forcing graduates of US Education programs to take at least a little math beyond passing out of algebra, the cycle is doomed to repeat.

FTFA, 'Parents and teachers can help the students. The two researchers suggest using mathematics manipulatives and encourage teachers "to read professional journals, become informed about the problem and modify their instruction."'

Uh huh, see point 1 = 1 + 0 above.

The Lund's grocer I shop at in Northeast Minneapolis does it just this way. Another reason I feel justified spending 20% more for my food :).

The fact that they bag your groceries is another reason. It's common in MN to have to do it yourself.

I hope they went to every store with an "express lane for less than 10 items". Shudder.

Surely there must be some studies that have randomly assigned security vs. no security to properties in neighborhoods, and then tracked theft?

I can second this. I did a Master's in Biostatistics, and have a computing background from undergrad. It sounds like this would be a good fit for you, since you're working in a related field already. In the five years I've been working at universities since my Master's, I've had a lot of different experiences, ranging from large clinical trials to military projects. Your computing background will make you a very valuable asset to almost any group you work in, as a lot of stats people are entering from a math background and have little formal programming experience. It's a really good fit for me, because it allows me to balance my time between consulting, designing studies, and programming to analyze them. R and SAS are the two big programs that people in biostat tend to use. I'd look into it if I were you.