Storm Ahead?

Workout notes
rotator cuff, hip hikes, Achilles, abs (3 sets of 10 v. crunch, crunch, sit back; twist machine is broken)
pull ups (5 sets of 10)
incline bench: 10 x 135, 4 x 160, 4 x 155, 7 x 150
seated military: 3 sets of 12 x 50 dumbbell
rows: 3 sets of 10 x 65
curls: 3 sets of 10 (30 dumbbell, 65 EZ curl bar (2))
pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 160

Walking: deliberate 2 miles; focused on toes; outside to get heat conditioning.

Weather
We might get a Derecho; read about Derechos here

Academia
this is from the old Rate Your Students blog:

A pre-nursing student, Negative Nancy, failed the prerequisite class for nursing school. After whining and wheedling endlessly to no avail, she pursued a grade appeal. After the appeal board reviewed her case, which included copies of her 40/150 scores on exams, she was denied the appeal. In fact, she was recommended to go back and redo the prerequisite to the prerequisite. After she lost her case, her Daddy (who is an adjunct at the school) called to try and convince me that “She tries so hard and will make such a caring nurse!”

When Daddy’s pleas fell on deaf ears Nancy and Daddy went to the Dean of Student Affairs.

The Dean then tried to pressure me into changing the F to a C (gasp!) because “they made a compelling case for her passing” and “in the interests of student satisfaction we should make sure she can pursue her dreams.” Ummmm…no. I am the dream quasher. Call me the Simon Cowell of pre-nursing. If you don’t have the brains and talent, you don’t get to go on. Isn’t that what a prerequisite is for? Did the Dean know that she appealed her grade? No. When he found out did he change his tune? No.

So, her grade remains and she’ll have to retake the course with a different instructor (for student satisfaction, of course). The Dean, however, believes in Negative Nancy SO MUCH that he wrote a special letter of rec for her so her F would be mitigated. He’s also making a call to Admissions of the nursing program. How nice. The Dean thinks that based on his half-hour interaction with Nancy she should be a nurse. Regardless of the fact that she doesn’t know her ass from her elbow.

At times, there is the rub: people sometimes see a credential as a “feel good about yourself” thing rather than as a sign that the person has some minimal basic competence in an area.

Reading, anti-intellectualism and menopause

Workout notes
Last night: 3 mile walk with the group.
This morning: glacial 5 mile run (5.1 in about 55 minutes) on the Cornstalk course from the house to Markin. Then I did leg weights: squats: 10 x 45, 5 x 85, 5 x 95 attempting to get deep; hip hikes; 2 circuits of abduction, adduction, push back.

This bordered on “assisted stretching”; my squats were really as light as I say.

Note: that “speed” workout two days ago did tire out my legs; did it really do me any good?

Academia
This New York Times article says:

Educators, policy makers and business leaders often fret about the state of math education, particularly in comparison with other countries. But reading comprehension may be a larger stumbling block.

Here at Troy Prep Middle School, a charter school near Albany that caters mostly to low-income students, teachers are finding it easier to help students hit academic targets in math than in reading, an experience repeated in schools across the country.

Students entering the fifth grade here are often several years behind in both subjects, but last year, 100 percent of seventh graders scored at a level of proficient or advanced on state standardized math tests. In reading, by contrast, just over half of the seventh graders met comparable standards.

Yes, I will stipulate that the algebra skills of the incoming calculus students are less than proficient. But I’ll also say this: many years ago, students who couldn’t understand what was being asked for in a “word problem” couldn’t do the math either. Now, that isn’t the case. Students who can do the math often struggle to figure out what is being asked for.

Consider the following problem: “suppose that the probability of a ticketed passenger showing up for a flight is .94 and further suppose that the event that a passenger shows up for a flight is independent of any other passenger showing up. The plane’s capacity is 200 and the airline sold 205 tickets. What is the probability that at least one passenger with a ticket will not be able to board the airplane due to overbooking?”

Many students couldn’t figure out what the question was. But if you told them “if is a random variable which is binomially distributed with calculate and they were able to do it correctly.

Anti-intellectualism
This is an interesting “break” question for faculty:

Ah, summer! The season when I wave goodbye to students who think I am the embodiment of evil and say hello to visiting relatives who are certain I am the embodiment of evil.

Well, not me personally, but academics in general. Summer is the time when duty calls me to be nice to people just because they happen to share some DNA with me or my spouse, and inevitably the discussion will turn to What’s Wrong with the World These Days (everything) and Who Is to Blame for our National Ills, and I’ll bet you can identify the current scapegoat: godless liberal socialist college professors brainwashing students with their radical feminist pro-gay anti-gun anti-God multicultural agenda.

What do I say to these people? A little voice urges me to bite my tongue, respect my elders, don’t rock the boat, keep the peace, don’t teach an old dog new tricks, just smile and nod and talk about the weather. Cliches: the last refuge of the academic at the family reunion.[...]

That isn’t really a problem for me in terms of family but I remember on a couple of occasions that someone found out that I was a college professor and told me that I taught students to “hate our country” and that “hard work wasn’t necessary”. I smiled and replied “I didn’t know that there was an un-American way to solve a differential equation.” They then accused ME of being condescending!!!!

I also sometimes get hurt feelings when someone tells me “X is true” and I ask: “why? What is the evidence?”; they seem a bit put out that I don’t count “confidence in one’s own opinion” as a substitute for expert knowledge. And yes, this is indeed bipartisan (evolution, GMO issues).

Speaking of education, it is graduation time, and I love this meme:

How true this is! And, it is true on many levels. From what I’ve seen (this is just opinion here), life and the career is often more challenging than one’s undergraduate college years. And for those who want to get a research Ph. D. from a strong research institution: you’ll quickly find out that your undergraduate and beginning masters classes were kid stuff.

Speaking of science
I am not an expert on evolution, but this makes no sene to me at all:

According to Dr. Aarathi Prasad, menopause is an artifact from a time when resources were scarce and it was common for women to die young. But today, she says, when life expectancy can stretch into the 100s and resources are plentiful for many women living in advanced economies, menopause is no longer “normal for nature” and is something that can be “overcome” by nature or science.

“The mood of scientists working on this and looking to the future is we will either technologically or scientifically evolve out of the menopause,” she told an audience at the Hay Festival of Literature and Arts this week.

The Telegraph goes on to report more of her remarks on why menopause is no longer “necessary” from an evolutionary perspective:

“When menopause evolved, women probably died ten years before it happened, it hit in your 50s, on average,” she went on. “If you’re looking at a future where women are going to live to 100, that’s half your life when the rest of your body functions perfectly well and your ovaries don’t.

“And it’s not just reproduction. The menopause brings an increased risk of heart disease and osteoporosis.

The biologist and science writer concluded her remarks with an assessment of menopause that many women who have experienced it would likely agree with: “Is [menopause] something necessary or beneficial for us?” she asked the audience. “I do not see any benefits.”

Here is why I am scratching my head: yes, menopause has no benefit so evolving out of it will induce no cost. But what reproductive advantage will there be to evolving out of it? I don’t see it….perhaps random genetic drift could help and not be selected against; that is all I can see here. But I am not an expert and I’d love to see what an expert says.

Economy
Robert Reich says: don’t let the conservative frame the debate:

On a related note: a couple of non-conservative economists have said that the world economy would suffer if, say,:

Daron Acemoglu, an eminent economist at M.I.T., has ignited a firestorm by arguing that contemporary forces of globalization bar the United States from adopting the liberal social welfare policies of Scandinavian countries.

“We cannot all be like the Nordics,” Acemoglu declares, in a 2012 paper, “Choosing Your Own Capitalism in a Globalized World,” written with his colleagues James A. Robinson, a professor of government at Harvard, and Thierry Verdier, scientific director of the Paris School of Economics.

If the “cutthroat leader” – the United States — were to switch to “cuddly capitalism, this would reduce the growth rate of the entire world economy,” the authors argue, by slowing the pace of innovation.

Note: Tom Edsall (the author of the Times article) notes that the economics article is mathematical (and gives an example of some of the math expressions, the level of which is elementary but the symbols aren’t defined in the Times article)

But check out the comments; the readers pound the result. Some readers note that hedge-fund managers aren’t exactly innovators and others note that government agencies such as the NSF fund the actual basic research, as it really isn’t in the economic interest for big business to do so. Most basic research does NOT pay off economically but without it being there as a body, practical research won’t happen. That “x percent” of basic research that does pay off has to be there, and it is all but impossible to predict which research will be part of that “x percent”.

Social I find the sign and the t-shirt message to be an interesting juxtaposition.

Where you start and what you go through matters…a story

One of my regular internet conversation partners relayed the following to me:

I’m not sure why, but I think you’ll appreciate this story. The other day I was in a Hallmark store with my friend xxx, buying a high school graduation card. All the cards were full of superlatives, “Great job, graduate! You should be SO proud!” Mind you, these were SPECIFICALLY for high school graduates. I told xxx, “Geez, it’s JUST high school. Seriously, it’s not actually an achievement, but basically the bare minimum one should manage in life. I will congratulate my kids when they graduate from college.” We found the card with the least amount of superlatives and approached the check-out. The lady in line in front of us turned to me and said, “I just wanted to let you know that for some people graduating from high school IS an achievement. For some people it’s really difficult. Some people have family problems..” and she started CRYING.

So, while, Jesus, I felt like a dick, there was still a small part of me thinking, “But it’s JUST high school.”
I’m still debating whether that makes me an intellectual snob, or if I’m just weighing the approximate % of people who earn a high school diploma vs. those who earn higher degrees and being logical in saying that it’s NOT THAT BIG A DEAL.

I’ll comment on whether my friend was “being a dick” later in the post (short answer: NO!) but I’ll discuss many aspects of this.

First, MY history. Neither of my parents made it out of junior high. They grew up in depression era poverty in a Mexican-American part of Austin, Texas back in the day that racial segregation was the norm and perfectly legal. Mom, in effect, had no father (she had a biological one of course) and her mom scrapped to make ends meet; dad didn’t exactly have a stable home life either.

But dad joined the Air Force and I grew up on Air Force bases; I had Department of Defense schools to go to, a clean, safe place to live, plenty to eat, and time to go to school. Early on, my parents took me to the library; we went there very frequently. We ALWAYS had books in the house. At the dinner table (and we had a dinner table), we frequently discussed politics and world events.

I went to a “lower middle class, clapboard neighborhood” high school for my last 2.5 years. It wasn’t a magnet school nor was it where the offspring of the well-to-do went. But it was structurally sound, safe, and offered courses such as physics, British literature and calculus. Several of my senior year teachers had masters degrees.

Even better: because the student body population was not from wealthy families, there was no assumption that we (the students) were “entitled” to good grades; the teachers were free to push us a bit. Example: our pre calculus teacher and our calculus teachers taught “epsilon-delta” calculations for limits; and eventually we learned! I salute their patience.

Bottom line: I was a bit puzzled when my parents made a sort-of big deal out of high school graduation; from my point of view at the time, all I had to do was to NOT f*ck-up. I now realize that my parents should have congratulated THEMSELVES and not me; they are the ones that set it all up.

And so it goes with people who “live in my friend’s tribe” so to speak. High school graduation really isn’t a big deal, at least for those who didn’t suffer from horribly bad luck (e. g. getting cancer, getting in a terrible accident, etc.)

And yes, there is a tendency to overplay any little things kids do. You see the effects of this when they show up for their first year in college and find out….no, they are NOT special. Being able to write a “sort-of” grammatically correct paragraph, state an opinion or differentiate a polynomial doesn’t mean that they are a genius.

But not everyone grows up that way

Yes, there are kids, even today, who grow up in poverty. Some go to school hungry. Some are lacking parental support from even ONE parent, never mind two. Some have parents in jail; some are molested or beaten. Some face social pressures to drop out. Some have unsafe schools to go to. Many do NOT have books in the house or the ability (or encouragement) to get to a library.

So for kids growing up in these circumstances, graduation from high school IS a big deal, and it is helpful to remember that.

And things are relative
My friend talked about graduation from college. For me, obtaining an undergraduate degree was, well, pretty easy, even though I was at a “highly competitive” school. The completion of my undergraduate studies was, well, greeted with a shrug.

I was never pushed until I went to Nuclear Power school; and that was mostly because you had to learn a lot of material (at a shallow level) very quickly. And in the practical side, I was barely competent. I don’t think on my feet well.

And graduate school was another story; in my first year of my Ph. D. program I got by butt kicked. I survived and managed to pass my Ph. D. written exams…and that was an effort! Later…toward the end of my Ph. D. program I realized: the Ph. D. written comprehensive exams were baby stuff. Seriously; if given time to study I wouldn’t have trouble now. Being original to make a discovery and get it published is much, much, much harder.

So, while I felt pretty good about getting the Ph. D., but…for some….that is no big deal! Seriously; it really isn’t that big of a deal to the top professors at Ph. D. granting institutions; for them tenure at a research university was the tough hurdle.

It is all relative.

About my friend No, she was not being a jerk; she was talking to another friend who lived in a similar situation. There is no reason people can’t have conversations among themselves, and this overreaction to anything positive that kids do can be harmful; it can cause them to lose perspective.

The same principle applies in sports
Back in 1999, I had run a 1:34 half marathon and was pretty happy with that. One of my friends, who 14 years older than I ran a 1:33 but was upset with his time. That didn’t bother me; after all 4-5 years earlier (at 50 years of age) he ran a sub 3 hour marathon! A 1:33, for someone of his background and abilities, wasn’t a great time..so he thought (he was struggling with age acceptance a bit). So I have no problem comforting a friend who is upset with their own performance, even if it is vastly superior to mine.

As for me, my 5K times are pretty crappy (24:56 was my last one), but I am a 53 year old non-athlete who has had 5 knee operations, the last one in 2010. I am lucky to be able to run at all. My bench press (200 pounds; hips down!) is pretty weak for a 186 pound male, but again, I am a 53 non-athlete who had rotator cuff issues in 2010; there was a time when I couldn’t do a single pull up (never mind sets of 10) and bench pressing 135 was painful.

Accomplishments are relative.

Science, arguments, evolution, GMOs, etc.

For those who regularly read my blog: I haven’t paid too much attention to this “GMO/Monsanto” stuff. I am becoming interested in it. However some see this as a tribal fight: companies such as Monsanto versus the environmental “activists”; the former is driven by profit first and foremost; the latter is hampered by not only scientific ignorance but also by the Dunning-Kruger effect.

So, I am going to try to educate myself on these issues. No, I am not a specialist in this sort of science. I am reasonably well versed on how to interpret data though.

I should say one other thing: I should say WHY I accept things like evolution, human caused (or human activity aggravated) climate change and the like. It is true that the arguments that I’ve seen make sense to me (on a non-specialist level) and that the associated mathematics that I’ve seen checks out. It is also true that many of the arguments that I’ve seen AGAINST these positions have either been refuted by the science community as a whole, involved mathematics in which case I was able to see that they were bad arguments, or were hilariously bad enough that I could see the flaws.

But, ultimately, my main reason for accepting these positions is that:
1. The science community overwhelmingly accepts them and
2. The science community has delivered real knowledge and real results; medicines work; vaccines work and we are much better at tracking and predicting storms.

The opponents of these positions have delivered NOTHING at all.

So, when I wrote a letter to the editor supporting evolution, I did NOT attempt to argue for it myself (I am not an expert). I didn’t say “I just know and I am very confident that I am right and you are wrong.” Instead I invited the readers to investigate what the science departments, the science laboratories and what the major museums were saying:

I understand how the current creationism vs. evolution debate might be confusing to many, especially to those who don’t have professional-level credentials in science. So, I’d like to offer a few suggestions to the “interested but perplexed”:

1. Surf to the websites of the biology, chemistry and anthropology departments of our best research universities and natural history museums (say, Big Ten universities, Field Museum, etc.). Also visit the websites of places such as the National Science Foundation. You can see for yourself what is being actively researched and what is being taught.

2. Ask yourself what is a more trustworthy source: a community that has produced tangible results – discoveries, vaccines, medicines, etc. – or a community that has produced no scientific results at all.

3. Ask a scientist the following question: What evidence would lead you to either modify or abandon your current theories of evolution?

4. Then ask a creationist: What evidence would lead you to abandon creationism, or even abandon the belief that humans were an intentional creation of your deity?

5. Ask yourself: Would I be satisfied limiting myself to the “science” of Biblical times?

I am not an expert in evolutionary science and I wouldn’t blame anyone for not taking my word for it. However, explanations from bona fide experts with tangible scientific accomplishments and credentials are available, and I invite the interested to read them.

Of course the whack jobs weren’t convinced at all; they reacted in exactly the same way the woo woos act when you point out that they haven’t given anyone any objective reason to take what they are saying seriously. Crackpots are, by definition, all but impossible to convince. In this regard, there is some symmetry between the political left and right wings.

So, where does one turn? Over the next few weeks I’ll look at what the major labs and science departments have to say.

Here are a couple of references that I’ve found useful:

1. Greg Jaffe is director of biotechnology at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. He has some experience in this area, though his undergraduate degree is in biology and his advanced degree is in law. I’d prefer to quote a scientist. However what he lays out here seems to be consistent with what I’ve seen in the science magazines. Some of what he says appears to be counterintuitive to me…at first, but he at least argues well. Two bits:

Myth: “Frankenfoods” made with GE ingredients are harmful to eat.

There is no reliable evidence that ingredients made from current GE crops pose any health risk whatsoever. Numerous governmental and scientific agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and National Academy of Sciences, have conducted reviews that did not identify any health concerns. Indeed, even the fiercest opponents have not shown any health risks.

That should not come as a surprise. The DNA inserted into GE seeds, and the protein it produces, are largely digested in the gastrointestinal tract. And the proteins are sometimes molecules that humans have already been exposed to in our diets. For example, GE crops that fend off viruses contain components of plant viruses that we’ve long eaten without any harm.

Furthermore, current GE crops enter our food supply primarily as highly processed ingredients that are essentially free of the engineered DNA and its protein products. High-fructose corn syrup and corn oil made from GE corn, soybean oil from GE soybeans, and sugar from GE sugar beets are identical to ingredients made from non-GE crops.

While current GE foods are not harmful, they haven’t improved our diet, though that may change. Farmers have started growing soybeans that produce high-oleic oil that could substitute for trans-fat-rich partially hydrogenated oil. And the long-awaited “golden rice,” engineered with beta carotene to combat vitamin A deficiency, is expected to be grown by Southeast Asian farmers in 2014.

[...]

Myth: GE crops are environmentally sustainable.

Biotech giant Monsanto brags that it is “one of the world’s leading companies focused on sustainable agriculture.” While some biotech seeds provide substantial environmental benefits, sustainability claims are exaggerated.

Monsanto’s most successful products are its herbicide-tolerant crops–soybeans, corn, cotton, sugar beets, and alfalfa that are tolerant to glyphosate. Those crops, planted on millions of acres each year, led to skyrocketing glyphosate use–and the emergence of glyphosate-resistant weeds. At least 10 weed species in 22 states have shown resistance to glyphosate, which prevents farmers from using that relatively benign herbicide on an estimated 7 to 10 million acres. The industry’s proposed solution is for farmers to temporarily use herbicide “cocktails” containing multiple herbicides to combat resistant weeds while they develop new GE varieties engineered tolerant to other herbicides.

Insects may also become resistant to pesticide-producing corn. The Environmental Protection Agency requires farmers to protect the effectiveness of that corn, since it reduces the need for harmful chemical insecticides. However, more than one out of four corn farmers doesn’t follow EPA’s rules, jeopardizing the technology’s long-term sustainability.

Finally, GE crops, like conventional crops, are part of our industrial agriculture system that uses large amounts of fertilizer and are sometimes grown in vast monoculture fields where crops are not rotated adequately. If sustainability is the goal, all farmers, not just GE crops farmers, need to move in a more sustainable, organic direction.

There is much more in this article.

2. Larry Moran (biochemistry professor) talks about the overreach of some claims:

I received this email message today from Leslie Maloy, (lmaloy@hastingsgroup.com). It’s stupid. It’s an example of scientific illiteracy. There’s no chance than food from genetically modified crops will do you any harm. You may want to oppose GMO crops for other reasons but to pretend that GMO crops will endanger your health is a lie.

It’s stuff like this that’s giving the environmental movement a bad reputation. Their anti-science positions are losing them support from the scientific community.

Note: in the comments, Dr. Moran did admitted that the “no chance” claim was a very mild exaggeration and changed it to “remote chance, though ANY food (organic or otherwise) has a remote chance of doing you harm”.

Evolution
This is fascinating. Evolution has sometimes given organisms the ability to detect and avoid stuff that is toxic to it. Sometimes evolution has provided an organism immunity to a toxin. But I’ve never heard of this before: evolution can make a toxic thing TASTE BAD to an organism! (via: Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne’s website)

Before the mid-1980s, roach control experts would spray poisons on everything to control roaches. That didn’t go down very well with people, and so the companies switched to baits, which included not only a poison, but something to attract the roaches to the deadly baits: the sugars D-glucose and D-fructose, which roaches love. (Sucrose, our table sugar, is a dimeric molecule that links fructose to glucose.) But within a few years, cockroaches began appearing that avoided the baits, and did so not because they were averse to the poison, but because they were averse to the attractant, glucose. This new trait turned out to be heritable, that is, it had a genetic basis.

Ayako Wade-Katsumata and coauthors hypothesized that the aversion to glucose was a result of evolution in the way the taste buds and brain detected and perceived the sugar.

To figure this out, they wired up nerve cells (neurons) in the cockroaches’ taste receptors (“taste sensilli”), which reside in hairs around the mouth. The figure below, from the paper, shows those hairs and the kind of single hair whose nerve cells (those cells that detect and respond to stimulants) could be wired up to see if the nerve cells fire when exposed to different molecules. (It’s amazing what neurophysiologists can do these days). There are several types of taste receptors in the hairs, but the authors concentrated on two: those that, when they fire, send a signal to the sweet detector in the brain, and those cells whose firing sends signals to the bitter detector in the brain. In normal, unselected roaches, only the first cells fire when the beast tastes glucose, stimulating it to feed. When the bitter receptors cause the bitter neurons to fire, the roaches avoid what they’ve tasted.

What the authors found is that in cockroaches that had evolved to avoid baits, glucose stimulated the firing not only of glucose receptors, but also the bitter receptors. (The positive response of the sweet receptors to glucose was also lower in bait-averse cockroaches than in normal, wild-type cockroaches.) In other words, what once attracted the roaches to baits now repelled them.

Wild huh? Surf to read more; Dr. Coyne features photos and further discussion.

Ideas are hard I don’t consider economics to be a “science”. But following the economic discussions requires that one digest ideas. Consider this (re: the Reinhart and Rogoff blunder…via Paul Krugman:

This could go on forever, and both they and I have other things to do. So let me just state — clearly, I hope — where their analytical sin lies.

To some extent it lies in the downplaying of causality issues — of whether high debt causes slow growth, slow growth causes high debt, or both high debt and slow growth are the result of third factors (as was the case in demobilizing postwar America, which they highlighted in their original paper).

But the more important sin involves the misuse of the “90 percent” criterion.

There is, as everyone in this debate has acknowledged, a negative correlation in the data between debt and growth. As a result, draw a line at any point — 80 percent, 90 percent, whatever — and countries with debt above that level will tend to have slower growth than countries with debt below that level.

There is, however, an enormous difference between the statement “countries with debt over 90 percent of GDP tend to have slower growth than countries with debt below 90 percent of GDP” and the statement “growth drops off sharply when debt exceeds 90 percent of GDP”. The former statement is true; the latter isn’t. Yet R&R have repeatedly blurred that distinction, and have continued to do so in recent writings.

(emphasis mine)
From my dealings on social media: only a small percentage of people would be able to understand what I put in bold. Many of my closer friends would be able to, but those are mostly those with advanced degrees or degrees in science, etc. Most would be hopelessly confused. So, concerning the latter group: how in the world would such people be able to understand ANY of the nuances concerning climate change, evolution, safety of GMOs, etc.?

Note: this little remark will be used in my calculus classes. If one labels debt as a percentage of GDP as, say, and growth as , then the fact that growth tends to be smaller when debt is higher is the statement and the latter is that becomes negative or "more negative" when .

Graphically:

Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90% do have slower growth than countries with lower debt-to-GDP ratios, but there is no “cliff” at 90%–and policymakers should not have been told that there is an “important marker” at 90%.

Note: they are assuming linear fits. So here, is constant and negative; hence the second derivative remains zero; no change at .

Some discussion of today’s young people….

Yes, there appears to be an “entitlement” mentality; here some professor talks about a column in the USA Today titled More Students Deserve to Graduate. Uh, no. You might argue that we should have a higher percentage of entering students graduating, but that is because we probably admit too many students to college.

Interestingly enough, there is soem debate on whether many entering students are really prepared. College professors and high school teachers see it differently:

Yes, they’re ready. No, they’re not. A new survey shows a wide gap between high school teachers and college professors when it comes to the question of whether incoming freshmen are prepared for higher learning.

Just 26 percent of college instructors believe students are well-prepared for first-year courses, compared to 89 percent of high school teachers, according to the ACT National Curriculum Survey.

“We’ve seen for a number of years that there have been gaps between what skills colleges say are most important for students to learn and what high school teachers and school districts are teaching,” said Ed Colby, spokesman for ACT. “There doesn’t seem to be enough collaboration between local schools and colleges.”

David Dowell, vice provost for academic affairs at Cal State Long Beach, said that was certainly true in the past.

“One of the findings from the California work was that high school English teachers focused on expressive writing in reaction to literature,” Dowell said. “Colleges

expected fact-based expository writing. (Students) were doing well in their writing, but it was a different kind of writing. “ACT produces the report every three to five years. The survey looks at what is taught in schools and what is expected for student success at the college level when it comes to math, science, reading, writing and English.

What else might be going on? I have some guesses, but no data to back these guesses up.

1. High school teachers, especially if they have been teaching high school for a while, may have forgotten what a big step up it is from high school to college.

2. High school teachers might be comparing their best students to the rest of their students in their school instead of against the best students of other high schools. It is the latter group that their students will be going to college with. Hence, when they grade their honors classes, the work might be graded a bit too easily; after all, the high school teachers are used to seeing the work of average high school students. For example, might be a medium to hard question in a high school calculus exam, but at the college level, it is barely a “question 1″ caliber question. You put something like this on an exam so that no one gets a zero.

3. It could also be that the high school students ARE taught what they are supposed to be taught and that they get the questions right on their high school exams…only to “brain dump” after the course is over. In college, you sometimes see this happening in courses that have a prerequisite course. You’ll see a student with, say, a “B” in calculus one and you’ll note that they took the course from a well respected professor. But in your course, it is almost as if they’ve never seen the prerequisite material before.

I think that, in many cases, the students really don’t learn the material at a “know it while walking around” level until they’ve both seen it and used it several times. This is no knock on anyone but rather a statement on how the human brain works (at least for those of us who aren’t like Stephen Hawking)

But the students are clever too. Students use social media, and many have found a way to communicate in a type of social code, so as to protect their privacy: (via Bruce Schneier)

danah boyd points out something interesting in the data:

My favorite finding of Pew’s is that 58% of teens cloak their messages either through inside jokes or other obscure references, with more older teens (62%) engaging in this practice than younger teens (46%)….
While adults are often anxious about shared data that might be used by government agencies, advertisers, or evil older men, teens are much more attentive to those who hold immediate power over them — parents, teachers, college admissions officers, army recruiters, etc. To adults, services like Facebook that may seem “private” because you can use privacy tools, but they don’t feel that way to youth who feel like their privacy is invaded on a daily basis. (This, btw, is part of why teens feel like Twitter is more intimate than Facebook. And why you see data like Pew’s that show that teens on Facebook have, on average 300 friends while, on Twitter, they have 79 friends.) Most teens aren’t worried about strangers; they’re worried about getting in trouble.
Over the last few years, I’ve watched as teens have given up on controlling access to content. It’s too hard, too frustrating, and technology simply can’t fix the power issues. Instead, what they’ve been doing is focusing on controlling access to meaning. A comment might look like it means one thing, when in fact it means something quite different. By cloaking their accessible content, teens reclaim power over those who they know who are surveilling them. This practice is still only really emerging en masse, so I was delighted that Pew could put numbers to it. I should note that, as Instagram grows, I’m seeing more and more of this. A picture of a donut may not be about a donut. While adults worry about how teens’ demographic data might be used, teens are becoming much more savvy at finding ways to encode their content and achieve privacy in public.

Fish, Residues and Pyromaniacs

Climate Change: yes, fish are swimming to cooler waters thereby hurting some in the fishing industry:

Fish and other sea life have been moving toward Earth’s poles in search of cooler waters, part of a worldwide, decades-long migration documented for the first time by a study released Wednesday.

The research, published in the journal Nature, provides more evidence of a rapidly warming planet and has broad repercussions for fish harvests around the globe.

University of British Columbia researchers found that significant numbers of 968 species of fish and invertebrates they examined moved to escape the warming waters of their original habitats.Previous studies had documented the same phenomenon in specific parts of the world’s oceans. But the new study is the first to assess the migration worldwide and to look back as far as 1970, according to its authors.

The research is more confirmation that “global change is real and has been real for a long time,” said Boris Worm, a professor of marine biology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who was not part of the study. “It’s not something in the distant future. It is well underway.”

[...]

Politics
Robert Reich makes the case that at the moment, President Obama is letting the critics define him, instead of defining himself. He can’t expect the Republicans to cooperate:

Barack Obama is allowing the fires to dominate because he has not defined his core agenda. During the 2012 campaign it appeared to be restoring jobs, rebuilding the middle class, and reversing the scourge of widening inequality. Since then, though, the core has evaporated – leaving him and his administration vulnerable to every pyromaniac on the Potomac.

Math fun: yes, a poem in College Misery about ….residue integrals!

Sunny Sunday

Workout notes Mostly dry trail (but with one bridge washed out): 1:01:48 for the outer loop at FPNC then 24:12 for the Valley to Bee Tree for 1:26 (5 miles of hiking).

45 F at the start (7 C) and brisk; lots of sun. I couldn’t have been prettier though it is unusual that it is this cool. I sure wish that we could have moved today’s weather to next Sunday.

Speaking of sun: Jerry Coyne directs us to this video; it shows 3 years worth of images set to music. Note: if you get tired, skip ahead to 2:40 or so where you can see 4 different views of the sun, each in different filters (wavelengths of light).

College Students
Many kids are “special” to their parents. That is how it is supposed to work. But: in the great scheme of things, most of us are average; only a tiny, tiny, tiny minority (which I don’t belong to) are truly special:

Flava: Mandatory Freshman Reading
Lots of universities have a Freshman Reading Program. It’s supposed to create a common topic for all the little darlings.

I submit for your CM consideration the following book: Adulting: How to Become a Grown-Up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps.

Author Kelly Williams Brown tells it like it is, but like she’s the sassy older sister of your precious froshie.

Here’s some flava:

“Step 1: Accept that you are not that special This is the most difficult and important thing to accept if you wish to be a grown-up: You are not a Special Snowflake.

Step 2: Appreciate those who disagree with step 1 Well, you are to some people. Your parents, presumably, love you very much and think you are perhaps the most adorable, talented thing ever to prance upon this earth. Your friends agree with them, as do your favorite teachers, as does your significant other. When there is a You Parade, these people will be the flag bearers, the drum majors and majorettes, so make sure you are always flag bearing and drum majoring for them, too. These people who think so highly of us are very special and precious, and we must treasure them. Because here is the truth: Most of the world doesn’t give a flying fuck about you.”

Of course, colleges often hurt themselves by overselling students on how good they are.

“Race”, IQ and immigrants

Note: I put “race” in the quotes; scroll to the end of this post to see why.

I heard of the Heritage Foundation member who is working on their immigration reform ideas; he had written a Ph. D. dissertation (at Harvard University) in which he argued for using an IQ criteria for admitting new immigrants:

Richwine’s doctoral dissertation is titled “IQ and Immigration Policy”; the contents are well summarized in the dissertation abstract:
The statistical construct known as IQ can reliably estimate general mental ability, or intelligence. The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations. The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market. Selecting high-IQ immigrants would ameliorate these problems in the U.S., while at the same time benefiting smart potential immigrants who lack educational access in their home countries.

Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”
Toward the end of the thesis, Richwine writes that though he believes racial differences in IQ to be real and persistent, one need not agree with that to accept his case for basing immigration on IQ. Rather than excluding what he judges to be low-IQ races, we can just test each individual’s IQ and exclude those with low scores. “I believe there is a strong case for IQ selection,” he writes, “since it is theoretically a win-win for the U.S. and potential immigrants.” He does caution against referring to it as IQ-based selection, saying that using the term “skill-based” would “blunt the negative reaction.”

Emphasis mine. So we have “race and IQ” once again.
I will NOT focus on the politics but rather focus on “the facts” regardless of the political and social implications.

I have NOT read the dissertation and therefore cannot comment on the data or methodology. However it appears that the argument is this:
1. Hispanics, as a subset of people in the United States, currently have a lower IQ than whites (undeniably true)
2. Immigrants from, say, Mexico, have a lower IQ (on the average) than current Americans (true)
3. These immigrants, as part of the pool of Hispanic Americans, would drive the aggregate IQ down (true)
4. IQ is a heritable trait (true)
5. Therefore these immigrants would have low IQ offspring thereby hurting the nation’s aggregate IQ (not convinced here!)

So, what do the facts say?
The current IQ difference between “races” (self identified) are real:

“Race differences show up by 3 years of age, even after matching on maternal education and other variables,” said Rushton. “Therefore they cannot be due to poor education since this has not yet begun to exert an effect. That’s why Jensen and I looked at the genetic hypothesis in detail. We examined 10 categories of evidence.”

The Worldwide Pattern of IQ Scores. East Asians average higher on IQ tests than Whites, both in the U. S. and in Asia, even though IQ tests were developed for use in the Euro-American culture. Around the world, the average IQ for East Asians centers around 106; for Whites, about 100; and for Blacks about 85 in the U.S. and 70 in sub-Saharan Africa.

Race Differences are Most Pronounced on Tests that Best Measure the General Intelligence Factor (g). Black-White differences, for example, are larger on the Backward Digit Span test than on the less g loaded Forward Digit Span test.

The Gene-Environment Architecture of IQ is the Same in all Races, and Race Differences are Most Pronounced on More Heritable Abilities. Studies of Black, White, and East Asian twins, for example, show the heritability of IQ is 50% or higher in all races.

It is true that the brains of the more intelligent have better wiring than those who are less intelligent; there are observations to back this up. However, if there are genes responsible for this (perhaps there are epigenetic effects too?) they haven’t been found.

However the story doesn’t end here for a number of reasons.

1. When it comes to an inheritable characteristic, genes don’t tell the whole story. Consider the height of Japanese people. Clearly, height is an inheritable characteristic and I don’t think that they’ve had that much intermarriage after World War II, but we now see:

For the 1995 survey, the results of medical checkups undergone by children in kindergarten, elementary school, junior high, and high school were used, with statistics on height and weight compiled on the basis of a random sampling of 700,000 children and statistics on obesity compiled on the basis of a random sampling of 1.2 million children. Between fiscal 1948, the first year after the war the survey was resumed, and fiscal 1995, the most remarkable change in height occurred among 14-year-old boys in the eighth grade. Today these boys average 159.6 centimeters (5 feet 2 inches), 19.8 centimeters (7 3/4 inches) more than their counterparts in 1948 and about the same as eleventh and twelfth grade boys that year. They are 7.9 centimeters (3 inches) taller than children in their parents’ generation 30 years ago. Similar increases in height could be seen among the girls too. The biggest change occurred among 12-year-old girls in the sixth grade, who average 146.7 centimeters (4 feet 10 inches) today, or 15.9 centimeters (6 1/4 inches) more than their counterparts in 1948 and 6.3 centimeters (2 1/2 inches) more than those in their parents’ generation 30 years ago.

Genes merely provide a bound; environment can change how the genes are expressed!

2. Our IQ’s HAVE been drifting up, as a whole:

The Flynn effect is the increase in average intelligence test scores by about 0.3% annually, resulting in the average person today scoring 15 points higher in IQ compared to the generation 50 years ago.[36] This effect can be explained by a generally more stimulating environment for all people. The authors suggest that programs aiming to increase IQ would be most likely to produce long-term IQ gains if they taught children how to replicate outside the program the kinds of cognitively demanding experiences that produce IQ gains while they are in the program and motivate them to persist in that replication long after they have left the program.[37][38] Most of the improvements have allowed for better abstract reasoning, spatial relations, and comprehension. Some scientists have suggested that such enhancements are due to better nutrition, better parenting and schooling, as well as exclusion of the least intelligent people from reproduction. However, Flynn and a group of other scientists share the viewpoint that modern life implies solving many abstract problems which leads to a rise in their IQ scores.[36]

3. There ARE environmental factors affecting IQ as well; it is not 100 percent heritable:

A 2011 study by Tucker-Drob and colleagues reported that at age 2 years, genes accounted for approximately 50% of the variation in mental ability for children being raised in high socioeconomic status families, but genes accounted for negligible variation in mental ability for children being raised in low socioeconomic status families. This gene-environment interaction was not apparent at age 10 months, suggesting that the effect emerges over the course of early development.[33]

4. Though IQ isn’t measured here, the data shows that the gap between Hispanics and white kids (on school achievement scores) are greater between kids growing up in “non-English speaking households” than in English speaking households. This study did NOT control for “years lived in the US”:

Richard Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute , a nonpartisan think tank, called the data on Hispanic students meaningless because it puts students from vastly different backgrounds – first generation Latino students entering the U.S. school system in the middle of their education, for example, with third generation children who are highly assimilated. The data released by the Department of Education is not separated by generation or a parent’s country of origin, though it does distinguish between Hispanics who are English language learners and those who are not.

The gap between white students and Hispanics who are not English language learners has declined from 24 points in 1998 to 15 points in 2009 in fourth grade reading. In contrast, the gap between white fourth graders and Hispanic English language learners was 44 points.

(here: “English language learners” means, roughly, that English wasn’t the first language in the home).

We also know that, at least in terms of language, there is virtual total assimilation by 3 generations.

Conclusion Caveat: this isn’t my area and I have not read the dissertation in question. But my questions are these:

1. Will the level of immigration stay the same or will new immigrants become a smaller and smaller proportion of all Hispanics?

2. Why isn’t it possible or even likely that we’ll see an upward drift in IQ among the descendants of these new immigrants, similar to what we’ve seen in the rest of the population as a whole? Heritable does NOT mean “immutable” (height of Japanese is an example).

Commentary on “Race”
I’ve followed the discussions on “race” and if it has any real meaning. Some of the biologists and other life scientists that I’ve interacted with said “sure”: if one were blindfolded and taken to one of three cities without knowing which was which: Stockholm, Peking or Abuja, and then you had the blindfold taken off, you could easily tell where you were taken to.

There are characteristics that cluster, genetically speaking. For example, it makes to sense to test a Swede for the sickle cell.

But on the other hand, especially in the United States, “racial classification” can get tricky. Propensity for sickle cell or the differences in outward appearances really are superficial, in a sense.

I learned this the hard way when I got my DNA tested. I have olive skin and self-identify as “Mexican-American”. My dad was very dark skinned, and my slightly lighter skinned mom grew up speaking Spanish; she didn’t learn English until later. Both were raised in Mexican-American neighborhoods in central Texas.

Hence, when I submitted my cheek-swabs for testing, I fully expected to see Aztec type ancestry. The results:

European haplogroups, both paternal and maternal. In other words, though society identifies me as “Mexican” and I self-identify as “Mexican”, my genes identify me as European! It isn’t that easy, is it?

Update Dr. Andy (in the comments) provided us with an interesting article by Ron Unz from The American Conservative. Unz argues that wealth and other factors can change IQ:

Consider, for example, the results from Germany obtained prior to its 1991 reunification. Lynn and Vanhanen present four separate IQ studies from the former West Germany, all quite sizable, which indicate mean IQs in the range 99–107, with the oldest 1970 sample providing the low end of that range. Meanwhile, a 1967 sample of East German children produced a score of just 90, while two later East German studies in 1978 and 1984 came in at 97–99, much closer to the West German numbers.

These results seem anomalous from the perspective of strong genetic determinism for IQ. To a very good approximation, East Germans and West Germans are genetically indistinguishable, and an IQ gap as wide as 17 points between the two groups seems inexplicable, while the recorded rise in East German scores of 7–9 points in just half a generation seems even more difficult to explain.

The dreary communist regime of East Germany was certainly far poorer than its western counterpart and its population may indeed have been “culturally deprived” in some sense, but East Germans hardly suffered from severe dietary deficiencies during the 1960s or late 1950s when the group of especially low-scoring children were born and raised. The huge apparent testing gap between the wealthy West and the dingy East raises serious questions about the strict genetic interpretation favored by Lynn and Vanhanen.

Next, consider Greece. Lynn and Vanhanen report two IQ sample results, a score of 88 in 1961 and a score of 95 in 1979. Obviously, a national rise of 7 full points in the Flynn-adjusted IQ of Greeks over just 18 years is an absurdity from the genetic perspective, especially since the earlier set represented children and the latter adults, so the two groups might even be the same individuals tested at different times. Both sample sizes are in the hundreds, not statistically insignificant, and while it is impossible to rule out other factors behind such a large discrepancy in a single country, it is interesting to note that Greek affluence had grown very rapidly during that same period, with the real per capita GDP rising by 170 percent.

There is much more in that article; it is long but worth the effort to read.

Final Exam Period in College: the most stressful time of the academic year or not?

I know someone who works in “student support services”; she tells me that there is always an uptick in stress related student incidents at this time of the academic year.

That was NOT my experience in college. Sure, at the Ph. D. level the comprehensive exams were stressful for me. But at the undergraduate level, the final exam periods were my favorite ones. I actually looked forward to this period as it meant that I was about to finish and put it all together. For me, it was the LEAST stressful part of the academic year….especially the May final exam period. The weather was now better and my spirits started to lift.

I don’t know whether that was just me, or because I was at a service academy, or what.

As a faculty member: same. I really don’t mind final exams, though I don’t like all of the necessary grading.

Creationism in some class rooms: how much does it really matter?

workout notes
Weights only in the morning; some miles (2-4? walking) in the afternoon with the group (not done yet).

Weights: (almost empty gym; it is final exam week)
supplementary: rotator cuff, Achilles, Hip Hikes, Side Plank, some yoga
Main: pull ups: 5 sets of 10
bench: 10 x 135, 4 x 185, 7 x 170 (ran out of motivation)
incline: 10 x 140, 6 x 150
abs: 3 sets of 10 each; crunch, twists, sit back, v. crunch (curling the torso makes a huge difference!)
dumbbell bench: 2 sets of 10 x 65 dumbbells
dumbbell military: 3 sets of 12 x 50
dumbbell row: 3 sets of 10 x 65 (I always sweat heavily during this one)
Hammer row: 2 sets of 10 x 210
pull downs: 3 sets of 10 x 160
curls: 3 sets of 10 x 65 (EZ curl bar; 2 10 pound plates on each side)
Oh yes, I’ve started doing light squats:
5 x 45, 5 x 65, 5 x 75 (no, I am not joking; those are my actual weights, but I am training myself to go deep).

Reason: I want to start squats this summer; my legs are too weak for me to run faster.

Posts
How much harm does creationism cause? Sure, it is bogus but it appears to me that those who don’t believe creationism believe all sorts of other woo-woo; I am beginning to think that most people just aren’t going to understand science anyway.

I read something to that effect in Kenneth Miller’s book Only a Theory. Another research professor said that it might not be worth it to expend too much energy in fighting creationism in the deep south as that is not where we get most of our scientists.

What started me thinking about this: one was this post by Jerry Coyne; he had given some lectures in North Carolina and some had reacted negatively. (Yes, there is a strong research triangle there; I definitely would defend science teaching in that area.)

Then there is this video from a Dayton, Tennessee biology class room: (yes, THAT Dayton, Tennessee; the place of the Scope “Monkey” Trial):

Sure I wouldn’t want MY kid in that classroom with that “biology teacher” (who in the heck graduated him? Bryan College? Liberty? Bob Jones?) but these aren’t my kids.

Seeing stuff like this makes me think that we really made a mistake fighting the Civil War; had we just let the Southern States go we would be a much stronger country, and they’d be happier. We could have our liberal democracy and they could have their theocracy that they crave.

NOTE: yes, I know that there are two big issues. There is the legal issue: the “no establishment” clause forbids the government promoting religion in the class room; this is why creationism is illegal.

The other issue is the issue of “good science teaching”: creationism/intelligent design is regarded as a long-ago-debunked crackpot idea, on a par with homeopathy and astrology. If you don’t believe me, surf to the websites of the best science museums in the nation, or to any biology department in any non-sectarian university. Start with the big research universities in your state; see for yourself what is being researched and taught.