It's a "Math Flavored" Test

That's what PWNtheSAT told me after I screamed on the top of my lungs for the umpteenth time because I'd fallen again for some deception in the "Math Section" that wasn't even "math."

"Does that make you mad?" he asked.

"YES," I screamed.

"Good, then don't let them do that to you again."

And then he told me to think of the Math Section like shrimp flavored Ramen Noodles: there could be some shrimp in there, but really it's a lot of other "stuff." "That doesn't mean it's any less hard," he clarified, "Just different."

Not sure if those were the words that inspired my unplanned, last second, impulsive shift in strategy -- but I took SAT #5 in 2011, all in first-serves. I was aggressive. There was not one iota of perseveration in my game that day.

Last Saturday morning, at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, NY -- I discovered my inner "don't mess with me" self.

No idea what this means for my score, and thank god this doesn't really count for anything. I am very curious though, as to how this "backwards-Debbie" plan worked out, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I woke up the next day just a little bit scared.

Here's what I know for sure:

I had a blast and enjoyed every second of the experience. I distinctly remember thinking as I colored in those first bubbles with that deliciously soft and perfectly sharpened #2 pencil, "This feels soooooo good."

I will also say this: Every day I'm less sure about what, exactly, the SAT is testing. More and more it feels like a test of how not to be messed with -- especially the math (and least of all the writing).

And if that be the case (and I do believe that be the case), I'm going to highly recommend a book that I've highly recommended before: PWN the SAT Math Guide.

From the introduction:

"The SAT is not a math test........it's full of booby-traps, misleading diagrams, and intentionally difficult phrasing. Even questions that look a lot like straightforward algebra questions are put there not to see if you can do the algebra, but to see if you can spot the shortcut that lets you avoid the algebra.

.....Taking the SAT like you'd take a regular math test is like bringing a knife to a gun fight......

.....The SAT is a test, above all, of how good you are at taking the SAT......

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

Cross-posted on Perfect Score Project

death by calculator

So on Saturday I took the SAT, all 4 hours of it: another supposedly fun thing I'll never do again!

Over on College Confidential there are, currently, 65 pages of my fellow test-takers debriefing each other re: the Critical Reading passages.

How is management different from handling? jpegslayer wants to know. I don't recall management being a choice on the Ella Baker passage,^* but I do recall, dimly, selecting handling.

Also, there's a protracted debate over vehement vs caustic and emphatic vs disparaging. I have no memory of vehement vs caustic appearing anywhere on the test (apparently I was in a trance for parts of it), and I chose emphatic over disparaging.

People thought the Fleece passage was HARRRRDD (Akil found it here), which it was. Hard and odd...pretty much hard because it was odd. Odd and truncated, which made the thing odder still.

Question: was Fleece urbane or eccentric?

Answer: he was eccentric. I say he was paranoid, too, but the College Board and I may not see eye to eye on that one.

As to the rest of the test, C. and I both had math calamities, sad to say. C. choked on the one hard section of the three: got stuck on an early problem, lost track of time, and ran out the clock without even having read 5 of the problems, let alone tried to answer them. Classic, and so frustrating.

My own difficulties were self-inflicted.

I started down the path to ruin on Tuesday, when Debbie told me about the math frac function on the TI-83: PWN says you have to have it! Well, if PWN says you have to have it, then you have to have it because PWN knows everything about the SAT. (Really. He does.)

Trouble was: I didn't have it. A TI-83, that is. I have a lowly TI-36 I've been using for years and know so well I can practically touch-type the thing.

So I called Ed at NYU and asked him to pick me up a TI-83 on the way home. He said he would, but for some reason or other he didn't, which meant one less day to get up to speed on the TI-83 assuming he managed to get one on Wednesday.

He did, but it was sealed inside one of those monster pressure-sealed jobs that are impossible to open, and I didn't get around to dealing with it 'til the next night - Thursday - when the plastic proved so tough I actually cut myself with the scissors I was trying to jam through the packaging. In hindsight, that was a sign.

By the time the TI-83 was finally liberated from its packing and I had staunched the bleeding, it was 8:30 or so, and I was in no mood. At which point it emerged that C. didn't know anything about the math frac button(s) and couldn't show me how to use them.....so Debbie stopped over on the way home from her daughter's back to school night and spent 10 minutes explaining the thing.

That left one day - Friday - to practice.

In my defense, I did try reminding myself that one day of practice on a calculator with a different keyboard, different functions, and different locations for the same old functions (different notations, too) was not going to overwrite 5 years of practice with my trusty TI-83: I know this! I am a science writer, for god's sake! I write stuff about the brain! Stuff about the brain and learning and memory!

But I just kept thinking: math frac. Got to, got to, got to have math frac.

Oh, man.

Long story short, I got to the test, took the first math section, the hardest of the three (well, four in my case since my experimental section was also math) and stumbled and tripped over one problem after another when I couldn't remember where the Enter key was (or even that there was an Enter key), or which side the Power key was on, or how you do square roots on the TI-83 (hit the 2nd key; square root key is on the left, not the right) or exponents (use parentheses), etc., etc., etc. And since working memory can hold only 3 or 4 things at a time, plus or minus two, and "where's the Enter button?" counts as one (at least), I'd have to forget some key part of the problem I was trying to solve in order to clear enough mental space to remember how to work the calculator, so then I'd have to re-read the problem to re-remember whatever I was remembering before I had to forget that to remember the calculator, and then when I was done re-reading and re-remembering the problem, I might discover I had now re-forgotten how to work the damn calculator, which meant I would have to re-forget the problem to clear space to re-re-remember the workings of the TI-83 ----- aaaaaauuuugggh! Stuck in an infinite forgetting and remembering loop! Help! Help!

I switched back to my old calculator for the other three sections, and things went much better.

Later, hearing the story, Ed said, "I was afraid of that."

^* The Ella Baker passage made my eyes bleed.

Wu on Common Core State Mathematics Standards

Phoenix Rising

Opening:

Many sets of state and national mathematics standards have come and gone in the past two decades. The Common Core State Mathematics Standards (CCSMS), which were released in June of 2010, have been adopted by almost all states and will be phased in across the nation in 2014. Will this be another forgettable standards document like the overwhelming majority of the others?

Perhaps. But unlike the others, it will be a travesty if this one is forgotten. The main difference between these standards and most of the others is that the CCSMS are mathematically very sound overall. They could serve -- at long last-- as the foundation for creating proper school mathematics textbooks and dramatically better teacher preparation.

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2011/Wu.pdf

Wash U professor on Reed Hastings' really bad idea

As a physicist, educator and father of five, I can say that Messrs. Duncan and Hastings do not understand education or the role of computer and Internet technology in it. A well-thought-out textbook or a live classroom demonstration does a much better job of conveying understanding than anything that can be done with computer or Internet technology.

Anyone who has watched students using these technologies will recognize that they are distractions from the hard work of education.

Jonathan Katz
Professor of Physics
Washington University
St. Louis

More technology isn't the answer to our educational needs
WSJ | September 24, 2011

Speaking of well-thought-out textbooks, one of the most oppressive aspects of "technology" in the schools is the replacement of textbooks by packets, which are fantastically difficult to keep track of, not just for the student but for the teacher, too. I speak as a creator of packets: I'm driving myself crazy.

It wasn't always thus. Back in the day, teachers ran off those damp, great-smelling, purple-print mimeographs. But mimeos were a limited production; teacher packeting didn't take off until the advent of the Xerox machine. I predict things are only going to get worse as people start buying personal scanners.

Add Google to photocopiers and scanners and you get all-packets-all-the-time. What a mess. Yet another rolling calamity on the horizon!

I tutor a boy in a neighboring town who doesn't appear to have a math textbook at all, and not because the school is using Terc. Last I heard, the school is using Terc, but the only book the teachers are actually using (it appears) is a test prep book from one of the test prep book companies. The teachers Xerox one-page review lessons out of the test prep book for the kids to collect in their binders. The paper-punch holes last a couple of weeks, then the sheets tear loose and slip out of the binder and down to the bottom of the backpack, where they live until the summer, when Mom goes through the crumpled wads of paper and tosses it all out.

Or, alternatively, when Mom goes through the crumpled wads of paper and discovers her child has failed two out of six units in math this year. On fractions! tofix to revise to fix torevise

Speaking of worksheets, does anyone know where to get a complete set of Prentice-Hall's fantastic grammar worksheets? (pdf file)

and see:
the founder, chair, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
Larry Summers has a really bad idea
Wash U professor on Reed Hastings' really bad idea

David Brooks has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea, part 2
David Brooks has a really good idea

why students have to memorize things
extremely fast learning & extended working memory

'you can't hide from math and statistics and be a good marketer'

In the growing field of data analytics, finding "qualified candidates has proven difficult" for employers.

Is data analytics the new 'plastics'?

A different view of first grade Readiness

A recent post at Free Range Kids led me to this post,
which has a checklist for testing if your child is ready for first grade.

1. Will your child be six years, six months or older when he begins first grade and starts receiving reading instruction?

2. Does your child have two to five permanent or second teeth?

3. Can you child tell, in such a way that his speech is understood by a school crossing guard or policeman, where he lives?

4. Can he draw and color and stay within the lines of the design being colored?

5. Can he stand on one foot with eyes closed for five to ten seconds?

6. Can he ride a small two-wheeled bicycle without helper wheels?

7. Can he tell left hand from right?

8. Can he travel alone in the neighborhood (four to eight blocks) to store, school, playground, or to a friend's home?

9. Can he be away from you all day without being upset?

10. Can he repeat an eight- to ten-word sentence, if you say it once, as "The boy ran all the way home from the store"?

11. Can he count eight to ten pennies correctly?

12. Does your child try to write or copy letters or numbers?

What jumped out at me from it was the insanity in both directions: 1) academic skills that now indicate readiness for preschool, or at latest, kindergarten, were 30 years ago indications of being ready for first grade, and 2) life skills that now indicate readiness for middle school were indications 30 years ago that a child was ready for first grade.

We're pretty conscious that we've pushed the academics far far earlier on our kids, because by and large, we now value academics as the only path to successful adulthood (whether true or not, who is going to take the risk it's true and not prepare their children accordingly?), but by denying them independence, we're creating perpetual adolescents in the process who won't be successful at adulthood.

What child today would be expected to handle walking or biking 4-8 blocks at the age of 6 or 7? What parent would allow their child to do so? What would happen to that parent? How would a parent even begin to teach their child that autonomy these days?

The list makes clear the prior division of labor: the home was where socialization and citizenship was taught, and school was where the 3 Rs were taught. The expectation was that the family did their job, and the school would do theirs.

It may be causal that the schools now fail because the family failed. It may be a feedback system where the family fails because the schools fail. But we should ask ourselves if we really think the State can succeed where the family has failed, and if so, what it will do to what few functioning families remain. Because the State has no interest in your child having enough autonomy to ride his bike a mile from home at the age of 7--in fact, the State's interests are counter to that proposition.

The founder, chairman, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea

In last week's Wall Street Journal: A Digital Promise to Our Nation's Children.

Annotated.

Student achievement and educational attainment have stagnated in the U.S., and a host of our leading economic competitors are now out-educating us. [now?]

[snip]

Imagine, though, an online high-school physics course that uses videogame graphics power to teach atomic interactions, or a second-grade online math curriculum that automatically adapts to individual students' levels of knowledge.

[snip]

At its full potential, technology could personalize and accelerate instruction for students of all educational levels. [or not]

[snip]

Other countries are far ahead of us in creating 21st-century classrooms. South Korea, which has the highest college attainment rate in the world, will phase out textbooks and replace them with digital products by 2015 [note: products, not books]. Even Uruguay, a small country not known for leadership in technology, provides a computer for every student.

It is no secret that advances in educational technology have been hailed as breakthroughs in the past, only to disappoint. [true] Too often, the market for educational technology has been inefficient and fragmented. The nation's 14,000 school districts, more than a few of which have byzantine procurement systems, have been inefficient consumers and have failed to drive consistent demand. [we have to buy more technology?]

[snip]

To help remedy those gaps, the Department of Education is launching a unique public-private public-vendor partnership called Digital Promise.

Digital Promise is a bipartisan initiative that will be sustained primarily by the private sector [which will be sustained by a more efficient, less fragmented market and consistent demand] ... Federal seed money will fund the program's start-up, but it will be overseen by a board that includes business executives vendors—such as John Morgridge, the chairman emeritus of Cisco, and Irwin Jacobs, co-founder of Qualcomm—who will work with researchers, educators and other private-sector leaders vendors.

Digital Promise's aim is ambitious: to advance breakthrough technologies that transform teaching and learning in and out of the classroom, while creating a business environment that rewards innovation and entrepreneurship [for vendors].

Digital Promise can show leadership in areas such as helping build a more efficient market for [vendors of] education technology.


Arne Duncan and Reed Hastings
September 19, 2011 - WSJ
Mr. Duncan is the U.S. secretary of education. Mr. Hastings is the founder, chairman and CEO of Netflix and a former president of the California Board of Education.

One word: dismal.

and see:
speaking of technology and stagnant scores
oh brave new world!
codswallop, part 2
the founder, chair, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
Larry Summers has a really bad idea
Wash U professor on Reed Hastings' really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea
David Brooks has a really bad idea, part 2
David Brooks has a really good idea

E.D. Hirsch explains cause of decline in SAT scores is content-light instruction

Average SAT scores fell this year, with critical reading results declining to the lowest on record.  E.D. Hirsch writes that the main cause is a move away from content-rich instruction in the elementary grades.

The decline has led some commentators to embrace demographic determinism — the idea that the verbal scores of disadvantaged students will not significantly rise until we overcome poverty. But that explanation does not account for the huge drop in verbal scores across socioeconomic groups in the 1970s.

The most credible analyses have shown that the chief causes were not demographics or TV watching, but vast curricular changes, especially in the critical early grades. In the decades before the Great Verbal Decline, a content-rich elementary school experience evolved into a content-light, skills-based, test-centered approach.

Daniel Willingham on this subject:

More: How Knowledge Helps - It Speeds and Strengthens Reading Comprehension, Learning—and Thinking (Cross-posted at Cost of College)

In a van down by the river

I had to go to the high school with my son last night for a mandatory program for everyone involved with athletics and extracurricular activities. A parent had to attend with a student. It was on "chemical health" and it included a motivational speaker - a basketball coach. At the end, everyone had to sign a "contract". I assumed that the message was going to be more sophisticated than when I had to watch "Refer Madness" in 1969. Only a little. All I could think of was Chris Farley and the SNL skit. A large part of the talk was to emphasize Determination, Respect, Enthusiasm, Attitude, Motivation, and S for something. All of that is fine, but he made a big pitch for how college is now mandatory for success. He gave the usual statistics, except for the ones which show increased college loan defaults because the degree hasn't helped. He made it seem that not going to college was two steps away from living in a van down by the river.

the Oxford comma

For years I have resisted dropping the final comma in a series.

E.g.: lions, tigers, and bears versus lions, tigers and bears

If there are three things, I use two commas. I don't know why.

Now I do.

AWOL!

Sorry to be -- fall now involves three treks to the Open and the start of my composition class, and I'm just beginning to get my bearings.

I am in the process of officially transferring my allegiance from Roger Federer to Novak Djokovic.

Speaking of Novak Djokovic, I think I need a pressurized egg.

Under activist investor pressure, McGraw-Hill to split into two listed companies

The breakup of the mini-conglomerate follows public demands starting in July from the Ontario Teacher's Pension Fund and hedge fund Jana Partners LLC for a broad reorganization. The activists suggested breaking up the company into more than two pieces to highlight the value of its individual equities, commodities and financial analytics units.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/09/13/us-mcgrawhill-idUSTRE78B1Y620110913

These activist investors comprise about a 15% (so far) stake in the company. McGraw-Hill, in case you didn't know, is a major publisher of "integrated math" and "Everyday Math" books.

Activist investing is an interesting strategy in educational reform; in this case it appears to be the unlikely alliance of teachers (with educational interests) and a hedge fund (with a financial interest). Even with a small, but significant stake, you can nucleate other shareholders around you and force management votes and proxy battles, and cause massive headaches for management, who will often have a large risk of being voted out.

Even if voting out does not occur, management will often make such concessions to activists as reform of their company policies and educational products, or even various monetary "greenmails"; activists can then use this money to multiply their leverage against other targeted companies.

Time Flies

Hey, remember this kid?

He's starting Singapore Math on Monday.

Free access to expanded version of U.S. News college rankings

Free access is courtesy of Google.  Hurry, because this offer expires  Thursday, September 15!

Today, U.S. News and World Report released their 28th annual ranking of the top higher-education institutions across the nation. While this list of schools represents traditions of academic excellence that span centuries, these institutions also clearly recognize the importance (and value) of modern technology in academia. Google has just announced that 61 of this year’s top 100 universities have chosen Google Apps for Education to improve communication and collaboration on campus.
Free Access To Rankings From Google
To show their appreciation to these schools, and to help students better explore and evaluate their college options, Google is providing a year’s worth of free access to the U.S. News complete rankings for anyone who registers before Friday, September 16. Just sign up and you’re all set.

(Cross posted at Cost of College)

9/11

On 9/11, Jimmy's teacher called and told me to come pick him up. The high school was in chaos, she said; they'd had word that a former member of the staff had died in one of the planes, and teachers and kids were crying. Jimmy, then 14, was big and difficult and had attended the school for just 5 days, the first severely autistic student ever to enroll. His transition was going badly, and there was now no chance they would be making headway on that front today. 

When I got there, the teacher told me her babysitter had called: there'd been an attack on Fort Smith, up near her house. I'd never heard of Fort Smith, and I had no idea where it was, close or far. "Pick up all your kids," the teacher said. So I did.

Christopher was in the lunch room when his name was announced along with the name of our neighbor's son, Christopher's friend. There was a mix-up about who the other boy's teacher was, so Christopher told the grownups the right teacher's name, and then he was sent out to me.

I have no memory of greeting him that day. Where were we? In the school lobby? On the steps out front? Those moments are gone. My memories of 9/11 are like the movie Inception, where one of the signs the characters are dreaming is that they don't know how they got wherever it is they are now. That's 9/11 for me. In one memory I'm standing in front of the high school talking to Jimmy's teacher; in the next I'm walking with Christopher on the sidewalk at the far end of the school parking lot, the end close to my friend K's house, trying to think how to tell him about the airplanes hitting the towers and the towers falling down and realizing I should have come up with a plan about how to do this before I got here. Instead, I'm winging it.

In the next memory, I can hear myself saying, "Something bad happened," and after that there's another jump cut, and now Christopher is asking me anxiously what the country can do. I don't have a plan for handling this part of the conversation, either, so Christopher, sensing he's on his own, is trying to figure it out for himself.

We go back and forth a little bit about the things America could do, nothing I say providing the slightest reassurance or comfort, until finally he asks: "Do they have any really tall buildings?" Meaning: Do they have any really tall buildings we can knock down? His little face, ringed with curls, is tense and worried, but his voice is hopeful. He is seven, he has been in second grade for five days, and if we have lost two buildings, then it is right for them to lose two buildings, too. But the buildings have to be really tall.

"No," I say, "they don't," and he looks stricken. I am stricken, too. Something bad has happened.

Later on, that day or another day, Christopher worries that something bad will happen to the Statue of Liberty, too. What if the terrorists crash an airplane into the Statue?

I wonder what was my answer. Something with too many words, I'm sure. They probably won't try to hurt the Statue, but even if they do try the army is watching, and they won't let any planes crash into the Statue, etc., etc. My point being: the Statue is safe. Also, we are safe.

But Christopher isn't listening. He has come up with his own answer.

"If the terrorists crash into the Statue of Liberty," he says, "it will be OK. The French are so nice, they will give us another one."

It is the right answer, and he doesn't worry about the Statue again.

The meaning of an expression?

I have a question about an Integrated Algebra homework assignment:

In 3-10, state the meaning of each expression in part a and in part b, and simplify the expression in each part.

The first two problems:

3.  a.  20 + (6+1)    b.  20 + 6 + 1

4.  a.  18 - (4 + 3)   b.  18 - 4 + 3 

What does "state the meaning" mean?  I suspect it means to write the equation in words, as explained in this Yahoo Answers response offered by a teacher.

Also, I noticed that every homework exercise in the textbook has a "Writing About Mathematics" section.  I wonder if the teacher will correct all the writing assignments.

Lots of writing ahead.

The book is Amsco's Integrated Algebra for New York State.

no change in ACT math scores

speaking of rigged...

change in SAT math scores:

Between 1996 and 2005, the average [SAT] mathematics score increased for all racial/ethnic groups. During this time, the score for Asian/Pacific Islander students increased by 22 points, from 558 to 580. Mathematics scores for White, Puerto Rican, and American Indian/Alaska Native students increased between 12 and 16 points, while Black, Mexican American, and Other Hispanic/Latino students experienced smaller increases, between 3 and 9 points. (p. 77)

no change in ACT math scores:

Unlike SAT mathematics scores, ACT mathematics scores have not increased over time. (p. 81)

geography

The majority of students who take the ACT live in the Midwest, Rocky Mountains, Plains, and southern regions of the country (ACT 2005a). The SAT is more prevalent on the east and west coasts and in the Northeast (SAT 2005a).
p. 76
Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities
National Center for Education Statistics
September 2007

Should American parents have their kids take the ACT?

rigged

Someone I know spoke last night to an admissions person at a highly selective college.

The admissions person said that highly selective colleges here in the U.S. have been admitting numerous students from China because their resumes are so strong. Spectacular scores, spectacular grades.

Then, when the students arrive at the highly selective colleges, their professors discover that they aren't prepared and can't do the work.

What these colleges are seeing, the admissions counselor said, is "systematic cheating." Those were his words.

Another thing: these highly selective colleges have been led to believe that the Chinese government is paying full fare. But no. The students have a bit of money from the Chinese government, but nothing close to what they need, and their parents can't afford to make up the difference.

So there they are, in America, enrolled in the most selective colleges in this country. They can't do the work, and they can't pay the tuition.
  
update: no change in ACT math scores

Functions

I recently added some links for problems to my previous two posts on algebra review and rational roots. Today I'd like to post about functions.

The appropriateness of when to introduce the function concept varies depending on the views of the individual instructor and the student population one is working with. I value the importance of the function concept and notation, but feel that teaching the function notation and the “vertical line test” without follow-up material relating to curve analysis (max, min etc.), composition and inverse, and transformation of functions is of questionable value particularly in the case of a gen. ed. math course that is to be taken by a broad range of students.

I've found that it is possible to discuss many topics related to the behavior of polynomial, rational, exponential and logarithmic functions without the additional two or three days of material required to introduce the function notation to a gen. ed. student population.

Given time, I like to cover functions by introducing the basic notation, followed by curve analysis in which the concepts of increasing and decreasing behavior, as well as maximum and minimum values are discussed. I then like to address function composition and inverse, the transformation topics (which can be somewhat tricky for students) and finish with a unit on the application of functions to a range of optimization problems common in many Calculus courses. I typically have the students use the TI 83/84 calculators to find the maximum and minimum values that will be found algebraically in a Calculus course.

So, I typically spend four to five weeks covering

1) notation

2) increasing, decreasing, max, min

3) composition, inverse

4) transformations

5) applications/modeling

More after the jump...

Common Core math

Apparently, no one is willing to defend the Common Core math standards for Education Next.

help desk - fables and fairy tales

I'm teaching a freshman composition course based on fables, folk tales, fairy tales, and creation myths, and I need some essays or passages for students to read and possibly use for text reconstruction exercises.

Any ideas?

I've amassed a collection of academic papers, but they won't work for my class.

Here's the kind of thing I'm thinking of:

Why did Aesop use animals instead of humans in fables?

Practicing Medicine Can be Grimm Work by Valerie Gribben

9/11

in the Wall Street Journal this morning:

Mr. Schwartz, within a few days of the attacks, was on a train with his family to Florida, where they owned a vacation home. Within a year, they had given up their Manhattan apartment. They had a feeling "possibly that this is the wrong place to be right now with an infant," he said.

His son Calder is 10 now, in the fifth grade in Tampa. The boy has visited New York often, and loves it.

"I said, 'When you go to college, go to college in New York,'" said Mr. Schwartz. "He said, 'So you can come back with me.' "
Refugees From the City Reflect Anew on Their Decision

the rules

from h2g2

Tennis crowds are extremely close to the action so the slightest movement can be off-putting. Of course there will be times you will have to move - too much hospitality is going to play havoc with your bladder control - but do it when it's allowed. For instance, people can move from their seats when the players are changing after every two games, one service game for each player or double partnership. The stewards will be stopping you from returning to your seat once the players are ready to resume play, but before they stop it's up to you to remain in your seat. When the time does come and the second game is over, move swiftly and directly to your nearest exit (they will link up to where you actually want to get eventually), as you only have 90 seconds before play has to resume.

While you are in your seat try not to get too comfortable, especially if you're a snorer and have been queuing or travelling a long time to get in. There's nothing worse than being asked from the umpire's chair to wake up to stop putting the players off.
Etiquette for Tennis Spectators

I'm talking to you, people of Arthur Ashe.

Oh, man.

We spent yesterday at the Open, which in our house means summer is officially over. I love the Open; we've gone every year since we moved here 13 years ago, and it's just about the only New York ritual we have. But it's getting less and less fun. The upper deck is pretty much bedlam these days. Yesterday we had seats on the aisle and next to the stairwell, and Ed and I and an exasperated lady from France appeared to be the only people present who had heard that you're not supposed to traipse in and out of the stadium during play. The lady from France was a stalwart; she took everyone to task and held people at bay.

But they just kept coming, and going.

errrgh

Routine Builder

A fantastic app: Routine Builder.

I am now watering my plants on schedule, once a week, instead of whenever I remember it, which is about once a month, if I'm lucky.

If my plants are lucky, I should say.

I've just this minute added "Eat An apple" to the daily queue.

Steve H on vocational education

I asked about education and jobs for students who like math but aren't going to major in math, by which I probably mean students who 'like numbers' or 'like arithmetic'...(I don't want to be more specific than that in a post.)

Here is Steve H:

Actually, the vocational path might be best for students who are not so great in math, but want a degree and a technical education. You might get math courses that are more appropriate for your needs.

See New England Institute of Technology. (www.neit.edu) It's all about getting an associate or Bachelor's of Science degree. It it very well regarded, but not cheap. They are very focused on specific careers. You can get the degree piece of paper AND be trained for a specific career.

Here are some of the careers they list.

Clinical Medical Assistant
Surgical Tech
Medical Engineering Tech
Interior Design
Physical Therapy Assistant
Construction Management
Multimedia and Web Design
Video and Radio Production
Digital Recording Arts Tech
Automotive High Performance
Automotive Tech
Auto Collision Repair
Electronics Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Game Development & Simulation Programming

I found the course catalog and can find math prerequisites for courses, but I haven't found a list of math courses for each degree. I did find that the Electronics Engineering Bachelor's Degree requires a course called Calculus II.

"The Bachelor of Science Degree in Electronics Engineering Technology is accredited by the Technology Accreditation Commission of ABET,..."

I don't know whether businesses worry about who accredited your degree. Those who know about the school would never compare this engineering degree with one from the state's university, but will that difference matter in 10 years in an area that doesn't know about the school?

and:

I should have asked what you mean by "like math"? Lots of jobs might need people who can put together spreadsheets and not have a fit with empirical equations. That is probably the best venue for these people. You probably won't find a posted job that asks for a spreadsheet guru, but you might be able have a job where you can evolve into that person.

There is also computer-aided design that is in demand by architects and engineering firms. If you are really good at 3D geometric modeling (e.g SolidWorks or Rhino), you will most likely always be in demand. I don't know if you would call that math.

In general, I would make a distinction between those who want to do math and those who want a job which will take advantage of their ability to handle math-like attention to sequence and details. I've met a number of people without degrees who have an amazing ability to handle technical details, some of which involves math.

help desk - jobs

I have a question.

What kinds of math-related jobs exist for students who like math but aren't going to be math majors in college?

What kinds of math-related jobs are taught in vocational schools? (I'm thinking of the schools Steve H has mentioned.)

Speaking of technology and stagnant scores

from 1997:

In 1922 Thomas Edison predicted that "the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and ... in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks." Twenty-three years later, in 1945, William Levenson, the director of the Cleveland public schools' radio station, claimed that "the time may come when a portable radio receiver will be as common in the classroom as is the blackboard." Forty years after that the noted psychologist B. F. Skinner, referring to the first days of his "teaching machines," in the late 1950s and early 1960s, wrote, "I was soon saying that, with the help of teaching machines and programmed instruction, students could learn twice as much in the same time and with the same effort as in a standard classroom." Ten years after Skinner's recollections were published, President Bill Clinton campaigned for "a bridge to the twenty-first century ... where computers are as much a part of the classroom as blackboards." Clinton was not alone in his enthusiasm for a program estimated to cost somewhere between $40 billion and $100 billion over the next five years. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, talking about computers to the Republican National Committee early this year, said, "We could do so much to make education available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, that people could literally have a whole different attitude toward learning."
The Computer Delusion
by Todd Oppenheimer
J U L Y 1 9 9 7

the founder, chairman, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
speaking of technology and stagnant scores
oh brave new world!
codswallop, part 2

Oh brave new world!

photo: Jim Wilson/The New York Time

CHANDLER, Ariz. — Amy Furman, a seventh-grade English teacher here, roams among 31 students sitting at their desks or in clumps on the floor. They’re studying Shakespeare’s “As You Like It” — but not in any traditional way.

In this technology-centric classroom, students are bent over laptops, some blogging or building Facebook pages from the perspective of Shakespeare’s characters. One student compiles a song list from the Internet, picking a tune by the rapper Kanye West to express the emotions of Shakespeare’s lovelorn Silvius.

The class, and the Kyrene School District as a whole, offer what some see as a utopian vision of education’s future. Classrooms are decked out with laptops, big interactive screens and software that drills students on every basic subject. Under a ballot initiative approved in 2005, the district has invested roughly $33 million in such technologies.

The digital push here aims to go far beyond gadgets to transform the very nature of the classroom, turning the teacher into a guide instead of a lecturer, wandering among students who learn at their own pace on Internet-connected devices.

“This is such a dynamic class,” Ms. Furman says of her 21st-century classroom. “I really hope it works.”

Hope and enthusiasm are soaring here. But not test scores.

Since 2005, scores in reading and math have stagnated in Kyrene, even as statewide scores have risen.
In Classroom of Future, Stagnant Scores
By MATT RICHTEL
Published: September 3, 2011

Spend first, find out the stuff you bought doesn't work later!

My district, one year after the crash (or was it two? time flies--) bought SmartBoards for every single classroom in the district still remaining SmartBoard-free after the first go-round of SmartBoard acquisition.

The reason?

SmartBoard equity.

Seriously. Those were the actual words our administrators and then-school board members used. SmartBoard equity.

There were kids in classrooms with SmartBoards, and there were other kids in other classrooms without SmartBoards. Not fair!

Hence: SmartBoard equity. Taxpayers had to buy SmartBoards for all the classrooms so all the kids could have SmartBoards all the time.

We've got high school kids who can't do long division (I tutored one such student this summer), but no worries. Our district has achieved SmartBoard equity, and that's what counts.


addendum

I realize I've told the SmartBoard equity story before.

I will probably tell it again, because I can't get over it. Where tales of SmartBoard equity are concerned, once is not enough.


High-Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian


Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom

the founder, chairman, and CEO of Netflix has a really bad idea
speaking of technology and stagnant scores
oh brave new world!
codswallop, part 2

Reading and the SAT

I'm a glutton when it comes to books. I finish most within a day or two. I read in gigantic eye gulps.

I like "E," "P," and "A" (audio) editions -- but if I have my druthers, I choose "P" (print -- especially if there's nice paper involved).

I'm a cocktail party reader -- not the proofreading type -- and I am great at skimming, notating, highlighting, connecting, marinating, and synthesizing. I am decidedly not perspicacious.

These skills have served me well....in real life...

On the SAT, they are a liability.

I've decided that the SAT is, for all intents and purposes, a reading test.

My mistakes often come down to one word missed, transposed, or possibly just eye-gulped down the wrong hatch without even realizing that I missed something. The questions are often dressed up in someone else's outfit (especially the math) -- so you must summon every iota of punctiliousness* you have at your disposal.

As Catherine and I were saying the other night, the future copy editors of the world will probably have an easier time with this test, than the mathematicians.

*I've stumbled across this word twice in two days on the SAT.

Illustrations by Jennifer Orkin Lewis

Cross-posted on Perfect Score Project

Glen on legalistic reading and Venn diagram problems

In an earlier post, I asked why the sentence "Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish" seems, to me, an acceptable -- and typical -- way of saying: "Thirty students take geometry, and another set of 25 students take Spanish."

I think Glen has explains it:

Out of context, there is an implicit contrast: "Two students do X, and three students do Y" is a common sentence pattern in English, which implies that you are talking about five students and how they divide up. If X and Y aren't obviously alternatives, this form implies that they are. "Two students take Spanish and three take French" would be natural English if talking about five students. If talking about four students, it would be odd. "Two students take Chinese, and three students are hispanic" might prompt an exasperated, "What, hispanic students can't take Chinese?", because it does seem to contrast X, taking Chinese, with Y, being hispanic.

If you didn't mean to contrast one group of students from another, you would probably say it differently. For example, "The geometry class has 30 students, the Spanish class has 25, and some students could be in both classes."

But in the context of a math problem, all of that changes. Math problems written in natural language still require you to make disambiguating assumptions--it is still natural language, after all--but they want to you put more weight on what is literally said and less on other factors ("bayesian priors").

In such a context, you are trained to interpret "Two students do X, and three students do Y," without assuming two disjoint groups. You learn to be literal and legalistic in a math problem context, which is a context-based re-weighting of the factors involved in interpretation of language.

I'm glad Glen has used the term "legalistic": that's exactly what I was thinking.

I'm not a legal reader by any means, but when I do read legal documents -- or, more to the point, when I read a legally vetted explanation of a state of affairs to which I object -- I instantly switch to a literal-minded, 'legalistic' mode. I take it as a given that legally vetted statements count on readers to make inferences that aren't in fact true, and to be mollified by those inferences to boot.

In short, legally vetted public relations statements, which is what I'm talking about, practice a particular form of lying by omission, which is lying via exploitation of the conventions of natural language. (I'll have to be on the look-out for examples...)


Further:

I have an email from Katharine asking whether I'm thinking of the Gricean maxims (pdf file). I hadn't been, because I'd never heard of the Gricean maxims, but I think she's right.

question for Katharine

I've been meaning to post something about the wording of Venn diagram problems for a while now.^*

e.g.:

Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish.

I have finally begun to divine fairy rapidly that what this sentence really means is: 

Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish. Of those students, some may take both geometry and Spanish. Then again, maybe not.

I divine it, but I don't like it. I would never, ever write the first sentence if what I meant was the second sentence(s). (So no one's going to hire me to write Venn diagram problems any time soon, but never mind.)

I've called this post "question for Katharine" because I'm pretty sure that, as a writer, I'm following an implicit rule I know but can't name.

I might write the first sentence if I meant:

Thirty students took geometry, and another 25 students took Spanish.

Actually, I probably would write the more explicit two-sentence passage because I specialize in spelling things out. But I wouldn't think it was wrong if someone else wrote Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish when what they meant was Thirty students take geometry, and another 25 students take Spanish.

But I perceive Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish as an incorrect way to express Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish. Of those students, some may take both geometry and Spanish. Then again, maybe not.

In short, according to my non-conscious rulebook: 

Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish ≅
Thirty students took geometry, and another 25 students took Spanish.

but

Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish ≠
Thirty students take geometry, and 25 students take Spanish. Of those students, some may take both geometry and Spanish. Then again, maybe not. 

Why is that?

I started to think it through the other day, but then it struck me that Katharine, who is a linguist, may already know.



^* awhile? a while? I'm going to figure that out soon.

If you want to score 800, shoot for 900

I mentioned in the comments that I'm sick today, but I was just emailing back and forth with Debbie about the SAT -- we're down to the wire here; C. takes it for the last time on October 1.

Here's what I have learned -- and I hope I'll find time to put together a proper post.

Working memory, attention, focus, executive function: all of these faculties are limited resources. Period. In that sense, your brain is exactly like a muscle: fatigue and stress lower performance. (Anxiety lowers performance, too, but for somewhat different reasons.)

If your child is shooting for a high score on the SAT, he or she needs to do two things:

1. Automate everything he or she can automate. SAT Math is supposed to be a test of problem solving, but I am now positive that the 800 scorers are not solving problems. They're getting right answers on exercises they can do 'in their sleep.' In short: overlearning.

2. If you want to score an 800, shoot for a 900. Ditto for 700: shoot for 800. Which is another way of saying number 1.

The reason to shoot for an 800 if you want a 700 is that anything that knocks out mental resources will drop your score by that much.

Now I'm going to go crawl in bed.

overlearning by WiseGeek

Smart Teachers in Stupid Schools, part 2

more from teacher Christine:

Progressive educators would like to promote a more democratic society advocating greater equity, justice, diversity and other democratic values, yet their methodologies do just the opposite, with "Fuzzy Math" and "Whole Language" causing lesser privileged students who can't afford tutoring to fall way behind. NYC has 70% of its student population in this category. Imagine how devastating to the morale and sense of self-esteem the use of poor curriculums can have on a child's psyche. These students subjected to these methods grow to believe they can't do anything; they are labeled as special needs children and become distraught that they are not mentally capable of becoming educated. Many are just pushed through the system because there is no where else for them to go. Progressivism which is trying to enforce some kind of social agenda, rather than purely impart knowledge, is causing many students to fail and teachers to become distraught and despondent.

What do teachers who refuse to follow the leader do? Many shut their doors and pull out the curriculum they know works. I know of teachers who, when whole language is being implemented by the district, will use their phonics programs undercover. Teachers will set up look-outs in the hall to see if supervisors are coming and drill students in what to do should a supervisor show up. I have had my students open their "readers" and put in the phonics books I'm using inside. "If someone comes you take the book slide it in your desk and pretend you're reading." I've instructed.

Smart Teachers in Stupid Schools

words to live by

Amy P on class projects:

nobody in the history of man has ever bought a school project kleenex box

Smart Teachers in Stupid Schools

Christine writes:

I'm sitting in yet another meeting for staff development on the common core curriculum. This meeting is for Special Ed Teachers, the Special Ed supervisor for the district is talking about "hotspots" – "And one of the "hotspots" as you know, is that our students must tell us where they are academically and how they intend to move to the next level." I raised my eyebrows and made a face in her direction. "What?" she questioned, "We're all professionals here, and do you have something to add?" "Not really" I replied, "No, I insist, you obviously have something on your mind and we'd like to hear it." "Look" I stated firmly, "I don't know many adults who can tell you where they are academically and how they expect to get to the next level, no less children, no less special needs children! Now, the kids can tell you what they like to do and what they don't like to do, but to ask them to present their academic portfolio on the spot is simply not appropriate. The professionals in the classroom must discern and administer efficient methodologies to teach the kids and get them to the next levels; this should not be a concern of the students." We're seated in a big square table; the other teachers are all within my sight. As I look around seeking support, most remain mute not daring to question the status quo, only one strong dynamic teacher nods her head feverishly in agreement and asserts "Exactly!" "Well," maintains the supervisor, "This is what is coming down the pipe all our kids have to be 'proactive learners'." "Yes, well," I quipped, "it's simply not appropriate." "'Proactive learners'" I rolled my eyes thinking, "These people love to use phrases that have snappy ideals with little meaning in the classroom."
by Christine

It's amazing how fast the jargon turns over in public education. I've been paying close attention for years, and every time I turn around a whole new...hotspot...pops up. Now the new hotspot is HOTSPOTS, for god's sake.

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that special-ed parents are not going to take kindly to the notion that their kids will now be required to proactively take charge of their own education.

two-pack

 Ralph Gardner on shopping for Irene:

[M]y wife sent me out to provision Friday morning. I stocked up on all the staples—beer, vodka, milk (which will surely spoil if we lose power for days, as some predict) ice cream (ditto), a bushel of tomatoes (I may do some canning if I get bored bailing out the basement) and, most importantly, batteries. We checked our supplies and even though we're well stocked in the C, AA and AAA varieties, we appeared to be all out of the D size, the workhorse behind many flashlights.

I returned home triumphant, every item on the shopping list my spouse had assembled bought and ready to rally for our survival. All except the batteries. It wasn't as if they didn't have any D batteries at our local hardware store. It was just that they only came in the pricey two pack. I'd had my heart set on the Armageddon size—the kind you find at Lowe's or Home Depot and come eight, 16, 32, even 64 to a box.

I wanted enough batteries to see us through anything nature threw at us; I wanted the confidence of knowing we had light through the 2012 elections if need be; I wanted enough candle power to throw a party. And at a couple of bucks a pop, I didn't see any way that was going to happen, at least not without bankrupting us.

Needless to say, Debbie was not happy when I got home. She had her hands full trying to book our daughters on one of the last trains out of the city even as Amtrak was canceling them faster than one could hit the refresh button. The last thing she needed was to worry that we'd be roaming around in the dark (the local news warning about the danger of candles, which I was looking forward to lighting all over the house in homage to the 19th century).

She accused me of being cheap on a vast and unprecedented scale. Indeed, she insinuated that I was perfectly willing to squander the safety of our family just because I couldn't get a deal on batteries, wondering whether I'd ever heard the expression "opportunity cost."

The whole thing is hilarious.

let's not and say we did

Imagine replacing the sequence of algebra, geometry and calculus with a sequence of finance, data and basic engineering.
How to Fix Our Math Education
By SOL GARFUNKEL and DAVID MUMFORD
Published: August 24, 2011

Robert Pondiscio responds.

For the most part, it appears, Joanne Jacobs' readers aren't impressed. I'm especially partial to this comment:

I’m currently teaching quantitative literacy at the community college level. The vast majority of students who take it need either this class or a basic stats class to fulfill a graduation requirement.

I have taught this class for several semesters over the past few years. My impression: Most students don’t really care for the class, despite its “relevancy.” It seems that not a few felt misled by their advisers, thinking that they were enrolling in an “easier” math class. They tend to wish that they had enrolled in the basic stats instead, because it is more straightforward as a math class.

That reminds me of the time C. said, back when he was age 10 or so: "They don't understand, Mom. When you make math more fun, it's more boring."

Taming the Math Perfectionist

(I was going to make this a comment on another post but it got so lengthy and unwieldy that here I am making it a full-on independent post. Pardons.)

Speaking of perfection/distraction/panic/etc, we've finally made a bit of headway with a problem we've been having at our house for some time: my daughter is a pretty bright girl, enough that, well, I really haven't had to teach her anything yet. (My son, I teach; my daughter, I expose and she just does it.)

The dark side to this behavior is that if she comes across something she doesn't just "get" immediately, she shuts down and panics.

[[Small digression for background:

We cruised through Singapore 1 with no hiccups, and I put the brakes on Singapore 2 when it was clear (starting multi-digit addition/subtraction) that she didn't have her single digit facts down cold enough yet. That didn't seem to bother her because while she didn't have immediate recall of the facts, she certainly "got" simple addition, it wasn't a conceptual issue for her. We spent a couple of months working through just Math-U-See Alpha which is nothing but hammering well-grouped math facts until she made significant progress. We're starting back to Singapore 2 tomorrow morning, in fact.

OK, enough digression.]]

A. happens to greatly enjoy computer games, so while we were hitting the math facts hard, I spent some time looking at various math practice sites for her. I ended up giving Math Whizz (based in the UK) a try and we had a bit of a break-through with it.

It started with an evaluation, in which I told her that it was (by definition!) going to ask her questions that she could not answer, because it had to know at what point she could no longer answer questions. She freaked out a little when it got to multiplication and asked me for help, I told her I couldn't help her because that would goof things up -- if it thought she knew multiplication well, then it would be giving her even harder multiplication that she definitely couldn't do. We talked about the fact that she was required to fail in order for it to work. She eventually got used to this idea.

Then, later when the assessment was all over, she was doing one of the lessons which was something she was "sure" she couldn't do and she panicked, asking me how she could get out of it. I came over and said:

"Well, let's take a look at this. You know if you get the wrong answer, it'll just give you slightly easier stuff next time, so no big deal."

"OK, let's just put in all zeroes!"

"Well, sure, we could do that, but let's see if we can get as far as we can with this, and then maybe it can see *how* we got it wrong and use that information to figure out what you need practice with."

So, I left her alone to Fail With Style ... and wouldn't you know she got most of the questions right. When freed to "get them all wrong" because the system needs her to fail if she doesn't understand it, the stress and panic went away, and she went on to figure 8 of 10 of them out. And she was excited by that, instead of freaking out that it wasn't 10 out of 10. (It was 3 digit subtraction with regrouping, which we sure haven't covered officially yet. And, now that I think about it, I'm a little mind boggled that she placed high enough for them to try that in the first place. Hmm.)

I've been worried about what was going to happen once we started hitting things that she just didn't "get" immediately because it was bound to happen at any point and, before, it would have been a disaster for her. I am currently ... cautiously optimistic.

English literature at Harvard

from "The Decline of the English Department" by William Chace:

Consider the English department at Harvard University. It has now agreed to remove its survey of English literature for undergraduates, replacing it and much else with four new “affinity groups”—“Arrivals,” “Poets,” “Diffusions,” and “Shakespeares.” The first would examine outside influences on English literature; the second would look at whatever poets the given instructor would select; the third would study various writings (again, picked by the given instructor) resulting from the spread of English around the globe; and the final grouping would direct attention to Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

Daniel Donoghue, the department’s director of undergraduate studies, told The Harvard Crimson last December that “our approach was to start with a completely clean slate.” And Harvard’s well-known Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt also told the Crimson that the substance of the old survey will “trickle down to students through the professors themselves who, after all, specialize in each of these areas of English literature.” But under the proposal, there would be no one book, or family of books, that every English major at Harvard would have read by the time he or she graduates. The direction to which Harvard would lead its students in this “clean slate” or “trickle down” experiment is to suspend literary history, thrusting into the hands of undergraduates the job of cobbling together intellectual coherence for themselves. Greenblatt puts it this way: students should craft their own literary “journeys.” The professors might have little idea of where those journeys might lead, or how their paths might become errant. There will be no common destination.

As Harvard goes, so often go the nation’s other colleges and universities. Those who once strove to give order to the curriculum will have learned, from Harvard, that terms like core knowledge and foundational experience only trigger acrimony, turf protection, and faculty mutinies. No one has the stomach anymore to refight the Western culture wars. Let the students find their own way to knowledge.

"The Decline of the English Department"

First the facts: while the study of English has become less popular among undergraduates, the study of business has risen to become the most popular major in the nation’s colleges and universities. With more than twice the majors of any other course of study, business has become the concentration of more than one in five American undergraduates. Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04 (the last academic year with available figures):

English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to 3.9 percent
Foreign languages and literatures: from 2.5 percent to 1.3 percent
Philosophy and religious studies: from 0.9 percent to 0.7 percent
History: from 18.5 percent to 10.7 percent
Business: from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent

In one generation, then, the numbers of those majoring in the humanities dropped from a total of 30 percent to a total of less than 16 percent; during that same generation, business majors climbed from 14 percent to 22 percent. Despite last year’s debacle on Wall Street, the humanities have not benefited; students are still wagering that business jobs will be there when the economy recovers.

What are the causes for this decline? There are several, but at the root is the failure of departments of English across the country to champion, with passion, the books they teach and to make a strong case to undergraduates that the knowledge of those books and the tradition in which they exist is a human good in and of itself. What departments have done instead is dismember the curriculum, drift away from the notion that historical chronology is important, and substitute for the books themselves a scattered array of secondary considerations (identity studies, abstruse theory, sexuality, film and popular culture). In so doing, they have distanced themselves from the young people interested in good books.
William H. Chace
American Scholar
Autumn 2009

Sunday wrap-up

funny

question

From the October 2009 SAT:

There are 100 pieces of candy in a bag, 20 percent of which are wrapped. If a total of 70 percent of the pieces of candy in the bag are chocolate, what is the smallest number of wrapped chocolate pieces that could be in the bag?

The answer is 0, right?

C. had trouble with this problem, which led me to doubt my answer.

This brings me to an issue I've been meaning to raise.

Would this problem be easier if you worded it this way:

There are 100 pieces of candy in a bag, 20 percent of which are wrapped. If a total of 70 percent of the pieces of candy in the bag are chocolate, and the other 30 percent are caramel, what is the smallest number of wrapped chocolate pieces that could be in the bag?

treemageddon, part two

Hell.

C. just looked out the window and saw that we have 4 trees leaning on their sides against the hill out back. I'm pretty sure all of them are toppled, though I can't see whether their root balls are exposed. Doesn't look good.

The ground is saturated from the rainiest August we've had in all the years they've been taking measurements, and a moderate wind was enough to push them over.

It's like the earthquake damage you see in countries without earthquake building codes. An earthquake that wouldn't faze Los Angeles levels Haiti. Right now, where trees and soil are concerned, we're Haiti.

Times reader photos

Fabulous reader photos of Irene

My favorites:
123 (of 236)
162 - “Bring it”
165 - lawn chairs in pool
177 - surfers
196 or 198 – **Hurricane Alert** Mayor Bloomberg states “everyone should have 7 new pairs of underwear"

Wall Street under water again

(title from Reformed Broker)

the Barstool on Irene

from NYC Barstool:

I haven’t even opened my second box of Pop Tarts yet and this s*** is already over. Unreal. I have 2 pounds of cold cuts and 6 unopened bottles of wine. Looks like it’s gonna be Brown Sugar Cinnamon, Boars Head and a nice Cabernet for my Sunday Funday.

Same here. Ed says in addition to the FIFTEEN CANS of tuna fish he snapped up at Stop n Shop yesterday (the last cans on the shelf!), we have a pound of ham.

Nobody around here eats ham any more, either.

Ed says, "At least I didn't buy Pop Tarts."

Now we're debating whether you can eat Pop Tarts raw. C. says Yes, you can.

still here

Electricity still on; sump pump working.

Trying to figure out what to do with the FIFTEEN CANS of tuna fish Ed bought yesterday, seeing as how nobody around here eats tuna fish any more.