There Are Lies

I'm damned if I can understand the "elasticity" of the truth that Gov. Palin killed the "bridge to nowhere" because she initially supported it.

So...if I write the wrong answer down to an algebra question, and then erase it and put the right answer, I should only get half credit, because I initially supported the wrong answer?

Sounds like stupid reasoning to me. I think you get full credit (or blame) for your final answer, whatever it is.

Carl,

Interestingly, I agree with you but the public school systems don't. I've since gotten quite good at some maths, but my B- in Algebra II is still on my high school transcript (not that anyone has asked to see it recently). In my free time when I am imagining how I would run a school I start everyone off with a F in every body of knowledge (you're tabula rasa = "you ignorant child") but that as you learn your way up the lesser grades are permanently removed.

Only your "final answer" (aka, your current position) stands on the transcript.

Oh, don't get me started on the public school. So much of your grade depends on what used to be called "effort and conduct" that it's sickening. You can get 100% on all the tough problems, but because you didn't turn in your worksheet you get a C. You didn't show all the steps! True, you got the right answer, but who cares about that, you didn't use the right method!

Feh. I think it's part of the feminization of American culture. We care too much about process, too little about achievement.

Your B- may mean that you had trouble that year, or that you didn't jump through the hoops with enough panache and insouciance to please the teacher, or even that you took the time to really think about the fundamentals -- which can make you more confused than enlightened in the beginning, but which tends to make you much stronger later on.

But you're right, only the final grade should count. Indeed, my experience is that folks whose A came hard usually know their stuff better.

Carl, there's a good reason to insist people show their work, especially in any class that requires proof by deduction.

Check out Zeldman's "Modest Proposal" (zeldman.com). From a man who doesn't know history (the fed banned cigarette advertising) or the law (they could because it was commercial speech which has no 1st amendment protection) and neither he nor his commenters realize the idea is inherently unconstitutional.

Read this and think about it. It's very simple. It might really hurt to read this Simberg since it will show what hypocrites gather here.

[Post snipped by editor for reasons explained in next comment. You'd think the morons would learn, but then, they're anonymous morons...RS]

Rand,

That last comment from Anon wasn't just off topic, it was simply plagiarized from here: http://www.redroom.com/blog/tim-wise/this-your-nation-white-privilege

I know your standard policy, but please delete that last post. Anon has gone over the line, IMO.

If someone is too lazy to choose a simple pen name, they should not be allowed linking privi's.

That's OK. I know it hurts when you have to face the truth. Since you are unable to counter the hypocrisy that is leveled at Obama, you delete the post. Nothing over the top there Brock. Just the facts that you can't face.

Fine. The GOP is slowly but surely turning into a Fascist party of old white people:

"Fascist writer Westbrook Pegler, an avowed racist who Sarah Palin approvingly quoted in her acceptance speech for the moral superiority of small town values, expressed his fervent hope about my father, Robert F. Kennedy, as he contemplated his own run for the presidency in 1965, that "some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his spoonful of brains in pubic premises before the snow flies." It might be worth asking Governor Palin for a tally of the other favorites from her reading list," - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Go ahead, delete this post too.

especially in any class that requires proof by deduction.

Sure, Rick. But, really, in that case your answer is the proof. In such a case your "work" would consist of things like a preliminary informal sketch of the proof, notes to yourself to help organize your thinking before you write out the formal statements. Can you imagine a serious teacher requiring you to turn in such a preliminary sketch ("show your work!") -- and then penalizing you if you don't organize your thoughts in the approved way? Blech.

And that's no so far from reality. My kids have to turn in outlines and drafts of their papers in AP History, stuff like that, and they get burned if it's not in approved format. I tell them they might as well just write the paper a few weeks early, then work backwards to create the "draft" and "outline" that meet specs. I've never met a really creative writer who finds a formal outline ("I. Introduction, A. Four Underlying Causes Of The Civil War, i. Slavery...") of much real use. (An informal outline, conforming to your own style of thought, yes, but that wouldn't pass muster.)

I know it hurts when you have to face the truth.

Indeed, clearly you do.

All those failed inner-city schools...

Destroying the lives of all those inner-city children...

and kept in operation by the virulently-Democrat education establishment.

For year, after year, after year, after year...

And it's REPUBLICANS who are racist?

Please join the war on Greed:

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/the_war_on_greed.php

Sounds like just the kind of thoughtful plan McCain would propose.

Let's see I finished High School, or the UK equiv, over 20 years ago and all my A level maths papers had the working as worth more than the answer. IIRC each question would typically be worth 20 points and the reasoning worth 15-17 of those. Especially with something like Integration, especially partial integration.

Fast forward to my degree and it became even more slanted against getting the right final answer because you didn't have a hope in hell of getting a right answer from first principles in most of our subjects, so most of the marks were for demonstrating an understanding of what you actually had to do from first principles.

If she changed her mind because she thought it was the RIGHT thing, then fine. If, as I suspect, she changed her mind because it was the politically expedient thing to do, then that's a completely different kettle of fish.

Based on what I've been reading about written by Alaskans who know her, I suspect it's the later.

> Based on what I've been reading about written by Alaskans who know her, I suspect it's the later.

How do you know that they're Alaskans who know her?

The Dems have been writing fake "I voted straight Repub my whole life until ...." messages and letters in every election this century.

How do you know that they're Alaskans who know her?

The Dems have been writing fake "I voted straight Repub my whole life until ...." messages and letters in every election this century.

I did wonder myself, so checked around and Snopes has been pretty good at verifying which of the Palin eats babies stories are true and which are not.

This one was interesting: http://buelahman.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/about-sarah-palin-a-view-from-a-neighbor/

And here was the Snopes view on it: http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/sarahpalin.asp

Let's see I finished High School, or the UK equiv, over 20 years ago and all my A level maths papers had the working as worth more than the answer.

That's insane unless you are talking about what is really a multi-part problem, e.g. find find x, now use x to solve for y, et cetera. In that case, since the subproblems are well-defined, you can reasonably grade people on them. It's no different from grading each question on a final exam separately, instead of merely giving the entire exam a grade.

But if you are talking about what's generally known as "partial credit," that's insane, a corruption of teaching that is wreaking havoc in the quantitative fields. You get students who have achieved a B grade on an exam, or entire course, who can do no problem 100% correctly. They have stitched together a passing grade entirely through getting half of this problem right, half of another, and so forth. When it comes time for them to go to professional or graduate school, they are screwed, at a terrible disadvantage, and often enough get booted out.

I think most likely you are confusing categories here. You are in general talking about problems and exams in which sub-parts and sub-problems can be objectively identified and graded, not about grading the process by which a student finds an answer in the case where many (typically almost infinite) such processes exist.

If she changed her mind because she thought it was the RIGHT thing, then fine.

You're a mind-reader? You know one you trust? Because otherwise, if you propose to elect a Vice-President based on the secret inner musings inside her head, you are as susceptible to bullshit artists (*cough* Barry O *cough*) telling you what your opponent really thinks as any credulous religious nut is susceptible to his pastor telling him what God thinks. That means your vote is nearly worthless, because it can easily be bought and sold by a demagogue. You might as well be designing rocketships based entirely on theoretical speculation, with no measurement or experience whatsoever. We know how well that turns out. If you want to know how Governor Palin acts with respect to government spending, for example, then instead of guessing what her secret inner superego is telling her, or trying to nail her on some random inconsistency here or there (as if any of us is ever 100.00% self-consistent), and instead try simply measuring on a broad basis what's she's done as governor of Alaska.

Has Alaskan state spending gone up or done? Have priorities shifted, and if so, how? Has the state requested more or less Federal largesse, and have the areas in which it asks for Federal money changed? Unfortunately, if you ask those very concrete questions -- instead of speculating wildly on Palin's secret inner moral compass -- you are going to find that her actual factual credentials as a fiscal conservative are quite good, better than McCain's in some areas, and far better than go-along Democratic party-line spoilsman Obama, or Joe Biden (D-MBNA).

If, as I suspect, she changed her mind because it was the politically expedient thing to do

Now this is just weird. What exactly is the difference, for a politician in a republic, between "right" and "politically expedient?" You want to beat up on, say, George Bush because he doesn't "listen" to Congress, the will o' the people, et cetera -- i.e. do the "politically expedient" thing -- and yet beat up on Sarah Palin because she does? This is one of those "heads I win, tails you lose" propositions, isn't it? A politician is "expedient" if he listens to the popular will, and "arrogant" if he doesn't.

One gets the feeling that the real problem with Governor Palin as far as you're concerned is that she has an "R" after her name.

That's insane unless you are talking about what is really a multi-part problem...

Er... and what advanced maths have you done that isn't really?

You are in general talking about problems and exams in which sub-parts and sub-problems can be objectively identified and graded, not about grading the process by which a student finds an answer in the case where many (typically almost infinite) such processes exist.

I can't talk about the US system as I didn't go to school here, but taking a typical example from the A Level maths paper I did in 1987...

"From first principles derive the formula for the volume of a sphere."

Getting the answer 4/3PIr^3 isn't what the question is about, so getting that as the right answer isn't much of an achievement compared to showing the ability to define the area under a curve, formulate the integral, set the correct boundary conditions, integrate the solution and turn the whole thing into the equation.

The exam is testing the ability to solve the problem, not give the right answer.

If anything, at least, in the UK, the problem is they've simplified things so far that they give too much of the solution up front. So, that was from an 1987 paper, the 2007 equivalent reads something like. "If the area under a curve is defined as [equation], from first principles work out the volume of a sphere."

Something which adds much more complexity.

After school when I got to University it became more slanted against getting an actually correct answer, the working makes up far more of the solution.

Looking at some of the topics I did where this was the case it would include: electrical engineering (especially power and loss calcuations and 3 phase field theory); thermodymanics (especially pipe friction loss calculations, where you could get the right method but screw the answer through mis-reading a table in the exam); structural mechanics where they're really really really turn up the maths; and, of course, Maths - especially some of the stuff like D operators or matrix manipulations.

I challenge anybody, in a rush, in an exam, to invert a 4 by 4 matrix and multiply it by another 4x4 without transposing a number. Showing you can do it, and ideally, spot (as you usually can) a mistake has been made is worth more that wasting time in a 3 hour exam to take 5 minutes to rework something you've shown you know how to do.

What exactly is the difference, for a politician in a republic, between "right" and "politically expedient?"

What is the DIFFERENCE?

Wow. You are actually asking that? You have thought about what you mean with that question?

do the "politically expedient" thing -- and yet beat up on Sarah Palin because she does?

If she's doing it just to pander to the electorate, then damn right I will. Actually one thing I can at least admire GWB and Tony Blair for is that they didn't do this. It's one of their best characteristics, even if they were often, in my opinion, completely wrong about a lot of it.

One gets the feeling that the real problem with Governor Palin as far as you're concerned is that she has an "R" after her name.

No, not at all. There are many republican politicians I respect and admire. McCain used to be one of them funnily enough.

There are so many many problems with Governor Palin that keep bubbling up to the surface that I'm not even convinced she's really qualified to be a Governor at this stage, let alone the Vice President, and, actuarial speaking, have a 1 in 3 shot at being President in the next 4 years.

I'm not even convinced she's really qualified to be a Governor at this stage

Well, apparently about eighty percent of those being governed by her disagree with you. Too bad they didn't take the advice of Dave O'Neill, who obviously knows what is better for them than they do.

How have they managed so far without your sage advice?

How have they managed so far without your sage advice?

Dunno, frankly it is a mystery to me. Although all though government handouts and the oil tax windfall has probably helped eh?

Er... and what advanced maths have you done that isn't really?

It has nothing to do with the subject being taught, but the nature of the question.

You (well, at least I) can design a question that has complex many-part problems where many sub-problems are tested. Or you can design a test where the correct answer is proof enough all by itself that you know what you're doing.

Or I can design a test that tests your reasoning process, but that's much harder, because I need to be in a position to judge any reasoning process with which you come up, to decide whether it's valid or not. That means I need to thoroughly understand the field. I've certainly done that kind of thing when teaching graduate classes, or in the context of a PhD oral exam, but it's not practical for primary and secondary education, where the teacher as a rule has a very incomplete mastery of the field.

I challenge anybody, in a rush, in an exam, to invert a 4 by 4 matrix and multiply it by another 4x4 without transposing a number.

If that was the only route to success, and transposing a number earned me a zero, I could do it easily. So could you. You'd be motivated, whereas when you know you'll only get dinged a point or two, you aren't motivated to avoid "small" mistakes.

Consider an analog of your statement, in the real world: I challenge anybody, in a rush, in an emergency room, to open the chest of a person bleeding to death and tie off the damaged vessels and restart the heart, all the while giving the correct orders for drugs in the correct sequence, without -- oops! -- ordering forty times too much (or too little) heparin and killing the patient dead.

We depend on people solving complex problems 100% right all the time. Anyone learns that as soon as they get a real job that doesn't involve merely pushing paper and making arguments. Why we therefore give them the completely wrong impression all through school -- that, as you say, the proper process of solution is more important than getting the right answer -- is a mystery to me. But it does help explain why I have a hard time hiring people who are reliable and competent, even though they have fancy degrees with good grades.

Wow. You are actually asking that? You have thought about what you mean with that question?

Yup. Probably more than you, since yours is the conventional wisdom, and I thought like you about 25 years ago. Maybe we should talk again in 10 years? Or do you have a more substantive argument than incredulous mockery?

Actually one thing I can at least admire GWB and Tony Blair for is that they didn't do this.

This is cynical. Neither is running for office any more. You lot said much the same thing about Reagan, once he was safely dead. It's all lies.

If you really valued sticking to your guns even in the face of public disapproval, you'd be nauseated by Barack Obama, who has recast his positions (FISA, public financing, debates, taxes, associations with Rev. Wright, earmarks, Iraq, Second Amendment) more and faster than any recent politician -- certainly far more than his opponent, who is, for better or worse, known generally for his stubborness and go-it-alone nature.

You'd also be giving huge kudos to George Bush and John McCain for sticking to their guns with the "surge" in Iraq, despite the passionate opposition of the Democrats and general popular disapproval, not only for the intellectual consistency and refusal to pander, but because he was, as events have proved, quite right to do so. But you don't, do you? Which means, if you don't, that your stated principles are adopted for the political convenience of the moment, just like Obama, and don't govern any actual actions. That is cynical pandering. Not changing your mind about an earmark (the famous bridge) because you get an earful from your constituents and your state's delgation in Congress about how stupid it is.

Sorry, really not following your point here.

If that was the only route to success, and transposing a number earned me a zero, I could do it easily. So could you. You'd be motivated, whereas when you know you'll only get dinged a point or two, you aren't motivated to avoid "small" mistakes..

No, because getting the inversion of the matrix right isn't important in what is being tested. Understanding, in this case, how to take a strucural mechanics scenario and create a matrix of the data, manipulate the matrix and get the numbers out is far far more important than getting the mechanics of a manual matrix manipulation right.

In my first undergraduate intern job my company wanted something to calculate stresses in I section beams. I wrote a computer program to do it for them. I used MacCauley's Theorem as the basis of the calculation engine and double checked my data against some analysis we'd had sent out to firm of Structural Engineers a few months before.

Now, I know for a fact that I fluffed the correct answers on the exam I'd taken on MacCauley's, but I knew exactly how it worked and demonstrated how it worked to the examiners and passed. I was then able to use my knowledge of HOW IT WORKS to write a program to calculate stresses and beam sizes for out engineering department.

Knowing how to use something is the right answer, not the number of MegaPascals you underline at the bottom of the exam sheet.

I helped out with First Year (11-12 year olds) maths at my high school (it was a required activity for the A Level class, 17 year olds) - what shocked me wasn't that they were letting 11 year olds use calculators (ok, I lie, that shocked me too), but that the 11 year olds hadn't been taught the critical reasoning skills to use them in the first place.

I challenge anybody, in a rush, in an emergency room, to open the chest of a person bleeding to death and tie off the damaged vessels and restart the heart, all the while giving the correct orders for drugs in the correct sequence, without -- oops! -- ordering forty times too much (or too little) heparin and killing the patient dead.

Strawman. I challenge anybody who hasn't practiced and practiced and, yes, truth be told, probably killed a few people in the process to get that one right too.

And yes, I know some Doctors. Some of their grades would make the hairs on the back of your head stand up.

Neither is running for office any more.

Au contraire. Tony Blair won an election in 2005 on a deeply unpopular platform which included Iraq, as did GWB in 2004.

You'd also be giving huge kudos to George Bush and John McCain for sticking to their guns with the "surge" in Iraq

Actually I do. At least I do for McCain, not so much for Bush because anybody could see it had to happen that way from day one.

I was with McCain and Powell on this subject from day one. If you're going to invade places do it properly.

My issue with the Iraq adventure is that Afganistan was and is more important and we're stuck in a sideshow while the real problem is still out there and lurking in the mountains of our friends the Pakistanis.

As for being nauseated. I've said a few times on this blog that Obama reminds me far too much of Tony Blair, a man who managed to undo a lot of the legacy he inherited and has left the UK in a dreadful mess financially.

However, McCain is, at the end of the day, IMO, too old to be taking on a role like this and his selection of Palin was flagrant popularism. It would be much harder for me, for example, if he'd gone with Romney.

As it stands, I'm not allowed to Vote in your elections, I have taxation without representation, ironically enough. There is no question I would have been better off under McCain - but frankly whoever wins will have to sharply increase taxes to pay for all the banks the US government just bought.