Hapgood

Mike Caulfield's latest web incarnation. Networked Learning, Open Education, and Online Digital Literacy

  • The NY Times is Ridiculously Sloppy in Talking About College Cost

    I don’t know what it is about college cost reporting, but it either attracts shoddy reporters, or makes good reporters shoddy. Take the recent piece by Andrew Martin and Andrew Lehren. Here’s a paragraph that actually appeared in it: Ninety-four percent of students who earn a bachelor’s degree borrow to pay for higher education —… Continue reading

  • Peter Thiel Looks to Hire College Grad with “High GPA” from a “Top-tier University”

    This was first picked up (to my knowledge) by Matt Yglesias over at Moneybox. Peter Thiel’s company is looking to hire an Investment Analyst, and whoever writes up the job descriptions over there has specified that the ideal candidate will have a  “High GPA from [a] top tier university”: Thiel, of course, is the guy… Continue reading

  • Statistical Reasoning BEFORE Statistical Methods

    “Recent research suggests that before delving into educating students about statistical methods, statistical literacy, thinking, and reasoning training is needed. In fact, studies have shown that a knowledge base in statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking is needed for understanding published research (delMas, Garfield, Ooms, & Chance, 2007).” Full article here. The cited article actually talks more… Continue reading

  • We Built the Pineapple, Not Pearson.

    This article makes some excellent points about “Pineapplegate”. On the whole the incident reflects more poorly on our media and public debate than it does on Pearson.  There’s so much wrong with the way that we test students in American education, but smirking at a trippy test question fixes none of it, and denies some… Continue reading

  • You are the “product” at your local bar as well

    I’ve been thinking about this a long time, but a recent tweet by @dkernohan made me think I should throw it up somewhere. There’s a saying that if you are not paying for something like Facebook, that you aren’t the customer — you’re the product. And I think this is true in many ways. But… Continue reading

  • WordPress eTextbooks

    There’s been radio silence the past couple weeks because I’ve been spending my free time writing this WordPress-based eTextbook on Quantitative Literacy. There’s lots to be said about this, I suppose, but one of the things worth mentioning is what a pleasure it has been to author in this way. I’d love to tweak the… Continue reading

  • Quantitative Reasoning MOOC Update

    (Yeah, I finally used the ‘M’ word…) As some of you know, I’ve been working the past three or four months on getting a MOOC on Quantitative Reasoning up and running for Spring 2013.  Jim and Tim and I are in discussions on how this might work at this point, and the current plan is… Continue reading

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  • A Note on Farm Share and Subgroups

    As we say in the COMPARABLE checklist, the story is often somewhere in the edges. Take this chart of the proportion of a food dollar which goes to the farmer vs. post-farm activities. At first it seems to show declining farm revenue as the the market bill (which includes everything from transportation to preparation) climbs:… Continue reading

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  • How Not To Do a Graph: Distribution of U.S. Food Dollar

    From Marion Nestle’s book on Food Politics: Interesting graph, but undermined by its cuteness. Farm value and labor, the first two segments, make up just short of 60% of the total, but appear to be less than 50% (maybe even 40%) because of all the inserted black gaps. But maybe that’s by design, to make… Continue reading

  • Comparison of the Day: SIDS and Prone Sleeping in Norway

    This is a really sad chart: the incidence of SIDS (“crib death”) in Norway plotted out against the rise and fall of parents that put their children to sleep on their stomach. (Which was what they told you to do for a long time). As you can see, there was not only a correlation with the rise… Continue reading

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