Monday, March 25, 2013

Data:to use or not to use…. | Deborah Meier on Education

Data:to use or not to use…. | Deborah Meier on Education:


Data:to use or not to use….

Did you know that: only Russia , the Ukraine and Lebanon have as much inequality of income and wealth as the USA? If you even want to give democracy a chance, this should suggest how hard the road will be to recover even a modicum of greater equality! Between CEOs and minimum wage workers the difference is 5,000 per hour vs $7.25 per hour, and every day it’s getting worse.
Why do I find myself going through these exercises over ad over–to keep me angry? And maybe it’s just that I find statistics fascinating–and wish that my education had included more of that and less of the caculus-driven stuff I managed to do well at but never understood and never use.
It’s what made me love the book called, “the signal and the noise, why so many predictions fail–but some don’t.” Author, Nate Silver who is famous for his election polling–FIVEHIRTYEIGHT.COM and a system for forecasting