Chance News 65
Quotations
"All scientific work is incomplete - whether it be observational or experimental. All scientific work is liable to be upset or modified by advancing knowledge. That does not confer upon us a freedom to ignore the knowledge we already have or postpone the action that it appears to demand at a given time."
Sir Austin Bradford Hill, as quoted at Toxipedia. Submitted by Steve Simon.
Forsooth
The following Forsooths are from the RSS NEWS June 2010
Labour's betrayal of British workers. Nearly every one of 1.67m jobs created since 1997 has gone to a foreigner.
Immigration was at the centre of the election campaign today as it emerged that virtually every extra job created under Labour has gone to a foreign worker.
Figures suggested an extraordinary 98.5 per cent of 1.67 million new posts were taken by immigrants.
The ONS figures show the total number of people in work in both the private and the public sector has risen from around 25.7 million in 1997 to 27.4 million at the end of last year, an increase of 1.67 million.
But the number of workers born abroad has increased dramatically by 1.64 million from 1.9 million to 3.5 million.
The English lanquage currently comprises roughly a million words. Discounting new words that are added every day, and those occasionally lost to posterity, the possibility of forming a three-word combination is therefore a million cubed, or a quadrillion--that's followed by 216 zeros.
The Guardian, 21 August 2009
Submitted by Laurie Snell
Return on investment in college
Union, RPI rank high on education value.
by Caitlin Tremblay, Daily Gazette (Schenectady, NY), 30 June 2010, p. A5
The article reports that that two local colleges (Union College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) “are listed among New York state’s and the nation’s best colleges for making back the money spent on a bachelor degree, according to a study by the website PayScale.com …Payscale, a compensation research website, took the price of the schools’ degree and compared it to the average income of graduates to calculate a ‘return on investment.’ Only those with undergraduate degrees and full-time hourly or salaried jobs were included…Topping Payscale’s list are Massachusetts Institute of Technology (annual ROI of 12.6 percent), California Institute of Technology (12.6 percent) and Harvard University (12.5 percent).”
The website Paycale.com (which also explains the methodology) asserts that “A return on investment (ROI) calculation tells you what you get back for what you spend - and it's a great way to compare college costs…PayScale helps you figure out which school's tuition costs will return the biggest dividends for you after graduation.”
Discussion Questions
With the help of the Payscale.com website methodology description:
- Critique, from a statistical perspective, the use of the results of this study in comparing colleges with regard to assessing “what you get back for what you spend.”
- How might the validity of such a study be improved and, if implemented, how would this impact any reservations you might have about the conclusions that you might draw?
- Comment on any other aspects of the underlying methodology and how it might be improved.
Submitted by Gerry Hahn
Paul the octopus plumps for Spain
Spain will defeat Netherlands in Sunday's World Cup final, according to the latest prediction from Paul the psychic octopus.
To intense media interest on Friday morning, Paul, who has an unblemished record in the tournament so far, picked Spain as the victors in the Johannesburg final and also predicted that Germany will defeat Uruguay in Saturday's third-place play-off.
The decision was welcomed in Spain - who were also tipped by Paul to defeat his home country, Germany, in the semi-finals - with Marca's website leading with the story of how el pulpo Paul predicted that Spain would be campeones.
Paul has achieved global fame after correctly predicting the results of all of Germany's games at the tournament in South Africa. In order to harness his powers, his keepers at Sea Life Oberhausen present Paul with the choice of two glass boxes, both containing a mussel but each bearing the flag of a different country.
The odds of Paul correctly predicting Germany's results so far are 1 in 64 and he proved correct once again when tipping Spain to beat Joachim Low's side in the semi-final, which they duly did thanks to a header from Carles Puyol.
Many German fans were unhappy with Paul's decision to plump for Spain and fearing a backlash, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero has joked he will offer state protection to Paul.