dagblog - Comments for "The Data Haunted World"

I'm thoroughly confused by

Ramona — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 13:13:06 +0000

I'm thoroughly confused by Common Core and don't know what to believe. Different outcomes are presented by people I respect, and there seems to be no middle (common) ground. (Thank you, Tmac, for the links and your own explanation.)

Diane Ravitch wrote about it yesterday and I found both her piece and the comments interesting. I still don't know what to believe, but she talks about transparency while developing the standards and, while she gets the need to standardize some curricula, she also questions who gets to do the standardizing and how rigid it would have to be.

Thanks Bruce. I think that

tmccarthy0 — Tue, 25 Mar 2014 02:34:46 +0000

In reply to Good links Tmac and you

Thanks Bruce. I think that most people just buy the hype on one side or another. I'm not an advocate per se of Common Core, but I am an advocate of curriculum normalization. I think it is important, but certainly it will do nothing to address the real problem, which is all about institutional inequality. Our efforts are better spent doing something about how our public school system(s) is funded. Bussing didn't adequately address the problem, it was a good effort I suppose given our system, but it didn't change anything.

Good links Tmac and you

Bruce Levine — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 14:35:46 +0000

In reply to I'm going to give you a

Good links Tmac and you should put them in a blog.

I'm going to give you a

tmccarthy0 — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 13:50:13 +0000

In reply to "I don't think settling for

I'm going to give you a couple of clues Mike, so you understand exactly what is going on here.

Common Core is not a curriculum based on big, medium or small data, Common Core is an attempt to build that data. Here is why I say this, school districts are run by school boards across the country. Every single district has their own curriculum standards, the standards in some district in Texas are far different than the standards of our school district because our school board is filled with engineers and scientists. Common core itself it an attempt to normalize or standardize education across the country in order to begin to collect the data you are describing. (That data doesn't exist right now here in the US because we have disparate demands from each school district in America).

And you might believe this is disrupting Arts education, but to be very honest with you, that began to be eliminated from curriculums across the country in the 1990's and it had nothing to do with Common Core. It did have everything to do with the expectation that we must raise the STEM skills of students in our public schools.

I would also like to see more people in America have a better education in math and science and in the arts. I also want to see curriculum normalized, but until we fund public education differently, i.e. levies are stupid, we aren't going to be able to solve our problems. Fair funding is the very root of our problem. We know very well that children from wealthier districts are scoring the equivalent of those other first world nations on their math, science exams and they still get a fairly wide breadth of education in the arts. Until we accept this and seek to change it, nothing will change here. Poor kids from poor districts will continue to get the shaft.

I would say Democracy cannot be sustained through the massive inequality that exists in our current public education system. The statistical evidence lies in my theory, not yours.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/311499-wealthy-districts-continue-score-higher...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_inequality_in_education

http://www.yale.edu/ciqle/CIQLEPAPERS/CIQLEWP2009-3.pdf

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10824661003634948#.Uy7la9xH3Hg

http://www.tbp.org/pubs/Features/W07Brown.pdf

http://www.epi.org/publication/us-student-performance-testing/

Hope you read some of the links.

But the vaccine example just

Verified Atheist — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 10:43:04 +0000

In reply to I'm also thinking in terms of

But the vaccine example just goes back to my bad analysis with anecdotes point. Big data has nothing to do with it.

Aside: the child of someone I know developed autism shortly after getting their vaccine doses. With her second child, she decided not to have him vaccinated. He, too, developed autism, shortly after the time period when he would have been vaccinated. Although this sad story by itself doesn't disprove the theory, it's an anecdote that probably won't be repeated as much as those anecdotes that appear to support the theory (post hoc ergo prompter hoc and all that). I could tell you so many stories about some of the crazy things parents of children with autism have tried out of desperation, and in at least two cases those parents are medical doctors who should know better. However, I cannot judge those parents because I know their world has been turned upside down.

If the treatment cures cancer

Verified Atheist — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 10:37:27 +0000

In reply to "I don't think settling for

If the treatment cures cancer in only 1% of patients and is excruciatingly painful, wouldn't you want to know how likely it is to help you before you subject yourself to it? Big Data isn't saying you can't do it, it's just predicting how likely it is to be successful. Of course, Big Data might "tell" your insurance company not to pay for it. However, that 1% is the number one gets from small data analysis. Slightly better analysis would tell you that it's actually 5% for white, male, former wrestlers. (Actually, I would be highly suspect of such an analysis without knowing more about the sample size of white, male, former wrestlers.) Near-future analysis will tell you that it's 0.1% for someone with your genomic markers. Doesn't mean it definitely won't work, but it's information that will help you to decide if it's worth the cost to you. Oh, and it's got a 2% chance of killing you out-right.

Science is not part of Common

EmmaZahn — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 08:25:38 +0000

In reply to The complaint isn't that

Science is not part of Common Core, not yet anyway.

And there appears to be plenty of room in the English language arts section to include other arts and music.

Funny thing I noticed while updating my memory of Common Core: your complaint, including its specific wording, was included in the criticisms section.

Mark Naison, Fordham University Professor, and co-founder of the Badass Teachers Association, raises a similar objection: "The liberal critique of Common Core is that this a huge profit-making enterprise that costs school districts a tremendous amount of money, and pushes out the things kids love about school, like art and music.”^[56]

Badass Teachers Association? Now there is a group every parent should be proud to entrust their child's education to. :-/

"we know there is a tyranny

EmmaZahn — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 08:00:42 +0000

In reply to "I don't think settling for

"we know there is a tyranny of the majority we must protect against. Is there something similar for Big Data?"

Say something like teaching statistics .... which just happens to be part of Common Core math as is critical thinking. Media skills are included in the English part, also opinion reading and writing.

You protect people by enabling them, not by shielding them from the world they will eventually have to live in.

I'm also thinking in terms of

Elusive Trope — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 05:14:38 +0000

In reply to "I don't think settling for

I'm also thinking in terms of something along the line of the controversy around vacinnes. In the information age, it some times isn't the numerically superior group that wins, but the group who captures the most clicks, so to say. Passionate but misguided or misinformed individuals can quickly become the majority in regards to 'having a say' on the matter. When the mainstream media, from local to international, begin transmitting it, validated by its origins in big data, so much energy has to be done putting out the brush fires, nothing is left to expand on the existing knowledge.

"I don't think settling for

Michael Maiello — Sun, 23 Mar 2014 02:38:26 +0000

In reply to But the problem isn't the

"I don't think settling for being wrong more often is the right choice."

This is important. This has been explored a lot in terms of markets. I have worked for extremely rich asset managers. Whether they know something or are lucky is subject of much debate.

But what about medicine? You can be lucky in the stock market. Heck, this year, if you had a verifiably perfect NCAA bracket, Warren Buffet would give you $1 billion. Would that be luck or skill, had someone won? I don't know.

But what if it's... this treatment cures cancer in only 1% of patients? If I am a patient and have exhausted all else, would I not want to try?

In democracy, we know there is a tyranny of the majority we must protect against. Is there something similar for Big Data?