Tidbits on February 12, 2015
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Set 6 of Bob Jensen's
Favorite Snow Pictures
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Snow/Set06/SnowSet06.htm
Tidbits on February 12, 2015
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
More
of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Listen to 90 Famous Authors & Celebrities Read Great Stories &
Poems ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/90-famous-authors-celebrities-read-great-stories-poems.html
Free music downloads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Hear Isolated Guitar Tracks From Some of Rock’s
Greatest: Slash, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/hear-isolated-guitar-tracks-from-some-of-rocks-greatest-slash-eddie-van-halen-eric-clapton-more.html
Dancing Priests --- http://www.youtube.com/embed/UdYDKmpzt5U?rel=0&controls=0
The National Recording Registry 2013 --- http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/registry/nrpb-2013reg.html
Sesame Workshop --- http://www.sesameworkshop.org
Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument, the
“Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/hear-the-worlds-oldest-instrument-the-neanderthal-flute.html
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
Pandora (my favorite online music station) ---
www.pandora.com
TheRadio (online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this international
radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let
it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band
recordings ---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free
music selections online ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm
Photographs and Art
Wild photos of what's becoming Boston's harshest winter ever
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/wild-photos-of-whats-becoming-bostons-harshest-winter-ever-2015-2
45 Lessons in Life ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqY-AS4aFFY
Thank you Paula
Beautiful Photos Of The World's Oldest And Most Majestic Trees
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/photos-of-the-worlds-oldest-and-most-impressive-trees-2015-1
Hmong Embroidery --- http://www.hmongembroidery.org
Extreme Pictures Of Turkish Special Forces Training In The
Snow ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/pictures-of-training-camp-in-snow-warfare-2015-1
WW II Airplanes ---
http://pippaettore.com/
The Paintings of Filmmaker/Visual Artist David Lynch ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/the-paintings-of-filmmakervisual-artist-david-lynch.html
An Illustration of Every Page of Herman Melville’s Moby
Dick ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/an-illustration-of-every-page-of-herman-melvilles-moby-dick.html
10 Places Every Wine Lover Should Visit In 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-wine-travel-destinations-2015-1
No help regarding my favorite drink --- iced tea
Walker Art Center Magazine --- http://www.walkerart.org/magazine/
Look at all the crazy weapons Russians carry on the subway ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/russians-carry-guns-and-machetes-on-subway-2015-2
Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" in
Graphical Representation
http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/eudora-weltys-worn-path-graphical-representation#sect-introduction
The High Line (historic NYC railroad) --- http://www.thehighline.org
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Listen to 60+ Free, High-Quality AudioBooks of Classic
Literature on Spotify: Austen, Dickens, Tolstoy & More ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/free-classic-audiobooks-on-spotify.html
Listen to 90 Famous Authors & Celebrities Read Great Stories &
Poems ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/90-famous-authors-celebrities-read-great-stories-poems.html
A Day in the Life: Artists' Diaries from the Archives of American Art --- http://www.aaa.si.edu/exhibitions/day-in-the-life-diaries
OUPblog: Oxford University Press's Academic Insights for the World --- http://blog.oup.com/
Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" in
Graphical Representation
http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/eudora-weltys-worn-path-graphical-representation#sect-introduction
Stream Classic Poetry Readings from Harvard’s Rich Audio
Archive: From W.H. Auden to Dylan Thomas ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/harvards-poetry-room-recordings.html
Millions of Free Poems ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Electronic Poetry Center [iTunes] --- http://epc.buffalo.edu/
Stony Brook Press (poetry, history, geography) --- http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/handle/1951/25510
Poetry Out Loud: Teaching Resources --- http://www.poetryoutloud.org/teaching-resources
Elizabeth Barrett Browning Project --- http://www.und.edu/instruct/sdonaldson/
Reading: Harvard Views of Readers,
Readership, and Reading History ---
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/reading/
Includes annotated copies belonging to famous authors and poets
Poetic Likeness: Modern American Poets (Portraits of Great Artists) --- http://www.npg.si.edu/exhibit/poets/
Shmoop is an online study guide for English Literature, Poetry and American history --- http://www.shmoop.com/
The Elliston Project: Poetry Readings and Lectures at the
University of Cincinnati ---
http://digitalprojects.libraries.uc.edu/elliston/
Metazen (short fiction and poetry) --- http://www.metazen.ca/
Stony Brook Press (poetry, history, geography) --- http://dspace.sunyconnect.suny.edu/handle/1951/25510
Beat Poetry, Broadsides, and Little Magazines --- http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/Beat
Audio and Podcasts: The Poetry Foundation --- http://www.poetryfoundation.org/features/audiolanding
Broadside Verses Collection --- http://epfl.mdch.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/mdbv
Beat Poetry, Broadsides, and Little Magazines --- http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/Beat
Beat Poetry, Broadsides, and Little Magazines --- http://digital.lib.usu.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/Beat
Pulitzer-Winning Poet Mark Strand on the Heartbeat of Creative
Work and the Artist's Task to Bear Witness to the Universe ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/01/28/mark-strand-creativity/?mc_cid=f2a44c2b67&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on February 12, 2015
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2015/TidbitsQuotations021215.htm
U.S. National Debt
Clock ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Also see
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Peter G.
Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/
GAO: Fiscal Outlook & The Debt --- http://www.gao.gov/fiscal_outlook/overview
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
"Veterans, Racial Disparities, Mortgage Fraud And Children’s Health
Insurance," by Ben Casselman and Andrew Flowers, Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog,
February 9, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/veterans-racial-disparities-mortgage-fraud-and-childrens-health-insurance/
Jensen Comment
This is a complicated posting that's difficult to summarize.
Here are some of the main takeaways:
Mortgage lending surged in low-income,
less creditworthy areas of the U.S. between 2002 and 2005. But systemic
differences between incomes reported on mortgage applications and incomes
reported to the IRS indicate that much of this “subprime” lending was
reliant on borrowers fraudulently overstating their income.
Key quote: “Looking past 2005, we
find that zip codes with high overstatement perform terribly. Default rates
in these zip codes skyrocketed from 2005 to 2007. Using a longer horizon,
the zip codes with high overstatement from 2002 to 2005 experienced lower
IRS income and wage growth from 2005 to 2012. They also saw lower median
household income growth from 2000 to 2010 according to the Census. Finally,
there was a jump in both poverty and unemployment rates from 2000 to 2010.
Recall, these zip codes already had higher poverty and unemployment rates in
2000, and they increased further through 2010.
These
patterns are inconsistent with gentrification, but consistent with
fraudulent income overstatement on mortgage applications.”
Low-income African-Americans who
had Medicaid health insurance in childhood had fewer hospitalizations in
adulthood, possibly offsetting 3 to 5 percent of the program’s annual cost.
The effects were especially pronounced for those with chronic diseases and
those from low-income areas.
Key quote: “Our results highlight the importance of evaluating these
programs over a longer time period. Indeed, we find no impact of Medicaid
coverage in our analysis of the ‘immediate’ effect at age 15, but do find
effects later in life at age 25. These findings suggest that the benefits of
insurance may only materialize over a long horizon.”
Read the Full Report from the National Bureau of Economic Research---
http://www.nber.org/info.html
"38 Percent Of Women Earn More Than Their Husbands," by Mona Chalabi,
NPR via Nate Silver's 5:38 Blog, February 8, 2015 ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/38-percent-of-women-earn-more-than-their-husbands/
Jensen Comment
I don't know how this study factored for misleading statistics, but here are a
few considerations. It's quite common for women to support husbands who are
students such as students or residents in medical school. For example, surgical
residents get paid, but they get paid very little relative to what their wives
may be still earning to support the completion of their husband's training
requirements. Of course sometimes it is husbands who support aspiring female
physicians.
Many men are in the USA military. Their wives who work are almost certain to have higher income, although the benefits of a military are substantial --- including free family medical care, base housing, base schools, and lifetime pensions commencing at a young age, sometimes before reaching 40 years of age.
Times are changing for professional women at work. The big CPA firms now hire more female accounting graduates than male accounting graduates. There are also cracks in the glass ceiling. Deloitte, one of the top Big Four firms, just appointed a woman CEO.
Bob Jensen's threads on the history of working women ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Jensen Comment
In 1971 Education was the most popular masters degree discipline with 37.2% of
the market. With the decline in automatic pay raises for masters degree
attainment, the popularity of these masters degrees faded somewhat. In 1971
Business was the second most popular masters degree with 11.2% of the market
followed by Engineering with 7.1% of the market.
In 2012 Business took over the number one spot with 25.4% of the masters degrees. Education followed closely with 23.%. Health profession masters degrees rose to 11.1%. Physical sciences masters degrees dropped off the charts between 2002 and 2012.
The fastest growing masters degrees in 2012 were Law Enforcement and Leisure and Fitness Studies. This, in part, however is due to a small base when comparing rates of change. Health professions have a larger base with a noteworthy rate of growth.
"Master's degrees are as common now as bachelor's degrees were in the '60s,"
by Libby Nelson, Vox, February 7, 2015 ---
http://www.vox.com/2014/5/20/5734816/masters-degrees-are-as-common-now-as-bachelors-degrees-were-in-the-60s
Wired Science (probably the world's most active science and technology blog) --- http://www.wired.com/science/
From the Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Science and Pseudo-Science ---
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-science/
"Is Economics a Science," by Robert Shiller, QFinance, November
8, 2013 --- Click
Here
http://www.qfinance.com/blogs/robert-j.
shiller/2013/11/08/nobel-is-economics-a-science?utm_source=November+2013+email&utm_medium=Email&utm_content=Blog2&utm_campaign=EmailNov13
Also see
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm#Pseudo-Science
"Overreliance on the Pseudo-Science of Economics," by Ethan Fosse and
Orlando Patterson, The New York Times, February 9, 2015 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated/overreliance-on-the-pseudo-science-of-economics
Every year a Nobel Prize in Economics is awarded when in fact there is no “Nobel Prize in Economics.” There is only a “Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.” That prize, which was invented by the Swedish central bank nearly 75 years after Alfred Nobel’s death, is an annoyance to the recipients of the five actual Nobel Prizes, those scholars from excluded scientific disciplines such as astronomy, and a living descendant of the donor, Peter Nobel, who has denounced it as a “PR coup by economists.”
This raises the question: Have we given economists too much authority based on mistaken views about their scientific reputation among established scientists and the public?
When asked about the degree to which various academic fields can be considered “scientific,” the American public is decidedly more mixed toward economics, ranking it well below established scientific fields such as physics or biology, and even below sociology.
It’s not the statistical models used by economists that is the problem, but the rejection of qualitative methods, other fields and viewpoints. The gulf between the economic view of the world and that of the lived experiences of the general population is often vast. For example, in June 2009, the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the United States was no longer in a recession, in stark contrast with the felt, economic experience of 88 percent of Americans the following year.
It’s no wonder, then, that the real-world implementation of mainstream economic ideas has been a string of massive failures. Economic thinking undergirded the “deregulation” mantra leading up to the Great Recession of 2007-2009, and has fared no better in attempts to “fix” the ongoing crisis in Europe. However, nowhere is the discipline’s failure more apparent than in the area of development economics. In fact, the only countries that have effectively transformed from the “Third” to the “First World” since World War II violated the main principles of current and previous economic orthodoxies: China plus the “East Asian Tigers” of Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea, whose policies entailed extensive state intervention into the economy, institutional reforms and the manipulation of prices and markets. Only recently have economists come to accept the primacy of institutions in explaining and promoting economic growth, a position long held by sociologists and political scientists.
The dominance of economistic thinking in domestic policymaking has similarly led to expensive, frequently disastrous failures. In many of these instances the expertise of sociologists and other academics more suited to the topics at hand were ignored or thoroughly rejected. A clear case in point is the Moving to Opportunity program, a randomized experiment in the 1990s that moved poor families to slightly less poor neighborhoods. Controversially, the researchers found no impact on earnings or educational attainment. The backlash was severe and swift, as sociologists, many of whom had been studying the impact of neighborhoods on poverty for decades, appropriately criticized the limited intervention and narrow focus on a small set of outcomes over a relatively short time period. It also meant scuttling policies that might have resulted in desegregation and real improvements in the housing and life chances of residents of America’s most impoverished neighborhoods.
While the annual ritual of economists awarding themselves a "Nobel Prize in Economics" may seem purely academic, the devastating consequences of placing too much authority in the ideas and policies of economists is too important to ignore.
Jensen Comment
I was tempted to write "ditto for accountics science," but pseudo science is
more problematic in economics than accounting, because the media and practice
world in economics often pays attention to "scientists" in economics. The media
and practice world virtually ignores academic research in accountics science.
There are quite a lot of citations in accountics science but those are
accountics scientists citing each other. It's more or less a closed loop in the
"Cargo Cult" world of accoutics science.
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm#CargoCult
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
By way of illustration there are many blogs by economics scientists attempting to communicate with the economics profession and the public in general. I don't know that a single accountics scientist maintains a blog trying to communicate with anybody..
The New York Times Debate
Are Economists Overrated?
February 9, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/02/09/are-economists-overrated
- Philip Cohen (Maryland), Exceptions Overwhelm Economic Rules: "Exploitation, dishonesty, violence, ignorance and demagoguery set vast areas of social life apart outside of economic models."
- Diane Coyle (Manchester), Economists Deal With the Pie on the Table, Not in the Sky: "Government decisions balance costs and benefits, winners and losers. It is best to do this explicitly, which is what economists do."
- Marion Fourcade (UC-Berkeley), An Ambivalent Authority: "Much of economic science is esoteric and preoccupied with internal struggles. Ideological divisions, exploited by politicians, defy clarity."
- Peter Henry (NYU), Analyze and Explain, Don’t Prognosticate: "Economics succeeds when used as a forensic tool, employing history and data, not creating unrealistic expectations."
- Orlando Patterson (Harvard) & Ethan Fosse (Harvard), Don’t Rely on Pseudo-Science: "Implementation of mainstream economic ideas has led to massive failures after expertise of other academics were ignored."
- Charles Plott (Cal-Tech), Failures Shouldn’t Obscure Widespread Success: "Economic science is the foundation of sound policies and techniques in business and government."
PonoPlayer --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PonoPlayer
"The PonoPlayer Review: Criticism and Follow-Up," by David A. Pogue,
Yahoo Tech, February 4, 2015 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-ponoplayer-review-criticism-and-follow-up-110040409129.html
Joni Mitchell’s (2015 Satire) Application for a Tenure Track Philosophy
Position ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/joni-mitchells-application-for-a-tenure-track-philosophy-position.html
That Guy With an Accent Who Says You're Going to Jail
"2015’s dirty dozen tax scams," by Sally P. Schreiber, Journal of
Accountancy, February 6, 2015 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2015/feb/dirty-dozen-tax-scams-201511766.html
Phone scams, phishing, and identity theft topped this year’s IRS list of the “dirty dozen” tax scams, which the IRS has been releasing, one scam at a time, since Jan. 22. The one-scam-a-day approach allowed the IRS to explore each one in more detail. Here is the complete list:
- Phone scams.
- Phishing.
- Identity theft.
- Return preparer fraud.
- Hiding income offshore.
- Inflated refund claims.
- Fake charities.
- Filing false documents to hide income.
- Participating in abusive tax shelters.
- Falsifying income to claim tax credits.
- Excessive claims for fuel tax credits.
- Frivolous tax arguments.
According to the IRS, the most serious scams this year are phone scams, in which criminals call intended victims impersonating the IRS. Many times, the callers disguise the number they are calling to look like an IRS number and may threaten the target of the scam with arrest, deportation, or license revocation.
Continued in article
Identity Theft --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_theft
Jensen Comment
An enormous and ever-lasting problem is Identity Theft. In some ways stealing
your Social Security number is worse than stealing a credit card number.
Changing you're credit card number instantly is one a 1-800 phone call away. I
don't know, but do you have to die to change your Social Security number?
The bad guys are buying Social Security numbers and names by the tens of millions. They file for phony tax refunds in your name with a phony address and steal over $100 billion from the IRS. And if they get caught the punishment is usually no deterrent from doing it again next tax season. Many of them are untouchable in other countries. Electronic tax filing (E-filing) exacerbates the problem because some attachments required by postal filing are not required for E-filing such as W-2 Forms that hinder, somewhat, claiming withholding refunds and earned-income tax credits.
People filing fake tax returns often aren't the hackers who stole the identity information. The ID thieves put the identity on the black market, usually on foreign soil, where the bad men and women buy this information on the Internet.
Tax refund ID theft is growing 'epidemic': U.S. IRS watchdog ---
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/11/07/us-usa-tax-refund-idUKBRE9A61HB20131107
(Reuters) - More Americans' identities were stolen in tax refund crimes in the first six months of 2013 than in all of 2012, said a U.S. Internal Revenue Service watchdog on Thursday who described the problem as "a growing epidemic."
Tax refund fraud has exploded in recent years. Scammers typically use stolen names and Social Security numbers to file phony electronic tax forms for IRS refunds.
About 1.6 million Americans were victims of ID theft/tax refund crimes this year through June, up from 1.2 million taxpayers in all of 2012, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) said in a report.
"Identity theft is a growing epidemic," said J. Russell George, TIGTA's chief.
Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, a hot spot for these crimes, said in a statement that TIGTA's analysis shows the IRS is making progress, but much remains to be done.
TIGTA said that while the number of frauds has risen, the amount of federal revenue lost to these crimes has decreased. In 2011, the government lost $3.6 billion in potentially fraudulent tax refunds, down from $5.2 billion in 2010.
The thieves are increasingly working from abroad, TIGTA found. In 2011, someone using a single mailing address in Lithuania made more tax filings with fraudulent Social Security numbers than any single U.S. address, TIGTA said.
The Lithuanian address received $220,489 in fraudulent IRS refunds; an address in Shanghai received $156,533.
"The constantly evolving tactics used by scammers to commit identity theft continues to be one of the biggest challenges facing the IRS," the IRS said in a statement on Thursday.
TIGTA said the IRS must do more to spot red flags signaling potential fraud in tax filings, such as multiple filings from the same address, and to help victims more quickly.
The IRS said it agreed with TIGTA's recommendations.
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
There's a weird problem with the new Raspberry Pi computer ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/raspberry-pi-2-camera-flash-glitch-turns-off-2015-2
We got a look at Project Tango: Google’s extraordinary 3D-mapping tablet
prototype ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-project-tango-review-2015-2
"Does the College Major Really Matter?" by Jeffrey J. Selingo,
Chronicle of Higher Education, February 10, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Does-the-College-Major-Really/172011/?cid=at
Jensen Comment
This begs the question of when majors do matter, and they matter most when
choosing the wrong one can add a year or more to taking licensing examinations
for careers. For example, it now takes five years (150 credits) to sit for the
CPA examination. Not choosing accounting as a major in the second year can add
more semesters to getting a degree.
When my university added the fifth year masters program in accounting, however, it did so in what I consider the correct way. It moved some of the advanced accounting courses to the masters program, thereby leaving more flexibility in the first four years for double majoring or at least taking minors in other disciplines like mathematics, communications, computer science, and even another language.
Not choosing engineering as a major can put a student out of synch in a curriculum plan. The same can be said of other majors like nursing and pharmacy and other careers with licensing examinations.
Of course the world does not come to an end if a student has to take more time to graduate due to uncertainty about a career plan. But often the trial and error process does not add a whole lot to critical reasoning skills that often come in more advanced courses like courses in philosophy, economics, etc.
Careers Getting a Boost from Foreign Experience
Jensen Comment
On infrequent occasions I've witnessed how foreign experience seemed to improve
the odds of my former students being admitted to a Big Four partnership. These
were not top students, and on graduation day I would not have predicted that
they would become partners in Big Four firms. I might add that some of these
students also took double majors in foreign languages such as Russian, Chinese,
and Spanish. That is perhaps why they were afforded opportunities to work for
the Big Four in Moscow, China, and Latin America.
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on February 10, 2015
How many stamps are in your passport? Or perhaps more importantly, how many work visas? Nearly 40% of CFOs at the largest 1,000 public and private companies in the U.S. have worked abroad, and that figure is expected to rise, CFO Journal’s Kimberly S. Johnson reports.
The trend follows the money: Companies in the S&P 500 got roughly half their sales outside the U.S. in 2013, up about 10% over the past decade, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. And recent earnings figures underscore the value of understanding the local consequences of extreme volatility in currencies, commodities and politics.
Years spent in the trenches abroad can help an executive navigate cultural mores, regulations and supply-chain disruptions. “I don’t believe you can get there by being there a week or two and flying back out,” said Thomas Mangas, CFO of Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.
Jensen Note
Entry level accountants are usually called "staff accountants." Upon graduation
some of the most plentiful jobs in the world are for staff accountants. Note
that in the USA, however, CPA firms generally require that students become
qualified to immediately take the CPA examination, and that generally takes a
fifth year of study, usually but not always for a masters degree. The same can
be said for chartered accountants in many other nations.
Staff Accountants are in the Top Ten Below
"10 jobs with the best salary potential," Jada A. Graves, US News & World
Report, February 3, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/jobs-with-the-best-salary-potential-2015-2
Jensen Comment
Also important is job-change opportunity. Many college graduates go to work for
CPA firms never intending to stay with those firms. Those firms offer terrific
opportunity for technical training and exposure to clients needing accounting,
internal auditing, forensics, information technology, and tax services. More
often than not those that leave the CPA firms and stay in the work force go with
clients.
Salaries may or may not be higher, but there is often less travel and job stress when working for a client. Making partner with a CPA firm often entails long hours and public relations skills requiring special talents. Partners are paid well, but less than 15% of the new hires in large CPA firms become partners. Partners generally have skills in obtaining and retaining clients. The same, by the way, is true of law firms where much of the technical work is often performed by lower-paid non-partners.
My point is that students hoping to become partners in CPA firms and law firms should take courses in communications. Foreign languages can also help since sometimes the path to partnership is easier for USA accounting graduates to work in off shore offices of multinational CPA firms such as working in offices in Moscow, Mexico City, and various cities in South America and Asia.
Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/jobs-with-the-best-salary-potential-2015-2
Harvard Business School students list the best and worst parts of their
experience there ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/harvard-business-school-students-experience-2015-2
Jensen Comment
The word "push" in relation to student assignments and examinations needs to be
defined with more precision. The Harvard Business School is noted for extensive
writing assignments each week that are generally graded by professors
themselves. The HBS is noted for its case study assignments and competitive
pedagogy in case discussion courses.
However, without knowing the facts my hunch is that flunking out of the Harvard Business School, apart from voluntarily dropping out, is probably a rare event. Hence the term "push" is a relative term. The same can probably be said for the Harvard Law School. In both the HBS and Harvard Law the hardest thing is getting into these programs. Students who are admitted usually have high academic skills plus unique talents and backgrounds.
To date there are 83 HBS professors rated on RateMyProfessor. Sometimes the ratings tell more about the students than their professors. However, keep in mind that students who send in evaluations to RMP are self-selecting. This is not a random sample of the thousands of HBS graduates. The numerical ratings are generally nonsense due to a sparse number of evaluations sent in for given professors. The most revealing information can sometimes be in the added commentaries.
An example of a commentary on one HBS professor:
too easy after all this is harvard dammit. we were featured in legally blonde with reese witherspoon
"How Reviews on ‘Rate My Professors’ Describe Men and Women Differently,"
by Nick Desantis, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 9, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/how-reviews-on-rate-my-professors-describe-men-and-women-differently/93687?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Easy or demanding? Boring or engaging? And what about homework?
The student-evaluation site Rate My Professors contains a huge stockpile of information about what college students think of their instructors. And thanks to a new tool created by a Northeastern University professor, those millions of reviews can be mined to reveal students’ biases about male and female professors.
Benjamin M. Schmidt, an assistant professor of history at Northeastern, spoke to The New York Times about his interactive tool, which allows users to see how often certain words appear in male and female professors’ reviews, across an array of disciplines.
Chronicle readers will recognize the tool’s creator as the same scholar who devised a graphic that lets users see how often presidents have used certain words in their State of the Union addresses. President Obama led the pack with the most mentions of some college-related words.
On his blog Mr. Schmidt posted some answers to frequently asked questions about the new tool. He wrote that the largest fields were “about 750,000 reviews apiece for female English and male math professors.” And he said the database was “heavy on master’s and community colleges” in the most-represented institutions. The University of Central Florida was at the top of the heap.
Here’s more from the Times about the patterns Mr. Schmidt noticed in the Rate My Professors data:
Mr. Schmidt, who made the chart as part of a project called Bookworm for searching and visualizing large texts, said he was struck by “this spectrum from smart to brilliant to genius, where each one of those is more strongly gendered male than the previous one was.” He was also surprised that relatively few people commented on female professors’ clothing or looks, which he had expected to be the case.
And here are a few examples. Notice how male professors are more often described as “arrogant” …
Jensen Reply to One of the Commentators
Dear profroguerouge,
If you carefully follow RMP evaluations like me, you will find that the overwhelming majority of respondents on RMP are not disgruntled and usually rate their teachers quite highly. What is revealing is that most professors are rated as easy graders, but respondents do not, in general, intend this as a criticism.
Of course there are many limitations of the RMP database. Respondents are self-selecting. In most instances the numerical ratings are nonsense since the proportion of a teacher's students who send in evaluations is miniscule.
But the commentaries can be revealing about the pedagogy of a teacher, the easiness of the course, the political activism of the professor in the course, etc. For example, a journalism professor at the University of Texas has a grading average of A+. That same student gives credit for students to participate in campus protests against the administration which he leads. But his students rate his intellect as very high even if the course is a certain A+.
Added Jensen Comment
Anecdotally, I tend to agree that students who comment about women professors tend to mention clothing and looks. But comments about sense of humor or lack thereof are more apt to be about male professors. RMP tends to leave us feeling that men tend to be humorous and/or odd.
I also find that students are more apt to be turned on or turned off by feminism activism of female professors.
For example, look at the reviews at
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=196790Of course this is only one illustration because I know this professor also does research on feminism in economics. This is not a random choice.
The Seattle coach actually chose the surest way of getting three tries at the goal within 30 seconds.
In American Football nine things can happen when you throw a pass. Possible injuries aside, for the offense four of the possible outcomes are good and five of them are bad. I ignored the possibility of a fumble, although the odds might be a bit higher for a fumble by a quarterback or a receiver on a passing play. The ball could also be fumbled after an interception.
But there are various other strategies involving more than one play, the clock, timeouts remaining, and inability to get penalty yards beyond the goal line.
Seattle had one time out left such that Marshawn Lynch could've been given two lunges at the goal line for sure. However, Seattle gambled on getting three tries for the goal, a pass and two more tries that could have been running lunges by Lynch. Odds are that Lynch would have eventually scored a touchdown in two lunges. He might've fumbled --- so this is a consideration. Certainly the defense will be very aggressive trying to force a fumble. But a fumble after he moves ahead one yard and gets the ball across the goal line doesn't count as a fumble.
Hypothetically, a no-brainer time to pass on second down was probably with zero time outs left even though five of nine possible outcomes are bad when passing. Note that some of the four good things are not as good when there is only one yard to go for a touchdown. A penalty against the defense is only good for half the distance to the goal line. But it can extend the clock after the time runs out. The defense is less likely to commit a visible penalty that gives the offense another shot at the goal at the end of the game.
In hindsight I think it was a good decision to pass on the second down with one time out left. However, I did not think so at the time.
Was it wise for Seattle to take a chance with a pass with one yard to go,
one time out left, and 30 seconds left on the clock? ---
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/2/7961789/pete-carroll-play-call-defense
No in hindsight, but maybe yes at the time. New England probably gambled almost
entirely that the ball would be handed off to powerhouse
Marshawn Lynch,
. . .
Let me spell that out in a little more detail.
An incomplete pass stops the game clock. An unsuccessful run does not. A timeout also stops the clock, and Seattle only had one timeout left. So if the Seahawks had run on second down and failed to get a touchdown, they would have had to call timeout.
Now, it's third down, and they have no timeouts left. So if they run on third and fail, the game is over. But if they pass on third and fail, the clock will stop, and they can run another play. So they basically have to pass on third, and the New England defense knows they have to pass.
By contrast, if you throw on second down and fail, the clock stops. Now it's third down, and you still have your time out. That means you could run on third, fail, and use the timeout to stop the clock and run another play on fourth down. That means New England has to defend against both the pass and the run, which puts Seattle in a more advantageous strategic position than they would be had they run and failed.
Obviously, this line of thinking didn't work out very well for the Seahawks. And there's a good case to be made that it involves overthinking the situation. You only need two yards (actually one yard) , and you've got Lynch, so why not put it in his hands? But if you leave hindsight out of it, you can see the argument on the other side.
* Correction: This post originally said the ball was on the two yard-line, but the NFL's official record says otherwise.
Jensen Comment
Nobody phoned me for advice. I thought to myself at the time that I would run on
the second down, call a time out, pass on the third down, and run on the fourth
down. I assumed a third (fourth-down) try would be possible in 30 seconds as
long at the last time out was called very quickly after the first run at the
goal on the second down. It's possible, however, that time runs out before
the fourth down.
When shooting for three tries at the goal, the first two tries have to
transpire at lightning speed in less than 30 seconds..
Seattle would not have liked it if the
quarterback took too much time getting the pass off on the third down or if the
pass on third down was bobbled around for two much time before hitting the
ground as an incomplete pass.
I suspect the Seattle coach worried about too much time being taken up on a
third down pass.
He preferred the second down pass that would give more flexibility on how
to get two more tries after the second down. If the second down pass took less
than ten seconds there was time for two running plays. I the second down pass
took fifteen seconds there was time for a quick third down pass and a last try
at running the ball.
In hindsight I think the Seattle coach called it correctly for more assurance at three tries at the goal --- a pass, a run, and another run.
He just got unlucky that one of the five bad things (the worst thing that could happen) happened on the second down pass. The Seattle Coach Carroll, however, probably has a lot of confidence that his quarterback will not throw short-distance interceptions. The best quarterbacks with one yard to the goal make split second decisions as to when to throw the ball away.
By the way, when he was the USC Coach Pete Carroll did great things for the minority community. He's a good guy and a smart coach.
After writing the above and sending it off I read the following at the
respected 5:38 blog ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/a-head-coach-botched-the-end-of-the-super-bowl-and-it-wasnt-pete-carroll/
"The Rich Man’s Dropout Club: Whatever happened to the teenage
entrepreneurs whom Peter Thiel paid to forgo college?" by Beth McMurtrie,
Chronicle of Higher Education, February 8, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Rich-Mans-Dropout-Club/151703/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en#
Jensen Comment
This article is too long and too complicated to summarize here. In the late
1960s a colleague of mine named Jack Muth taught operations at Michigan State
University where I taught accounting as an assistant professor. Jack put off
getting getting his Ph.D. diploma at Carnegie-Mellon University because he saw
no need for the foreign language requirement. He continued working at CMU as a
research associate ABFL (All-But-Foreign-Language).
As a ABFL research associate Jack had an opportunity at some point to go to
France. He then saw a need to learn some French, took some coursework, met the
language requirement for his Ph.D. at CMU, and picked up his diploma. He then
worked for several years as an assistant professor but was not awarded
tenure at CMU. He later joined the faculty at MSU, was given tenure in advance,
had almost no record of research and publication beyond his famous rational
expectations model developed when he was still at CMU, and spent much of his
time pursuing his obsession with playing in a string quartet ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Muth
My point is that some people, often brilliant people with resources to be
financially independent, are upset over time wasters that include requirements
in college curriculum and job duties that they view as a waste of time for
themselves. In college they're in a hurry to go places and do things. In Jack's
case Bill Gates and many other well-known college dropouts had not yet entered
college so they were not his role models. I'm not sure Jack had a role model.
Unlike Bill Gates and the Thiel Fellows discussed in the above article Jack Muth
did not have entrepreneurial aspirations ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiel_Fellowship
What Jack really wanted was to what he was good at but not brilliant --- playing
the viola.
Some brilliant students try to avoid the traditional role models of graduating from college, going to work for an organization, and performing according to job specifications. For example, some view joining a tenure track as a waste of time if it entails counting publications in research journals to get tenure and pay raises. Many like Jack Muth who who do get tenure early on do so on the basis on one noted contribution and don't play the career game like us other drudges had to play the publish or perish game. Jack was a bit problematic at MSU. He did not make noted research contributions beyond those contributions before he joined MSU. Students avoided his classes like the plague, because he was seldom prepared for class and often wandered over their heads on tangents that were not intended parts of the course.
When I was at Stanford there was a famous professor in the mathematics department that even the best math majors avoided like the plague. He was so ill prepared for his classes that students generally considered taking his courses to be a waste of their time. Maybe he was burned out. When he tried to explain solutions to problems he generally became all muddled up to to lack of preparation. Jack was a bit like that back at MSU, although I could still recognize brilliance that was not burned out. I think Jack just lost interest in mathematical economics. He loved his music.
As a colleague I thought Jack was brilliant. On occasion I became hopelessly lost in the mathematics of my own research. I would take my troubles down to Jack and without the least bit of preparation he would reveal his brilliance by showing me a way. Jack was an outstanding colleague that most of my other colleagues and MSU students failed to appreciate because they did not tap his brilliance in the right way.
I advise students to avoid anything like a Thiel Fellowship that tempts them to bypass a college degree. The odds are against becoming a Bill Gates or anything like Bill Gates. Being a Thiel Fellow is an invitation to fail and being left with nothing but failure. And returning to college later in life often gets complicated by such things as having children and losing that drive to compete in college --- where being in college is even more painful later in life than it was when being young.
Don't count Android out in spite of all the good news you hear or read about
iPhones.
It's still David's Apple versus Android's Goliath!
"Android just achieved something it will take Apple years to do (ship
over one billion devices a year)," by Rob Price, Business Insider, February 2,
2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/android-1-billion-shipments-2014-strategy-analytics-2015-2
. . .
Despite this, new figures show that Android isn't going anywhere, at least not soon. Strategy Analytics last week revealed that Android reached a huge new milestone in 2014. For the first time ever, more than 1 billion devices were shipped with the Android OS.
This trounces iPhone sales, CNET reports. Apple sold just 192.7 million units in the same time period. According to Strategy Analytics, Android devices were 81% of all smartphones sold last year. The global smartphone market also increased 30%, to 1.3 billion from 1 billion.
Microsoft's 3% market share is little more than a footnote, and all others combined come to less than 1%
Jensen Comment
The other night I was at a dinner party where a Mac enthusiast raved that Mac
was going to bury Microsoft Windows. Thant may well be, but Mac computers are
still stuck with only 10%-13% of the PC market. Microsoft will still be here in
a big way for years to come unless Apple gets smart and outsources its Mac
operating system combined with development of an Apple Office that leaves MS
Office in the dust.
How to Avoid Misleading With Statistics
"Follow the Money (on gender and minority pay gaps in at UC Berkeley),
" by Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, February 6, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/06/berkeley-tries-track-and-address-salary-gaps-among-professors
Jensen Comment
This is perhaps the best pay gap study that I've encountered because it tries to
control for some of the obvious reasons for pay gaps such as differences in
faculty supply and demand by discipline.
It also raises questions about some of the non-politically correct factors such work-family balance:
“Do the differences reflect group differences in access to important social networks?” she asked. “Do they reflect the operation of implicit association in the assessment of individual faculty members’ records? Do they reflect differences for group members in work-family balance? Questions like these point us toward ways in which we can try to make direct or indirect institutional responses.”
The UC Berkeley study rises above most other gender pay gap studies, but there's still room for speculation and further study. For examples, the study strongly suggests that "experience" may be a factor leading to pay gaps. But it does not provide examples of where experience is a factor in pay gaps. One example is accounting. Most USA-citizens in accountancy Ph.D. programs had experience as CPAs in the public or private sectors. This means that they passed the uniform CPA exam required for licensing. There's no gender gap here because the more women than men are hired for CPA firms and other accounting employers.
But without a gender divide in accounting there most certainly is a racial divide in undergraduate accounting programs, especially among African American males. Without checking my facts I think much less than 5% of of the undergraduate accounting graduates are African American. Why is this the case since there are perhaps more employment opportunities in accounting than most other disciplines? My hypothesis is that it's a combination of having fewer African American males in the pool of undergraduates in general combined combined with fears of the CPA examination probabilities of passage. Passage rates are much lower and more intimidating than, say, the passage rates on the Bar Examination.
Thus many fewer African Americans get experience as accountants, and experience is a requirement for admission into most accounting Ph.D. programs. Thus, having African American males graduate from an accounting Ph.D. program in a prestigious university is a rare event.
Questions that should be pursued in greater detail include starting-gate pay gaps in starting assistant professors by discipline. For example, do new women or minority and female assistant professors of accounting earn less than new white male assistant professors hires in accounting? I really doubt that there are differences except that African Americans may actually receive higher offers due to their scarcity in fields like accounting. Women may also be in shorter supply among new Ph.D. graduates in some fields such as computer science, thereby leading to higher offers for females at the starting gates.
As the article points out there are many, many other factors affecting pay gaps in years following the year of earning a Ph.D.
I've made this point previously, but it bears repeating here.
One factor to consider is the dominance of white males among Ph.D. graduates in
the starting-gate pools. In some disciplines there are significant shortages of
female, African American, and Native American Ph.D. graduates for hiring as
assistant professors. Computer science comes to mind. Over subsequent
years there are much larger pools of white male full-professor computer
scientists such that one expects a significantly higher
probability that highly paid (endowed chair) stars are more likely to emerge
from the larger pool --- even if every person at the starting gate is
equally-likely to become a star performer. The highly paid stars,
in turn, skew the pay averages toward white males among full professors in a
given department.
For example, when filling an endowed chair in computer science there will be more white males due to the original larger starting-gate pool of white males trying to become stars in computer science.
Discrimination is factor in pay gaps within a discipline where choice of major is self-selecting. For example, we don't take the entire population of students entering Ph.D. programs and randomly assign them to all academic disciplines. They themselves choose whether they want a Ph.D. in English or primary education versus a Ph.D. in computer science. Strong efforts are now being make at the K-12 level to attract more women and minorities into computer science and science in general. I applaud the effort, and to the extent it is successful, pay gaps by gender and race will disappear in our Academy.
Bob Jensen's threads on the history of women in the professions ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women
Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
Professor Albrecht reveals quitting school to prevent a string of F grades and his "beloved" Professor Donald Johnson
"The Ripple Effect," by David Albrecht, Skills for Young Professionals
Blog, February 4, 2015
https://skillsforyoungprofessionals.wordpress.com/2015/02/04/the-ripple-effect/
Bob Jensen's threads on careers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
PwC US Launches CareerAdvisor, January 7, 2015
New platform of tools to provide students with resources they need for the
career they want
http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2015/pwc-us-launches-careeradvisor.jhtml
Academic careers ---
http://www.academiccareers.com/
LibraryCareers.org --- http://www.ala.org/ala/educationcareers/careers/librarycareerssite/home.cfm
Careerzone --- http://careerzone.ny.gov/cz/stem/index.jsp
JobApps --- http://www.myjobapps.com/
Careers in Logistics ---
http://academic.rcc.edu/logisticsmanagement/PDF/Careers In Logistics by
CSCMP.pdf
Resume Writing Helpers and Samples --- http://www.resumesamples.info/
My Next Move (career change helpers) ---
http://www.mynextmove.org/
For example feed in the word "accountant"
Science Careers --- http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/
Accounting Career Network ---
http://www.searchaccountingjobs.com/
AccountingCareersNow.com --- http://www.accountingcareersnow.com/
The Big Four Accounting Firms Are All in the Ten: Who dares say that
accounting is a dull career?
"Fifty Most Popular Employers for Business Students," Bloomberg
Businessweek, May 9, 2013 ---
http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/2013-05-09/fifty-most-popular-employers-for-business-students
"How To Get Hired If You Have A
Tattoo," by J.T. O'Donnell, Business Insider, October 22, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-get-hired-if-you-have-a-tattoo-2013-10
Apple's Tax Bill in Australia Doubles (suspicions of profit shifting)
http://www.smh.com.au/business/apples-803-million-australian-tax-bill-revealed-20150127-12yrqq.html
Apple paid just $80.3 million in Australian tax last year, despite making more than $6 billion in local revenue, accounts filed with the corporate regulator show.
While a fraction of its overall income, Apple's tax bill was more than double what it paid the previous year.
The tax-expense figure, disclosed in accounts filed with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, comes as a Senate inquiry prepares to grill the heads of Australian and multinational corporations over their tax affairs.
It also comes amid an investigation by the Australian Tax Office of tech companies suspected of shifting profits out of Australia.
While the actual amount of tax a company pays is confidential under Australian law, an expense figure is calculated for the purpose of annual accounts.
Professor Antony Ting, at the University of Sydney Business School, said Apple's latest accounts suggested it was continuing to shift profits overseas.
"It appears that Apple is still able to shift most of its profits from Australia with its tax structure, which most likely is perfectly legal under the current tax law," he said.
"That leaves little profits, after deducting sales and marketing costs in Australia, to be taxed in Australia."
An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the accounts reflected tax paid accurately.
Apple has been in the spotlight over its taxes in Australia, after an investigation by Fairfax Media last year showed it had shifted $8.9 billion in untaxed profits from its Australian operations to Ireland in the past decade.
It is one of the companies expected to be hauled in front of a Senate inquiry into corporate tax avoidance, with hearings due to start as soon as March.
U.K. Lawmakers Accuse PwC of Promoting Multinational Tax Dodges ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-06/u-k-lawmakers-accuse-pwc-of-promoting-multinational-tax-dodges
Mysteries of Human Memory
Does this explain the helicopter memory lapse of NBC's news anchor Brian
Williams?
"You Have No Idea What Happened," by Maria Konnikova, The New
Yorker, February 4, 2015 ---
http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/idea-happened-memory-recollection
How to Mislead With Statistics
"The MOOC Hype Fades, in 3 Charts," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of
Higher Education, February 5, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/the-mooc-fades-in-3-charts/55701?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
How to Mislead With Statistics
When it comes to surveys usually what you ask is what you get, and what you fail to ask is what you fail to get.
This is a poor article because it did not look into prior research to both include in the article and to affect the wording of questions. For many college faculty and other teachers around the world, MOOCs are free windows into the classrooms of prestigious universities using top teachers teaching advanced courses in their specialties. It's true that many of those window watchers are looking through the windows out of curiosity, but they are getting some teaching ideas and learning a few things about advanced topics in their own specialties.
Critics of MOOCs tend to look at MOOCs as alternatives to teaching and motivating students in introductory courses. Most MOOCs were never intended for introductory students in introductory courses, because we already know that those students need more intensive interactions with teachers and other students. Ironically, they often get this more in small fee-based distance education courses than they get in a lecture hall holding 2,500 students in a flagship university. In any case the students do not and never will get intensive interactions in MOOCs.
MOOCs are ipso facto sustainable as long as tens of millions of students globally are signing up to window watch and the universities with multiple billions in endowments can well afford to serve up something to these millions of window watchers.
I hate surveys like this that ignore previous studies on the same issues. Examples of studies that should have been mentioned are provided at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Important links include the following:
MOOC FAQ --- http://www.openculture.com/mooc_faq
"Harvard and MIT Release Visualization Tools for Trove of MOOC Data," Chronicle of Higher Education, February 20, 2014 --- Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/harvard-and-mit-release-visualization-tools-for-trove-of-mooc-data/50631?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
"18 Free Online Business Courses That Will Boost Your Career," by John A. Byrne, Business Insider, December 18, 2014 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/best-free-online-business-courses-in-january-2014-12
For many students they boost your ability to master MBA courses before entering an MBA program.
"6 Big Takeaways From the EdX Global Forum," by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed, November 23, 2014 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/6-big-takeaways-edx-global-forum
The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning --- http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/index
From the American Library Association
Advocacy: Online Learning --- http://www.ala.org/onlinelearning/issues/advocacy
Also see the following links from Bob JensenGrowth Worldwide --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#DistanceEducation
Alternatives Worldwide --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/CrossBorder.htm
Free online tutorials, videos, and courses from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
And the list goes on and on at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Gallup --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallup_%28company%29
Jim Clifton --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Clifton
How to Mislead With Statistics
"The Big Lie: 5.6% Unemployment," by Former Gallup CEO Jim Clifton,
LinkedIn, February 3, 2015 ---
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-lie-56-unemployment-jim-clifton?trk=pulse-det-nav_art
Here’s something that many Americans -- including some of the smartest and most educated among us -- don’t know: The official unemployment rate, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading.
Right now, we’re hearing much celebrating from the media, the White House and Wall Street about how unemployment is “down” to 5.6%. The cheerleading for this number is deafening. The media loves a comeback story, the White House wants to score political points and Wall Street would like you to stay in the market.
None of them will tell you this: If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job -- if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks -- the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed. That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news -- currently 5.6%. Right now, as many as 30 million Americans are either out of work or severely underemployed. Trust me, the vast majority of them aren’t throwing parties to toast “falling” unemployment.
There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20 -- maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn -- you’re not officially counted as unemployed in the much-reported 5.6%. Few Americans know this.
Yet another figure of importance that doesn’t get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find -- in other words, you are severely underemployed -- the government doesn’t count you in the 5.6%. Few Americans know this.
There’s no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.
And it’s a lie that has consequences, because the great American dream is to have a good job, and in recent years, America has failed to deliver that dream more than it has at any time in recent memory. A good job is an individual’s primary identity, their very self-worth, their dignity -- it establishes the relationship they have with their friends, community and country. When we fail to deliver a good job that fits a citizen’s talents, training and experience, we are failing the great American dream.
Gallup defines a good job as 30+ hours per week for an organization that provides a regular paycheck. Right now, the U.S. is delivering at a staggeringly low rate of 44%, which is the number of full-time jobs as a percent of the adult population, 18 years and older. We need that to be 50% and a bare minimum of 10 million new, good jobs to replenish America’s middle class.
I hear all the time that “unemployment is greatly reduced, but the people aren’t feeling it.” When the media, talking heads, the White House and Wall Street start reporting the truth -- the percent of Americans in good jobs; jobs that are full time and real -- then we will quit wondering why Americans aren’t “feeling” something that doesn’t remotely reflect the reality in their lives. And we will also quit wondering what hollowed out the middle class.
Jim Clifton is Chairman and CEO of Gallup. He is author of The Coming Jobs War (Gallup Press, 2011).
Jensen Comment
Part-time jobs, especially those without benefits, should be excluded from the
calculation of the main unemployment rate --- especially since so many of the
"new jobs created" are part-time jobs.
The Best TV Streaming Device You Can Buy ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-best-tv-streaming-device-you-can-buy-the-best-109429437739.html
. . .
This is the best streaming device:
Roku Streaming Stick ($49)
Roku’s streaming stick is cheap, tiny, and gives you access to more content than you could ever possibly watch. Not only do you get the basics like Netflix and Hulu Plus, but you also get Google Play Movies, which isn’t available on Amazon’s Fire TV or Fire TV Stick. The Roku Streaming Stick also gets Amazon Instant Video.
It’s dead easy to set up and use, too.
The Roku Streaming Stick has access to more than 1,800 channels, which include things like HBO GO, Crackle, Watch ESPN, and a variety of niche offerings, including Zom-Bee TV, Spud’s Trailer Trash, Detroit Reality TV, a ton of religious channels, and others. The Streaming Stick also gets access to all of the available major music services, with the exception of Apple’s iTunes.
The Roku Streaming Stick also lets you mirror content from your smartphone, tablet, or Windows 8 device to your TV.Sure, Roku’s streaming stick doesn’t have an Ethernet port, so you have to use Wi-Fi, and it doesn’t have a digital audio jack, so you can’t hook it up to your stereo system. But when it comes to streaming devices, content is king. And with more content than any other offering at a relatively low price, the Roku Streaming Stick is clearly the best option if you’re in the market for a streaming device.
If you love Roku, but your Wi-Fi is terrible
Roku 3 ($99)
So you love everything that the Roku Streaming Stick has to offer in terms of content, but your Wi-Fi connection isn’t fast enough to stream content to your TV?
January 30, 2015 reply from Louis Matherne
Being the geek that I am I have a few of these devices – a Roku, Apple TV, Chromecast, and a TiVo. The only one that doesn’t get used much is the Apple TV. It doesn’t do much that the other devices can’t and there is almost always a transaction cost!
The TiVo gets used every day. There is just little substitute for its convenience. I’m getting closer but I’m not there yet.
The Roku is getting used more and more but primarily for Netflix, HBOGO, ShowTime, Amazon Prime. There is a lot of content available through the Roku but a lot of it is junk. I could probably get more of what I record on the TiVo on the Roku if I looked for it but the TiVo is simple and convenient.
The Chromecast covers content not available on the other devices. There are some good shows on Starz that are not supported on the Roku. For its $30.00 onetime charge, it was worth it.
Oh, and with a Dune media player I can stream content from my media server.
Even with all the above, there are still a number of shows or movies I can’t get without paying an additional fee but needless to say I’ve got access to more content than I have time for … or should be making time for.
With all the above, I’d be hard pressed to cut the cord. And don’t forget that access to those premium channels on any device still requires a monthly charge.
Louis
Jensen Comment
I still prefer a hardwire connection with a HDMI cable. I do sometimes have
trouble with the cheap size adapters that I get from Amazon, so I get a dozen at
at time for less than $2 each.
"Time to Get Better," by Joe Hoyle,
Teaching Blog, February 4, 2015 ---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2015/02/time-to-get-better.html
Jensen Comment
I think how well students read/memorize textbooks depends both upon how you
teach classes (e.g., by calling on students to answer questions from the
chapters) and how you test (e.g., model problems directly after textbook
illustrations). Many teachers teach directly from textbooks. This is sad,
because students can learn from textbooks on their own such that the teacher is
not much value added in the course other than his or her role in forcing
textbook learning.
Risk averse students often give high teaching evaluations to textbook teachers, because those students do no like uncertainty in quizzes, examinations, and class call outs. This also is sad, because life on the job is full of uncertainties that are not covered in textbooks.
JournalTOCs (Tables of Contents and Article Titles) --- http://www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk/
Jensen Comment
I was not impressed by the search engine, but note the categories under the
search box such as "Accounting and Finance"
Question
Would you believe any study, even one pushed by the The Washington Post,
that concludes that there is no racial difference between teenage crime in the
USA?
How to Mislead With Statistics
'Another Bogus Academic Study Creates Bogus Headlines," by Colin
Flaherty, The American Thinker, February 2, 2015 ---
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/02/another_bogus_academic_study_creates_bogus_headlines.html
Thanks to the Washington Post, we have new entry in what is surely the fastest-growing industry in academia: bogus studies that purport to show there is no difference between black and white rates of crime. The only difference comes from the big bad racist police, prosecutors, parole officers, judges, juries, reporters, editors and others who are also in on The Big Fix and relentlessly pick on black people, For No Reason What So Ever.
Even in black cities with black mayors, black police chiefs and black prosecutors -- like Washington.
This latest headline from the Post tells a shocking story: “Black teens who commit a few crimes go to jail as often as white teens who commit dozens.”
Or it would be shocking if it were true. But it is not.
This headline, of course, flies in the face of numbers that show violent crime for black people is astronomically out of proportion: 5, 10, 50 times greater than crime rates for white people. Throw Asians into the mix, and you can multiply that by 10 times more.
Turns out, they are also in on The Big Fix: “Although there were negligible differences among the racial groups in how frequently boys committed crimes, white boys were less likely to spend time in a facility than black and Hispanic boys who said they'd committed crimes just as frequently, as shown in the chart above,” quoth the Post.
“Negligible differences among the racial groups?” What? Where did that come from?
That gem of disbelief is contained in a study from Tia Stevens Andersen of the University of South Carolina and Michigan State University's Merry Morash.
And where did they get it? “Surveyors (from the Department of Labor) asked youth whether they had stolen, destroyed property, attacked someone or sold drugs in the last year.”
"Recommended from Around the Web (Week Ending January 31, 2015),"
MIT's Technology Review, January 30, 2015 ---
Click Here
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/534536/recommended-from-around-the-web-week-ending-january-31-2015/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150202
"College Admissions Racket: They're Not Going to Let You In Anyway,"
by Janet Lorin, Bloomberg Businessweek, January 28, 2015 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-28/college-admissions-racket-they-re-not-going-to-let-you-in-anyway?cmpid=BBD012815&alcmpid=
Carlsen played a rather un-Carlsen-like game to
ultimately defeat Caruana.
This is what happens when Magnus Carlsen takes on his closest rival in chess ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-what-happens-when-magnus-carlsen-takes-on-his-closest-rival-in-chess-2015-1
Jensen Comment
This makes me wonder if it would be a perfect time for Apple Corporation to
defeat Microsoft with a very "un-Apple-like" move.
Suppose Apple at this critical juncture in the life of Microsoft began to play more like Microsoft --- by licensing the production of Mac clones with Mac operating systems to Dell, HP, and other enormous manufacturing corporations.
At the same time Apple could invest some of its idle gazillions in cash for development of an Apple Office Suite that would leave MS Office in the dust.
Teaching History with 100 Objects
Humanity is forgetting its history more rapidly. And
celebrities are losing their fame faster than ever.
Marc Parry, "Scholars Elicit a 'Cultural Genome' From 5.2 Million
Google-Digitized Books," Chronicle of Higher Education, December 16, 2010
---
http://chronicle.com/article/Scholars-Elicit-a-Cultural/125731/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
"A Very Short History Of Data Science," by Gil Press, Forbes,
May 28, 2013 ---
Click Here
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2013/05/28/a-very-short-history-of-data-science/?utm_campaign=techtwittersf&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
Go to the article itself to see the historic paintings
"The vanished grandeur of accounting Once, bookkeepers were valorized in
great art. Sound funny now? The joke might be on us," by Jacob Soll, Boston
Globe, June 8, 2014 ---
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/06/07/the-vanished-grandeur-accounting/3zcbRBoPDNIryWyNYNMvbO/story.html
Teaching History with 100 Objects ---
http://www.teachinghistory100.
One hundred objects from museums across the UK with resources, information and teaching ideas to inspire your students’ interest in history.
More about this project
Jensen Comment
As I scanned the above site it dawned on me how we might add historical objects
(or pictures or videos) of those objects into some of our accounting courses,
especially when teaching topics where accounting history is virtually ignored.
For example rather than just define the term "ledger" in bookkeeping the rich
history could be taught with images or even objects of this history such as
papyrus, quill pens, etc.---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ledger (note some of the early history)
Or when teaching modules from "data science" there are various objects that
might be visualized ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_science
For examples perhaps objects of machine learning, signal processing, etc. could
catch student's attention.
For example, one possible assignment on a give topic might be to ask teams of students to discover possible objects of historical interest on this topic.
I kick myself for having given or thrown away a succession of six of early laptop computers that I owned over the years.
A good place for accounting teachers to start when looking for history
"object" ideas is the Accounting Historians Journal
with now has free archives of articles about old stuff ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/general_library/dac/files/ahj.html
Some Accounting History Sites
A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Canadian Printer and Publisher (history of various trades and industries)
---
http://link.library.utoronto.ca/cpp/
You can search for various industry terms such as accounting, cost,
bookkeeping, etc.
Bob Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge
accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Archive of the History of Financial Regulation --- http://www.sechistorical.org/
American Accounting Association
Past Presidents are listed at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~
Accounting History Journals
September 1, 2012 message from Jim McKinney
Accounting History Review was formerly titled Accounting, Business & Financial History is based out of Cardiff University. Accounting History is a journal published by Sage as a journal of the Accounting History Special Interest Group of the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand. The Accounting Historians Journal a publication of the Academy of Accounting Historians is independently published (and as a result far cheaper in price) than the other two. The Accounting Historians Journal is much older than the other two having entered its 39th year of publication. Older editions of the AHJ are available on JSTOR and other databases, with older back issues available for free at the University of Mississippi Libraries website that also maintains the AICPA libraries. I know editors at all three journals and all are quite capable and respected individuals. There is a considerable debate which of the journals are considered better than the other with arguments made for each of the three.
Jim McKinney, Ph.D., C.P.A.
Accounting and Information Assurance
Robert H. Smith School of Business
4333G Van Munching Hall
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742-1815
http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu
Go to the article itself to see the historic paintings
"The vanished grandeur of accounting Once, bookkeepers were valorized in
great art. Sound funny now? The joke might be on us," by Jacob Soll,
Boston Globe, June 8, 2014 ---
http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/06/07/the-vanished-grandeur-accounting/3zcbRBoPDNIryWyNYNMvbO/story.html
In Washington’s National Gallery of Art hangs a portrait by Jan Gossaert. Painted around 1530, at the very moment when the Dutch were becoming the undisputed masters of European trade, it shows the merchant Jan Snouck Jacobsz at work at his desk. The painter’s remarkable gift for detail is evident in Jacobsz’s dignified expression, his fine ermine clothes and expensive rings. Rendered just as carefully are his quill pen, account ledger, and receipts.
This is, in short, a portrait of not only wealth and material success, but of accounting. It might seem strange that an artist would lavish such care on the nuts and bolts of something so mundane, like a poet writing couplets about a corporate expense report. But the Jacobsz portrait is far from unique: Accounting paintings were a significant genre in Dutch art. For 200 years, the Dutch not only dominated world trade and portrayed themselves that way, but in hundreds of paintings, they also made sure to include the account books.
This was not simply a wealthy nation crowing about its financial success. The Dutch were the leading merchants of their time, and they saw good accounting as the key to both their wealth and the moral health of their society. To the audience of the time, the paintings carried a clear message: Mastering finance was an achievement requiring both skill and humility.
Today when we see accountants in art or entertainment, they are marginal figures—comically boring bean-counters or fraudsters cooking the books. Accounting is almost a synonym for drudgery: from the hapless daydreamer Walter Mitty to the iconic nerd accountant Rick Moranis plays in “Ghostbusters.” Accounting is seen as less a moral calling than a fussy brake on the action.
In the wake of decades of financial scandal—much of it linked to creative accounting, or to no accounting all—the Dutch tradition of accounting art suggests it might be us, not the Dutch, who have misjudged accounting’s importance in the world. Accounting in the modern sense was still a new idea in the 1500s, one with a weight that carried beyond the business world. A proper accounting invoked the idea of debts paid, the obligation of nightly personal reckonings, and even calling to account the wealthy and powerful through audits.
It was an idea powerful enough to occupy the attention of thinkers in religion, art, and philosophy. A look back at the tradition of accounting in art shows just how much is at stake in “good accounting,” and how much society can gain from seeing it, like the Dutch, not just as a tool but as a cultural principle and a moral position.
***
Scratches on ancient tablets show us that accounts have been kept for as long as humans have been able to record them, from ancient Mesopotamians to the Mayans. This kind of accounting was about measuring stores: Merchants and treasurers recorded how much grain, bread, gold, or silver they had. Most ledgers were simple lists of assets or payments.
Accounting in the modern sense started around 1300 in medieval Italy, when multipartner firms had to calculate their investments in foreign trade. We don’t know who, if anyone, can take credit for the invention, but it was around this time that double-entry bookkeeping emerged in Tuscany. Instead of a simple list, it consisted of two separate columns, recording income in one against expenditures in the other. Every transaction of expenditure could be checked against corresponding income: If one sold a goat for three florins, one gained three florins and, in the other column, lost a goat. It was a kind of self-checking mechanism that also helped calculate profit or loss. In Hogarth’s “Marriage a la Mode: The Tête a Tête,” the man with the account books walks off in disgust (left).
HIP/Art Resource, New York
In Hogarth’s “Marriage a la Mode: The Tête a Tête,” the man with the account books walks off in disgust (left).
It would come to change finance, but was not an immediate hit. Any system of enforcing fiscal discipline is an incursion against the absolute control of the account-holder, and kings and the powerful tended to see themselves above the merchant-like calculations of bookkeeping. They not only hid their wealth and debts: They often did not bother to calculate them. In the end, they saw themselves as only accountable to God; if they needed more ready cash, they could always lean on their inferiors. At least in the short run, it was far more comfortable to govern without the constraints of financial accountability.
But in one place, the idea of financial accountability did take hold. By the early 1500s, Holland had become the center of global trade, with Antwerp and later Amsterdam acting as the most important ports in the world. Ships arrived laden with spices, exotic fruit, minerals, animals, whale oil, cloths, and other luxury goods. In 1602, the Dutch government in essence created modern capitalism by founding both the first publicly traded company—the Dutch East India Company, or VOC—and the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
Accounting was central to managing not only these companies, but also the Dutch government itself. While not all tax collectors or company managers kept perfect double-entry books, it represented an ideal. It was also seen as a necessary skill for civic participation. Most members of Dutch society were fluent in accounting, having studied at home or in publicly funded city accounting schools.
Double-entry accounting made it possible to calculate profit and capital and for managers, investors, and authorities to verify books. But at the time, it also had a moral implication. Keeping one’s books balanced wasn’t simply a matter of law, but an imitation of God, who kept moral accounts of humanity and tallied them in the Books of Life and Death. It was a financial technique whose power lay beyond the accountants, and beyond even the wealthy people who employed them.
Accounting was closely tied to the notion of human audits and spiritual reckonings. Dutch artists began to paint what could be called a warning genre of accounting paintings. In Jan Provost’s “Death and Merchant,” a businessman sits behind his sacks of gold doing his books, but he cannot balance them, for there is a missing entry. He reaches out for payment, not from the man who owes him the money, but from the grim reaper, death himself, the only one who can pay the final debts and balance the books. The message is clear: Humans cannot truly balance their books in the end, for they are accountable to the final auditor.
This message rubbed off on political and financial leaders. They were expected to keep good books, and they could expect to be publicly audited—a notion fiercely resisted in the great monarchies of the Continent. In the 17th century, another genre of paintings emerged, showing public administrators holding their books open for all to see. More than 100 of these paintings were produced between 1600 and 1800. Transparency became a cultural ideal worthy of art.
The Dutch also appreciated that ledgers, bills of exchange, and files, like any tool in human hands, were liable to misuse in the interest of wealth or pride. Dutch painters like Marinus van Raemerswaele warned against hubris and greed with paintings of bookkeepers as twisted, grotesque figures in absurd hats who would be as likely to commit fraud as to keep good books.
The value the Dutch placed on accounting made a large impression on the English, who sought to emulate “the Mighty Dutch” in many ways, including this new business technique. By the 1700s, they were also the only other nation to paint accounting pictures. The English celebrated the wealth of their Industrial Revolution and Empire with portraits of successful merchants smiling over their books—and, like the Dutch, also used account books as a way to wag a finger. In one scene from William Hogarth’s “Marriage à la Mode,” a popular series of paintings from the 18th century, a noble couple squanders their lives on parties and gambling. In a final signal of disapproval, almost like a punctuation mark, their accountant walks away in disgust.
***
By the late 19th century, accounting had become a profession of its own, rather than fundamentally a shared practice and value. It receded from the lives of individuals, and began to take on more the reputation it holds today.
Continued in article
"Stock Prices and Earnings: A History of Research," by Patricia M.
Dechow, Richard G. Sloan, and Jenny Zha, SSRN
(no longer available free as a download from SSRN),
Annual Review of Financial Economics, Vol. 6, pp. 343-363, 2014
December 2014 ($32 unless accessed free via your university's library
subscription)
http://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/annurev-financial-110613-034522
Abstract:
Accounting earnings summarize periodic corporate financial performance and are key determinants of stock prices. We review research on the usefulness of accounting earnings, including research on the link between accounting earnings and firm value and research on the usefulness of accounting earnings relative to other accounting and nonaccounting information. We also review research on the features of accounting earnings that make them useful to investors, including the accrual accounting process, fair value accounting, and the conservatism convention. We finish by summarizing research that identifies situations in which investors appear to misinterpret earnings and other accounting information, leading to security mispricing.
Jensen Comment
AAA Members may want to accompany this paper with Bill Beaver's
recollections of his own pioneering research on stock prices and earnings
--- recollections given at the American Accounting Association Annual
Meetings as the 2014 Presidential Scholar.
Video (free to AAA members who are subscribed to the AAA Commons) ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/hives/8d320fc4aa/summary
It is somewhat surprising that a predictor variable its extended versions (e.g., earnings per share) that cannot be defined by the FASB and IASB can be an effective predictor after it no longer can be defined. By not being definable, there is little assurance that earnings, eps, etc. are consistently measured over time for a single firm and across firms at a point in time.
Net earnings and EBITDA cannot be defined since the FASB and IASB elected
to give the balance sheet priority over the income statement in financial
reporting ---
"The Asset-Liability Approach: Primacy does not mean
Priority," by Robert Bloomfield, FASRI Financial Accounting Standards
Research Initiative, October 6, 2009 ---
http://www.fasri.net/index.
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting history ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
"Here's The Painstakingly Detailed Budget Of A Couple Who Earns Nearly $15,000 A Month," by Libby Kane, Business Insider, January 26, 2015
Question
Suppose you were teaching a financial literacy course and used the following
monthly budget for a couple. What would you focus on to stimulate student
debates on the issues.
Hints
·
The couple
earns $180,000 after-tax withholdings and tax estimated additional payments per
year (assuming both adults work giving rise to the day care allowance).
·
My
calculation assuming a 4% APR 30-year mortgage initially is that the couple owns
a home originally costing $345,150 plus whatever they made in a down payment.
This price would be relatively high in a decadent farming town in Iowa and
relatively low in a suburb of most major cities. It would be a tent in Silicon
Valley. It would not be much of a house within a walking distance of virtually
all major universities in the USA.
The house probably cost a lot less if the $1,647.80 payment also covers property
taxes and mortgage insurance. Have your students estimate the original cost of
the home if the payments on the mortgage itself are only $1,000 per month. They
must be living in an old shack or a cramped town house.
·
The life
insurance seems relatively low for a family with young children.
·
The
"out-to-eat" budget is relatively low and can be used up entirely with two
nights out at nice restaurants per month. The family must eat out mostly at
fast-food and pizza joints. One way to save money plus eat healthy meals is to
eat at a nearby hospital like we did in both San Antonio (where the Northeast
Baptist Hospital was only a block away). Eating at the hospital was cheaper than
cooking at home. Erika worked full time at this hospital.
·
The electric
bill of $200 would not cover our electric bill with heating and air conditioning
while we lived in San Antonio where the electricity and gas bill was over $400
per month. In the White Mountains of New Hampshire electricity, propane and
heating oil would be more like $1,000 per month. It's very cold up here.
·
I think for
a younger family not of Medicare the medical, dental, and prescription drug
allowance is way too low in the budget shown in the article below. For retired
folks like us on Medicare the medical, dental and prescription outlays would be
much, much higher --- more like $1,500 per month. Younger folks naively think
Medicare is "free" after you retire. It's not free when you add in the cost of
Medicare itself, the cost of Medicare supplemental insurance, and the
out-of-pocket costs of medicine not covered by Medicare D.
·
How about
the other monthly estimates?
Are they realistic for the USA?
Are important items deleted in terms of most families?
o In San Antonio where I watered my lawn with a sprinkling system my water and sewer bills were over $200 per month
o My Time Warner cable bill is now over $160 per month
o What about those monthly iPhone usage fees?
o How about home owner insurance and umbrella (liability) insurance?
o How about lawn and garden equipment such as a garden tractor and lawn mowers and snow throwers?
o
What about
furniture and appliance costs? Up here in the boondocks I spend quite a lot on
extended on-site warranties.
When you
teach from this budget you might go into more details regarding possible tax
strategy and retirement strategy pros and cons.
"Here's
The Painstakingly Detailed Budget Of A Couple Who Earns Nearly $15,000 A Month,"
by Libby Kane, Business Insider, January 26, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/detailed-budget-of-high-earning-couple-2015-1
February 1, 2015 reply from Patricia Walters
Bob
Not every place charges for water. We had a well in VA and we paid electricity and maintenance for the pump, not for the water.
We had a lawn mower in VA. Here we have someone come and cut our grass who has the equipment, about 100 per month in the growing season only. No snow. Even in VA we had shovels, not power tools.
No TV, only cable for internet. Biggest utility charges electricity (we have big OLD house) and phones.
We don't know where these people live. Costs vary widely depending on location, even within counties.
Are there homes in Fort Worth that cost over a million? Sure. But there are also homes in reasonable neighborhoods for less than $150,000. I live in one of those neighborhoods.
I've lived in NYC, NJ, VA and now TX. Costs vary widely across those places and within those places.
One if their biggest expenditure was school, which seemed likely to me.
Why do you doubt the truth of their budget?
Pat
February 2, 2015 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Patricia,
I did not doubt the truth of their budget, but I did think they left a few things out or were ambiguous about some things that need to be clarified by a teacher or students using this budget in a financial literacy course.
For example, the $1,687 mortgage payment could be the mortgage alone or it could also cover property taxes, homeowner insurance, and mortgage insurance. Take those away from the payment and you are left with a fairly low-sized mortgage.
In my case the property taxes are $1,000 per month but they are not part of my mortgage payment in these mountains. In fact the property tax payment and the mortgage payment only differ by $200 because I paid over 60% down at the time of purchase. Later I refinanced the remaining mortgage for 3.6% for 30 years. I pay the homeowners insurance separately, and that's not cheap up here.
Most people cannot afford such a large down payment unless they're retired. In rural mountain and ocean properties the banks typically require larger down payments than in towns. In many instances former owners must finance the homes they sell.
When I taught at the University of Maine I had an ocean cottage that could not be financed except by an owner. Banks would not loan on shore property in those days. That made interest rates highly variable, because they were part and parcel to sales price negotiations. Owners also typically demand large down payments when they finance sales properties.
I also wanted a mortgage so I could play the game of having more itemized tax deductions plus invest more in a long-term insured tax-exempt mutual fund that pays only slightly less than by mortgage interest rate. The standard deduction sucks, but you have to have a sizable amount of itemized deductions to cover the minimum threshold for itemized deductions..
I could pay the mortgage off any time, but I don't want to due to a tax strategy that might be debated by students in a financial literacy course. That's why I suggest having students debate alternate tax strategies at the same time they are discussing household budgeting.
Having a deep water well makes me not concerned about the cost of water usage. Wells only get expensive when you have to replace the well and or the pressure tank and pump. Two of my neighbors had to replace their wells, and it cost each of them thousands of dollars.
With a well also comes a septic system. The risk here is having to replace the drain fields for broken tiles. That expense depends a lot on having sufficiently high ground for another field. You can't put a new drain field over an old drain field or in low land that does not drain well from rain and snow melt.
A B&B down the road is having all sorts of troubles finding a suitable place for a new drain field. The small hotel has been empty for over a year in part because of this problem and the need for a new well.
In San Antonio you could get housing relatively close to Trinity University for less than $200,000 but most faculty who do so either do not have children or send their children to private schools (which is really expensive). Also crime risks are higher near campus relative to most outer northern parts of the city. By higher crime risk I mean that I don't recommend walking near campus at night and having to have high quality home security systems.
Trinity has very safe and well lighted walking, jogging, and biking trails on campus that are heavily patrolled by officers on bicycles. These trails are used a lot by neighbors not affiliated with the University. It's a public service.
Added Later
I think the bottom line of a study of this budget is that if budgeting is difficult for a family making $180,000 after taxes think about the "poor" family trying to do it on half as much income per year after income taxes.The real bottom line is that you cannot divide each line item in this $180,000 budget by two for a family making half as much ($90,000) after-tax income.
Times have changed. In the 1970s when I lived in Maine I had a beautiful and huge house beside the Eastern Maine Medical Center plus an ocean cottage on 12 acres of shore front near Acadia National Park.
The cost of the ocean property was $37,500 that I financed with the former owner. My wife only worked at home in those days, and my income was about $50,000 per year from the University of Maine --- and we could still afford two cars, attend NYC theater, etc. I was writing accountics research articles in those days and earned zip in consulting.
In Florida I owned an acreage with horses while earning less than $80,000 per year. Only in Texas did my income jump to over $200,000 per year such that I could get more serious about retirement savings for 24 years.
I don't know how a family earning less than $100,000 can make it in a city like San Antonio, send the kids to decent schools, and still save for retirement.
It's no wonder that in the 21st Century both parents must work outside the home to make it all work.
PS It was a mistake to sell (in 1978 when we moved to Florida) the Maine shore property for about what I paid for it in 1972. Today this shore property most likely is worth more than a million dollars since it is so close to Acadia National Park. In those days my property taxes on this parcel were about $25 per month. Today they are more than likely to be over to $2,000 per month on the shore.
When I think about it, keeping the shore property may have been a bad deal because eventually the property taxes would've eaten me alive over the decades. The cottage was and still is inaccessible in the winter and would not obtain enough in summer rental to pay for the annual property taxes.
Thanks for
your thoughts,
Bob
Bob Jensen's
personal finance helpers ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#InvestmentHelpers
Are those horny Harvard professors unstoppable?
"Harvard Ban on Sex between Professor and Undergraduates likely to lead to
more sex with Graduate Students: Harvard Policy does not go far enough,"
by Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage, February 9, 2015 ---
http://www.ethicssage.com/2015/02/harvard-ban-on-sex-between-professor-and-undergraduates-likely-to-lead-to-more-sex-with-graduate-stu.html
Jensen Comment
And if a ban on sex with graduate students doesn't work those Cambridge nursing
homes are in big trouble.
Jensen Comment
I suspect it's hard for Tom Brady to stay motivated after four Super Bowl rings
and tens of millions in the bank. How will President Obama stay motivated at the
end of 2016?
I watched an interview with Harper Lee about why she never wrote another
novel in the 50+ years following her Pulitzer Prize 1960 blockbuster
To Kill a Mockingbird. Her reply was that she didn't think she could write
another novel to top her crowning success. Harper Lee's new "lost" manuscript
soon to be published in 2015 was actually written before 1960 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Kill_a_Mockingbird
If you were Tom Brady would you want to risk yet another season where you could get a head injury that ruins life in retirement or even (less likely) paralysis or crippling joints (virtually certain)?
If you were Barack Obama would you want to keep flying off after 2016 for a lifetime of fund raisers? I think what probably keeps Tom and Barack going is the fear of letting teammates and colleagues down.
What keeps Medal of Honor winners going back into war is the same feeling of responsibility and obligation to buddies in battle who were part of the happenings that led to their honors.
Some like Warren Buffett and Steve Jobs just keep doing what they do best finding new gems that earn them more billions to give away. Some like Bill Gates take on new challenges on how to give away tens of billions of dollars already in the bank without sleepless nights on how earn tens of billions more.
I spent a year with Josh Lederberg in a think tank (CASBS) 14 years after he earned a 1958 Nobel Prize in molecular biology. He said that after winning the Nobel Prize he really did not want to set foot in a laboratory again --- at least not in a a competitive effort to win another Nobel Prize. In the year I knew him he was more of a science philosopher trying to make contributions to the issue of ethics and dangers in cloning.
How many Nobel Prize winners won more than one Nobel Prize in their
specialty?
I count Madam Curie, John Bardeen, Frederick Sanger apart from others like Linus
Pauling who won second prizes outside their specialty (usually Nobel Peace
Prizes) ---
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/Who-has-won-more-than-one-Nobel-prize/articleshow/1839923.cms
This is a trifling few in the entire history of the prize.
I suspect what keeps some lesser mortals like assistant professors who were just awarded tenure going is, in many cases, a feeling that they've not quite won the honor of tenure plus knowing that there's a second achievement that must be conquered --- promotion to full professor. What keeps full professors motivated is often the feeling that they owe it to their co-authors and graduate students to not fold up their laptops and go fishing. There's always another hit to be had in a top research journal and then another hit and then another hit. And those hits are not as dangerous as the hits Tom Brady will take in yet another season.
My point is that there is no magic answer for staying motivated to repeat the high-tension effort that led to a major achievement. Each circumstance is different, and each new opportunity is different. Most achievers keep on trying to achieve more.
But if I were Tom Brady I would surely think about another line of work after today's victory parade in Boston. Also for me one Medal of Honor would be more than enough to prevent me from going back into dangerous battles. And I would put my head into research and teaching and blogging rather than flying off to three fund raisers every week.
How to Mislead With Statistics
"Computational Linguistics Reveals How Wikipedia Articles Are Biased Against
Women," MIT's Technology Review, February 2, 2015 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/534616/computational-linguistics-reveals-how-wikipedia-articles-are-biased-against-women/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150203
Jensen Comment
The biggest complaint I have with this article is that it does not explain or
even fully appreciate that Wikipedia is crowd
sourced. Articles about a man or about a woman cannot be written
or edited by that man or woman featured in the module. They modules have to be
written by others such as friends or colleagues. Consider the following
quotation from the BOVE article:
But there are other signs of a more insidious gender bias that will be much harder to change. “We also find that the way women are portrayed on Wikipedia starkly differs from the way men are portrayed,” they say.
. . .
Wagner and co say that articles about women tend to emphasize the fact that they are about a women by overusing words like “woman,” “female,” or “lady” while articles about men tend not to contain words like “man,” “masculine,” or “gentleman.” Words like “married,” “divorced,” “children,” or “family” are also much more frequently used in articles about women, they say.
There is no Wikipedia author or editorial board that writes the entries about a man or a woman, although Wikipedia editors may modify the article for slander or obviously inappropriate portrayals. But I deeply doubt that the Wikipedia reviewers deliberately slant the article on gender issues. That slant, if it exists, for a given entry was most likely put in by the person who wrote or edited the entry, and there are millions of people writing the entries about millions of men and women. My point is that there's no single author or small group of authors who are writing these entries.
Also virtually every biographical entry about a man or woman has a "personal history" section that covers the history of marriages, divorces, and children, and parents of the person in question. The words "married" and "children" appear for virtually every person that was married and had children irrespective of whether the person is male or female.
I'm not saying that there's not gender bias on occasion in Wikipedia.
What I am saying is that the gender bias over tens of millions of biographies in Wikipedia are not the result of a gender-bias conspiracy. That bias, when it appears in a module, exists is the result of culture itself across tens of millions of authors of those biographies.For example, I hypothesize that it's a culture thing when authors are more apt to use the term "feminine" when writing about a woman versus "masculine" when writing about a man. For centuries, authors about young women frequently mention "tom boy" behaviors of young girls. How often do authors talk about "girlie" features of young boys? It happens, but we've read a lot more about "tom boys" in history than "girlie boys." --- Arnold Schwarzenegger excepted.
The the fact that gender bia is cultural does not make it right or wrong. It is simply there, and perhaps we should applaud analysts trying to gather data and change those cultural biases. Or perhaps we should applaud efforts to keep those biases. As the saying goes "Viva Les Difference!"
Sometimes I think analysts go too far in misleading the public with their statistics or in suggesting underlying causal intentions of those outcomes.
One of the best video clips from an American Accounting Association annual meeting was the plenary speech of Jimmy Wales at the August 2014 annual meeting. I think this video is available only to AAA members (but I could be wrong) ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/posts/0eddbcd42a
You can learn a lot about Wikipedia by watching this video.
Jimmy Wales is the leading cofounder of Wikipedia ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Wales
And yet it describes how he was married three times. He is not described as being "masculine" or "feminine."Bob Jensen's threads on the history of professionalism and women ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#Women
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on February 2, 2015
Amazon makes a push on college campuses ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-makes-a-push-on-college-campuses-1422825521
Amazon.com Inc. has struck deals with Purdue University, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of California, Davis, to operate co-branded websites selling textbooks and other student related-items. While the deals aren’t exclusive, they acknowledge the reality that students already shop on Amazon. The websites will offer next-day delivery service, giving students one fewer reason to head to a brick-and-mortar store. And the hope is that when they graduate, they will spend more with Amazon.
Societal Cost Versus Company Costs
I needed an adapter plug that I ordered from Amazon for less than $2 and had
it shipped "free" as an Amazon Prime member. I say "free" because if I
was not an Amazon Prime member my total shipping costs from Amazon would greatly
exceed the $95 2015 annual flat rate ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Amazon_Prime
In the past I would have driven about 30 miles round trip to a Radio Shack that's been out of business for years.
On Friday UPS delivered the adapter plug to my garage. UPS probably had stops along the way before the hill to our cottage, but chances are that there were no stops on Friday for about four miles up our hill and four miles back down. UPS got paid for this tiny shipment that only weighed about three ounces.
It dawned on me that the real value of delivery of this $2 item hardly justified the costs of the fuel, driver time, etc. to custom deliver a $2 item. The issue of course is that UPS will deliver one item up this hill no matter what is the value of the item itself. And even if Amazon had a minimum cost per order, chances are I would have ordered other things that arrive at UPS on different days. To my knowledge UPS delivers five days a week up here without consolidating orders that arrive on different days before delivering up our hill.
This may be something to think about when teaching cost accounting. Who gets paid and who gets screwed?
How to Mislead With Statistics by Cherry Picking Examples
"Foreign Students Aren't Edging Out Locals, Numbers Show," by Karin
Fishcher, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 2, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Foreign-Students-Arent-Edging/151547/?cid=wb&utm_source=wb&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
This article misleads in a number of ways.
Firstly there's no definition of the term "edging out." Since there are always
more applicants to flagship universities than are admitted, in any given
flagship university thousands of foreign students ipso facto means some in-state
qualified applicants are refused admission. The question is whether those denied
would otherwise be admitted if there were not so many higher-paying foreign
student admissions.
Secondly the article cherry picks illustrations and avoids looking at
flagship universities turning away enormous numbers of qualified applicants. For
example the 10% Law at the University of Texas and Texas A&M by the admissions
of their presidents means that huge numbers of qualified applicants are being
denied admission to these universities because of the 10% Affirmative Action
constraints ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#10PercentLaw
Adding thousands of foreign admissions further denies thousands of qualified
in-state applicants.
Thirdly, the article dwells on rates of change rather than absolute numbers and then cherry picks only schools where the numbers look pretty good except for UC Berkeley. For example no mention is made of the University of Illinois.
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 2014 enrolled 4,898 students from China, more than any other American university. They comprise the largest group of international students on the campus, followed by South Korea (1,268 in fall 2014) and India (1,167). Graduate enrollment of Chinese students at UIUC has grown from 649 in 2000 to 1,973 in 2014 ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Illinois_at_Urbana%E2%80%93Champaign#International_students
It is obvious that flagship universities are playing both ends against the middle. They want generous state support for in-state residents and then get top dollar by denying qualified in-state residents so they can earn higher tuition from foreign students.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
Fraud --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraud
Ethics --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics
"A few thoughts on teaching Ethics: Are Business Schools using the Best Approach to Teach Ethics?" by Steven Mintz, Ethics Sage, January 27, 2015 --- http://www.ethicssage.com/2015/01/a-few-thought-on-teaching-business-ethics.html
Jensen Comment
For me role playing did not work so well in teaching ethics or most any other
topic. I think it went too slow and got boring. There are tons of cases, but
these also tend to get boring.
For me short videos seemed to work the best, especially when followed by review discussions. At the time the IMA had some very good videos for classroom use.
I think it's important to stress the occasional murky line between unethical acts and illegal acts. You can teach both, but it's important to stress when behavior is possibly unethical but probably not illegal.
CGMA Portfolio of Tools for
Accountants and Analysts ---
http://www.cgma.org/Resources/Tools/Pages/tools-list.aspx
Includes ethics tools and learning cases.
Ethics Games and Puzzles --- http://www.ethics.org/resource/ethics-games-and-puzzles
Scruples Game --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scruples_%28game%29
Ethics Training for the Workplace --- http://www.ehow.com/facts_5957733_ethics-training-workplace.html
The bottom line is that both ethics and political leanings more often than not are impacted more by what is learned growing up at home and possibly by what is learned in church and K-12 schooling. Sometimes we learn ethics best by watching our teachers, coaches, and supervisors recommending things that are not ethical.
For example, my high school football coach encouraged playing dirty ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#Randy
The Enormous Problem of "Measuring" Evidence
"10 scientific mysteries we are set to solve this century," by Tom Siegfried,
Science News, January 31, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/scientific-mysteries-we-could-solve-in-the-21st-century-2015-1
. . .
7. How to measure evidence
This one is so mysterious that many scientists don’t even know there’s a mystery. But if they paused to think, they’d realize that the standard way of inferring conclusions from experimental data — calculating “statistical significance” — makes about as much sense as punting on fourth and seven when you’re down by 15 with eight minutes to go.
One small example: if you do an experiment and get a statistically significant result, and then repeat it and get a statistically significant result again, you’d think you have better evidence than doing the experiment only once. But if the significance level was a little less the second time, the combined “P value” would be less impressive after the second experiment, even though the evidence ought to be regarded as stronger.
It’s a mess. Game theory would surely be able to help somehow, possibly by virtue of its relationship to thermodynamics.
Bob Jensen's threads on science and humanities links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Top 5 NFL Hits...to Taxpayers --- http://reason.com/reasontv/2015/01/30/the-top-5-nfl-hits-to-taxpayers
Bob Jensen's Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Two Days Before Super Bowl, The NFL’s Status As A Nonprofit Is Challenged
---
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lindseyadler/nfl-tax-exempt-super-bowl?utm_term=.taL01KaRn#.dvgkv3dBB
A Great Chart on How NFL Players on Average Have Become Enormous ---
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/31/7952557/chart-nfl-players-have-gotten-enormous
Jensen Questions
Is there an evolving pool of bigger, faster, and better USA prospects?
Like the NBA is the pool of bigger players expanding because of non-USA
prospects for the NFL as well?
Are more rigorous training routines enabling players to eat more without getting
too fat and/or too slow?
How are these statistics impacted by having an increased numbers of NFL teams?
Are diets better after getting off the Wheaties?
I read where Tom Brady lives on an extremely strict diet to keep from getting
too fat?
It seems like an increasing number of players (e.g., Aaron Hernandez) get into
trouble after midnight in bars and bar parking lots ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Hernandez
Are they bad boozers or just picking up wild women?
Prediction --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction
"What Research Tells Us About Making Accurate Predictions," by Walter
Frick, Harvard Business Review Blog, February 2, 20115 ---
Click Here
https://hbr.org/2015/02/what-research-tells-us-about-making-accurate-predictions?utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date&cm_lm=rjensen%40trinity.edu&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&referral=00563&cm_ven=Spop-Email&cm_ite=DailyAlert-020315+%281%29
Prediction is very difficult,” the old chestnut goes, “especially about the future.” And for years, social science agreed. Numerous studies detailed the forecasting failures of even so-called experts. Predicting the future is just too hard, the thinking went; HBR even published an article about how the art of forecasting wasn’t really about prediction at all.
That’s changing, thanks to new research.
We know far more about prediction than we used to, including the fact that some of us are better at it than others. But prediction is also a learned skill, at least in part — it’s something that we can all become better at with practice. And that’s good news for businesses, which have tremendous incentives to predict a myriad of things.
The most famous research on prediction was done by Philip Tetlock of the University of Pennsylvania, and his seminal 2006 book Expert Political Judgment provides crucial background. Tetlock asked a group of pundits and foreign affairs experts to predict geopolitical events, like whether the Soviet Union would disintegrate by 1993. Overall, the “experts” struggled to perform better than “dart-throwing chimps”, and were consistently less accurate than even relatively simple statistical algorithms. This was true of liberals and conservatives, and regardless of professional credentials.
But Tetlock did uncover one style of thinking that seemed to aid prediction. Those who preferred to consider multiple explanations and balance them together before making a prediction performed better than those who relied on a single big idea. Tetlock called the first group foxes and the second group hedgehogs, after an essay by Isaiah Berlin. As Tetlock writes:
The intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to “cover” new cases; the more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were content to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world.
Since the book, Tetlock and several colleagues have been running a series of geopolitical forecasting tournaments (which I’ve dabbled in) to discover what helps people make better predictions. Over the last six months, Tetlock, Barbara Mellers, and several of their Penn colleagues have released three new papers analyzing 150,000 forecasts by 743 participants (all with at least a bachelor’s degree) competing to predict 199 world events. One paper focuses solely on high-performing “super forecasters”; another looks at the entire group; and a third makes the case for forecasting tournaments as a research tool.
The main finding? Prediction isn’t a hopeless enterprise— the tournament participants did far better than blind chance. Think about a prediction with two possible outcomes, like who will win the Super Bowl. If you pick at random, you’ll be wrong half the time. But the best forecasters were consistently able to cut that error rate by more than half. As Tetlock put it to me, “The best forecasters are hovering between the chimp and God.”
Perhaps most notably, top predictors managed to improve over time, and several interventions on the part of the researchers improved accuracy. So the second finding is that it’s possible to get better at prediction, and the research offers some insights into the factors that make a difference.
Intelligence helps. The forecasters in Tetlock’s sample were a smart bunch, and even within that sample those who scored higher on various intelligence tests tended to make more accurate predictions. But intelligence mattered more early on than it did by the end of the tournament. It appears that when you’re entering a new domain and trying to make predictions, intelligence is a big advantage. Later, once everyone has settled in, being smart still helps but not quite as much.
Domain expertise helps, too. Forecasters who scored better on a test of political knowledge tended to make better predictions. If that sounds obvious, remember that Tetlock’s earlier research found little evidence that expertise matters. But while fancy appointments and credentials might not have correlated with good prediction in earlier research, genuine domain expertise does seem to.
Practice improves accuracy. The top-performing “super forecasters” were consistently more accurate, and only became more so over time. A big part of that seems to be that they practiced more, making more predictions and participating more in the tournament’s forums.Teams consistently outperform individuals. The researchers split forecasters up randomly, so that some made their predictions on their own, while others did so as part of a group. Groups have their own problems and biases, as a recent HBR article explains, so the researchers gave the groups training on how to collaborate effectively. Ultimately, those who were part of a group made more accurate predictions.
Teamwork also helped the super forecasters, who after Year 1 were put on teams with each other. This only improved their accuracy. These super-teams were unique in one other way: as time passed, most teams became more divided in their opinions, as participants became entrenched in their beliefs. By contrast, the super forecaster teams agreed more and more over time.
More open-minded people make better predictions. This harkens back to Tetlock’s earlier distinction between foxes and hedgehogs. Though participants’ self-reported status as “fox” or “hedgehog” didn’t predict accuracy, a commonly used test of open-mindedness did. While some psychologists see open-mindedness as a personality trait that’s static within individuals over time, there is also some evidence that each of us can be more or less open-minded depending on the circumstances.
Training in probability can guard against bias. Some of the forecasters were given training in “probabilistic reasoning,” which basically means they were told to look for data on how similar cases had turned out in the past before trying to predict the future. Humans are surprisingly bad at this, and tend to overestimate the chances that the future will be different than the past. The forecasters who received this training performed better than those who did not. (Interestingly, a smaller group were trained in scenario planning, but this turned out not to be as useful as the training in probabilistic reasoning.)
Rushing produces bad predictions. The longer participants deliberated before making a forecast, the better they did. This was particularly true for those who were working in groups.
Revision leads to better results. This isn’t quite the same thing as open-mindedness, though it’s probably related. Forecasters had the option to go back later on and revise their predictions, in response to new information. Participants who revised their predictions frequently outperformed those who did so less often.
Together these findings represent a major step forward in understanding forecasting. Certainty is the enemy of accurate prediction, and so the unstated prerequisite to forecasting may be admitting that we’re usually bad at it. From there, it’s possible to use a mix of practice and process to improve.
However, these findings don’t speak to one of the central findings of Tetlock’s earlier work: that humans typically made worse predictions than algorithms. Other research has found that one reliable way to boost humans’ forecasting ability is to teach them to defer to statistical models whenever possible. And the “probabilistic training” described above really just involves teaching humans to think like simple algorithms.
Continued in article
It is almost a parlor game, especially as elections approach—not only the little matter of who will win but also: by how much? For Nate Silver, however, prediction is more than a game. It is a science, or something like a science anyway. Mr. Silver is a well-known forecaster and the founder of the New York Times political blog FiveThirtyEight.com, which accurately predicted the outcome of the last presidential election. Before he was a Times blogger, he was known as a careful analyst of (often widely unreliable) public-opinion polls and, not least, as the man who hit upon an innovative system for forecasting the performance of Major League Baseball players. In "The Signal and the Noise," he takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of the success and failure of predictions in a wide variety of fields and offers advice about how we might all improve our forecasting skill.
Mr. Silver reminds us that we live in an era of "Big Data," with "2.5 quintillion bytes" generated each day. But he strongly disagrees with the view that the sheer volume of data will make predicting easier. "Numbers don't speak for themselves," he notes. In fact, we imbue numbers with meaning, depending on our approach. We often find patterns that are simply random noise, and many of our predictions fail: "Unless we become aware of the biases we introduce, the returns to additional information may be minimal—or diminishing." The trick is to extract the correct signal from the noisy data. "The signal is the truth," Mr. Silver writes. "The noise is the distraction."
The first half of Mr. Silver's analysis looks closely at the success and failure of predictions in clusters of fields ranging from baseball to politics, poker to chess, epidemiology to stock markets, and hurricanes to earthquakes. We do well, for example, with weather forecasts and political predictions but very badly with earthquakes. Part of the problem is that earthquakes, unlike hurricanes, often occur without warning. Half of major earthquakes are preceded by no discernible foreshocks, and periods of increased seismic activity often never result in a major tremor—a classic example of "noise." Mr. Silver observes that we can make helpful forecasts of future performance of baseball's position players—relying principally on "on-base percentage" and "wins above replacement player"—but we completely missed the 2008 financial crisis. And we have made egregious errors in predicting the spread of infectious diseases such as the flu.
In the second half of his analysis, Mr. Silver suggests a number of methods by which we can improve our ability. The key, for him, is less a particular mathematical model than a temperament or "framing" idea. First, he says, it is important to avoid overconfidence, to recognize the degree of uncertainty that attends even the most careful forecasts. The best forecasts don't contain specific numerical expectations but define the future in terms of ranges (the hurricane should pass somewhere between Tampa and 350 miles west) and probabilities (there is a 70% chance of rain this evening).
Above all, Mr. Silver urges forecasters to become Bayesians. The English mathematician Thomas Bayes used a mathematical rule to adjust a base probability number in light of new evidence. To take a canonical medical example, 1% of 40-year-old women have breast cancer: Bayes's rule tells us how to factor in new information, such as a breast-cancer screening test. Studies of such tests reveal that 80% of women with breast cancer will get positive mammograms, and 9.6% of women without breast cancer will also get positive mammograms (so-called false positives). What is the probability that a woman who gets a positive mammogram will in fact have breast cancer? Most people, including many doctors, greatly overestimate the probability that the test will give an accurate diagnosis. The right answer is less than 8%. The result seems counterintuitive unless you realize that a large number of (40-year-old) women without breast cancer will get a positive reading. Ignoring the false positives that always exist with any noisy data set will lead to an inaccurate estimate of the true probability.
This example and many others are neatly presented in "The Signal and the Noise." Mr. Silver's breezy style makes even the most difficult statistical material accessible. What is more, his arguments and examples are painstakingly researched—the book has 56 pages of densely printed footnotes. That is not to say that one must always agree with Mr. Silver's conclusions, however.
Continued in article
Elo Rankings --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elo_rating_system
Elo Rankings Deflate the Patriots (by epsilon) Before the Super Bowl
Here's what statistical guru Nate Silver and his technical friends predicted in
advance of the 2015 Super Bowl
"The Patriots And Seahawks Are The Best. This Could Be The Worst Super Bowl
Ever" ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-patriots-and-seahawks-are-the-best-this-could-be-the-worst-super-bowl-ever/
Jensen Comment
In retrospect I think it was one of the best Super Bowl games with a
cliff-hanging ending and lots of Monday morning quarterbacks..
A Totally Different Kind of "Audit" by PwC
"Review ‘Validates’ a Controversial Ranking, Missouri University Says,"
by Charles Huckabee, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 2, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/review-validates-a-controversial-ranking-missouri-university-says/93173?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
The University of Missouri at Kansas City says in a news release that an independent audit and review have validated an academic journal’s ranking of its Henry W. Bloch School of Management as first in the world in innovation-management research. The Kansas City Star, however, reports that the audit also confirms many details of a newspaper investigation last year that described “a pattern of exaggerations, misstatements, and cherry-picking data” by officials of the Bloch School in pursuit of top rankings.
The audit, by the international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, was commissioned by the University of Missouri system’s Board of Curators at the request of Gov. Jay Nixon in response to the newspaper’s report. The Board of Curators released a report on the auditor’s findings on Friday. The curators also released an analysis of the auditors’ findings by Robert D. Hisrich, a professor emeritus of entrepreneurship at the Thunderbird School of Global Management, in Arizona, whom the board hired to review and comment on the audit report.
The audit focuses in part on data submitted by Bloch School officials to Princeton Review, a test-preparation-services company that publishes rankings of universities and academic programs. Princeton Review, which is not affiliated with Princeton University, has ranked the Bloch School’s graduate and undergraduate entrepreneurship programs in its top 25 every year since 2011.
The auditors also examined interactions among Bloch School officials and the authors of a 2012 article in the Journal of Product Innovation Management, “Perspective: Ranking of the World’s Top Innovation Management Scholars and Universities.” The journal article ranked the Kansas City institution’s entrepreneurship program as No. 1 worldwide.
Among the audit’s findings are that an official at the Bloch School had, under pressure from his boss, submitted flawed or false data to Princeton Review, and that another Bloch official had participated in the editing of the journal article. The audit does not challenge whether the article’s or the company’s rankings were deserved.
Mr. Hisrich, in his review, acknowledged that information provided to Princeton Review “was inaccurate in three subject-matter areas” but added, “I cannot conclude that the inaccurate information made a material difference in UMKC’s rankings.” Regarding the journal article, he concluded that the methodology the authors used and the circumstances surrounding the article’s publication “were consistent with generally acceptable professional practices.”
Leo E. Morton, chancellor of the University of Missouri at Kansas City, said he was “pleased to have the Bloch School’s No. 1 ranking in innovation-management research validated,” but asserted that he also took seriously the findings about flawed data submitted to Princeton Review. “We have already implemented changes and will continue to seek ways to improve our data collection,” Mr. Morton said.
"Fibbing for Rankings," by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed,
February 2, 2015 ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/02/02/audit-finds-u-missouri-kansas-city-business-school-gave-false-information-princeton
The University of Missouri at Kansas City gave the Princeton Review false information designed to inflate the rankings of its business school, which was under pressure from its major donor to keep the ratings up, according to an outside audit released Friday.
The audit -- by PricewaterhouseCoopers -- described the process by which business school officials came up with creative reasons to provide data that many at the school believed to be false, and that the audit found to be false. In one case, for example, the university created a wish list of clubs that it might support to promote entrepreneurial students. The university then reported that its wish list was reality and that it had all of those clubs, which in fact did not exist.
Another part of the audit found that an article published in The Journal of Product Innovation Management -- an article that ranked the university's business school as the top institution in the world in the field of innovation management -- did not violate professional norms. However, the audit also found that the journal was unaware when accepting the article that it was written by scholars with ties to the university.
UMKC issued a news release Friday that reads: "Independent review upholds No. 1 research ranking."
But the audit also confirmed many of the findings of an August article in The Kansas City Star that found "a pattern of exaggerations and misstatements" by the business school. At the time, the university disputed the Star's report, but Missouri governor Jay Nixon requested an investigation, and that request led to the report issued Friday.
'By All Means Necessary'
PricewaterhouseCoopers officials had access to senior UMKC officials (including some who left positions they had held in the period covered by the audit) and to relevant e-mail messages. The e-mail revealed a focus on finding ways to do well in the rankings in order to keep happy the business school's largest donor (of $32 million), for whom the school, the Henry W. Bloch School of Management, is named.
An e-mail from the then dean to colleagues said, for example: "Henry Bloch gets very upset when our rankings go down. We must do everything we can to increase it when we can by all means necessary.”
The audit then describes some of the things UMKC did to rank high in the Princeton Review's evaluation of business schools' (undergraduate and graduate) entrepreneurial programs.
For example, in answering a question about how many students are enrolled in an entrepreneurship program, the university started counting anyone who was taking a class in entrepreneurship. Not surprisingly, the numbers jumped. For example, UMKC reported that undergraduate enrollment in entrepreneurship programs increased in a year (the year in which the university changed how it was filling out the form) from 99 to 438. A dean told the auditors that he knew that figure "isn't right."
Another change UMKC made helped it inflate answers on another Princeton Review question: about what percentage of students launch a business while enrolled. The university, the audit found, started using primarily data from its e-scholar program (a certificate program for entrepreneurs in which they must develop a business plan). The e-scholar program students are not degree students or enrolled in the university, but officials said they believed it was legitimate to use this group for reporting, even though the Princeton Review ranks degree programs. Since all of the e-scholar students must create business plans, the proportion of undergraduates reported as launching a business increased from 44 percent to 100 percent from 2010 to 2011.
And then there was the question on clubs. The Princeton Review asks: “How many officially recognized clubs/organizations do you offer that are specifically for entrepreneurship students?”
The answers in 2009 were three each for undergraduates and graduate students, and in 2010 were four each. In 2011 the figure jumped to 29 for graduate students and 28 for undergraduates.
Here's how the number of clubs "grew," according to the audit. A business school official asked a colleague to put together a wish list of clubs that might show an entrepreneurial focus at the university. A second official "then instructed a UMKC graduate student to populate these clubs onto the university’s webpage." UMKC "used the clubs' existence on the university’s webpage as the only proof the club existed." Officials believe "these additional 20-plus clubs never actually existed at UMKC." Since the Star article, the number of clubs being reported is down to five each for graduate students and undergrads.
The PricewaterhouseCoopers report says the Princeton Review does not review the accuracy of information submitted to it by colleges and universities and so did not do any independent analysis of UMKC data. The audit also said it was not clear that any of the false information would affect the business school's overall ranking.
But on Sunday night, Robert Franek, senior vice president and publisher of the Princeton Review, said in an email to Inside Higher Ed that Princeton Review would be removing UMKC from the lists of best colleges and business schools for entrepreneurial programs.
“At The Princeton Review, for the past 34 years we have provided accurate and timely information to students and parents to help them make decisions about colleges and graduate schools. We were extremely disappointed to learn that the University of Missouri-Kansas City falsified data about the school per a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers on January 30. As a result of this new information, we are removing the University of Missouri-Kansas City from our 2014 ranking lists of the best college and business school entrepreneurial programs," said a statement Franek released. "Schools earn a spot on our entrepreneurship ranking through school-reported data. Every school signs an affidavit to ensure their information is accurate. We take these affidavits and this news very seriously.”
Questions on a Journal Article
Another major part of the audit was a look at the journal article published in The Journal of Product Innovation Management.
On this question, the audit found that the article was based on data analysis and that no shortcomings could be found in it. But the article has been questioned from the time it was published. The original Star article quoted a professor (anonymously, because he feared speaking out) as saying that “We all knew that this was bullshit. We knew that UMKC was not better than MIT and Stanford.”
While the audit didn't question the article's findings, it did note concerns about it. The authors who asserted that UMKC was tops in the world in innovative management did not disclose to the journal that they were both visiting scholars at the university and knew some of the players. Because the article was based on data (number of articles written in journals of various influence, etc.), the journal's editor said that the article's findings still stood. However, he said he wished he had known about the authors' ties to the institution they praised.
The authors are two scholars from China. They gave a letter to the auditor in which they said that there was no need to identify their UMKC connections because the "double-blind" peer review process -- in which they don't know who reviews their work, and the reviewers don't know the author -- prevented conflict of interest. The audit, however, found that at the journal in question "papers are solely reviewed by the editor and not subject to the typical double-blind review of other research papers."
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on ranking controversies ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
Jensen Comment
Perhaps we should be more precise in using the term "audit" versus the term
"review." The article content uses the word audit whereas the title more
appropriately uses the term review. Then again maybe this was an audit since it
validated the numbers.
Price Waterhouse years ago was willing to lend its name to the possible limits of the term "review." Over ten years before its merger with Coopers & Lybrand, PW signed off on a review in 1987 of Days Inn financial statement forecasts prior to a planned IPO of Days Inn. This was not an audit of the forecast numbers themselves. But it was a "review" of the forecast procedures of Days Inn and a review of the "underlying assumptions" in those forecasts.
I still have a prized copy of that 1987 Days Inn annual report in which PW
audited the 1987 financial statements and reviewed the financial statement
forecasts. A real estate appraisal company, Landhauer Associates, signed off on
the estimates of over 300 hotel exit values based on a sampling of the real
estate appraisals. I provide more details at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory02.htm#FairValue
Perform search on the phrase "Days Inn"
Update
Princeton Review Strips U. of Missouri at Kansas City of Its Controversial
Ranking ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/jp/princeton-review-strips-missouri-university-of-its-controversial-ranking?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Tiger Woods --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger_Woods
A Toothless Tiger
The golf world has never seen anything like the meltdown Tiger Woods is going
through ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/tiger-woods-shoots-44-phoenix-open-2015-1
Jensen Comment
Don't count Tiger out. His work ethic, like that of his good friend
Lindsey
Vaughn, is beyond what many people other than Navy Seals are capable of in
terms of determination and risk taking.
100 Great Ideas for the Future of Libraries -- A New Paradigm for Civic
Engagement ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-fishman-lipsey/100-great-ideas-for-the-for-the-future-of-libraries_b_6551440.html
Access to information has changed dramatically in the past 2,200 years, yet the basic structure and function of libraries has remained relatively static. Silent rows of books and limited hours? The Dewey Decimal system? If libraries are meant to democratize access to learning and information, then it is clear that the time has come for a massive reimagining.
Revamping an age-old establishment takes more than just visionary leadership at the top. Communities - the end-users - need to be drawn into the discussion. Yet so often, decisions about the future of communities are made behind closed doors by a select few with little to no meaningful citizen input. The existing vehicles for public comment are time consuming, hard to find, difficult to navigate, and unpleasant from a participant perspective. Most people are unaware of where relevant public meetings are taking place, and most people can't take an afternoon off to wait in line for hours to make a two-minute comment that will rarely even garner a response. Because forums for public engagement are often woefully underutilized, people might interpret a community's lack of engagement as a lack of interest. But perhaps the issue is that public spaces don't exist where people from all backgrounds can engage in meaningful idea-sharing and collaborative community problem-solving in a user-friendly, free, convenient, welcoming way, where their ideas will actually be heard and considered by decision-makers.
We wanted to put our hypothesis to the test in Miami. What if we created a "public space" where people could easily and collaboratively brainstorm ways to address the issues of their community? Would that space be utilized? Would good ideas come from it? And if those ideas were synthesized into a user-friendly format that is intuitive and clear to understand, would local leadership take the time to engage in the results and actually take action based on the voices of their constituents?
An experiment was born. First up, a local hot topic - the future of Miami's public libraries. We launched a 10-day open idea forum on Facebook, called "100 Great Ideas", with an all-call to anyone in Miami to join in the discussion by sharing an idea or insight. Within days, 150 ideas were brought to the online space and the discussion group grew to include more than 600 members. Several individuals sent additional comments via email. Many of the ideas weaved together into strong trends, which we've synthesized the themes in this report . After the 10-day window concluded, several decision-makers proactively reached out to discuss the results, and others responded immediately to outreach from us. The community-generated report has been read by local mayors, the heads of the county library system, local foundations, and others who play core roles in deciding what to do next with Miami's libraries. Much to our surprise, many of the best ideas were already in the works, and the leaders we met with were not only extremely receptive, they were eager to run with new ideas and create additional avenues for continued participation from the community. They want to see more of this, and so do we.
Our major takeaways?
(1) People want to engage - they need better access points. Cities thrive when their citizens and government are positively engaged with one another. It's in each city's best interest to lower the barriers and invite people to bring their ideas to the table. Access points of various and relevant kinds are critical because they enable people to tune in at the times and places that work best for them. Digital access points, like an online community forum, allow participants to easily build upon the ideas of others and enable transparency. It was striking that such a large group came together in conversation in just over a week, and that the key community leaders in charge of libraries responded to our report within a matter of days. On both sides of the equation, people were eager to engage. The responsiveness confirmed our hunch that a different, more inclusive and accessible process of engagement and decision-making is not only possible, but also desired.(2) We as citizens must take ownership of the crucial role we can and should play in our public government. This experiment was hatched, executed, wrapped up, and received with enthusiasm from both community members and community leaders with no pretext. We weren't hired to do this; it was driven from our longing to open up our current systems to different ideas and processes. We encourage residents to follow through on the ideas they have, big or small and conventional or not, for shifting our current systems. It is only by proposing and demonstrating the alternatives available to us that we can update those that are seemingly no longer working for today's modern day. It is imperative that we take an active role in sharing the needs of our communities with our representatives, instead of waiting for them to figure it out on their own.
(3) The public is ready for elected and appointed leaders to actively solicit input and create spaces for people to inform them. As we moved through the campaign, participants quickly wondered, what next? How do we see these ideas through to execution? Several commented that the ideas and exchange were valuable, but what good is the community collaborative process if the ideas are not actually considered and put into action? The public is ready for a stronger bridge between citizen input and government decision-making. Citizens are willing to step up and get involved, but they need to be met halfway and reassured that the ideas they suggest and propose are not just falling on deaf ears that have already made up their minds. Leadership must demonstrate new techniques and methodologies to keep citizens involved.
(4) We must foster an ongoing culture of engagement. While online platforms are convenient and efficient in bringing large numbers together, they can never replace the value of physical spaces where we come together and "live life in public," a precursor to people engaging in an ongoing conversation about the future of their city. As can be seen in cities with admirable civic environments like Portland Oregon, engagement is a culture and not a one-time process or event. As Miami seeks to become increasingly inclusive, it must find ways to leverage public spaces, of all kinds, to draw people and ideas together. Not just in one-off events, but more consistently as a part of the daily behavior, decisions and choices that defines our city's culture.
(5) There are some pretty innovative things already happening in the library space. Show-stopping buildings, modern spaces, bookless models, maker labs, and multi-purpose facilities with all sorts of innovative offerings. The Knight Foundation launched a national challenge giving away $2.5M in grants for innovative library ideas that garnered more than 700 proposals, many of which are outstanding. The change is starting to take shape, and this is a great time to get engaged.Continued in article
Link to the PDF Report --- https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bms756giuec7rir/AABpQpM9vJjDVqL7cYU6rncua?dl=0
Bexar County in Texas now has a public library without books ---
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2014/01/06/this-library-without-books-is-a-hit-with-readers/
A library without books. Bexar County (Texas) opened the nation’s only bookless public library, writes the AP:
San Antonio is the nation’s seventh-largest city but ranks 60th in literacy, according to census figures. Back in the early 2000s, community leaders in Bibliotech’s neighborhood of low-income apartments and thrift stores railed about not even having a nearby bookstore, said Laura Cole, BiblioTech’s project coordinator. A decade later, Cole said, most families in the area still don’t have WiFi.
Residents are taking advantage now. The library is on pace to surpass 100,000 visitors in its first year. Finding an open iMac among the four dozen at BiblioTech is often difficult after the nearby high school lets out, and about half of the facility’s e-readers are checked out at any given time.
Jensen Comment
Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I don't think I would like a library without
books. Various universities have replaced many books with electronic versions.
There are obvious advantages to electronic libraries including text searching
and now even picture searching. Another advantage may be providing multiple
access simultaneously whereas in the past when a book was checked out you had to
go on a waiting list for a copy. If the book was lost you might be totally out
of luck.
Yes I have my Kindle Fire and was an early-on owner of a Rocket eBook. But when I board a plane or settle down in a chair I still prefer to read from hard copy. But then I would also rather ride a horse than a jet ski --- just an old fashioned kind of cowboy.
Bob Jensen's threads on libraries ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---Libraries
Bob Jensen's threads on eBooks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ebooks.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on free electronic literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
"Who’s Saving for College in 529 Plans?," Chronicle of Higher
Education, January 29, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Who-s-Saving-for-College-in/151347/?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
Gasp! Could you believer the middle class?
"Community Colleges in Pa. to Offer Credit for Previous Experience,"
by Andy Thomaxon, Chronicle of Higher Education, February 20=, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/community-colleges-in-pa-to-offer-credit-for-previous-experience/93271?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
It's sad to see community colleges adopt what is really a marketing ploy by
for-profit universities to lure in adult students. There's no good academic
reason to grant college credit for life experience unless that experience led to
possible mastery over subject matter in a particular course. And if there is
possible mastery over that subject matter there's academic reason to grant
credit only after competency testing much like we do now for AP credits ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Placement
"College Credit for Life Experience: 2 Groups
Offer Assessment Services," by David Glenn, Chronicle of Higher Education,
May 16, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Will-Work-for-Credit/127564/
Competency-Based Credits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge
Officials in are trying to figure out how a man who's been dead for more than
two years wound up being reappointed to a county industrial authority board.
Read more at ---
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/47ebfe44e2864583849eaec22a6fa52b/man-who-died-2012-gets-reappointed-county-board
Stanford Launches Free Course on Developing Apps with iOS 8 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/stanford-launches-free-course-on-developing-apps-with-ios-8.html
If they lost government jobs you know they had to be really awful on the job.
"IRS Rehires Hundreds Of Problem Former Employees," by Robert W. Wood,
Forbes, February 6, 2015 ---
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2015/02/06/irs-rehires-hundreds-of-problem-former-employees-just-in-time-for-obamacare/
As an employer, would you rehire a former employee guilty of misconduct? Say, someone you caught falsifying official forms, peeking at secured confidential files, or misusing company property? How about rehiring hundreds of such misbehaving workers? These aren’t trick questions. Most employers breathe a sigh of relief when such an employee departs. You don’t hire them back.
Rehiring is for someone you want back, not someone who was a problem. But the IRS may be different from your average employer. So suggests a new report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The watchdog report says the IRS rehired hundreds of former employees with prior substantiated conduct or performance issues.
The Inspector General identified hundreds of rehires despite prior substantiated conduct or performance issues. Some were serious. They ranged from unpaid taxes, unauthorized access to taxpayer information, leave abuse, falsification of official forms, unacceptable performance, misuse of IRS property, and off-duty misconduct. The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration concluded that the rehires pose increased risks to the IRS and taxpayers.
Continued in article
"America's Worst School System (in Camden) Will Soon Be Dead. Will What
Replaces It Be Any Better?" by Jim Epstein, Reason Magazine, January
27, 2015 ---
http://reason.com/reasontv/2015/01/27/camden-school-choice
. . .
The 2012 Urban Hope Act authorized the state to open four new public schools in Camden, and three opened this year, which are run by the charter school operators KIPP, Uncommon Schools, and Mastery Charter Schools. Over the next several years, these three schools will gradually expand their enrollment until they serve the majority of kids in Camden.
These schools enjoy the same autonomy as charter schools in selecting their teachers and managing their budgets, but they also have one major thing in common with traditional public schools: They're attached to specific neighborhoods, so most of their students were assigned to attend them. Charter schools, on the other hand, generally accept kids from an entire city, and parents make a choice to send their kids to them.
Drew Martin, 34, who’s the school leader at KIPP Cooper Norcross, says this provides an opportunity to rebut critics who claim that the only reason charter schools perform so well is that they attract the most involved parents willing to make the effort to look for better options for their kids, and that they push out the most difficult students.
"So that's no longer going to be able to apply to us because we'll be using the same tactics that we've always used," says Martin, "but we're going to be required to take kids from our sending zone so nobody can say that we're creaming."
As-Sidq Davis was part of the first class at KIPP Cooper Norcross Academy, but Shantella Davis’ continued to have difficulty getting him to school—and she even withdrew him after a dispute with the administration. Davis is planning to reenroll As-Sidq, and since KIPP Cooper Norcross is his zoned school, Drew Martin says the door is open when he’s ready to return. And that’s what’s different: If the school were a charter, Martin wouldn’t be required to take him back.
Derrell Bradford, an education reform advocate who spent ten years working in Camden, says that the lack of parental choice is a major shortcoming of these new schools. "It removes the most powerful and fundamental element, which is that a parent wakes up one day and wants something better and has a right to go get it," he says.
Coincidentally, NYU Professor Diane Ravitch, who is the best-known policy analyst to make the charge that charter schools don’t serve kids from the most trouble homes, suggested on her blog in 2012 pretty much exactly what’s happening in Camden today, challenging KIPP "to put an end to suspicion that they [sic] were skimming students and excluding low-performing students by taking over an entire district.” adding: "Camden looks like a perfect candidate for the challenge.”
"I don't think KIPP has anything to prove to Diane Ravitch," says Bradford. "If there were no residential assignment someone would be out in the home of the neediest person in Camden trying to recruit their kids into a school because of the economics of it."
"I'm excited about what's going on there," Bradford adds. "Camden is monumentally better off today than it was event two years ago because who runs the schools matters. But I think in an ideal world their would be open enrollment everywhere."
This story is part three in a three-part video series on Camden's public schools. Click here to watch part one, which looks at how dramatically boosting per pupil spending didn't fix the public schools in Camden and New Jersey's other poorest cities. Click here watch part two, which is a profile of LEAP, Camden's first and most successful charter school.
Jensen Comment
In Germany and other parts of Europe less than 25% of the college aged students
are allowed into college. Children are tracked early on as to which which ones
will be prepared for college. The Camden experiment could possibly evolve along
similar lines --- but certainly not in the early years. In the USA we are not as
prepared for making great career opportunities for the other 75% who are not
college bound. Instead, contrary to what Tom Hanks would have us believe, we
have inferior colleges to give inferior college diplomas.
But if the Camden charter schools become the tough grading and touch curriculum alternatives for preparing the top students for the top universities in the USA Camden may evolve toward a German model.
"Tablets Tank for the First Time Ever," by David Nagel, T.H.E. News,
February 2, 2015 ---
http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/02/02/tablets-tank-for-the-first-time-ever.aspx
While the iPhone is experiencing record growth
The iPad has hit a wall ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-ipad-has-hit-a-wall-2015-1
Jensen Comment
Tablets are down but not out. There are still a lot of popular apps for tablets.
The problem is that if you only have a budget for one computer the best choice
in nearly all instances is a laptop. Even on a trip I carry a laptop and not my
MS Surface tablet. Tablet keyboards suck, and you have to carry a bunch of
adapters for the mini ports.
Windows Server 2003 --- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Server_2003
Microsoft Makes WS2003 Terminally Ill --- http://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/server-cloud/products/windows-server-2003/
WS2003 Death Benefits
A new multibillion-dollar market for Microsoft Windows is about to go crazy
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/windows-server-2003-death-is-worth-billions-2015-1
Microsoft partners plan to generate more than $1 billion in sales because Microsoft is pulling the plug on an old, beloved Windows operating system.
It's like Windows XP deja vu all over again, but this time, the beloved operating system is Windows Server 2003, which runs on computer servers and was first rolled out 12 years ago.
Microsoft is ending technical support for WS2003 on July 14, and computer makers like HP and Dell are licking their chops over it because that that means customers will have to upgrade.
HP has even rolled out a new program, code-named Operation Crescendo, to hit $1 billion in sales in one week from the end of Windows Server 2003, CRN's Steven Burke reports.
"We are all over this," HP Enterprise Group Vice President Chuck Smith told Burke in an interview. "The theme is 'One Week, One Message, One Billion.'"
HP CEO Meg Whitman and CFO Cathie Lesjak swooned about end-of-WS2003 on their last couple quarterly conference call with analysts.
The server makers believe that this won't just cause companies to buy new computer servers, and upgrade their Windows to the current version, but that they'll need help installing those servers. They also may need help in upgrading the ancient business software that has forced them to keep that ancient version of Windows for so long.
Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell is talking up the opportunity, too. In December, Dell told Bloomberg TV anchor Erik Schatzker:
We're going into a replacement cycle in servers with Windows Server 2003 and there are millions of servers that have to be replaced. And we're just at the beginning of that cycle, gearing up for that from a consulting and services standpoint, for a products standpoint. And we've got the whole product line refreshed and ready to go to go help customers address that.
How big of an opportunity is this? It's hard to quantify how many copies of the old operating system are running in various enterprise networks.
A Microsoft partner called Insight says there are 23.8 million copies of Windows Server 2003 running on 11.9 million physical servers worldwide, saying these numbers came from Microsoft. (We've asked Microsoft to clarify.)
HP says that upgrading all of those servers represents a $10 billion market.
You would think that Microsoft's management would such a big tech refresh cycle to counter some of the glum warnings the company issued earlier this week about its revenue and profit expectations.
CFO Amy Hood repeatedly warned analysts on the quarterly conference call that "the one-time benefit of Windows XP end-of-life PC refresh cycle has now tailed off" while making no mention of the up-and-coming WS2003 refresh cycle.
That's because Microsoft's partners could glean a bigger benefit from the death of WS2003 than Microsoft itself. Over 75% Microsoft's Server Product revenue comes from renewals, not new licenses.
Continued in article
Microsoft makes data-analysis tools free (trying to lure in more
business and academic users) ---
http://www.mercurynews.com/
Sounds like the old Bill Gates business model of making a fortune on the high
volume of eventual upgrades sales
Office For Windows 10 Is Going To Have A Ton Of 'Touch' Functionality
Built In — Here Are The Coolest Tricks ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/office-for-windows-10-touch-features-2015-1
Microsoft To Offer Free Windows 10 Upgrades For A Year After Release It's
a giant play for developers ---
http://readwrite.com/2015/01/21/windows-10-free-upgrade-microsoft
Jensen Comment
Maybe this is a cheaper way to find bugs. Google is still aggravating Microsoft
with a program to find bugs in Windows 8. To the embarrassment of Microsoft, the
Google program has been wildly successful.
Once Microsoft gets you hooked on Windows 10 then the debugged upgrades will no longer be free.
What Windows 10 Will and Won't Do ---
http://readwrite.com/2015/01/21/windows-10-microsoft-what-to-expect
Dartmouth Bans Hard Alcohol And Pledging
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/dartmouth-bans-hard-alcohol-and-pledging-as-part-of-campus-safety-reforms-2015-1
Jensen Comment
Up to now Dartmouth is purportedly the hardest drinking Ivy League campus.
"Harvard Law Pushes Back: Even liberals
objected to Obama’s lack of due process in sexual misconduct cases," The
Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2015 ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/harvard-law-pushes-back-1422663102?tesla=y
The University of Virginia held a two-day conference last February on “Sexual Misconduct Among College Students.” One of the speakers was the Education Department’s Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon, who touted her office’s efforts to compel colleges and universities, under pain of losing federal funds, to adopt draconian policies on sexual harassment and assault.
These policies have raised serious concerns about due process and basic fairness for the accused, and an audience member asked Ms. Lhamon how she planned to deal with such “push-back.” Her reply: “We’ve received a lot of push-back, and we need to push forward notwithstanding.” The recent experience of Harvard Law School demonstrates the value of pushing back.
Both Harvard Law and Harvard College, the university’s undergraduate division, were on the Office of Civil Rights’ list of 55 institutions under investigation for violations of Title IX, the law that is the basis for the OCR’s sexual-misconduct mandate. Effective with the 2014-15 academic year, Harvard’s administration instituted universitywide “Interim Policies and Procedures” designed to satisfy the OCR’s demands.
Most institutions yield to OCR’s pressure without significant dissent. But at Harvard, 28 law professors—including liberal luminaries Elizabeth Bartholet, Alan Dershowitz, Nancy Gertner, Janet Halley, Duncan Kennedy and Charles Ogletree —signed an open letter, published in the Boston Globe, in which they described the new policies and procedures as “inconsistent with many of the most basic principles we teach.”
Among their complaints: “the absence of any adequate opportunity to discover the facts charged and to confront witnesses and present a defense”; the designation of a Title IX compliance officer, “rather than an entity that could be considered structurally impartial,” as investigator, prosecutor and judge; “the failure to ensure adequate representation for the accused,” especially for lower-income students.
The professors also faulted the university for having “apparently decided simply to defer to the demands of certain federal administrative officials,” and law-school administrators listened. They adopted new procedures, independent of the university’s and far friendlier to due process.
Accused students will now have the right to a lawyer and access to financial assistance if they need it. Cases will be adjudicated by an independent panel rather than by the Title IX compliance officer. On Dec. 30 the OCR accepted the new procedures in a settlement agreement with Dean Martha Minow.
The resolution does not address all of the law professors’ concerns. Although the law school has improved its procedures, it is still subject to the university’s policies.
The professors are concerned that these policies define sexual harassment in a way “that goes significantly beyond Title IX and Title VII law” and impose “rules governing sexual conduct between students both of whom are impaired or incapacitated” by alcohol or other drugs, which are “starkly one-sided as between complainants and respondents.” Such impairment vitiates an accuser’s consent but is not a defense for the accused.
Dean Minow also agreed to OCR’s demands to modify the procedures in ways that raise further due-process concerns. The law school must include “a statement that complainants have a right to proceed simultaneously with a criminal investigation and a Title IX investigation,” which could make it impossible for an accused student to defend himself in the university proceeding while preserving his right against self-incrimination.
And it must adopt an “explicit prohibition of public hearings in cases involving sexual assault or sexual violence,” so that it will be difficult for the public or the press to monitor the process for abuses.
Still, the law school’s new procedures are a significant improvement over the university’s, and they promise more fairness than the kangaroo-court systems many universities have adopted under OCR pressure. The investigation of Harvard College is still under way, and the university could do far worse than to follow the lead of Harvard Law, the school that pushed back.
This is where college gang rapes should end up
--- the police and the courts
Vanderbilt Football Trial: Alleged Rape Details Emerge ---
http://abcnews.go.com/US/vanderbilt-football-trial-alleged-rape-details-emerge/story?id=28268191
Vanderbilt Football Players Found Guilty of Rape ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2015/01/28/vanderbilt-football-players-found-guilty-rape
"Charges Are Dropped Against 5 Accused of Rape (and expelled) at William
Paterson U.," by Charles Huckabee, Chronicle of Higher Education,
January 30, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/charges-are-dropped-against-5-accused-of-rape-at-william-paterson-u/93085?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
2nd College Student Charged With Rape Sues - Columbia // Males Suing
Private Universities, Others ---
http://www.prlog.org/12326547-2nd-college-student-charged-with-rape-sues-columbia-males-suing-private-universities-others.html
At least it is in the hands of the police and the courts where it belongs
Stanford ex-student denies raping woman outside a fraternity ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-stanford-ex-student-denies-rape-of-unconscious-woman-outside-frat-2015-1
An episode at Eastern Michigan University highlights
how anonymous social-media posts threaten the classroom dynamic, prompting the
professors’ union to demand protection from student harassment.
"A New Faculty Challenge: Fending Off Abuse on Yik Yak,"
by Peter Schmidt, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 29, 2015 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/A-New-Faculty-Challenge-/151463/?cid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
The three Eastern Michigan University professors had no idea that they were under attack by the Honors College students seated before them.
The three women knew that many of the nearly 230 freshmen in the auditorium resented having to show up at 9 a.m. every Friday for a mandatory interdisciplinary-studies class. But whatever unhappy students previously had said directly to them seemed mild in comparison to the verbal abuse being hurled at them silently as they taught one Friday morning last fall.
Students typed the words into their smartphones, and the messages appeared on their classmates’ screens via Yik Yak, a smartphone application that lets people anonymously post brief remarks on virtual bulletin boards. Since its release, in November 2013, the Yik Yak app has been causing havoc on campuses as a result of students’ posting threats of harm, racial slurs, and slanderous gossip.
After the class ended, one of its 13 fellows—junior and senior honors students who were helping teach—pulled a professor aside and showed her a screen-captured record of what she and her colleagues had just gone through. Students had written more than 100 demeaning Yik Yak posts about them, including sexual remarks, references to them using "bitch" and a vulgar term for female anatomy, and insults about their appearance and teaching. Even some of the fellows appeared to have joined the attack.
In an email to administrators later that day, one of the three, Margaret A. Crouch, a professor of philosophy, said, "I will quit before I put up with this again."
Eastern Michigan is hardly alone in grappling with how to tame abusive behavior on Yik Yak, which has designated bulletin boards for more than 100 campuses. But the episode at Eastern Michigan is significant because it highlights the potential for anonymous online comments to sour relationships among students, faculty members, and administrators. Instructors who once felt in charge of their classrooms can suddenly find themselves at students’ mercy.
Sites such as Yik Yak and other forums for anonymous online comments give speech "scope and amplification" it did not have before, which "changes the quality of the community," says Tracy Mitrano, director of Internet culture, policy, and law at Cornell University. Although offensive speech posted to Yik Yak generally disappears from the site within a few hours, on other sites, Ms. Mitrano says, often "it remains there, and the individuals don’t have any power to remove it, and it hurts."
Rallying the Faculty
Administrators at Eastern Michigan refused demands to track down and punish the offending students, saying it was logistically and legally impossible to do that. And so the Yik Yak episode has escalated into a broader labor dispute. The professors sought the help of their union, which has pressed the administration to do more to guard faculty members from harassment by students on anonymous social media.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Maybe something can be done on campus but little can be done when students port
their complaints to RateMyProfessor ---
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/
RMP has a new and serious privacy policy that may help some ---
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/assets/chilis/Summary_of_Most_Recent_Significant_Changes.pdf
January 29, 2015 reply from Bob Blystone
Bob:
Reminds me of Shirley Jackson and the Lottery. Perhaps all the students in the class should be required to read her short story.
Bob Blystone
January 29, 2015 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Bob,
Jackson said the following as quoted at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Jackson
Explaining just what I had hoped the story to say is very difficult. I suppose, I hoped, by setting a particularly brutal ancient rite in the present and in my own village to shock the story's readers with a graphic dramatization of the pointless violence and general inhumanity in their own lives.
Thanks,
Bob
"Dear Student: Should Your Granny Die Before The Midterm ...," by
Stacey Patton, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 29, 2015 ---
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/886-dear-student-should-your-granny-die-before-the-midterm?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
This makes me wonder how much of our future popular textbooks and textbook
supplements will be written by robots
"America’s oldest news agency wrote 10X more articles by having robots do
what reporters used to do," by Eugene Kim, Business Insider, January
30, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/aps-partnership-with-automated-insights-2015-1
If you thought robots could never replace journalists, think twice.
That’s certainly been the case at The Associated Press, America’s oldest 24-hour news agency. AP produced roughly 3,000 articles on company earnings last quarter, 10X more than it used to, by using automated technology.
According to The Verge, AP has been able to do it by partnering with Automated Insights, a company that specializes in “robot journalism.” Automated Insights uses artificial intelligence and Big Data analysis to automatically generate data-heavy articles, such as earnings reports.
Initially there was some human editing involved, but now most of the articles are fully automated — with far fewer errors than human reporters and editors. In theory, it could crank out 2,000 articles per second.
But AP says the purpose of having "robot journalists" is not about replacing its reporters, at least in the foreseeable future. Instead, it is to allow the reporters to spend more time on high-quality journalism.
Of course, this is not the first time we’ve seen a computer software do a better job than its human counterparts. Last year, we wrote about Narrative Science, another story automation company, that claims it can do the type of deep analysis a $250,000 per year consultant would do.
The Quill Pen Isn't What it Used to Be by a Long
Shot: Software That Turns Data into a Narrative Story
"Robot Journalist Finds New Work on Wall Street: Software that turns data
into written text could help us make sense of a coming tsunami of data," by Tom
Simonite, MIT's Technology Review, January 9, 2015 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/533976/robot-journalist-finds-new-work-on-wall-street/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-daily-all&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20150114
"The Newest Employees at Lowe’s
Hardware Store: Robots," by Mae Anderson, Yahoo Tech, October 28,
2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/the-newest-employees-at-lowes-hardware-store-robots-101180704939.html
No More Jobs on the Farms or Most Anywhere Else
"Get Ready for Robot Farmers," by Jodi Helmer, CNNMoney
via Yahoo Tech, October 24, 2014 ---
https://www.yahoo.com/tech/get-ready-for-robot-farmers-100613764059.html
"Patented Book Writing System Creates, Sells Hundreds Of Thousands Of
Books On Amazon," by David J. Hull, Security Hub, December 13, 2012
---
http://singularityhub.com/2012/12/13/patented-book-writing-system-lets-one-professor-create-hundreds-of-thousands-of-amazon-books-and-counting/
Jensen Comment
This makes me wonder how much of our future popular textbooks and textbook
supplements will be written by robots.
"Tape: Scientist offers to build nuke bomb targeting New York," by
Russell Contreras, Yahoo News, January 28, 2015 ---
http://news.yahoo.com/tape-scientist-offers-build-nuke-bomb-targeting-york-203327645.html
Jensen Comment
Perhaps China could provide one cheaper and a whole lot sooner. This is how
Pakistan and North Korea got their early bombs.
Deflating American football: Are we near the end?
"The end zone: The nation’s favourite entertainment faces many charges. One
of them will finish it." The Economist, January 31, 2015 ---
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21641250-nations-favourite-entertainment-faces-many-charges-one-them-will-finish-it-end?fsrc=nlw|hig|29-01-2015|NA
BY THE time it is over, more than half a billion chickens will have given their lives so that their wings might be dipped in barbecue sauce. Enough avocados will be eaten, mashed into guacamole, to lay a trail from Seattle to Boston and back, four times. Even those who think sport is silly must pause to acknowledge the Super Bowl. The ten most watched television broadcasts in American history have all been Super Bowls, as have the next ten. By a conservative estimate, 112m Americans watched it last year. The number who will see the game between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots on February 1st is slightly more than the number who say they attend church once a week. Many churches have given up competing and instead throw Super Bowl parties as a way of expanding the flock.
This year’s contest has many subplots that have required the intervention of politicians. Joe Biden, the vice-president, was asked to comment about the underinflated balls used in the semi-final by the Patriots (“Deflategate”). He revealed that he too prefers a softer ball. Serious people questioned whether it was good politics for Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey and aspiring candidate for the White House, to be photographed hugging the owner of the Dallas Cowboys. All this is frivolous, but it cuts through to voters in a way that budget maths does not.
The mingling of football and politics stretches back to the turn of the century, when Theodore Roosevelt, who worried that a fondness for billiards had made the country’s ruling class soft, brokered a deal to make football safer. The three most recent Republican presidents were all cheerleaders, before that activity came to be considered girlie. Hunter S. Thompson once spent most of an hour talking football with Richard Nixon. “Whatever else might be said about Nixon—and there is still serious doubt in my mind that he could pass for human,” wrote Thompson, “he is a goddam stone fanatic on every facet of pro football.”
Though it may not seem like it, the days of politicians using football to relate to ordinary Americans are numbered. This Super Bowl has an extra edge because it is the first since actuaries for the NFL, which runs the professional game, estimated that a third of ex-pros may eventually suffer brain damage. Put another way, 35 men on the pitch in Phoenix can be expected to endure early-onset Alzheimer’s or dementia pugilistica for the entertainment of everyone else. (The NFL agreed to set up a fund to compensate players with brain injuries in 2013.)
Because football is so widely followed, it is also a starting point for bigger arguments about America. When Ray Rice, a running back for the Baltimore Ravens, was filmed punching his girlfriend unconscious in a lift, the incident sparked debate about whether football rewards violence; about domestic abuse; about the rewards for inept executives (Roger Goodell, who bungled the NFL’s response, was paid $35m in 2013); and about the oddities of tort law (Mr Rice won millions for wrongful dismissal after the Ravens fired him). The discovery of a manual issued to cheerleaders for the Buffalo Bills, known as the Jills—filled with rules for everything from etiquette (“Do not be overly opinionated”) to advice on how to care for “intimate areas”—prompted a debate about whether cheerleading is demeaning and whether the pompom-wavers should be paid. Some, amazingly, are not.
Many of the charges thrown at football are bogus. The link between the sport and violence off the pitch is spurious: violent crime has been declining since the early 1990s, since when football has become even more popular. The notion that the sport is racist because the players risking injury are mostly black and the fans mostly white ignores the fact that the game is the only one followed with equal fanaticism by black and white America, or the possibility that adoring a player of a different race might be a more powerful force for good than any number of affirmative-action initiatives. As for the Jills, some of their manual is practical and, in parts—“never use words/ phrases such as: like, I seen it, you’s guys, dude, them guys, pee and ain’t”—interchangeable with The Economist’s rules for its journalists.
Crunch time
The maiming of so many of football’s professional players is different, because it is an objection to the game itself. The NFL players’ union says that the average length of a professional career is just under three and a half years. Watching a big hit on a player now comes with the same twinge of guilt as watching clips of Muhammad Ali being pummelled. Though high-school players are less likely to suffer brain damage, some school teams were forced to end their seasons early last year because so many children had been injured. Almost half of parents say they would not allow their sons to play the game, a feeling shared by Barack Obama. Nor is it easy to see how the rules could be changed to reduce the risk of brain damage in the professional game to an acceptable level.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Many of these same things were said about boxing matches 70 years ago. Boxing
permanently damaged the brains of virtually all long-time professional boxers.
But the doomsayers were wrong about boxing.
Now women are professional boxers, hockey players, and occasionally (rarely)
football players. We don't have to worry about professional wrestling since that
is choreographed gymnastics. But some of those body slams to the floor have to
be hard on the body even if they are faked.
I suspect the lawyers and insurance companies will make football and hockey teams too expensive for K-12 schools and colleges. That and lone wolf terrorists will probably put an end to most crowd cheering spectaculars. Until the football and hockey die the only spectators at an American football game may be the television camera crews. But the lawyers for the players and insurance companies will even make televised football and hockey a dangerous sport of the past.
There will, however, be cable channels like the History Channel for archived footage of great football and hockey games of the 20th Century. Yawn!
From the CFO Journal's Morning Ledger on January 23, 2015
The economic reality in the U.S. is that wealthier households are getting ahead more quickly, while middle- and lower-income Americans continue to struggle. That is forcing companies to adjust their marketing strategies and product lines to appeal to people with money to spend, knowing that those in the middle and below continue to hold their purse strings tightly, the WSJ reports.
For home builder Quadrant Homes, that has meant pivoting from a “More House, Less Money” marketing slogan to “Built Your Way,” aiming toward buyers with money to spend on gourmet kitchens and other custom finishes. It’s easy to see why. Since 2009, average household spending among the top 5% of U.S. income earners climbed 12% through 2012, while spending fell by 1% for everyone else.
The trend goes beyond homes. Luxury retailers are registering solid growth, as are luxury hotel chains, whereas midscale hotel chains are seeing revenues decline. And in grocery stores, sales of economy brands have risen, while top-tier chain Whole Foods Market Inc. reported record sales per gross square foot last year.
Jensen Comment
The situation is more dire in other countries where poor people do not get
subsidized housing, welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid free medicine and medical
treatment. America's poor live better than the upper middle class in some
nations.
Midscale hotel chains may do better now that fuel prices have plummeted.
What hurts hotels in general is need for travel is greatly reduced by new communications technology such as the ability to have virtual meetings where people see and talk to each other without physical presence. Robotics is also changing the need to travel, including such things as robotic surgeries where the skilled surgeon may be thousands of miles from where the surgery is actually taking place.
Amazon Launches Kindle Textbook Creator ---
http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y15/m01/i23/s02
Thank you Richard Campbell for the heads up.
Amazon launched a new service that helps educators and authors publish their own digital "textbooks" and other educational content that students can then access on Fire tablets, iPad, iPhone, Android smartphones and tablets, Mac, and PC.
"Educators and authors can use the public beta of Amazon's new Kindle Textbook Creator tool to easily turn PDFs of their textbooks and course materials into Kindle books," the company explained in its announcement. "Once the book is ready, authors can upload it to KDP in just a few simple steps to reach students worldwide."
Features include flashcards, highlighting, and note-taking.
Those who publish through the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) program can earn royalties of up to 70% and keep their rights and maintain control of their content. "They can also choose to enroll their books in KDP Select for additional royalty opportunities like Kindle Unlimited and the Kindle Owners' Lending Library, and access to marketing tools like Kindle Countdown Deals and Free Book Promotions," Amazon said.
More information about the KDP program is available on the Amazon website.
Jensen Comment
It's relatively easy in my field to write chapter material relative to the
end-of-chapter material on questions, problems, and cases to be accompanied by a
separate answer book. Also in accounting and tax there's a constant stream of
rules changes such that updating textbooks becomes a pain in the butt for an
individual author. For popular accounting and tax textbooks such updating has
become a factory operation by the big publishing firms along with production of
all the supplementary videos, test banks, teaching notes, etc.
My point is that its harder to be a textbook author in some disciplines vis-a-vis others where the content needs changing annually or more often. Textbook authors often find their textbooks own them rather than vice versa.
Kindle Textbook Creater makes it relatively easy to change course handouts into a textbook. But consideration needs to be given to all those copyrighted notes now in your password-controlled Moodle or Blackboard servers that cannot be made available by to the general public.
Also consideration needs to be given to ethics and your employer's policies regarding sales of materials to your own students.
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
CBO Projects Tepid Economic Growth, Rising Deficits Despite Rising Revenues
The Budget and Outlook 2015-2025
Congressional Budget Office
January 2015
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/49892-Outlook2015.pdf
Jensen Comment
The USA, like Greece, thinks it can spend its way out of debt. It can't!
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Jensen Comment
Sure you can be efficient if you avoid expensive programs or offer only limited
versions of those expensive versions.
For example, to be an efficient university avoid medical schools and medical research like the plague. Minimize programs having the most expensive faculty like accountancy, computer science, physical science, and other programs having high cost faculty and facilities requirements. If you have an expensive degree program with a very small faculty greatly restrict the gpa requirements for majoring in that program.
And by all means avoid expensive doctoral programs in terms of faculty and facilities. Now that's efficiency for you.
There are of course exceptions in the rankings, but not many exceptions. And in fairness quality of programs was factored into the rankings so that simply going cheap on poor quality gets you nowhere.
"Data Show Which Top-Ranked Colleges Operate Most Efficiently," by Bob
Morse, US News, January 15, 2015 ---
http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2015/01/15/data-show-which-top-ranked-colleges-operate-most-efficiently
It's common in the changing rooms of public swimming pools to make swimmers take showers before entering the pools. Maybe that will become a requirement to enter public libraries. That's just a Jensen thought and not part of the article below.
"Library social worker helps homeless seeking quiet refuge," LISnews,
January 29, 2015 ---
http://lisnews.org/library_social_worker_helps_homeless_seeking_quiet_refuge
What happens when you develop a genuinely
almost nearly perfect society in which there is nothing left to achieve, nothing
to kick against, or work?
"Actually, the Danish don't have the secret to happiness," Michael Booth,
The Atlantic, January 31, 2015
The American Dream Versus the Danish Dream ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/SunsetHillHouse/SunsetHillHouse.htm#AmericanDream
Jensen Comment
The Atlantic article below is too long but is accompanied by great photographs
Moral of Story
Maybe the best way to be happy is to set expectations low. Reminds me of the
Bloomington High School girls basketball team that recently lost 161-2. Think of
how happy this team will be next year when they only lose 98-12 ---
http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2015/01/16/girls-basketball-coach-suspended-after-defeating-opponent-161-2/
What happens when you develop a genuinely
almost nearly perfect society in which there is nothing left to achieve, nothing
to kick against, or work?
"Actually, the Danish don't have the secret to happiness," Michael Booth,
The Atlantic, January 31, 2015 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/actually-the-danish-dont-have-the-secret-to-happiness-2015-1
Jensen Comment
Cars are very, very expensive in Denmark. Maybe they would be happier if they
did not have to ride bicycles all the time and could save up enough money to own
and operate cars.
Denmark's Welfare State is On the Rocks In
Spite of (or because of) High Taxes
"Scandinavia�s Weakest Nation Finds Welfare Habits Too Costly," by Peter
Levring, Bloomberg, August 30, 2013 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-30/scandinavia-s-weakest-nation-finding-welfare-habits-unaffordable.html
Marginal Tax Cuts in Denmark --- http://www.asb.dk/en/aboutus/newsfromasb/newsarchive/article/artikel/feature_article_what_can_we_expect_from_the_spring_tax_reform-1/
The media regularly feature stories about how Danes are unwilling to work extra hours, even if taxes are lowered. The Danish Economic Council and the Danish Ministry of Finance say the opposite is true, while the public debate swings in both directions.
By Associate Professor Anders Frederiksen, Department of Marketing and Statistics, Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus
(This article was published in the Danish daily Berlingske Tidende on Monday 16 November 2009.)
This spring will see the implementation of a comprehensive tax reform that will reduce the marginal tax rate for most people in Denmark. We are becoming quite well versed in concepts such as financial 'carrots' and 'hammocks', and we have been inundated with all manner of studies of the willingness of the Danish people to work more if taxes are cut. Most of these studies find that the Danes are willing to work more, but there are always some that present the opposite conclusion; and the media has a tendency to call more attention to the latter. Perhaps it makes for a better story when people contradict the Economic Council and the Ministry of Finance.
Longer workdays
Let's nail the point home once and for all: the supply of labour in society will increase if the marginal tax rate (the tax on the last krone earned) is cut. This outcome is so certain that not a single economist contradicts it. But that is where the consensus ends, and opinions on the scope of this effect differ greatly, because the change in the supply of labour that will follow a cut in the marginal tax rate is generally considered relatively small � a conclusion that has also been confirmed by Danish research. This means that if the marginal tax rate is lowered by, e.g. 1 per cent, a good estimate is that the supply of labour will increase by 0.05 per cent for men and 0.15 per cent for women. In other words, after a marginal tax rate cut of 10 per cent, an average woman working full time will be willing to work approx. 30 minutes more a week.Uneven effect
But exactly who can we expect to work longer hours? The spring tax reform will abolish the middle-bracket tax, shift the tax basis for the top-bracket tax and reduce the bottom-bracket tax rate. This will increase the incentive for nearly every worker in Denmark to work more, although the consequences for the supply of labour depend on the level of income. Workers with a bottom-bracket tax as their marginal tax will experience a moderate reduction in taxes, and thus we can only expect a moderate increase in the supply of labour within this group. In contrast, people who are no longer charged top-bracket tax and who also experience the reduction in the bottom-bracket tax as well as the abolishment of the middle-bracket tax will have a significantly reduced marginal tax rate, and this will have a major impact on their willingness to work more. Thus, one of the consequences of the tax reform is an increase in the supply of labour among those workers earning around DKK 400,000.New study
But what do the Danish people say when asked whether they would work more if taxes were cut? To obtain a better understanding of this key question, we asked the members of the unemployment insurance fund FTF-A what they would be willing to do if the top-bracket tax were abolished? Their response was clear � they would work more. More precisely, 17 per cent responded that they would work more, while 77 per cent responded that they would not change their working hours and only 6 percent believed that they would reduce their working hours. Thus, these responses confirm the findings found in the specialist literature.Overtime or another job?
The spring tax reform will increase the supply of labour, but how is that possible when everyone works 37-hour-a-week jobs? The idea of inflexible working hours is actually a misconception. According to our study, the majority of the unemployment insurance fund members who responded that they would work more would do more overtime, while nearly a third would increase the supply of labour by taking an additional job. A small share would exchange their part-time job for a full-time job. And those who are not in employment would spend more time looking for work. In other words, you and I may not see any possibilities for earning extra money, but there is a large group of people who would see these possibilities and would be willing to make an extra effort if the incentive were greater.Less attractive to moonlight
One thing is the supply of labour, but what other consequences will the tax reform have? Unintended consequences of taxation, such as the existence of a black labour market, will also be affected by the reform. The specialist literature documents that the supply of labour in the informal labour market (especially for men) will be significantly affected by the pay that can be brought home from the regular labour market. We also know from previous studies that a large share of the population moonlights � a finding that is also confirmed by FTF-A's members, where approximately 10 per cent say they moonlight. If the top-bracket tax were abolished, 18 per cent of those who moonlight would reduce the amount of work they do on the black labour market, while only 1 per cent would go against that trend and moonlight more. In short, lower taxes also contribute to a more honest labour market.Pamper pension savings
The tax reform will also have interesting consequences for the financial sector, the retail sector and other areas of society with an interest in the economic priorities of Danes who have more money in their pockets. We know that the retail sector will experience a boost resulting from the increase in disposable income, but not all the money will go towards extra consumption. Some of it will also be put into savings, but what kind? The high marginal tax rate in Denmark has turned increasing pension payments into something of a national pastime in an effort to avoid and postpone paying taxes. If the top-bracket tax were abolished, this hobby would become less interesting, even though the higher disposable income would make it possible to increase savings. The responses from FTF-A's members show that 20 per cent of people with pension savings would increase their payments if the top-bracket tax were abolished, while only 8 per cent would decrease payments to their pension savings. This illustrates that the tax reform will not only have consequences for the labour market, but for many other sectors as well. For instance, people will spend more money in shops, and the financial sector can expect to experience an increase in demand for pension-related products.
Expensive in the beginning
Naturally, the many positive effects of the tax reform described here do not stand alone, and the observant reader is probably wondering whether there are any negative consequences of the tax reform. One problem is that the reform will not be self-financing in the short term. Consequently, the state will have less money in its coffers as a result of lower taxes next year, even taking into account the fact that a number of people will work more. However, this does not mean that the tax reform cannot be self-financing in the medium or long term. The changed behaviour patterns that we will see in the Danish people as a result of the lower tax on work will contribute to this. For example, higher pay after taxes will encourage young people to exploit their potential better, e.g. by obtaining a higher education, which will contribute in the long term to better pay conditions and growth in the economy.
How skewed can Denmark be?
One of the more negative consequences of the tax reform stems from the fact that the tax cut primarily affects the upper levels of the income distribution, leading to greater inequality in society. While the question of how much inequality can be tolerated is a political issue, it is naturally an important aspect that should be considered. But with that said, Danish society generally has a very high level of equality compared to other countries.
Jensen Comment
Could it be that tax revisionists in Denmark are beginning to anticipate value
added from something like an American Dream being introduced in Denmark?
The American Dream Versus the Danish Dream ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/SunsetHillHouse/SunsetHillHouse.htm#AmericanDream
"Replications in Economics: A Progress Report," by Maren Duvendack
Richard W. Palmer - Jones W. Robert Reed, WORKING PAPER No. 2 6 /201, Department
of Economics and Finance, University of Canterbury, December 3, 2014 ---
http://www.econ.canterbury.ac.nz/RePEc/cbt/econwp/1426.pdf
Abstract: This study reports on various aspects of replication research in economics. It includes (i) a brief history of data sharing and replication; (ii) the results of the authors’ survey administered to the editors of all 333 “Economics” journals listed in Web of Science in December 2013; (iii) an analysis of 155 replication studies that have been published in peer - reviewed economics journals from 1977 - 2014; (iv) a discussion of the future of replication research in economics, and (v) observations on how replications can be better integrated into research efforts to address problems associated with publication bias and other Type I error phenomena.
. . .
23 economics journals is unreliable. The task o f identifying which results are reliable, and which are not, should be an important priority for the economics discipline. The future of replications . The fields of science and political science have been very active in calling for an increase in replication activities . For example, the Center for Open Science received 1.3 Million USD to start the Reproducibility Initiative 42 , 43 , which aims to independently verify the results of major scientific experiments. There have also been renewed calls for replication in the political sciences, e.g. Gary King’s website 44 is a good resource, the political science replication blog 45 is another. More recently the Berkeley Initiative for Transparency in the Social Sciences (BITSS) 46 was started with the objective to make empirical social science research more transparent which includes promoting replications.
The area of economics has seen some but relatively few replication initiatives, one is the “Replication in Economics” project at Goettingen University which is funded by the Institute for New Economic Thinking and which has compiled a wiki containing an extensive number of replication studies published in economic journals. Another replication initiative in the field of development economics has been launched by 3ie.
. . .
We expect that elite journals will likely continue to find little benefit to publishing replication studies, as they receive high quality , original research with much citation potential. However, journals of lesser quality may find that replications of widely - cited papers can be expected to produce more citations than original research submitted to those journals. If that is the case, the pursuit of citations may help replication studies to establish a niche within the hierarchy of economics journals
Technological innovation also affects journal demand. The Journal of Applied Econometrics’ practice of publishing summaries of replications allows it to allocate less journal space for a replication study relative to an original research study. The increasing sophistication of online publishing also creates opportunities for journals to use their scarce journal space more efficiently. Public Finance Review publishes a summary version of a replication study in its print edition, but attaches the full - length manuscript as “ Supplemental material” that can be accessed at the journal’s online website. These innovations increase the ratio of citations/journal page, and hence can shift the demand for replication studies relative to original studies at some journals
Finally, widespread attention directed towards the replicability of scientific research may affect journal editors’ and researchers’ “tastes” for replication studies. This also generates dynamic externalities that simultaneously increases the demand and supply of replication studies.
Continued in article
Economics has met the enemy, and it is economics," by Ira
Basen, Globe and Mail, October 15, 2011 ---
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/economics-has-met-the-enemy-and-it-is-economics/article2202027/page1/
Thank you Jerry Trites for the heads up.
Bob Jensen's threads on the lack of replication in accountics science are
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
There is little interest in replication since top journals will not publish
replications, summaries of replications, or even commentaries on published
research outcomes.
There is great interest in the models and methods of accountics science but
little interest findings of those models.
The Cargo Cult of Accountics Researchers ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm#CargoCult
The second is the comment that Joan Robinson made
about American Keynsians: that their theories were so flimsy that they had to
put math into them. In accounting academia, the shortest path to respectability
seems to be to use math (and statistics), whether meaningful or not.
Professor Jagdish Gangolly, SUNY
Albany
How Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
From the Scout Report on January 30, 2015
SwipeRadio (radio station listening on your iPhone) --- http://www.swiperadioapp.com
SwipeRadio makes it possible to listen to your favorite radio stations on your iPhone. Upon opening, the app will ask you to identify your location, from which you may choose stations. Stations can also be chosen from 50,000 possibilities around the country and the world, and searched by keyword as well. It's a great alternative for listening to your favorite radio stations on the go. Currently designed for iPad and iPhone running iOS 7.0+.
Lingua.ly (language learning) --- http://www.lingua.ly
There are an abundance of language learning programs on the market. Few of them, however, take advantage of the world wide web. Lingua.ly seeks to do just that. So far it is offered in English, Spanish, French, and Hebrew with the option to learn one of nine other languages. After first creating a free account, readers can start by learning vocabulary. Once that is accomplished, the program starts to recommend websites that are at the learner's reading level. In this manner, the web becomes a language learning facility.
Asteroids In the News
Asteroid That Hurtled Past Earth Has a Miniature Moon
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/asteroid- hurtled-past-earth-has- miniature-moon-n294621
Best ever view of asteroid Ceres
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31009791
Solar System Exploration: Asteroids: Overview
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object= Asteroids
Huff Post: Asteroids
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/asteroid/
The Age of Asteroids
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/age-asteroids
Asteroids: between a rock and a hard place
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/sep/20/asteroids- rock-hard-place-meteor-strike- russia-nicaragua
TinyScan --- http://www.appxy.com/tinyscan/
The idea of TinyScan is simple - the app uses the camera function of iPhones to make them into portable scanners, so that users can scan documents and transform them into PDFs. The scanner automatically detects the page frame, making scanning extremely user friendly. PDFs can then be easily shared with others by uploading to Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, and others. TinyScan requires iOS 6.0+ or Android 3.0+. [C
Pocket --- https://getpocket.com
When you see something you'd like to read, but you don't have time at the moment, put it in Pocket and read it later. This is the simple, but powerful notion behind this helpful app. Once select items are placed in Pocket, there is no need for an Internet connection - a great feature for daily commuters or others who find themselves at various times throughout the day without an Internet connection. Items (articles, videos, etc.) can be added via email, web browser, or a handful of other apps, such as Twitter, Flipboard, or Pulse. Compatible with all operating systems.
A Year After his Death, Pete Seeger Still Inspires
Smithsonian Folkways: A Tribute to Pete Seeger
http://www.folkways.si.edu/PeteSeeger
M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives: Remembering
Pete Seeger
http://library.albany.edu/archive/seeger
Library of Congress Blog: Remembering Pete Seeger
http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2014/01/remembering-pete-seeger/
Remembering Pete Seeger
http://www.rememberingpeteseeger.org/
Pete Seeger: the man who brought politics to music
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/28/pete-seeger- man-brought-politics-to-music
NPR Music: Pete Seeger
http://www.npr.org/artists/15869924/pete-seeger
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance, economics, and statistics --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
Stanford
Launches Free Course on Developing Apps with iOS 8 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/stanford-launches-free-course-on-developing-apps-with-ios-8.html
School of Open (Creative Commons) --- http://schoolofopen.p2pu.org
Science Friday: Educate (PBS Radio) --- http://www.sciencefriday.com/teacher-resources/index.html#page/full-width-list/1
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
JournalTOCs (Tables of Contents and Article Titles) --- http://www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk/
Sesame Workshop --- http://www.sesameworkshop.org
Bob
Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Watch 570 Million Years of Evolution on
Earth in 60 Seconds ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/watch-570-million-years-of-evolution-in-60-seconds.html
Wired Science (probably the world's most active science and technology blog) --- http://www.wired.com/science/
Nautilus (science magazine) --- http://nautil.us/
10
scientific mysteries we are set to solve this century ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/scientific-mysteries-we-could-solve-in-the-21st-century-2015-1
San Diego Zoo Animal Finder --- http://zoo.sandiegozoo.org/animals
The Science of Hatred --- http://chronicle.com/article/The-Science-of-Hatred/143157
Science Friday: Educate (PBS Radio) --- http://www.sciencefriday.com/teacher-resources/index.html#page/full-width-list/1
Time to
"Dust Off" Older Evidence and Speculations
The most exciting astronomical discovery of 2014 was just proven wrong ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/cosmic-inflation-was-just-proven-wrong-2015-1
Bob Jensen's threads on astronomy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#---Astronomy
Astrobiology --- http://online.liebertpub.com/toc/ast/15/1
The International Breastfeeding Journal --- http://www.internationalbreastfeedingjournal.com
The Salt: NPR (food news from the farm to the plate and beyond) --- http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/
The Burgess Shale (fossils) --- http://www.burgess-shale.rom.on.ca
Stanford
Launches Free Course on Developing Apps with iOS 8 ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/stanford-launches-free-course-on-developing-apps-with-ios-8.html
WWF: The Energy Report (sustainable energy by 2050) --- http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/climate_carbon_energy/energy_solutions22/renewable_energy/sustainable_energy_report/
JournalTOCs (Tables of Contents and Article Titles) --- http://www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk/
Counterspill (oil spill history and other disasters) --- http://www.counterspill.org/
Why We Sleep --- http://www.ted.com/talks/russell_foster_why_do_we_sleep
Surviving & Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and Culture --- http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/survivingandthriving/index.html
From the Scout Report on January 30, 2015
Asteroids
In the News
Asteroid That Hurtled Past Earth Has a Miniature Moon
http://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/asteroid-hurtled-past-earth-has-miniature-moon-n294621
Best ever view of asteroid Ceres
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-31009791
Solar System Exploration: Asteroids: Overview
https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Asteroids
Huff Post: Asteroids
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/asteroid/
The Age of Asteroids
http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/age-asteroids
Asteroids: between a rock and a hard place
http://www.theguardi
an.com/science/2014/sep/20/asteroids-rock-hard-place-meteor-strike-russia-nicaragua
Bob
Jensen's threads on free online science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are
at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Social Science and Economics Tutorials"
No More (sexual assaults) --- http://site.nomore.org
The Science of Hatred --- http://chronicle.com/article/The-Science-of-Hatred/143157
Surviving & Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and
Culture
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
The Island of Knowledge: How to Live with
Mystery in a Culture Obsessed with Certainty and Definitive Answers ---
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/02/02/the-island-of-knowledge-marcelo-glasier/?mc_cid=9300b7fb0a&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Women's Legal History --- http://wlh.law.stanford.edu/
DensityDesign (visual representation of complex social, organizational and urban phenomena) --- http://www.densitydesign.org
Urbanology: BMW Guggenheim Lab (study of people living in cities) --- http://www.bmwguggenheimlab.org/urbanology-online
The International Breastfeeding Journal --- http://www.internationalbreastfeedingjournal.com
The Salt: NPR (food news from the farm to the plate and beyond) --- http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/
WWF: The Energy Report (sustainable energy by 2050) --- http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/climate_carbon_energy/energy_solutions22/renewable_energy/sustainable_energy_report/
JournalTOCs (Tables of Contents and Article Titles) --- http://www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk/
Bob
Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and Philosophy
tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Law and Legal Studies
No More (sexual assaults) --- http://site.nomore.org
Bob
Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Math Tutorials
Bob
Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
History Tutorials
Teaching History with 100 Objects http://www.teachinghistory100.org
Eudora Welty's "A Worn Path" in Graphical
Representation
http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/eudora-weltys-worn-path-graphical-representation#sect-introduction
Edgar Allan Poe Museum --- https://www.poemuseum.org/index.php
Listen to 90 Famous Authors & Celebrities Read Great Stories &
Poems ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/90-famous-authors-celebrities-read-great-stories-poems.html
A Day in the Life: Artists' Diaries from the Archives of American Art --- http://www.aaa.si.edu/exhibitions/day-in-the-life-diaries
Packers Project (Green Bay Packers Football History) --- http://packersproject.org
The High Line (historic NYC railroad) --- http://www.thehighline.org
OUPblog: Oxford University Press's Academic Insights for the World --- http://blog.oup.com/
Codex Mendoza (early pictorial history of Mexico) --- http://codice.manuvo.com/inicio.php?lang=english
Hmong Embroidery --- http://www.hmongembroidery.org
Stream
Classic Poetry Readings from Harvard’s Rich Audio Archive: From W.H. Auden to
Dylan Thomas ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/01/harvards-poetry-room-recordings.html
Wyandotte Constitution (history of Kansas and slavery) --- http://www.kansasmemory.org/item/90272
Walker Art Center Magazine --- http://www.walkerart.org/magazine/
Building Inspector (NYC buildings history) --- http://buildinginspector.nypl.org
Counterspill (oil spill history and other disasters) --- http://www.counterspill.org/
JournalTOCs (Tables of Contents and Article Titles) --- http://www.journaltocs.hw.ac.uk/
No More (sexual assaults) --- http://site.nomore.org
Women's Legal History --- http://wlh.law.stanford.edu/
WW II Airplanes ---
http://pippaettore.com/
Bob
Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Lingua.ly (language learning) --- http://www.lingua.ly
There are an abundance of language learning programs on the market. Few of them, however, take advantage of the world wide web. Lingua.ly seeks to do just that. So far it is offered in English, Spanish, French, and Hebrew with the option to learn one of nine other languages. After first creating a free account, readers can start by learning vocabulary. Once that is accomplished, the program starts to recommend websites that are at the learner's reading level. In this manner, the web becomes a language learning facility.
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Music Tutorials
The National Recording Registry 2013 --- http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/nrpb/registry/nrpb-2013reg.html
Hear the World’s Oldest Instrument,
the “Neanderthal Flute,” Dating Back Over 43,000 Years ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/hear-the-worlds-oldest-instrument-the-neanderthal-flute.html
From the Scout Report on February 6, 2015A Year After his Death, Pete Seeger Still Inspires
Smithsonian Folkways: A Tribute to Pete Seeger
http://www.folkways.si.edu/PeteSeeger
M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives: Remembering
Pete Seeger
http://library.albany.edu/archive/seeger
Library of Congress Blog: Remembering Pete Seeger
http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2014/01/remembering-pete-seeger/
Remembering Pete Seeger
http://www.rememberingpeteseeger.org/
Pete Seeger: the man who brought politics to music
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/28/pete-seeger- man-brought-politics-to-music
NPR Music: Pete Seeger
http://www.npr.org/artists/15869924/pete-seeger
From the Scout Report on February 6, 2015A Year After his Death, Pete Seeger Still Inspires
Smithsonian Folkways: A Tribute to Pete Seeger
http://www.folkways.si.edu/PeteSeeger
M.E. Grenander Department of Special Collections & Archives: Remembering
Pete Seeger
http://library.albany.edu/archive/seeger
Library of Congress Blog: Remembering Pete Seeger
http://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2014/01/remembering-pete-seeger/
Remembering Pete Seeger
http://www.rememberingpeteseeger.org/
Pete Seeger: the man who brought politics to music
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/jan/28/pete-seeger- man-brought-politics-to-music
NPR Music: Pete Seeger
http://www.npr.org/artists/15869924/pete-seeger
Bob
Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob
Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
A Sneak
Peek at Junot Díaz’s Syllabi for His MIT Writing Classes, and the Novels on His
Reading List ---
http://www.openculture.com/2015/02/junot-diazs-syllabi-for-his-mit-writing-classes.html
We can probably all agree that it’s a little premature, but all the same, the BBC has barreled ahead with its list of “The 21st Century’s 12 greatest novels.” Topping the list of excellent, if not especially surprising, picks is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz’s Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel about, as he puts it in the interview above, “a closeted nerd writing about an absolutely out nerd, and using their shared mutual language to tell the story.” The book has connected with such a wide swath of readers for more than its appeal to fellow nerds, though that’s no small thing. A great many readers have seen their own lives reflected in Díaz’s characters—Dominican immigrants growing up in New Jersey—or have found their experiences illuminating. And even though Yunior and Oscar’s very male point of view might have alienated female readers in the hands of a lesser author, Díaz has the sensitivity and self-awareness to—as Joe Fassler argues in The Atlantic—write sexist characters, but not sexist books. As the author himself says above, “if it wasn’t for women readers, I wouldn’t have a career.”
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/
January 29, 2015
· Eye Tracking May Help to Spot Concussions Quickly
· Binge-Watching TV: Sign of Depression, Loneliness?
· Pesticides, Plastics Chemicals Tied to Earlier Menopause in Women
· FDA: 72,000 Cases of Public Defibrillator Failure
· Study Underscores Power of Placebo Effect
· Ebola Vaccine Seems Safe, Triggers Immune Response
· Do Pregnant Women Need Blood Pressure Treatment?
· If Court Strikes Subsidies, Most Want Them Back
· Weight Changes Tied to Older Women's Fracture Risk
· IN Medicaid Expansion May Tempt Other States
January 30, 2015
· Colon Cancer Rates Rising Among Americans Under 50
· Insurance Choices Dwindle In Rural CA
· Obama Lifting Curtain on 'Precision Medicine' Plan
· Too Much Alcohol at Midlife Raises Stroke Risk
· Tamiflu Cuts 1 Day Off Average Flu Bout: Study
· Most On CA Exchange Sticking With Last Year’s Plan
· Flu's Grip on U.S. Starting to Weaken: CDC
· Acne Gel Linked to Rare Side Effect, Doctors Warn
· Kids' Post-Virus Paralysis Little Improved
· Should Vaccination Be a Personal Choice?
January 31, 2015
· Kidney Stones and Calcium Buildup in Blood Vessels
· Lead Exposure a Bigger Threat to Boys Than Girls?
· Obama Lifts Curtain on 'Precision Medicine' Plan
· Colon Cancer Rates Rising Among Americans Under 50
· Flame Retardants May Raise Risk of Preterm Births
· Researchers Learning More About Pancreatic Cancer
· Insurance Choices Dwindle In Rural CA
· Tamiflu Cuts 1 Day Off Average Flu Bout: Study
· Should Vaccination Be a Personal Choice?
· Most On CA Exchange Sticking With Last Year’s Plan
February 2, 2015
· Why Florida Is No. 1 In Obamacare Enrollment
· Burnout Rates Soar Among Family Doctors
· Bacteria May Help Battle Cancer, Study Suggests
· Kidney Stones and Calcium Buildup in Blood Vessels
· Lead Exposure a Bigger Threat to Boys Than Girls?
· Obama Lifts Curtain on 'Precision Medicine' Plan
· Colon Cancer Rates Rising Among Americans Under 50
· Flame Retardants May Raise Risk of Preterm Births
· Researchers Learning More About Pancreatic Cancer
· Insurance Choices Dwindle In Rural CA
February 5, 2015
- Less Commonly Used Obesity Surgery
- Gut Bacteria Change and Kids' Type 1 Diabetes
- FDA Commissioner to Retire in March
- Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Linked to Early Menopause
- Sexual Pain Common After Childbirth, Study Finds
- 2 Genetic Variants for Breast Cancer Identified
- Outbreak Sparks Bid To Strengthen CA Vaccine Law
- New Psoriatic Arthritis Research Offers Hope
- Smartphone Device Detects HIV, Syphilis
- Top Cancer Killer of Women in Wealthy Nations
February 6, 2015
Measles: A Tale of Two OutbreaksDespite Law, Some Birth Control May Require Copays
Lyme Disease More Serious, Costly Than Believed
5 Babies at IL Day Care Diagnosed With Measles
Coffee May Lower Endometrial Cancer Risk
IUDs, Birth Control Implants: How Long They Work
Type 1 Diabetes More Deadly for Women Than Men
Certain Infections Linked to Reduced RA Risk
February 7, 2015
- Lyme Disease More Serious, Costly Than Believed
- Measles: A Tale of Two Outbreaks
- Coffee May Lower Endometrial Cancer Risk
- 5 Babies at IL Day Care Diagnosed With Measles
- Despite Law, Some Birth Control May Require Copays
- Many States Still in Flu's Grip; Some Decline Seen
- New Psoriatic Arthritis Research Offers Hope
- Less Commonly Used Obesity Surgery
- Type 1 Diabetes More Deadly for Women Than Men
- FDA Commissioner to Retire in March
February 9, 2015
- HPV Shot Doesn't Seem to Boost Risky Teen Sex
- FDA Approves 1st Drug for Diabetic Retinopathy
- Lyme Disease More Serious, Costly Than Believed
- Measles: A Tale of Two Outbreaks
- Coffee May Lower Endometrial Cancer Risk
- 5 Babies at IL Day Care Diagnosed With Measles
- Despite Law, Some Birth Control May Require Copays
- Many States Still in Flu's Grip; Some Decline Seen
- New Psoriatic Arthritis Research Offers Hope
- Less Commonly Used Obesity Surgery
February 10, 2015
- Future Unclear for Kids Paralyzed After EV-D68
- HPV Shot Doesn't Seem to Boost Risky Teen Sex
- Latest Measles Count: 121 Cases in 17 States, D.C.
- Many Don't Handle Poultry Safely When Cooking
- Residential Program Helps Obese Kids Lose Weight
- Stress and Heart Attack Recovery in Younger Women
- Researchers Identify 8 Signs of Impending Death
- Kids and Energy Drinks: Inattention, Hyperactivity
- 5 Babies at IL Day Care Diagnosed With Measles
- Coffee May Lower Endometrial Cancer Risk
Every vaccine you should have as an adult, in one chart ---
http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7986249/adult-vaccine
Jensen Comment
There are of course others that should be taken when you are traveling to darker
corners of the world --- such as when the Navy requires thee painful typhoid
fever shots.
Bob Jensen avoids this risk to an extreme --- except in his posterior region
"How
Too Much Exercise Can Do More Harm Than Good," by Alice Park, Time
Magazine, February 2, 2015 ---
http://time.com/3692668/when-exercise-does-more-harm-than-good/?xid=newsletter-brief
A new study shows that running too much can be just as unhealthy as not being active at allAmericans as a whole don’t exercise enough—at least that’s what the latest studies show—and so the message is clear: get more active, take walks, Let’s Move! Basically anything is better than sitting on the couch. But how much exercise is enough? That’s a hotly debated question for which experts still don’t have a satisfactory answer. But given that most of us are starting from a sedentary position, the assumption has long been the more the better.
But in a report published Monday in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology researchers from Denmark say that people who push their bodies too hard may essentially undo the benefit of exercise. Those who ran at a fast pace more than four hours a week for more than three days a week had about the same risk of dying during the study’s 12-year follow up as those who were sedentary and hardly exercised at all. The link held even after the researchers accounted for potentially confounding factors such as age, sex, whether the participants had a history of heart disease or diabetes, or whether they smoked and drank alcohol.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I remember
when the University of Michigan accountics science researcher and avid runner
Vic Ba\ernard dropped dead at a muvh too young age at the end of a run ---
http://www.umich.edu/~msjrnl/backmsj/112095/bernard.html
The bad news the Bob Jensen's in life is that too little exercise is also bad for expectations of a long life in retirement. I used to walk much more in these mountains and should get back into it as soon as the temperature lifts above 0F. No chance of that today, but I have to go out and move a ton of snow.
Bob Jensen
A Great
Chart on How NFL Players on Average Have Become Enormous
---
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/31/7952557/chart-nfl-players-have-gotten-enormous
Jensen
Questions
Is there an evolving pool of bigger, faster, and better USA prospects?
Like the NBA is the pool of bigger players expanding because of non-USA
prospects for the NFL as well?
Are more rigorous training routines enabling players to eat more without getting
too fat and/or too slow?
How are these statistics impacted by having an increased numbers of NFL teams?
Are diets better after getting off the Wheaties?
I read where Tom Brady lives on an extremely strict diet to keep from getting
too fat?
It seems like an increasing number of players (e.g., Aaron Hernandez) get into
trouble after midnight in bars and bar parking lots ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Hernandez
Are they bad boozers or just picking up wild women?
Surviving & Thriving: AIDS, Politics, and
Culture
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
Why We Sleep --- http://www.ted.com/talks/russell_foster_why_do_we_sleep
Coffee may
slightly reduce your risks of skin cancer
---
http://time.com/3675152/this-drink-could-protect-you-from-skin-cancer/?xid=newsletter-brief
A Bit of Humor and Trivia
Explanations to 13 jokes only smart people understand ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/smart-joke-explanations-2015-1
Also at
http://www.businessinsider.com/smart-joke-explanations-2015-1?op=1#ixzz3QOlN0K26
Some are sort of dumb. These are not the "meanest" jokes around. Some are very
clever.
Humorous
or Otherwise Interesting Super Bowl Advertisements ---
http://time.com/3691421/super-bowl-2015-ads/?xid=newsletter-brief
Dancing Priests --- http://www.youtube.com/embed/UdYDKmpzt5U?rel=0&controls=0
These HBR cartoons aren't particularly good, but I like the first one ---
https://hbr.org/2015/02/strategic-humor-cartoons-from-the-march-2015-issue?utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date&cm_lm=rjensen%40trinity.edu&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&referral=00563&cm_ven=Spop-Email&cm_ite=DailyAlert-021015+%281%29
Forwarded
by Paula
01. After the Lone Ranger saved the day and rode off into the sunset, the
grateful citizens would ask, Who was that masked man? Invariably, someone would
answer, I don't know, but he left this behind. What did he leave behind?
_________?
Hint: It was silver but not his horse named Silver.
03 Get your kicks on ______ ___________
10. Red
Skeleton's hobo character was named ______ ___ ___ and Red always ended his
television show by saying, 'Good Night, and
________ ________ ___ ___ ________
Hint: Five words
11. Some
Americans who protested the Vietnam War did so by burning their ______ _______
Hint: Something besides flags and bras.
13. In
1971, singer Don MacLean sang a song about, 'the day the music died.' This was a
tribute to _______ ____________.
Hint: Happiness is Lubbock in your rear view mirror
18. Who
knows what secrets lie in the hearts of men? Only The _____ Knows!
Hint: He or she works best in the sunlight
How to
mislead with Statistics
Mix known facts with speculations
Forwarded
by Paula from an unknown source
Here is a wealth of trivia information, for questions no one would have thought
to ask.
I removed the pictures and replaced them with the picture URLs
To get straight to the sex scroll down to Number 28.
01.
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-2.jpg
The world's hottest place: Death Valley National Park The highest air
temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134 degrees Fahrenheit, at Death Valley
National Park on July 10, 1913.
Jensen Comment
A long time ago I read that the highest recorded temperature in a city was 130
degrees in Tehran.
02
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-14.jpg
The world's coldest place: East Antarctic Plateau On the high ridge of the East
Antarctic Plateau, the temperature can drop to as low as -135.8 degrees
Fahrenheit, recorded in August, 2010.
03
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-31.jpg
World's most populated city: Shanghai At a whopping 24,150,000 permanent
inhabitants, Shanghai is the single city that is home to the most people in the
world.
04
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-32.jpg
World's least populated city: Vatican City
With a paltry population of 842, the city-state of Vatican City is the smallest
city and state in the world.
05
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-33.jpg
World's wealthiest city: Tokyo That tower might as well be made of gold, since
Tokyo tops the charts with a GDP of $1,520 billion (only beating New York by a
mere $310 billion).
06
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-34.jpg
World's poorest city: Kinshasa Kinshasa is probably the poorest city in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, the poorest country in the world, at a GDP of
$55 billion. Many of its residents live on less $1 a day.
07
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-41.jpg
Highest point in the world: Mount Everest Towering 29,029 feet in the air, the
top of Mount Everest is the closest you can get to touching space, while still
standing on Earth.
08
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-36.jpg
Lowest point in the world: Challenger Deep
The lowest known natural point in the world is Challenger Deep, 35,797 ft below
sea level at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Only three people have ever made
it to the bottom, one of which was filmmaker James Cameron.
09
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-35.jpg
Most photographed place: The Guggenheim
Photos have always told stories, but in today's world of cell phone cameras and
social media, that story is relayed as data to companies who monitor everything
we do. Geotagged data was culled by Sightsmap using a Google-based image sharing
software, and can now show us the most photographed places in the world, right
down to the landmark. The Winner? The Guggenheim in New York.
10
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/picture-of-j-rgen-prochnow-ralf-moeller-nat-faxon-will-forte-eric-christian-olsen-and-gunter-schlierkamp-in-beerfest-2006-large-picture.jpg
The world's most popular country: Germany
The results of the annual BBC World Country Rating Poll are in, and Germany came
out on top as the most positively viewed country in the world among people
probably under the age of 85 (at a 59% positivity rating).
11
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-0.jpg
The wettest spot on Earth: Mawsynram, India
Rainwise, anyway. In Mawsynram, India, it rains an average of 467.35 inches per
year, and with a record of 1000 inches in 1985.
12
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-3.jpg
The driest spot on Earth: The Atacama Desert
The 600 miles of South America's Atacama desert is the driest place on Earth, no
contest. The Desert sees an average of 4 inches of rain every thousand years.
Yes, you read that right.
13
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-4.jpg
Sunniest Place on Earth: Yuma, Arizona In Yuma, Arizona, the sun shines for an
average of 11 hours a day. Its forecast is sun for 90 percent of the year,
averaging a total of 4015 daylight hours a year.
14
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-5.jpg
Most expensive city to live in: Singapore The new champion of the world,
Singapore has recently beat out Tokyo for the title of "most expensive city" for
2014. Cars can cost between 4-6 times in Singapore what they cost in the US or
UK (for example, a Toyota Prius actually costs about $150,000.00 there).
15
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-6.jpg
Least expensive city to live in: Mumbai, India At the other end of the spectrum,
Mumbai, India, is the cheapest place to live in the world, according to the
Worldwide Cost of Living Index 2014. For some perspective, a loaf of bread that
would cost $3.36 in Singapore, would only cost $0.91 in Mumbai.
16
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/4th-of-july-food.jpg
Country that consumes and wastes the most food (per capita): United States I
suppose there must be a reason why Americans have a food-related reputation when
it comes to other countries: we eat an average of 3,770 calories a day each.
17
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-9.jpg
The world's oldest city: Damascus There's quite a bit of controversy over which
city gets to officially claim the title of "oldest continuously inhabited city."
With evidence of civilization that extends back over 11,000 years, Damascus in
Syria is probably the safest bet.
18
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-42.jpg
Youngest country in the world: South Sudan The people of South Sudan were
formally recognized as an independent country in 2011, making it the youngest
country in the world to-date.
19
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-11.jpg
The world's most visited city: London After a several-year bout with Bangkok,
London has regained its place as the world's most visited city (according to
MasterCard's 2014 Global Destinations City Index). The city sees about 18.69
million international visitors annually, generating $19.3 billion in revenue.
20
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-13.jpg
The world's least popular country: Iran On that same rating scale, Iran has come
in dead last (at a 59% negativity rating). Only 15% of people polled viewed Iran
in a positive light.
21
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-15.jpg
The world's most dangerous city: San Pedro Sula, Honduras In San Pedro Sula,
Honduras, there are over 3 murders a day. The violence stems from the city's
role as a major hub for illegal drug and arms trafficking.
22
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-16.jpg
Most caffeinated country in the world: Sweden The coffee in Sweden will put a
spring in your step, and hair on your tongue. The Swedes consume an average of
388 mg of caffeine in coffee per person, per day (that's almost 5 Red Bulls).
23
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-17.jpg
Most drunken country in the world: Belarus In Belarus, each person above the age
of 15 drinks an average of 4.62 gallons of alcohol every year.
24
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-18.jpg
The most bicycle friendly city in the world: Groningen, Netherlands By comparing
cities along the criterion of average number of bicycle trips made daily, one
city reigns supreme: Groningen in the Netherlands. In Groningen about 50 percent
of the population commute via bike daily, making it the city with the greatest
proportion of cyclists on the planet.
25
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-19.jpg
World's most energy efficient city: Reykjavik, Iceland All of the energy and
heat used by the citizens of Reykjavik Iceland come from geothermal plants and
renewable hydropower, making it the most sustainable and energy efficient city
in the world. On their mission to be completely free of fossil fuels by 2050,
the city has also been replacing traditional buses with hydrogen-fueled buses,
from which the only emissions are water.
26
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/cat.jpg
Most cat friendly country: United States With a pet cat population of 76.43
million feline friends, the United States dominates the world stage for most cat
friendly country in the world.
27
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-38.jpg
Most dog friendly country: United States Similarly, America more than doubles
the amount of pet dogs any other country has, with a dog population of 61.1
million.
28
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-43.jpg
Most sexually satisfied country: Switzerland Switzerland might just be the most
progressive and least sexually repressed country in the world. Between liberal
views on pornography and prostitution, and sex ed that starts in Kindergarten,
over a fifth of the population consider their sex-lives "excellent." They even
recently opened up a very successful array of tax-funded drive-in sex boxes in
Zurich. Bonus, in spite of all this, Switzerland also holds the title as one of
the lowest teen birth rates in the world.
29
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-20.jpg
Least sexually satisfied country: Japan With its extreme conservatism, Japan is
the country with the least sexual satisfaction, as only 15% of individuals
reported having a fulfilling sex life. Furthermore, over 45% of Japanese women
report being either uninterested in, or actually despising, sexual contact
30
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-22.jpg
Most emotional country in the world: Philippines Polling citizens in 150
countries over the years of 2009-2011, researchers found that the people of the
Philippines were the most likely to respond emotionally to simple questions
about their day.
31
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/singapore.jpg
Least emotional country in the world: Singapore That same study revealed that
Singaporeans experience the least emotion on the day-to-day. Only 3 out of every
10 reported having any emotional reactions to basic scenarios or when describing
their days.
32
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-24.jpg
Country with the longest life expectancy in the world: Monaco According to the
World Health Organization's study from 2013, Monaco tops the charts for longest
living citizens, with an average life expectancy of 87.2 years. Men in Monaco
live an average 85.3 years, and women live to an average of 89 years.
33
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-25.jpg
Country with the shortest life expectancy: Sierra Leone On the other side of
that coin, the population of Sierra Leone live to an average of 47 years. The
men of Sierra Leone live to an average of 47 years old, whereas women live an
average of 48 years.
34
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/sexyworld.jpg
Sexiest country in the world: Brazil and Australia There will always be a debate
about which countries are home to the most attractive people, in part because
who's to say what is objectively attractive? Though the means are hardly
scientific, a recent poll found quite a disparity between which countries men
believe are the sexiest, and which countries women find the sexiest. For men,
Brazil tops the charts for the most attractive people. For women, it's about the
thunder down under in Australia.
35
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/nigeria.jpg
Most stressed-out country in the world: Nigeria by looking at the dimensions of
Homicide Rate, GDP per capita, Income inequality, Corruption, and Unemployment,
one thing is clear: Nigeria is hands-down the most stressed out country in the
world.
36
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-29.jpg
Least stressed-out country in the world: Norway Along the same dimensions,
Norway was at the far-end of the other side of the spectrum, and is deemed the
least stressed-out country in the world (until oil prices spiraled downward in
late 2014). Norway is also becoming more stressed with its recent immigrant
population and returned many not yet documented for lawlessness.
37
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-39.jpg
Country with the highest average IQ: Hong Kong* There are a lot of factors that
can affect an IQ score, ranging from national and personal wealth to simply who
makes the test. As a result, these findings are highly controversial, but seem
to suggest that Hong Kong is the country* with the highest IQ, at an average of
107 points. *Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China meaning that
it falls within the sovereignty of the People's Republic of China, yet does not
form part of Mainland China, and has it's own government.
38
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/places-ranked-30.jpg
Country with the lowest average IQ: Equatorial Guinea According to "IQ and the
Wealth of Nations," Equatorial Guinea caps the low end of the global IQ range,
with a national average of 59 points.
39
http://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/seoul.jpg
World's most well-connected city (for internet): Seoul, South Korea
Surprisingly, despite it's 618 million internet users spending an average of
18.7 hours a week surfing the net, China didn't even make the top 10. Along the
dimensions of average connection speed, availability (weighted towards free
access), openness to innovation, support of public data, and privacy/security,
Seoul in South Korea is the champion of internet-connectedness. With 10,000
government supported free WiFi spots dotting the city, and an internet speed
that goes unchallenged globally, Seoul is an internet junkie's paradise.
Forwarded by Paula
The Talking Centipede
A single guy decided life would be more fun if he had a pet.
So he went to the pet store and told the owner that he wanted to buy an unusual pet.
After some discussion, he finally bought a talking centipede, (100-legged bug), which came in a little white box to use for his house.
He took the box back home, found a good spot for the box, and decided he would start off by taking his new pet to church with him.
So he asked the centipede
in the box, "Would you like to go to church with me today? We will have a good time."
But there was no answer from his new pet.
This bothered him a bit, but he waited a few minutes and then asked again, "How about going to church with me and receive blessings?"
But again, there was no answer from his new friend and pet. So he waited a few minutes more, thinking about the situation.
The guy decided to invite the centipede one last time.
This time he put his face up against the centipede's house and shouted,
"Hey, in there! Would you like to go to church with me and learn about God?"
.....
YOU ARE GOING TO LOVE THIS ......
This time, a little voice came out of the box,
"I heard you the first time! I'm putting my shoes on!
Humor Between January 1-31, 2015 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book15q1.htm#Humor013115
Humor Between December 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor123114
Humor Between November 1-30, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor113014
Humor Between October 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q4.htm#Humor103114
Humor Between September 1-30, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor093014
Humor Between August 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor083114
Humor Between July 1-31, 2014--- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q3.htm#Humor073114
Humor Between June 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q2.htm#Humor063014
Humor Between May 1-31, 2014, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q2.htm#Humor053114
Humor Between April 1-30, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q2.htm#Humor043014
Humor Between March 1-31, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q1.htm#Humor033114
Humor Between February 1-28, 2014 --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/book14q1.htm#Humor022814
Tidbits Archives --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Update in 2014
20-Year Sugar Hill Master Plan ---
http://www.nccouncil.org/images/NCC/file/wrkgdraftfeb142014.pdf
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you
have key words to enter --- Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Online
Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm • With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier • With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams • With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR • With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
Shielding
Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
· With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review (TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
· With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
· With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of Accountancy Ignores TAR
· With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
The Cult
of Statistical Significance: How Standard Error Costs Us Jobs, Justice, and
Lives
---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/DeirdreMcCloskey/StatisticalSignificance01.htm
How
Accountics Scientists Should Change:
"Frankly, Scarlett, after I get a hit for my resume in The Accounting Review
I just don't give a damn"
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
One more
mission in what's left of my life will be to try to change this
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/temp/AccounticsDamn.htm
What went
wrong in accounting/accountics research? ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad
State of Accountancy Doctoral Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN
ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW:
1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob
Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer
on Mathematical Models and Statistics
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic
problems of accountancy (especially the vegetable nutrition paradox) that
probably will never be solved
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World
Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time ---
http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock and Calendar ---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free
(updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA
Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting
News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob
Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
New Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online
Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials • Bob Jensen's Video Tutorials and Other Helpers --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm (Includes video tutorials on Camtasia, MS Access, MS Excel, Managerial Accounting, and Accounting Theory)
• Accounting for Derivative Financial Instruments --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/caseans/000index.htm
• Accounting for Fraud --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud.htm
• Accounting Theory --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory.htm
• Electronic Commerce and Computing Security --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce.htm
• XBRL and OLAP --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/XBRLandOLAP.htm
Accounting
program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accounting and Taxation News Sites ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm |
||
AECM (Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi-bin/wa.exe?HOME
Over the years the AECM has become the worldwide forum for accounting educators on all issues of accountancy and accounting education, including debates on accounting standards, managerial accounting, careers, fraud, forensic accounting, auditing, doctoral programs, and critical debates on academic (accountics) research, publication, replication, and validity testing.
|
||
|
||
Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk |
||
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 |
||
Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com |
||
FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
|
||
The CAlCPA Tax Listserv
September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com] I found another listserve that is exceptional -
CalCPA maintains
http://groups.yahoo.com/taxtalk/
and they let almost anyone join it.
There are several highly capable people that make frequent answers to tax questions posted there, and the answers are often in depth. Scott Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts
Yes you may mention info on your listserve about TaxTalk. As part of
what you say please say [... any CPA or attorney or a member of the
Calif Society of CPAs may join. It is possible to join without having a
free Yahoo account but then they will not have access to the files and
other items posted.
Please encourage your members to join our listserve.
|
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob
Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
New Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Fraud Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some Accounting History Sites
Bob
Jensen's Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice timeline of accounting history --- http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All my online pictures --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor
Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu