Tidbits on March 28 2019
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
Maple Sugar Season is in Deep
2019 Snow
Here are my friend Wes Lavin's 2018 Maple Sugar Season Photographs
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Lavin/2018March/2018March.htm
Tidbits on March 28, 2019
Scroll Down This Page
Bob Jensen's Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For
earlier editions of Fraud Updates go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Bookmarks for the World's Library ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
My Latest Web Document
Over 400 Examples of Critical Thinking and Illustrations of How to Mislead With
Statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
Updates from WebMD --- Click Here
Google Scholar --- https://scholar.google.com/
Wikipedia --- https://www.wikipedia.org/
Bob Jensen's search helpers --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm
Bob Jensen's World Library --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Animated Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth
Over 200 Years (1790 – 2010) ---
A Visualization of the United States’ Exploding Population Growth Over 200 Years
(1790 – 2010)
USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl
In September 2017 the USA National Debt exceeded $20 trillion for the first time
---
http://www.statedatalab.org/news/detail/national-debt-surpasses-20-trillion-for-the-first-time-in-us-history
Human Population Over Time on Earth ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUwmA3Q0_OE
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
A Stanford Professor's One-Minute Brain Science Videos ---
https://www.instagram.com/hubermanlab/?hl=en
Google's Once Upon a Try (Fantastic): A journey of invention and
discovery with CERN, NASA, and more than 100 museums around the world ---
https://artsandculture.google.com/project/once-upon-a-try
Spectacular footage shows a ‘vortex’ of 7,500 puffins arriving on Skokholm
island off Wales in minutes ---
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-6834055/Spectacular-footage-shows-vortex-7-500-puffins-arriving-Stockholm-island.html
A Snow Video ---
https://www.facebook.com/mgbahn.ch/videos/304990696814936/
Thank you Elliot Kamlet for the heads up
TED Talk: Sarah T. Stewart: Where did the Moon come from? A new theory
---
https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_t_stewart_where_did_the_moon_come_from_a_new_theory?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-03-16&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_button
An Animated Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Life & Thought ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/an-animated-introduction-to-friedrich-nietzsches-life-thought.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Inn on Sunset Hill (just down from our cottage) ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5cqUX0LcbU&t=9s
Free music downloads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on nearly all types of free
music selections online ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Music.htm
Photographs and Art
Google's Once Upon a Try (Fantastic): A journey of
invention and discovery with CERN, NASA, and more than 100 museums around the
world ---
https://artsandculture.google.com/project/once-upon-a-try
In Bolivia, a colorful, loud and devotional mix of dancing and
praying ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2019/03/13/bolivia-colorful-loud-devotional-mix-dancing-praying/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.cc33bc248005
New Archive Digitizes 80,000 Historic Watercolor Paintings, the
Medium Through Which We Documented the World Before Photography ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/new-archive-digitizes-80000-historic-watercolor-paintings.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Stunning natural history illustrations of 18th-century artist
Sarah Stone ---
https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/03/12/sarah-stone-natural-history-illustration/?mc_cid=ed74d8baec&mc_eid=4d2bd13843
Norway's Underwater Restaurant ---
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/gallery/2019/mar/21/under-norway-new-underwater-restaurant-europe-first
But the prices are sky high like the prices of virtually all restaurants in
Norway
Photographs of Historic Floods in the Midwest ---
Click Here
Satellites just photographed California's dazzling 'super bloom'
of spring flowers from outer space ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/california-superbloom-spring-flowers-space-satellite-pictures-2019-3
Bob Jensen's threads on art history ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#ArtHistory
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on libraries --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm#---Libraries
Why Should We Read Sylvia Plath? An Animated Video Makes the Case ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/why-should-we-read-sylvia-plath.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
OpenStax (free books) ---
https://openstax.org/
Look under Business for free accounting books
Wikibooks --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks
Wikibooks is a source of evolving free
textbooks ---
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Books_by_subject
For example, here's what's available and
planned for accountancy ---
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Accountancy
One of the Best Sources of Free Learning Videos in
Various Disciplines is the Ever-Growing Khan Academy ---
https://www.khanacademy.org/
OpenStax (free books) ---
https://openstax.org/
Look under Business for free accounting books
For Example this is What's Available in Accountancy and Taxation ---
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/accounting-and-financial-stateme
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/taxes-topic
More than 100
colleges have set up channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many
universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
Search for words like “accounting”
For example, in the search box enter the word "accounting" to see accounting videos available to date.
There are now
nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very
basic accounting.
But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
There are nearly
70 videos on XBRL
YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400
Tens of
Thousands of Free Learning Materials sites (including videos and complete
courses from prestigious universities) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Links to Millions of Free Learning Sites --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Free Electronic Literature ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in
Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on March 28, 2019
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2019/TidbitsQuotations032819.htm
USA Debt Clock --- http://www.usdebtclock.org/ ubl
To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the booked
obligation of $19+ trillion) ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/politicalcalculations/2016/05/25/spring-2016-to-whom-does-the-us-government-owe-money-n2168161?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
The US Debt Clock in Real Time ---
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Remember the Jane Fonda Movie called "Rollover" ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_(film)
To Whom Does the USA Federal Government Owe Money (the
unbooked obligation of $100 trillion and unknown more in contracted
entitlements) ---
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/15/news/economy/entitlement-benefits/
The biggest worry of the entitlements obligations is enormous obligation for the
future under the Medicare and Medicaid programs that are now deemed totally
unsustainable ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Entitlements are two-thirds of the federal budget.
Entitlement spending has grown 100-fold over the past 50 years. Half of all
American households now rely on government handouts. When we hear statistics
like that, most of us shake our heads and mutter some sort of expletive. That’s
because nobody thinks they’re the problem. Nobody ever wants to think they’re
the problem. But that’s not the truth. The truth is, as long as we continue to
think of the rising entitlement culture in America as someone else’s problem,
someone else’s fault, we’ll never truly understand it and we’ll have absolutely
zero chance...
Steve Tobak ---
http://www.foxbusiness.com/business-leaders/2013/02/07/truth-behind-our-entitlement-culture/?intcmp=sem_outloud
"These Slides Show Why We Have Such A Huge Budget Deficit And Why Taxes
Need To Go Up," by Rob Wile, Business Insider, April 27, 2013 ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/cbo-presentation-on-the-federal-budget-2013-4
This is a slide show based on a presentation by a Harvard Economics Professor.
Peter G. Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on entitlements --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
You can read some of her teaching evaluations at
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=209479
They would've been even higher if she lowered the bar on standards.
Petrea was a CPA who earned a Ph.D. relatively late in her life in 1987. She joined Trinity University in August of 1988 and very quickly became director of the relatively small accounting program that's known for attracting top students. She worked very hard at linking employers with interns in their senior year and prospective employers with graduates of the masters program after internships. She was very successful in this regard and was highly regarded by employers for her integrity and her ability to identify the strong attributes of each and every graduate.
She and her daughter found the way to our cottage in the mountains a few years back after we were both retired.
It's so like her to not want a fuss made over her funeral just like she did not want a fuss made over her in life. Her husband died a number of years before she passed on. Petrea's ancestry was Danish.
In the earliest days of technology in education, long before
PowerPoint was even invented, she and I wrote a book together ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245cont.htm
Time to say goodbye to “statistically significant” and embrace
uncertainty, say statisticians ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2019/03/21/time-to-say-goodbye-to-statistically-significant-and-embrace-uncertainty-say-statisticians/
Three years ago, the American Statistical Association (ASA) expressed hope that the world would move to a “post-p-value era.” The statement in which they made that recommendation has been cited more than 1,700 times, and apparently, the organization has decided that era’s time has come. (At least one journal had already banned p values by 2016.) In an editorial in a special issue of The American Statistician out today, “Statistical Inference in the 21st Century: A World Beyond P<0.05,” the executive director of the ASA, Ron Wasserstein, along with two co-authors, recommends that when it comes to the term “statistically significant,” “don’t say it and don’t use it.” (More than 800 researchers signed onto a piece published in Nature yesterday calling for the same thing.) We asked Wasserstein’s co-author, Nicole Lazar of the University of Georgia, to answer a few questions about the move.
So the ASA wants to say goodbye to “statistically significant.” Why, and why now?
In the past few years there has been a growing recognition in the scientific and statistical communities that the standard ways of performing inference are not serving us well. This manifests itself in, for instance, the perceived crisis in science (of reproducibility, of credibility); increased publicity surrounding bad practices such as p-hacking (manipulating the data until statistical significance can be achieved); and perverse incentives especially in the academy that encourage “sexy” headline-grabbing results that may not have much substance in the long run. None of this is necessarily new, and indeed there are conversations in the statistics (and other) literature going back decades calling to abandon the language of statistical significance. The tone now is different, perhaps because of the more pervasive sense that what we’ve always done isn’t working, and so the time seemed opportune to renew the call.
Much of the editorial is an impassioned plea to embrace uncertainty. Can you explain?
The world is inherently an uncertain place. Our models of how it works — whether formal or informal, explicit or implicit — are often only crude approximations of reality. Likewise, our data about the world are subject to both random and systematic errors, even when collected with great care. So, our estimates are often highly uncertain; indeed, the p-value itself is uncertain. The bright-line thinking that is emblematic of declaring some results “statistically significant” (p<0.05) and others “not statistically significant” (p>0.05) obscures that uncertainty, and leads us to believe that our findings are on more solid ground than they actually are. We think that the time has come to fully acknowledge these facts and to adjust our statistical thinking accordingly.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the decline of p-values from favor in statistical
analysis ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
To p-Value or Not to p-Value? An Answer From Signal Detection Theory ---
https://open.lnu.se/index.php/metapsychology/article/view/871
“In statistics, Type I errors (false alarms) and Type II errors (misses) are sometimes considered separately, with Type I errors being a function of the alpha level and Type II errors being a function of power. An advantage of signal detection theory is that it combines Type I and Type II errors into a single analysis of discriminability…”
“…p values were effective, though not perfect, at discriminating between real and null effects.”
“Bayes factor incurs no advantage over p values at detecting a real effect versus a null effect … This is because Bayes factors are redundant with p values for a given sample size.”
“When power is high, researchers using p values to determine statistical significance should use a lower criterion.”
“… a change to be more conservative will decrease false alarm rates at the expense of increasing miss rates. False alarm rates should not be considered in isolation without also considering miss rates. Rather, researchers should consider the relative importance for each in deciding the criterion to adopt.”
“…given that true null results can be theoretically interesting and practically important, a conservative criterion can produce critically misleading interpretations by labeling real effects as if they were null effects.”
“Moving forward, the recommendation is to acknowledge the relationship between false alarms and misses, rather than implement standards based solely on false alarm rates.”
Continued in article
February 6, 2019 Message from Tom Dyckman (now retired from Cornell University)
Bob: Here is a new paper you might want to alert your readers too along with Dave's blog today.
Greenland, S., S. J. Senn, K. R. Rothman, J. B. Carlin, C. Poole, S. N. Goodman, & D. G. Altman, 2016. Statistical tests, p values, confidence intervals, and power: A guide to misinterpretations. European Journal of Epidemiology, 31, 337-350.
https://fermatslibrary.com/s/statistical-tests-p-values-confidence-intervals-and-power-a-guide-to-misinterpretationsAbstract
Misinterpretation and abuse of statistical tests, confidence intervals, and statistical power have been decried for decades, yet remain rampant. A key problem is that there are no interpretations of these concepts that are at once simple, intuitive, correct, and foolproof. Instead, correct use and interpretation of these statistics requires an attention to detail which seems to tax the patience of working scientists. This high cognitive demand has led to an epidemic of shortcut definitions and interpretations that are simply wrong, sometimes disastrously so—and yet these misinterpretations dominate much of the scientific literature. In light of this problem, we provide definitions and a discussion of basic statistics that are more general and critical than typically found in traditional introductory expositions. Our goal is to provide a resource for instructors, researchers, and consumers of statistics whose knowledge of statistical theory and technique may be limited but who wish to avoid and spot misinterpretations. We emphasize how violation of often unstated analysis protocols (such as selecting analyses for presentation based on the P values they produce) can lead to small P values even if the declared test hypothesis is correct, and can lead to large P values even if that hypothesis is incorrect. We then provide an explanatory list of 25 misinterpretations of P values, confidence intervals, and power. We conclude with guidelines for improving statistical interpretation and reporting.Continued in article
**How to Mislead With Statistics
How to Mislead With P-Values
When You’re Selecting Significant Findings, You’re Selecting Inflated Estimates ---
https://replicationnetwork.com/2019/02/16/goodman-when-youre-selecting-significant-findings-youre-selecting-inflated-estimates/
How Many Ways Can You Misinterpret p-Values, Confidence Intervals, Statistical Tests, and Power? 25
https://replicationnetwork.com/2019/02/09/how-many-ways-can-you-misinterpret-p-values-confidence-intervals-statistical-tests-and-power-25/
Jensen Comment
The sad thing is that journal editors of leading accounting research journals
seem to not care --- they're addicted to P-values
Journalism Under Siege: A Free Course from Stanford Explores the Imperiled
Freedom of the Press ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/journalism-under-siege-free-course-stanford.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Question
Why is Arizona State University forming a for-profit spinoff?
Answer
For the same reason Lyft and Uber are planning to raise billions in IPOs. The
purpose is to raise capital that, in turn, can be used to by the assets,
technology, and workforce necessary to successfully serve the public with mega
universities.
Question
Why Arizona State University?
Answer
Reputation for academic standards and quality of graduates.
Arizona State Will Create a For-Profit Spinoff to Court Students in the
Work Force ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Arizona-State-Will-Create-a/245929?&cid=db
Arizona State University is creating a for-profit venture to promote its online programs to big employers. The venture will be majority-owned by the TPG Rise Fund, a $2.1-billion private-equity fund that until recently was headed by one of the financiers arrested last week by the Department of Justice in its wide-ranging admissions-bribery dragnet.
Although the financier, Bill McGlashan, is no longer head of the fund — he said he resigned last week; TPG said he was fired “for cause” — he may still stand to profit from the new ASU venture, if it takes off.
McGlashan, a self-styled voice of ethical investing in Silicon Valley, was accused of paying $50,000 to a fixer to help gain admission to the University of Southern California for his son by falsifying his test scores, and an additional $250,000 to create the false impression that he was a potential recruit for the football team, complete with a faked picture showing him as a kicker.
Arizona State’s new venture, which the university calls a “learning-services company,” will focus on developing partnerships with employers to attract more students to the ASU’s online programs, in the vein of its partnerships with Starbucks and Uber. The university is also looking for other research universities to join the venture.
ASU has not formally announced the creation of the as-yet-unnamed company. But after a Chronicle reporter learned of the deal, the university’s president, Michael M. Crow, described elements of it in an interview on Tuesday. The university had been planning an elaborate rollout of the venture in early April in San Diego at the ASU+GSV Summit, a glitzy gathering of thousands of investors, education-company officials, policy makers, and education leaders.
In creating the venture, ASU seeks an even bigger slice of the market for students whose tuition is paid in whole or in part by their employers, and better connections to that pool of students.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
While Purdue reeled in the for-profit Kaplan University (and turned it into a
non-profit Purdue Global) ASU is casting out some of its non-profit programs
into for-profit programs (presumably to raise capital for expanded ventures).
The most important things in all of these dealings are the logos (Purdue University and Arizona State University) that stand for quality control and academic standards. If these outreach programs do not maintain the same academic standards as the on-campus programs the entire universities will become tainted like the University of Phoenix and other for-profit universities are tainted by such things as low or zero admission standards and low or zero grading standards.
The ultimate test is academic quality control. Most prestigious universities (think Harvard and MIT) now have extensive distance education programs. Their names signify academic standards that the for-profit programs until now mostly lack. Amidst all this are the recent thrusts of non-profit universities like the University of Massachusetts seeking to join the Mega Universities like Liberty University and the University of Southern New Hampshire having 100,000+ students enrolled in both respected graduate as well as undergraduate programs.
UMass System Aims to Join the Mega-University Club ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/UMass-System-Aims-to-Join-the/245825?cid=db&elqTrackId=3f32894a5a664ed788887261c8f04c24&elq=79e5bf77abf94b569aa996ee93cc5b1f&elqaid=22428&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=11058
Will it also serve corporate America with special programs like Arizona State
(Starbucks) and Purdue Global (Popa Johns)?
Mega-Universities (unexpectedly) on the Rise ---
https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/Trend19-MegaU-Main?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=818d19efc4804478bc59234df45cb112&elq=e45302a1d7524e09bb00395f674bd07c&elqaid=22287&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=10969
Liberty, Southern New Hampshire, Grand Canyon, Western Governors, and a few other universities have found a new way to play the game that many colleges are losing. Could they one day lay claim to a significant share of the nation’s new college students?
. . .
At a time when many colleges are struggling with shrinking enrollment and tighter budgets, Southern New Hampshire is thriving on a grand scale, and it’s not alone. Liberty, Grand Canyon, and Western Governors Universities, along with a few other nonprofit institutions, have built huge online enrollments and national brands in recent years by subverting many of traditional higher education’s hallmarks. Western Governors has 88,585 undergraduates, according to U.S. Education Department data, more than the top 14 universities in the annual U.S. News & World Report rankings combined.
Jensen Comment
Especially note the graph in the above article of enrollment trends at Arizona
State, Grand Canyon, Purdue Global, Liberty, Southern New Hampshire, and Western
Governors.
The most important key to success, in my viewpoint, is the attraction of top
students coupled with tougher admission standards that are key to academic
reputations. If admission standards are not tough reputation depends upon
academic standards for flunking out low performers. If you graduate low
performers you can soon develop a reputation for being a diploma mill ---
which is the fate of most of the for-profit universities
that have closed or will soon close.
Of course the attraction of reputable faculty is important, especially in research (R1) universities, but often the top research faculty are not even teaching undergraduates. What the Mega-Universities have to concentrate is on hiring and nurturing of great teachers who are experts in their disciplines. This will increasingly change accreditation standards and enforcement.
Arizona State University is somewhat unique in that it seems to want to be
both a reputable R1 research university (with distinguished researchers) along
with a diversity of missions such as providing Starbucks' funded degrees to any
Starbucks employee (including part-time employees) who want to do the academic
work for free. Now ASU wants to become a Mega Univesity with a for-profit
venture into adult education ---
https://www.chronicle.com/article/Arizona-State-Will-Create-a/245929?&cid=db
Note that the religious appeal of Mega Liberty University is no key to success in and of itself. Many religious colleges are on the verge of bankruptcy while Liberty University enrollments soar. Success for Liberty University entails building and maintaining a reputation for academic quality control.
For me the greatest surprise is how competency testing seems to
not be the
kiss of death that I predicted in this era where students are constantly brown
nosing teachers for grades and seeking leniency based upon race and age. Both WGU and Southern New Hampshire are noted for grading based upon competency
testing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#ConceptKnowledge
Some Universities maintain academic reputations with admissions standards (think Harvard) when in fact there is enormous grade inflation for students who are admitted (again think Harvard where the median grade point average at graduation is an A-). Universities without Harvard-like admission standards must build and maintain their reputations of academic toughness (think Western Governors University and Liberty University and Southern New Hampshire). The same applies to Purdue Global and the new for-profit venture of ASU who cannot afford to let their guards down on academic standards.
Although most students for a time will go to these mega
universities for traditional undergraduate and graduate degrees, the future of
mega universities is not in degree programs. The Future will be in
Badges of Competency-Based Learning Performance ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm#Badges
Video: A Scenario of Higher Education in 2020
(or perhaps a decade longer)---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gU3FjxY2uQ
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Sampling oif 40 Big Tech Predictions for 2019 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/40-big-tech-predictions-2019
My main worry is that improved and cheaper high-end drones will lead to more
terrorist sabotage. Until now terrorists have played dumb by hitting night clubs
and public gatherings. Smat terrorists will hit bridges, power grids, mountain
railroads, forests, mega factories, military bases, police stations, cruise
ships, oil refineries, sea ports, etc. Urban centers like Manhattan are at high
risk. Life is safer here in Sugar Hill as long as they leave our maple sap
buckets alone.
The Green Initiative promoting high speed rail in place is airline travel is naive. A bombed airport can recover in weeks. Bombed railroad bridges can take years.
No sleep, no sex, no life: Tech workers in China's Silicon Valley face
burnout before they reach 30 ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-workers-in-chinas-silicon-valley-face-burnout-before-30-2019-3
Coursera --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coursera
Artificial Intelligence for Everyone: An Introductory Course from Andrew
Ng, the Co-Founder of Coursera ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/artificial-intelligence-for-everyone-an-introductory-course-from-andrew-ng-the-co-founder-of-coursera.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Oxford’s Free Course Critical Reasoning For Beginners Teaches You to Think
Like a Philosopher ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/oxfords-free-course-critical-reasoning-for-beginners-teaches-you-to-think-like-a-philosopher.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
My Latest Web Document
Over 400 Examples of Critical Thinking and Illustrations of How to Mislead With
Statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm
Alan Turing --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
David Hilbert --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hilbert
Quantum Comuting --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing
Quantum Computing For the Very Curious ---
https://quantum.country/qcvc
Wonderful insights into Alan Turing and David Hilbert
If humanity ever makes contact with alien intelligences, will those aliens possess computers? In science fiction, alien computers are commonplace. If that's correct, it means there is some way aliens can discover computers independently of humans. After all, we’d be very surprised if aliens had independently invented Coca-Cola or Pokémon or the Harry Potter books. If aliens have computers, it’s because computers are the answer to a question that naturally occurs to both human and alien civilizations.
Here on Earth, the principal originator of computers was the English mathematician Alan Turing. In his paper, published in 1936 Alan M. Turing, On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem (1936). , Turing wasn’t trying to invent a clever gadget or to create an industry. Rather, he was attacking a problem about the nature of mathematics posed by the German mathematician David Hilbert in 1928. That sounds abstruse, but it’s worth understanding the gist of Hilbert and Turing’s thinking, since it illuminates where computers come from, and what computers will become in the future.
Through his career, Hilbert was interested in the ultimate limits of mathematical knowledge: what can humans know about mathematics, in principle, and what (if any) parts of mathematics are forever unknowable by humans? Roughly speaking, Hilbert’s 1928 problem asked whether there exists a general algorithm a mathematician can follow which would let them figure out whether any given mathematical statement is provable. Hilbert’s hoped-for algorithm would be a little like the paper-and-pencil algorithm for multiplying two numbers. Except instead of starting with two numbers, you’d start with a mathematical conjecture, and after going through the steps of the algorithm you’d know whether that conjecture was provable. The algorithm might be too time-consuming to use in practice, but if such an algorithm existed, then there would be a sense in which mathematics was knowable, at least in principle.
In 1928, the notion of an algorithm was prettyNat vague. Up to that point, algorithms were often carried out by human beings using paper and pencil, as in the multiplication algorithm just mentioned, or the long-division algorithm. Attacking Hilbert’s problem forced Turing to make precise exactly what was meant by an algorithm. To do this, Turing described what we now call a Turing machine: a single, universal programmable computing device that Turing argued could perform any algorithm whatsoever.
Today we’re used to the idea that computers can be programmed to do many different things. In Turing’s day, however, the idea of a universal programmable computer was remarkable. Turing was arguing that a single, fixed device could imitate any algorithmic process whatsoever, provided the right program was supplied. It was an amazing leap of imagination, and the foundation of modern computing.
In order to argue that his machine could imitate any algorithmic process, Turing considered what operations a human mathematician could perform when carrying out an algorithm. For each such operation, he had to argue that his machine could always do the same thing. His argument is too long to reproduce in full here, but it’s fun and instructive to see the style of Turing’s reasoning:
Computing is normally done by writing certain symbols on paper. We may suppose this paper is divided into squares like a child’s arithmetic book. In elementary arithmetic the two-dimensional character of the paper is sometimes used. But such a use is always avoidable, and I think that it will be agreed that the two-dimensional character of paper is no essential of computation. I assume then that the computation is carried out on one-dimensional paper, i.e. on a tape divided into squares. … The behavior of the computer [Turing is referring to the person performing an algorithm, not the machine!] at any moment is determined by the symbols which he is observing, and his “state of mind” at that moment. We may suppose that there is a bound BB B to the number of symbols or squares which the computer can observe at one moment. If he wishes to observe more, he must use successive observations. We will also suppose that the number of states of mind which need be taken into account is finite.
Obviously, this was an informal and heuristic argument! Invoking a child’s arithmetic book, or someone’s mental state is not the stuff of a rigorous, bulletproof argument. But Turing’s argument was convincing enough that later mathematicians and scientists have for the most part been willing to accept it. Turing’s machine became the gold standard: an algorithm was what we could perform on a Turing machine. And since that time, computing has blossomed into an industry, and billions of computers based on Turing’s model have been sold.
Continued in article
Mizzou Fires Police Officer Over Blackface (before he was hired) ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/03/20/mizzou-fires-police-officer-over-blackface?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=ccc6735849-DNU_2019_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-ccc6735849-197565045&mc_cid=ccc6735849&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Jensen Question
How many of Mizzou's faculty and administrators outraged over blackface in
history still tune into the hypocritical Jimmy Kimmel on ABC?
There's a huge double standard in the national media that the national media
wink winks.
Jimmy Kimmel, while the host of Comedy
Central’s “The Man Show,” dressed up more than once in blackface makeup, a bald
cap and a body suit to portray former Utah Jazz basketball star Karl Malone as
an inarticulate, dim-witted person who had difficulty pronouncing words
correctly ---
https://heavy.com/entertainment/2017/10/jimmy-kimmel-black-face-malone-grope-man-show/
Watch a video clip ---
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wse5lgIDxM
This is far more degrading and insulting than a minstrel show.
This is why blackface is offensive: A brief
history ---
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3725301/posts
Google's Once Upon a Try (Fantastic): A journey of invention and
discovery with CERN, NASA, and more than 100 museums around the world ---
https://artsandculture.google.com/project/once-upon-a-try
Bob Jensen's Search Helpers --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm
Google fined $1.7 billion over a 3rd breach of EU antitrust rules in 3
years ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-fined-17-billion-for-breaking-eu-antitrust-rules-over-adsense-2019-3
- Google was fined $1.7 billion by the European Union for its third breach of EU antitrust rules in three years.
- European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said the latest fine was for "illegal practices in search advertising brokering to cement its dominant market position."
- Google's EU fines since 2017 now total $9.4 billion.
IRS’s Dirty Dozen scams — 2019 edition
https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2019/mar/2019-irs-dirty-dozen-tax-scams-201920830.html?utm_source=mnl:cpald&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20Mar2019
Jensen Comment
Most are not new and date back almost as long as income taxes were imposed.
Some, however, like phone scams telling you the police are about to be on their
way to your house are new scams on ignorant Americans.
Age-old scams like unreported income are what keeps the $2 trillion underground economy thriving. Employers benefit by paying below minimum wage and not paying payroll taxes. Employees benefit by not paying any payroll taxes or income taxes (and getting a job when having trouble finding work elsewhere).
Thomas Schelling --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Schelling
Economic History
Harvard. Reading list and final exam for course “Conflict, Coalition and
Strategy”. Schelling, 1970 ---
http://www.irwincollier.com/harvard-reading-list-and-final-exam-for-course-conflict-coalition-and-strategy-schelling-1970/
Inverted Yield Curve --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_curve#Inverted_yield_curve
The inverted yield curve will cause asset bubbles not recession, economist
says ---
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/yield-curve-inversion-will-lead-to-asset-bubbles-not-recession-2019-3-1028058233
How to Mislead With Statistics
Here's how much money doctors across the US make ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-do-doctors-make-gender-pay-gap-doximity-study-2019-3
Jensen Comment
This article is a great example of how statistical reports can be misleading if
they only focus on mean averages without added information about standard
deviations and skewness and missing variables. For example, consider
neurosurgery. My wife's spine surgeon in Boston is what he calls a "big-back"
surgeon. He performs spinal surgeries that 95+% of the back surgeons in the USA
refuse to perform. He actually broke Erika's spine into three pieces and then
attached four rods from her hips to her neck. Afterwards, however, she can still
pick up a tissue off of the floor when bending her spine. Needless to say his
rates, sometimes exceeding tens of thousands of dollars per surgery, are greater
than the rates of "little-back" surgeons who also work out his office. By the
way, he's not on the faculty of the Harvard Medical School. However, every time
I've spoken with him he was followed by two or three Harvard Medical School
neurosurgery residency physicians who were what I called his "puppies."
By the way, it might be interesting to study details of his malpractice insurance premiums and lawsuits. He's amazing because he has the guts to be a "last-chance" neurosurgeon in spite of the circling lawyers. By last chance I mean when patients can no longer find a neurosurgeon who will operate on their spines he's their "last chance." Erika had over a dozen spine surgeries before she at last found this "big-back" surgeon in Boston.
There are also many other troubles with the above article. For example, malpractice insurance is very high priced in the USA relative to all other nations. And malpractice insurance costs vary greatly with specialties such as being very high for obstetrics (lawyers sue for every bad baby) versus neurosurgery versus psychiatry versus primary care physicians.
Let's consider an example. According to the study the average pay for a neurosurgeon is $617,000. But that does not account for differences in whether that salary is net of malpractice insurance premiums. Such netting out is complicated because many neurosurgeons make this much or much more without having to pay malpractice insurance premiums. My wife's spine surgeon who installed her morphine pump is an employee of the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center that pays malpractice insurance for virtually all employees and medical school faculty. However, many neurosurgeons who operate in that same medical center are not employees and must pay their own malpractice insurance. Similarly, there's a nearby Veterans Hospital where VA neurosurgeons do not have to pay their own malpractice insurance. But if the VA has to outsource a particular type of surgery that surgeon's bill to the VA will include malpractice insurance.
Incomes of many specialists vary when they must pay for their own staff versus have no expenses for staff. For example, the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center pays for all staff such as receptionists, nurses, technicians, accountants, etc. It even pays for lawyers when needed. The private-practice physicians who may also perform surgeries at this medical center must pay for their own office space and staff. How do you compare a salaried employee of that medical center with the profits of a private-practice physician?
I might point out a political problem related to all of this. There's an old saying: "Show me a bad doctor, and I'll show you a rich professional." The point is that even at the lowest end of the income distribution medical doctors in the USA are well paid.
The Democratic candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination have created a
paradox.
Most, not all, students are drawn to medical school in anticipation of
relatively high after-tax incomes. The
politicians advocating Medicare-for-All want to fund this $30+ trillion cost
with greatly increased taxes (think 70% of a physician's income). At the same
time more than twice as many physicians will be needed to staff
Medicare-for-All, especially with 76,000 new patients crossing the border each
month at current rates estimated by the NYT ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/us/border-crossing-increase.html
Eventually, the progressives will also legislate free medical school education.
But how many students will flock to medical schools even if they are free? My
guess is very few if you are gong to tax or regulate away 70% of their income
when they at long last begin to practice medicine.
The problem with becoming a physician is not just the cost of medical school. The problem is the ordeal --- those years of education and training needed to become masters of their crafts. The time needed varies with specialties, but you don't become a neurosurgeon without years of ordeal in training before you can bill your first paying patient. And there's a lot of blood, sweat, and tears in those training years. Even worse is that there's a lot of weekly tension and risk of burn out in the years of practice that follow. Tell that to the advocates of Medicare-for-All combined with soaring taxes.!
If you want to double the number of physicians in the USA you not only have to make medical school free; You have to let them be the highest paid professionals on average after taxes.
PS
You can read more about Erika's ordeal with pain and surgeries at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/ErikaBob/ErikaPain/Set01/Set01.htm
I might add that the electronic pain stimulator installed eventually proved to
be worthless. The same surgeon who installed it removed it and replaced it with
a morphine pump. The pump is no magic bullet, but its more effective than the
electronic wiring up and down her spine.
Tom Brokaw Says His Cancer Treatments Cost Nearly
$10,000 a Day ---
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/health-news/tom-brokaw-says-his-cancer-treatments-cost-nearly-dollar10000-a-day/ar-BBVgo5L?ocid=spartandhp
Jensen Comment
He doesn't say if Medicare is footing the bill, but since his back pain
treatments are experiments chances are Medicare is not paying until these
treatments become more routine.
I suspect that my wife's back surgery and treatments insurance payments are well over a million dollars. These costs were shared by Worker Compensation (she was hurt on the job), Medicare, and our Medicare Supplemental Insurance (Blue Cross),
How to Mislead With Statistics
Research: Better-Managed Companies Pay Employees More Equally ---
https://hbr.org/2019/03/research-better-managed-companies-pay-employees-more-equally?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_monthly&utm_campaign=finance_not_activesubs&referral=00209&deliveryName=DM31879
Jensen Comment
This article is a mixed bag. It does a poor job of defining "better managed." On
the other hand, it does a good job in admitting and explaining that does
not understand reasons for the findings.
What is also misleading is that it does not explain that organizations vary a great deal regarding pay needed for expertise. There's a huge difference between Apple Corporation that depends upon expensive engineers in a huge R&D operation versus Blue Cross needing a much greater proportion of lower-paid employees processing insurance claims. It also does not account for different types of pay structures such when pay varies a great deal within a category of employment due to sales commissions and related pay schemes where doctors and lawyers in a firm are paid according to the fees they generate.
As to the results of the article itself I like Reason Number 3 for explaining the differences. Some firms that limit wages and benefits by outsourcing both high-end and low-end employees. I worked at a university that outsourced its cleaning services. In the case of teaching courses it also outsourced some of the most expensive teachers such as accounting teachers and computer science teachers. Such outsourcing leads to compression of outlier labor expenses thus making it look (misleadingly) like there;s a smaller difference between high-paid and low paid-workers.
I might add that outsourcing itself can be misleading.
Hiring an adjunct to teach tax accounting or PERL programming in a college is
not the same as having tenured faculty teach those courses. Tenured faculty
serve other missions of the university such as research and service that adjunct
faculty do not usually serve. Hence cheaper experts are not always better
experts in terms of all missions of the organization.
My point here is that outsourcing the highest and lowest paid workers in an organization is not optimal for the good of society if the only thing it does is make it look like you are reducing the gap between highest and lowest paid employees.
How to Mislead With Statistics
The County in Each State With the Least Expensive Housing
https://247wallst.com/special-report/2019/03/21/the-county-with-the-least-expensive-housing-market-in-every-state-2/
Jensen Comment
Firstly, this really should read the least expensive houses to buy since it
ignores the rental markets such as rental markets for apartments.
The study is based primarily on median home values and suffers from the frustrating lack of information about variances and skewness.
There is some added useful information such as the percentage of houses in each county that are vacant. But this is sometimes confusing. For example, in Clark County, New Jersey there is only a 10.2% vacancy rate with the median house value at $161,596. in Clark County, Idaho 43.4% of the houses are vacant and yet the median value of a home is $108,629. And then there's De Baca County, New Mexico the median value of a house is only $69,412 with a vacancy rate of 41.7%. It makes a little more sense for home values to be lower when vacancy rates are higher.
But there are many other variables to consider that are ignored in this study. For instance in Hawaii County, Hawaii the median value of a home is $375,676 with a vacancy rate of 22.3%. This is probably because Hawaii is such an outlier in a study like this. Another outlier is the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area that has a median house value of $83,596 with a whopping 51.8% vacancy rate.
How to Mislead With Statistics
The Case for Real Estate Investment
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25653
Jensen Comment
The paper is enlightening about possible return attractions of real estate
investment. However, more distinction should be made regarding types of real
estate investment. Real estate investment need to be classified regarding annual
cash flow considerations and financial risks. These two concerns are interactive
and not mutually exclusive.
Near where I live a former airline pilot owned a 24-acre parcel up in these mountains for years over 10 years. The land had no cash flow potential while it remained undeveloped. He could not make a return on this investment until it became more valuable since he paid a relatively high price before the real estate bubble burst in 2006. Who knows how long it would take for the price to recover even though the views are spectacular from on this parcel of land. Meanwhile, and here's the clinker, he had to come up with $10,000+ per year cash flow to pay the property taxes each year. He grew weary of this after 10+ years, and finally sold the parcel for a negative return after property tax cash flows were factored into the return calculation (actually the selling price was lower than his buying price).
The moral of the story is to consider the cash outflows for property taxes, maintenance, and insurance relative to the years of waiting for a desired price of real estate.
Another type of real estate investment is one for which there are cash flows --- usually rental properties. Farms can usually be rented out to farmers. Houses, duplexes, and apartments can be rented out to renters. If all goes well, the rental cash inflows each year exceed the cash outflows such that, while waiting for the value to go up, there's not a cash drag each year. But being a landlord can be a hassle. I inherited an Iowa farm But in a short time I grew weary of the requests of the farmer wanting more investment in the land, especially drainage tile. The rent coming in exceeded the taxes, insurance, and other annual cash outflows, but after paying Iowa's rather steep income tax each year my return was less than I could get after taxes by selling the farm and investing in a long-term tax exempt mutual fund.
I feel most sorry for landlords in Oregon where rent controls were just passed. Reat that as meaning that real estate investing is now a bummer in Oregon if you're a landlord.
Faced with a housing shortage and skyrocketing rents, Oregon is
poised to become the first state to impose mandatory rent controls, with a
measure establishing tenant protections moving swiftly through the Legislature
---
https://outline.com/ZjFACN
House Speaker Tina Kotek, a Democrat, said 30,000 housing units must be built per year to meet the state’s current housing deficit and to build for the future as more people move to Oregon.
Jensen Comment
Is Tina Kotek the comedian of the day?
What's the incentive to build new rental units? What prospective landlords would
want to invest in long-term housing subject to rent control limits on revenue
and unrestrained risk on expenses?
Short-term returns may not sound to bad in this era of low interest rates, but
over the long-term you've got to be stupid to invest under these rent-controlled
restrictions.
One year in the future Oregon will at last legislate landlord incentives to
invest, but not today.
This is not the answer to providing shelter for the homeless, many of whom are
addicts and/or on welfare.
Here's what left-leaning Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman says
about rent control ---
https://www.nytimes.com/2000/06/07/opinion/reckonings-a-rent-affair.html
I'm not saying that you cannot make a decent return on real estate investment. Returns can range from making a killing to getting killed and every range of return in between. What I am saying is that real estate investment has all types of risks ranging from irksome annual property taxes to threats of rent controls. Meanwhile the headache-free returns from my tax-exempt mutual fund keep rolling in.each and every month. Yeah, tax-exempt bonds aren't much of an inflation hedge, and I would be looking for other
How to Mislead With Statistics (non-stationary data)
Macroeconomics --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macroeconomics
There's only one reliable rule of thumb in macroeconomics (so typical of
economics)---
https://www.themoneyillusion.com/theres-only-one-reliable-rule-of-thumb-in-macro/
In the 1950s, rates began rising and frequent mild recessions were the new norm.
In the 1960s, one long “Phillips Curve” expansion was the new norm. We had it all figured out.
In the 1970s, the Phillips Curve fell apart, and we just had to live with stagflation.
In the 1980s, we didn’t have to live with stagflation, but big deficits were the new norm.
In the 1990s, we achieved budget surpluses and a Great Moderation (noninflationary boom), something no one expected.
In the 2000s, the Great Moderation collapsed into a deep recession that few expected (certainly not me or Robert Lucas.) Also, America’s first big housing boom and bust. Also, bank runs that were supposedly ended by FDIC.
In the 2010s, we had near-zero interest rates even as the economy recovered and unemployment fell to moderate levels. Also unexpected.
Every decade produces a new and unexpected macro situation and the 2020s will be no different. Rules of thumb don’t hold up over time.
So don’t tell me, “When you look at history, it’s clear that X will happen.”
Sorry, but there’s only one reliable rule of thumb in macro:
Things change.
PS. I am reluctant to hazard a guess as to what will make the 2020s special; perhaps it will violate the rule of thumb that says, “American expansions never last more than 10 years.”
PPS. I have a post on the Steve Moore nomination at Econlog.
PPPS. But don’t read the Steve Moore post, read this one.
Jensen Comment
It is so typical that accountics researchers devoted to multiple regression
ignore non-stationarities where things change.
From Two Former Presidents of the AAA
"Some Methodological Deficiencies in Empirical Research Articles in
Accounting." by Thomas R. Dyckman and Stephen A. Zeff , Accounting
Horizons: September 2014, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 695-712 ---
http://aaajournals.org/doi/full/10.2308/acch-50818 (not free)
This paper uses a sample of the regression and behavioral papers published in The Accounting Review and the Journal of Accounting Research from September 2012 through May 2013. We argue first that the current research results reported in empirical regression papers fail adequately to justify the time period adopted for the study. Second, we maintain that the statistical analyses used in these papers as well as in the behavioral papers have produced flawed results. We further maintain that their tests of statistical significance are not appropriate and, more importantly, that these studies do not�and cannot�properly address the economic significance of the work. In other words, significance tests are not tests of the economic meaningfulness of the results. We suggest ways to avoid some but not all of these problems. We also argue that replication studies, which have been essentially abandoned by accounting researchers, can contribute to our search for truth, but few will be forthcoming unless the academic reward system is modified.
The free SSRN version of this paper is at
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2324266
This Dyckman and Zeff paper is indirectly related to the following technical
econometrics research:
"The Econometrics of Temporal Aggregation - IV - Cointegration," by
David Giles, Econometrics Blog, September 13, 2014 ---
http://davegiles.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-econometrics-of-temporal.html
**How to Mislead With Statistics
PBS Nova: How did the polls get it so wrong?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/body/why-did-the-polls-get-it-wrong/
Forbes: The Science Of Error: How Polling Botched The
2016 Election ---
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2016/11/09/the-science-of-error-how-polling-botched-the-2016-election/#6deb3b337959
Scientific American: Where Are the Real Errors in
Political Polls?
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/where-are-the-real-errors-in-political-polls/
Examples of misleading statistics and polls ---
https://www.datapine.com/blog/misleading-statistics-and-data/
NYT: Affirmative Action Is an Example of How Polls Can
Mislead
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/upshot/affirmative-action-and-why-polls-on-issues-are-often-misleading.html
Misleading Charts
---
https://qz.com/580859/the-most-misleading-charts-of-2015-fixed/
The Top 10 Ways to Get Misleading Poll Results (many times these are
intentional mistakes for political purposes) ---
http://www.charneyresearch.com/resources/the-top-10-ways-to-get-misleading-poll-results/
Fake Polls are the Real Problem ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/fake-polls-are-a-real-problem/
**How to Mislead With Statistics
Bogus Straw Stats Popped Up in October 7, 2018 Shark Tank ---
http://reason.com/blog/2018/10/08/bogus-straw-stats-pop-up-in-last-nights
Is market concentration increasing, decreasing, or a complicated mixed bag? https://johnhcochrane.blogspot.com/2019/03/concentration-increasing.html
How working in retirement affects Social Security ---
https://www.barrons.com/articles/unretirement-social-security-51552661091?shareToken=stf0e5da95a6bc42899d7dde4e267ec063&mod=e2smartbrief&reflink=smartbrief
This is not a free article (it costs one dollar).
But you can read more about this at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_(United_States)#Benefits_while_continuing_work
The official SSA site on this matter is at
https://www.ssa.gov/planners/retire/whileworking.html
Huawei: The story of a controversial company ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/resources/idt-sh/Huawei?mbid=nl_hps_5c8c21ebfaa84649abb66eaa&CNDID=31837029
Free Book: Learning to Learn Online ---:
https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/learningtolearnonline/
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Walter E. Williams --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams
More University Corruption ---
https://townhall.com/columnists/walterewilliams/2019/03/27/more-university-corruption-n2543687?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=03/27/2019&bcid=b16c6f948f297f77432f990d4411617f&recip=17935167
MIT: The 10 worst technologies of the 21st century ---
Click Here
How 9 college coaches made millions in FBI fraud case headlined by
Felicity Huffman, Lori Loughlin
https://sports.yahoo.com/here-is-what-all-of-the-coaches-charged-in-the-college-bribery-scandal-are-accused-of-193710803.html
Actresses Lori Loughlin and Felicity Huffman Among Those Charged in Sweeping
College Admissions Bribery Scandal ---
http://time.com/5549872/loughlin-huffman-charged-college-admisions-bribery-scandal/?utm_source=time.com&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=the-brief-pm&utm_content=2019031219pm&xid=newsletter-brief&eminfo=
The NCAA Bracket, if Academics Mattered Most ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/03/18/who-would-win-ncaa-tournament-if-academics-mattered-most?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=2d35d63a43-WNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-2d35d63a43-197565045&mc_cid=2d35d63a43&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Note how quickly some top teams like Duke lose out quickly in the academics game
UTSA students become 'sugar babies' to help pay student loans ---
https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/texas/utsa-students-become-sugar-babies-to-help-pay-student-loans/269-45e39ebb-5c12-472f-9ddf-abfdb37e22bb
How to Use a Security Camera’s Night Vision Through a Window ---
https://www.howtogeek.com/407363/how-to-make-a-security-cameras-night-vision-work-through-a-window/
How Sears Lost the American Shopper ---
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-sears-lost-the-american-shopper-11552647601?mod=djemalertNEWS
Thank you Denny Beresford for the heads up.
Jensen Comment
This article is too long and complex to summarize in a few short paragraphs.
When I was a kid on an Iowa farm the Sears Catalog was great for everything --- shoes, clothing, furniture, and tools; My Uncle Martin even bought his big two-story (elegant) farm house from Sears. It came into Fenton, Iowa on train cars and was hauled by wagon to his wonderful farm where it was assembled from prefabricated pieces. People came from miles around to admire this big house in the middle of an orchard.
To make a long story short, Sears should've nipped Amazon in the bud by expanding the Sears Catalog into online shopping early on in the game. Instead Sears abandoned the catalog in favor of expensive leases in glitzy malls --- malls that failed. The steps along the way to failure are summarized in the above article. It's a tragedy that Sears' dying took place while Amazon was investing billions in online software and warehouses while Sam Walton invested store profits in ever more stores near but not inside glitzy malls. Meanwhile the glitzy malls often became war zones for competing drug gangs.
I miss Sears in these mountains. We had a very small Sears display store about ten miles away (not in a mall). The main attraction for me was Sears' wonderful at-home extended warranty program. It was great to have technicians come to the house when needed to repair my snow thrower, my washing machine, my television, my stove, my leaf blower, my freezer, my microwave, my three refrigerators, my yard sweeper, and on and on. Now that Sears display store is empty. I guess I still have some items covered under warranty, but I will probably not renew those warranties. Instead of having these products repaired I will simply have new ones delivered (not from Sears) and pay to have the old ones carted off --- in our throw-away culture.
National Taxpayer Advocate: The IRS Should Either Fix Or Eliminate The
Free File Program ---
https://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2019/03/national-taxpayer-advocate-the-irs-should-either-fix-or-eliminate-the-free-file-program-.html
Why Republican Politicians Pay More Than Democrats for TV Ads ---
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/why-republican-politicians-pay-more-democrats-tv-ads?utm_source=Stanford+Business&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Stanford-Business-Issue-157-3-10-2019&utm_content=alumni
Amazon’s Fire TV Recast is a one-time, $230 purchase that lets you watch
and record live TV at home and on the go ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/fire-tv-recast-amazon-dvr-review-2019-1
For more than a decade New York City has been funneling billions more in
taxpayer money into a development (Hudson Yards) than was going to be given to
Amazon.
Why doesn't the liberal media mention this much bigger development?
In all, the tax breaks and other government assistance for Hudson Yards have
reached nearly $6 billion (to date) , according to public records ---
https://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/images/docs/research/political_economy/Cost_of_Hudson_Yards_WP_11.5.18.pdf
Hidden From Television Advertising for STEM Careers
Changing demographics of scientific careers: The rise of the temporary workforce
---
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/50/12616
A Quick and Dirty Summary of Elizabeth Holmes and Her Theranos Fraud ---
Click Here
Current and past editions of my blog called Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
The Duke University data fabrication case has now settled for a
“substantial” sum of $112.5 million. That means the whistleblower, another
former lab tech, will earn more than $30 million ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2019/03/25/duke-settles-case-alleging-data-doctoring-for-112-5-million/#more-88845
Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
Michael Avenatt --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Avenatti
Michael Avenatti Has Been Charged With Trying to Extort Nike. ---
Click Here
Current and past editions of my blog called Fraud Updates --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
The US Navy and its partners are 'under cyber siege' from Chinese hackers
and are hemorrhaging national security secrets ---
https://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-hackers-are-tearing-the-navy-and-its-industry-partners-apart-2019-3
Jensen Comment
If you can't stop this sort of thing, the best defense is to flood the databases
with quality phony data such that it will take years for the Chinese to separate
the wheat from the chaff.
The Deadweight Loss of Social Recognition ---
https://www.nber.org/papers/w25637#fromrss
Tesla accused a Chinese billionaire's engineer ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-22/tesla-accuses-billionaire-s-engineer-of-stealing-tech-secrets?cmpid=BBD032219_BIZ&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=190322&utm_campaign=bloombergdaily
Jensen Comment
Billionaires are quite common in China, possibly because China recognizes that
billionaires are often the best source of venture capital for very risky
startups. Billionaires are rewarded for their successes and can take enormous
hits for their failures, which is why Bill Gates and Warren Buffett both lost
billions in the failed startup called Theranos.
The USA economic engine could easily freeze up if it became much harder to become a billionaire in the USA relative to China.
While a move is underway to destroy the American Dream of rags to riches (by taxing away the riches) the Chinese dream is on the rise.
The Chinese Dream
How a Chinese billionaire went from making $16 a month in a factory to being one
of the world's richest self-made women with an $8.3 billion real-estate empire
---
https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-richest-self-made-woman-wu-yajun-net-worth-2019-2
Top 50 Billionaires in China ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Chinese_by_net_worth
Jensen
Comment
The question
for students to debate is why a supposed communist country allows so many
billionaires to rise up from poverty.
That's
supposed to happen in the USA where a child growing up in deep poverty (think
Oprah Winfrey or Howard Shultz) became a multi-billionaires.
But is it also supposed to happen under communism?
If so, why?
A Maryland Professor Saw A Culture Of Cheating. His Chinese Students Say
They Were Targeted ---
https://wamu.org/story/19/02/28/chinese-students-in-maryland-say-they-were-profiled-as-cheaters-they-arent-the-only-ones/
Elsevier --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsevier
Norwegian Universities Ditch Elsevier ---
https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2019/03/13/norwegian-universities-ditch-elsevier
The University of California system is calling it quits with Elsevier, one
of the biggest academic publishers in the world in an effort to promote open
sharing ---
https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/uc-terminates-subscriptions-worlds-largest-scientific-publisher-push-open-access-publicly?elqTrackId=d33d910ed53c41839e05a7c88b53acf1&elq=401766e275df4f8bb5d628f7f61360f4&elqaid=22388&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=11031
Also see
https://www.chronicle.com/article/U-of-California-System/245798
Bob Jensen's threads on how some publishers rip off research libraries by
charging extortion-like fees to libraries (but not necessarily individual
researchers) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm#ScholarlyJournals
United Nations: More than three times as many people in forced servitude
today as were captured and sold during the 350-year span of the transatlantic
slave trade ---
Click Here
The Guardian: 'I can get any novel I want in 30 seconds': can book
piracy be stopped?
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/06/i-can-get-any-novel-i-want-in-30-seconds-can-book-piracy-be-stopped
Beatrice Cherrier: So here’s tweetstorm on the history of
quantitative economics ---
https://twitter.com/Undercoverhist/status/1105851715461570560
David Giles Writes One of the More Popular Econometrics Blogs ---
https://davegiles.blogspot.com/
Here's the history of how quantitative economics for better and for worse
captured academic accounting in the late 1960s and never let go (although
the term term "accountics" dates back to Charles Sprague in 1887)
“An Analysis of the Evolution of Research Contributions by The Accounting
Review: 1926-2005,” (with Jean Heck), Accounting Historians Journal,
Volume 34, No. 2, December 2007, pp. 109-142.
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm
No other thing did more to detach the accounting academy from the accounting
profession
Exhibit A is how the accounting profession dominated The Accounting Review
before the 1960s; Now the accounting profession has zero interest in The
Accounting Review and its equation-dominated articles
What Makes Restaurants Sink or Swim?
https://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/food/young-hungry/article/21059630/what-makes-restaurants-sink-or-swim-we-asked-a-woman-who-helps-them-stay-afloat
What the Liberal Media Cherry Picks in Minimum Wage Impact Reporting ---
https://reason.com/blog/2019/03/14/nyc-bill-would-outlaw-unfair-firings-in
Jensen Comment
One myth is that the impact of minimum wage increases in one or a few
communities can be extrapolated to other communities. In fact each community is
unique. For example, Seattle and Manhattan are upscale cities where customers
are more likely to accept menu price increases attributed to having to raise
minimum wages. On the other hand, Baltimore has customers more likely to resist
similar menu price increases, which is the reason Baltimore politicians gave for
holding the line on large minimum wage increases.
How to Mislead With Statistics
The first place analysts tend to look for in measuring the impact of minimum
wage increases is restaurants. What is often overlooked are other industries
more apt to be affected by increases in the minimum wage. Exhibit A is
landscaping and the related business of yard fence building. These are
labor-intensive businesses where customers are relatively sensitive to price
increases. As a result those companies often react to high minimum wages by
hiring workers in the underground economy where there is no minimum wage. Supply
of labor is often ample in states that border Mexico and states that provide
sanctuaries from ICE (think progressive states bordering the USA's Pacific
ocean). Similar underground labor employment takes place in roofing, general
construction, house cleaning, child care, etc.
Alternate Theory (unsupported speculation)
Economic problem that the 737 engines used too much
fuel, so they decided to install more efficient engines with bigger fans and
make the 737MAX.
How to Mislead With Statistics
Which Accounting Jobs Pay the Most?
https://www.accountingweb.com/practice/practice-excellence/which-accounting-jobs-pay-the-most
Jensen Comment
Firstly, this study has all the deficiencies of other studies based upon means
without providing information about variances, outliers, and distributions,
particularly skewness. For example, when their are outliers such as extremely
high paid workers means can be skewed upwards. If the data are skewed downwards
by very low clerical employees means can be misleadingly low.
Secondly, the study does not include fringe benefits that can vary a great deal. For example, some organizations invest heavily in job training make it easier to advance within an organization or jump to another organization. Some organizations even pay for college tuition such as accountants who work for Statbucks, Walmart, McDonalds, Poppa Johns, etc. Some of these firms will even pay for graduate school. Also firms vary greatly with respect to vacation allowances, paternity leave, sick leave, parking, travel allowances, etc.
Thirdly, jobs vary a lot in terms of job security. For example, it's virtually impossible to fire a civil service employee short to being jailed for a felony. For example, IRS workers who were fired for extreme absenteeism and poor performance were recently hired back.
My Latest Web Document
Over 400 Examples of Critical Thinking and Illustrations of How to Mislead With
Statistics ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/MisleadWithStatistics.htm
Airport Slot Restrictions --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haneda_Airport
How do slot restrictions affect airfares? New evidence from the US airline
industry ---
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212012218300893
Flying mammals (Bats) seem to have become season-ticket holders to San
Antonio Spurs Games ---
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-are-there-so-many-bats-at-spurs-games/
Bat Watching Sites (other than Spurs games) in Texas ---
https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/species/bats/bat-watching-sites/#texasBats
Jensen Comment
I'm told (not confirmed) that Texas has more bats in limestone caves than the
other 49 states combined. I believe it. At the right time of evening you can
drive to bat watching sites and watch millions of bats emerge from caves and
cloud the setting sun. Bats are the first line of defense against mosquitoes and
eat an unbelievable tonnage of flying insects every night.
Erika did not like to swim in our pool at night, because swooping of bats over our lighted pool were so common. The lighted pool attracted insects, and the insects attracted fast-flying bats. Bats never had any interest to those of us in the pool, but Erika shuddered in her imagination (not reality) of a bat in her hair.
One time we had more of a problem with both flying and resting bats inside Trinity University's Chapman Hall where I had an office. I'm told that when roofers sealed off their escape routes some of the bats living in the attic were trapped. They then found their way into the hallways and classrooms throughout the building. It was sometimes a bit of a scary sight, and kept our campus police busy for a time trying to catch the bats in nets. The bats occasionally slept very soundly on things like bulletin boards. Even when cupped inside a net they remained asleep. I don't think they were playing possum --- they were really asleep. By the way, the police released them outdoors. You should not kill a bat unless it's absolutely necessary.
Up here in New Hampshire's White Mountains bats can be more of a "problem" in chimneys and attics. I actually don't consider them a great "problem." A couple of times we've had bats living in the attic get trapped downstairs in the summertime That I don't like! Usually those bats will find their way outside out if I open the screen doors and prod the bats with a broom. We have some nearby historic iron mines that are boarded up. The tunnels provide shelter to a lot of bats ---
Iron Ore From Sugar Hill's Ore
Hill and Historic Iron Works Operations in Franconia
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Resden/IronMine/Set01/01IronMine.htm
From the Scout Report on March 15, 2019
Google Noto Fonts --- www.google.com/get/noto
When a computer is unable to display a glyph in a chunk of text, it will include a substitute character (often diamonds with a question mark inside) instead. These are commonly called tofu and can be a major pain-point when using a computer in anything but English. Furthermore, even when fonts are available for all the glyphs in a text, they can often vary widely in their typography, resulting in aesthetic not unlike a collage of headlines pasted together from dozens of publications. Google's Noto font family (for "No tofu") seeks to end this situation by providing support for every glyph that can be represented in Unicode all with "a harmonious look and feel." Currently, the Noto fonts cover approximately 64 thousand of the 137 thousand glyphs defined in Unicode 11 with work ongoing to add the remaining glyphs. The Noto fonts can essentially be installed on any computer. Instructions in the install section cover Windows, macOS, and Linux computers. Package managers for Linux and other UNIX systems generally include system-level installers for the Noto fonts as well.
BorgBackup --- https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
BorgBackup is a deduplicating backup system that includes support for optional compression and encryption. A single Borg repository can store multiple archives, with the archives representing different folders, different points in time, different machines, or any combination thereof. Borg's deduplication is based on variable-length file chunking, with only chunks that aren't already present in a repository being added as new archives are created. An advantage of this approach is that it does not care at all about file names. As a consequence, files that occur in multiple archives will only be stored once and files can be moved or renamed without breaking the deduplication. This approach also means that only new portions of files are backed up. In addition to saving backups locally (e.g., to an external hard drive), Borg can also save them remotely on any machine that is reachable with an ssh connection. Borg's quick start guide gives a brief step-by-step example of how to use the software. The usage guide provides detailed information on all the software's features. In the installation section, users can find instructions on how to install Borg for their system as well as single-file executables of Borg that support Linux, macOS, and FreeBSD. Borg is free software, distributed under the 3-clause BSD license, with source code available on GitHub
Free Online Tutorials, Videos, Course Materials, and Learning Centers
Education Tutorials
Free Book: Learning to Learn Online ---:
https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/learningtolearnonline/
Bob Jensen's threads on distance education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm
Education in Chemistry --- https://eic.rsc.org/
Perceptions of Science in America --- www.amacad.org/publication/perceptions-science-america
OpenStax (free books) ---
https://openstax.org/
Look under Business for free accounting booksWikibooks ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikibooks
Wikibooks is a source of evolving free
textbooks ---
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Subject:Books_by_subject
For example, here's what's available and
planned for accountancy ---
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Accountancy
One of the Best Sources of Free Learning Videos in
Various Disciplines is the Ever-Growing Khan Academy ---
https://www.khanacademy.org/
OpenStax (free books) ---
https://openstax.org/
Look under Business for free accounting books
For Example this is What's Available in Accountancy and Taxation ---
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/accounting-and-financial-stateme
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/taxes-topic
More than 100
colleges have set up channels on YouTube ---
http://www.youtube.com/edu
Many
universities offer over 100 videos, whereas Stanford offers a whopping 583
Search for words like “accounting”
For example, in the search box enter the word "accounting" to see accounting videos available to date.
There are now
nearly 7,000 accounting education videos on YouTube, most of which are in very
basic accounting.
But there are nearly 150 videos in advanced accounting.
There are nearly
70 videos on XBRL
YouTube Education Channels --- http://www.youtube.com/education?b=400
Tens of
Thousands of Free Learning Materials sites (including videos and complete
courses from prestigious universities) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Links to Millions of Free Learning Sites --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for multiple disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Google's Once Upon a Try (Fantastic): A journey of invention and
discovery with CERN, NASA, and more than 100 museums around the world ---
https://artsandculture.google.com/project/once-upon-a-try
A team at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, or KU Leuven, says it has developed
a solar panel that converts sunlight directly into hydrogen using moisture in
the air ---
https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/fuel-cells/solar-panel-prototype-splits-water-to-produce-hydrogen
Education in Chemistry --- https://eic.rsc.org/
Orgchem 101 --- http://orgchem101.com/
Middle School Chemistry --- www.middleschoolchemistry.com
Isotopes Matter --- www.isotopesmatter.com
Women in Chemistry --- www.sciencehistory.org/learn/women-in-chemistry
Perceptions of Science in America --- www.amacad.org/publication/perceptions-science-america
TED Talk: Sarah T. Stewart: Where did the Moon come from? A new theory
---
https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_t_stewart_where_did_the_moon_come_from_a_new_theory?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2019-03-16&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=talk_of_the_week_button
A Stanford Professor's One-Minute Brain Science Videos ---
https://www.instagram.com/hubermanlab/?hl=en
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science, engineering, and medicine tutorials are at --http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Journalism Under Siege: A Free Course from Stanford Explores the Imperiled
Freedom of the Press ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/journalism-under-siege-free-course-stanford.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
A cleverly-constructed timeline on the history of the world's great religions --- http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf
A Visual Map of the World’s Major Religions (and Non-Religions) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/a-visual-map-of-the-worlds-major-religions-and-non-religions.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Harvard. Reading list and final exam for course “Conflict, Coalition and
Strategy”. Schelling, 1970 ---
http://www.irwincollier.com/harvard-reading-list-and-final-exam-for-course-conflict-coalition-and-strategy-schelling-1970/
Wisconsin First Nations --- https://wisconsinfirstnations.org/
Because of Her Story --- https://womenshistory.si.edu/
I Am a Migrant --- http://iamamigrant.org/
Perceptions of Science in America --- www.amacad.org/publication/perceptions-science-america
World Water
World Water: Water Conflict --- www.worldwater.org/water-conflict
Science Friday: A DIY Groundwater Model --- www.sciencefriday.com/educational-resources/diy-groundwater-model
National Drinking Water Alliance --- www.drinkingwateralliance.org
The Science of Flint's Water Crisis --- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAIXmt58iBU&feature=youtu.be
A History of Water in 20th-Century Bogota --- www.environmentandsociety.org/exhibitions/water-bogota
The Center for Great Lakes Literacy --- www.cgll.org
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Law and Legal Studies
March 2019: The EU has approved a controversial
overhaul of copyright laws ---
Click Here
European Union member states will now have two years to work out how to put the laws into action within their own countries.
What’s happened: Parliament voted the measures through by 348 to 278 against.
Why controversial? Two specific provisions have come in for criticism. Article 11 will let news organizations collect more fees from aggregators like Facebook and Google. Article 13 would require web giants to automatically filter copyrighted material, such as songs or videos, unless they have been specifically licensed. Although vaguely-worded, both sections will require tech companies to do a lot more to police content on their platforms.
A showdown: The run-up to the law has seen two sides line up to fight it out. The music industry and big publishers are in favor. The opposing side includes the tech giants, but also a large grassroots movement that says it will damage free expression online.
But some compromise: The proposals have been watered down from their original form to address some of the concerns raised by companies like Google, which had threatened to drop its news service in Europe due to Article 11 (which it called a “link tax.”) However, opponents are still far from happy with the new law.
Jensen Question
I don't quite understand the effectiveness of fees collected in the EU for news aggregators if aggregators elsewhere in the world can aggregate news without paying such fees.How will this affect aggregators like Wikipedia that receives no advertising or user fees for aggregating news?
Will Bob Jensen start getting aggregator billing for his Tidbits from the EU?
Bob Jensen's threads on the controversial DMCA in the USA
---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/theworry.htm#Copyright
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Law
Math Tutorials
Time to say goodbye to “statistically significant” and embrace uncertainty,
say statisticians ---
https://retractionwatch.com/2019/03/21/time-to-say-goodbye-to-statistically-significant-and-embrace-uncertainty-say-statisticians/
Quantum Computing For the Very Curious ---
https://quantum.country/qcvc
Wonderful insights into Alan Turing and David Hilbert
Abel Prize for maths awarded to woman for first time ---
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-abel-prize-maths-awarded-woman.html
Mathematical Association of America: On This Day --- www.maa.org/news/on-this-day
Copernicus' De Revolutionibus published two months before its author died ---
http://www.webexhibits.org/calendars/year-text-Copernicus.html
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Mathematics and Statistics
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
History Tutorials
Google's Once Upon a Try (Fantastic): A journey of invention and
discovery with CERN, NASA, and more than 100 museums around the world ---
https://artsandculture.google.com/project/once-upon-a-try
A Visual Map of the World’s Major Religions (and Non-Religions) ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/a-visual-map-of-the-worlds-major-religions-and-non-religions.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
The Humanities Digital Library --- http://humanities-digital-library.org/index.php/hdl
Conversations with History --- https://conversations.berkeley.edu/
A cleverly-constructed timeline on the history of the world's great religions --- http://www.mapsofwar.com/images/Religion.swf
The Full Story of Pocahontas Is Rarely Told. Here's What We're Missing ---
Click Here
An Animated Introduction to Friedrich Nietzsche’s Life & Thought ---
http://www.openculture.com/2019/03/an-animated-introduction-to-friedrich-nietzsches-life-thought.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Wisconsin First Nations --- https://wisconsinfirstnations.org/
Women in Chemistry --- www.sciencehistory.org/learn/women-in-chemistry
Because of Her Story --- https://womenshistory.si.edu/
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to History
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Bob Jensen's links to free courses and tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to Music
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Bob Jensen's threads on medicine ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob2-Part2.htm#Medicine
CDC Blogs --- http://blogs.cdc.gov/
Shots: NPR Health News --- http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots
Updates from WebMD --- http://www.webmd.com/
March 13, 2019
March 15, 2019
March 20, 2019
March 22, 2019
March 23, 2019
March 25, 2019
March 26, 2019
March 27, 2019
Farmers in the USA and Australia say they will continue to spray crops
with Roundup in spite of recent lawsuits ---
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2019/03/25/many-farmers-endorse-glyphosate-as-safe-weed-killer-while-bayer-battles-roundup-cancer-lawsuits/
Jensen Comment
Lawsuits like the recent huge jury awards in California will probably get scaled
back significantly after appeals.
Jensen Comment
Suppose there is no herbicide that can be deemed totally risk free. Further
suppose that herbicides enormously add yield to food crops around the world.
This becomes a classic case for student debates about ethics and morality. It's
an extension of the classic Trolley Problem in philosophy ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem
I might add that the cancer risk concerning Roundup is still hotly debated in
science.
The debate becomes even more interesting if the competition becomes between nations. The USA is a land of lawyers where too many large lawsuits can end use of a product. But in many (most?) other nations lawyers have much less societal power. It may well boil down to a world in which USA farm productivity is greatly curtailed relative to farm productivity in the rest of the world.
Why some people can diagnose Parkinson's disease by smell ---
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-47627179?utm_campaign=the_download.unpaid.engagement&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=70995664&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--yeCMpIrIUjiqVQQlQu0w64ZY8DCXY2fmDq2ETIbQkPUs1ZLPKPKBohGyr908ZWF5E5Ri-7Pxpn0GiZdw-a6raO2NB8Q&_hsmi=70995664
Kale Is One of the Most Contaminated (think pestacides) Vegetables You Can
Buy. Here's Why ---
Click Here
FDA Tiered Approval ---
https://marginalrevolution.com/
Asperger Syndrome --- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome
London Review of Books: Fascinating Historical Reading
Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna
by Edith Sheffer
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n06/michele-pridmore-brown/unfeeling-malice
The dangerous shifting cultural narratives around suicide ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/the-dangerous-shifting-cultural-narratives-around-suicide/2019/03/21/7277946e-4bf5-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html?utm_term=.ef01efb62fd8
Jensen Comment
Most (I think all) suicides of my closest friends were attributed to long-term
pain and disability issues --- they just did not want to become a burden on
friends and family. I am close to somebody that attempted suicide six
times. Her main issue is bipolar depression. I know that depression is an
increasing problem.
Buyer Beware: Seafood 'Fraud' Rampant, Report Says ---
https://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20190321/buyer-beware-seafood-fraud-rampant-report-says
What you should know about arugula ---
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/282769.php
Humor for March 2019
Airline Humor --- https://www.jborden.com/airline-humor/
Finding Humor in the Admissions Scandal ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/article/2019/03/14/admissions-scandal-attracts-much-attention-including-humorists?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=abb54478bd-WNU_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-abb54478bd-197565045&mc_cid=abb54478bd&mc_eid=1e78f7c952
Forwarded by Bob Overn
WOMAN:* *DO YOU DRINK BEER?*
MAN:* *YES*
WOMAN* : *HOW MANY BEERS A DAY?*
*MAN:* *USUALLY ABOUT THREE*
*WOMAN:* *HOW MUCH DO YOU PAY PER BEER?*
*MAN:* *$5.00 WHICH INCLUDES A TIP
*WOMAN:* *AND HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN DRINKING?*
*MAN:* *ABOUT 20 YEARS, I SUPPOSE*
*WOMAN:* *SO A BEER COSTS $5 AND YOU HAVE THREE BEERS A DAY WHICH PUTS YOUR *SPENDING EACH MONTH AT $450.*
*IN ONE YEAR, IT WOULD BE APPROXIMATELY $5400 CORRECT?*
*MAN:* *CORRECT*
*WOMAN:* *IF IN 1 YEAR YOU SPEND $5400, NOT ACCOUNTING FOR INFLATION,*
*THE* *PAST 20 YEARS PUTS YOUR SPENDING AT $108,000 CORRECT?*
*MAN:* *CORRECT*
*WOMAN:* *DO YOU KNOW THAT IF YOU DIDN'T DRINK SO MUCH BEER, THAT MONEY COULD HAVE BEEN PUT IN A STEP-UP INTEREST SAVINGS ACCOUNT AND AFTER ACCOUNTING FOR COMPOUND INTEREST FOR THE PAST 20 YEARS, YOU COULD HAVE NOW BOUGHT AN AIRPLANE?*
*MAN:* *DO YOU DRINK BEER?*
*WOMAN:* *NO.*
*MAN:* *WHERE IS YOUR AIRPLANE?*
Humor February 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q1.htm#Humor0219.htm
Humor January 2019--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book19q1.htm#Humor0119.htm
Humor December 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1218.htm
Humor November 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1118.htm
Humor October 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1118.htm
Humor October 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q4.htm#Humor1018.htm
Humor September 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0918.htm
Humor August 2018 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0818.htm
Humor July 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q3.htm#Humor0718.htm
Humor June 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.htm#Humor0618.htm
Humor May 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.htm#Humor0518.htm
Humor April 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q2.htm#Humor0418.htm
Humor March 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0318.htm
Humor February 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0218.htm
Humor January 2018--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book18q1.htm#Humor0118.htm
Humor December 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1217.htm
Humor November 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1117.htm
Humor October 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q4.htm#Humor1017.htm
Humor September 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0917.htm
Humor August 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0817.htm
Humor July 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q3.htm#Humor0717.htm
Humor June 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0617.htm
Humor May 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0517.htm
Humor April 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q2.htm#Humor0417.htm
Humor March 2017--- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0317.htm
Humor February 2017 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0217.htm
Humor January 2017 --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book17q1.htm#Humor0117.htm
Tidbits Archives --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.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/
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://faculty.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://faculty.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://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
AECM
(Educators)
http://listserv.aaahq.org/cgi- AECM is an email Listserv list which provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets, multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc.
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Yahoo (Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA. This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
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AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1 This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and taxation. |
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Business Valuation Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag [RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
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FEI's Financial Reporting Blog
Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, March 2008 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/mar2008/smart_stops.htm
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The CAlCPA Tax Listserv September 4, 2008 message from Scott Bonacker
[lister@bonackers.com]
Scott forwarded the following message from Jim Counts
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Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) --- http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://faculty.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://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
Bob Jensen's
Threads ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://faculty.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