In an important and sad new paper Meyer et al. demonstrate the phenomena in a series of 16 experiments which show that unease with experiments is replicable and general. The authors, for example, ask 679 people in a survey to rate the appropriateness of three interventions designed to reduce hospital infections. The three interventions are: Badge (A): The director decides that all doctors who...
Almost a quarter-million teachers physically attacked in public schools
A record 220,300 public school teachers reported that they were physically attacked by a student during the 2015-2016 school year, according to a report jointly published this month by the National Center for Education Statistics and the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The data for 2015-16 comes from the NCES’s National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS). The data for previous school years going...
Reign of terror at Virginia Tech
Sounds like the administration is putting up a stiff resistance to this guy; it’s definitely not the time for a limp response. A torrent of penis drawings in different locations across the Virginia Tech campus last fall drew numerous bias complaints from students, leaving university administrators grappling for answers as to whether the university had been targeted by a penis-drawing bandit...
Idea that rich people have lots of debt was due to a simple Stata error
There but for the grace of God go I: Back in January, the Urban Institute—a widely respected Washington think tank—published a statistic about student debt that pretty soon caught fire among economics journalists. Based on an analysis of federal data, its researchers concluded that 49 percent of all outstanding education loans belonged to highest-earning quarter of American households. In other...
Educational RCT’s are uninformative
From the abstract: There are a growing number of large-scale educational randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Considering their expense, it is important to reflect on the effectiveness of this approach. We assessed the magnitude and precision of effects found in those large-scale RCTs commissioned by the UK-based Education Endowment Foundation and the U.S.-based National Center for Educational...
Unskilled and entitled students will “eat you alive”
Students who can’t get into elite schools through the front door based on academic merit don’t change once they’re in class. They can’t do the work, and are generally uninterested in gaining the skills they need in order to do well. Exhibit A from the recent admissions corruption scandal is “social media celebrity” Olivia Jade Gianulli, whose parents bought her a place at the University of...
Causal inference workshops at Duke
Northwestern University and Duke University are holding our “main” week-long workshop on Research Design for Causal Inference – our 10th annual workshop — at Duke University in Raleigh-Durham. We invite you to attend. Our apologies for the length of this message. Main Workshop: Monday – Friday, August 12-16, 2019 We will also be holding an “Advanced” Workshop the following week: Advanced...
NY Times: College students really are snowflakes
Avoid sending your children to college: besides the racism and rape culture, there is sauce. The bribery scandal has “just highlighted an incredibly dark side of what has become normative, which is making sure that your kid has the best, is exposed to the best, has every advantage — without understanding how disabling that can be,” said Madeline Levine, a psychologist and the author of “Teach...
Japan 2019: Tokyo
We stayed in Shinjuku, which is very big and a little bit crazy.
Memory Lane, north of Shinjuku station. It’s now a big tourist spot, which means overpriced food.
We managed a quick side trip to Kamakura.
Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden
Nishishinjuku
On the way home
Japan 2019: Tachikawa
Keisuke Honda, our host, took us to a great seafood restaurant in Tachikawa. I forgot to get the name, but it was fantastic.