Bong sessions were a big part of it, if I'm remembering correctly.

I think taking a few years off between HS and college would be a very good thing for a lot of people. Generally more lifetime learning would be good now and certainly in the future with the robots and whatnot.

I'm mixed on taking a few years off. Just wonder if it would create complacency.

I definitely think people are going through life slower now though (i.e married, kids, jobs, etc later) and that deciding to push your future in a certain direction at 18 years old may not be ideal.

I was thinking abnout this the other day and even contemplated an extended three day a week work cycle with slightly extended hours.

My only issue with these things is the typical worker in settings where it's not possible to pinpoint productivity you often have a huge amount of inefficiency. So if we went to four day work weeks many business could exert enough pressure to get the same amount of work done in four days.

But I do think there is potential for job and economic growth where people have to actually work less. Just not sure if we will see it anytime soon.

100% trump would hire a Calculus Baby if one appeared on Fox and Friends.

People are vastly overpaying for those things.

Probably not true right now, but probably true in the future.

I think a thread on the future of technology and how it relates to policy and society would be excellent!

It sortof assumes we're about to enter a time period of breakneck technological innovation which may be debatable but that can be a subject for the thread as well. To Singularity or not Singularity?

How do you mean? Because those things cost more than they should or because it's a bad return on investment? If it's the latter, there's more to life than money.

Networking and socializing are by-products, and you certainly don't need college for that. College's best function is (or should be) providing a depth of information in a subject area along with some exposure to others, and the time to absorb it in a way that employers can't afford you OJT, at least not without bonding you to ensure they get a return on their training investment.

Trump beat Hillary by 6 points for people with HS degree or less.

Hillary beat Trump by 4 points with college graduates and by 21 points with some post graduate study.

A democracy needs an educated populace.

Whoa whoa whoa let's not get crazy microbet if that is your real name.

Yeah I was about to go re-read some Hemingway but then I thought WAIT WHAT IN THE **** IS IN IT FOR ME?

Unless they cheated to get a passing grade in algebra, more than 90% could be taught by a good private tutor to pass calculus I. Whether they should bother is of course a different question.

Wrong. I've taught many students who had private tutors which made no difference. In some instances, I even knew the tutor and could vouch for his qualifications.

And I have never failed to get a failing student at least a B. The ability to understand why a particular student is having trouble and to design the specific set of questions and answers that breaks through to that student (assuming as I said, that he actually is OK at algebra) is not usually correlated with being good at math. It could even be inversely correlated. The run of the mill tutor slows things down but he typically doesn't have the ingenuity to diagnose the specific problem and come up with with a custom cure. (When my father spent a year in later life teaching calculus at the local college his students got way better results on the finals because he, unlike his run of the mill Phd colleagues, knew how to teach the mathematically untalented.

Since it's 4 in the morning, I'm not going to feel too bad about continuing this derail, but one flaw among many in your theory that Skills to Pass Algebra --> Skills to Pass Calculus is that it presumes that students retain the lessons of algebra after they have passed. But this isn't so, not by a long shot. Recalling algebra is not like riding a bike for these students. If it were, then they'd be decent-good at math, but I was specifically talking about the subgroup that fail because they aren't.

Being OK at algebra is not a prerequisite for passing algebra.

Sigh. As every Sklansky conversation, it has turned into a brag about how great the Sklansky clan is, and why actually you're better than experts.

But so what? Their right to vote is more important than the fact that it might mean we ban abortions and gay marriage again, reinstate stop and frisk and start a war or two. These are PEOPLE and they all deserve their say.

Pretty sure that the best teachers at the Kahn academy could also get way more than 55% of your failing students to pass as well.

I wasn't expecting that they recall their algebra. Only that they were smart enough to pass it at the time. The fact is that most Phd mathematicians who find themselves teaching undergraduate calculus don't do a very good job with the dumber students. But there exists ways that they choose not to, or unable to, learn how to utilize.

This sequence of posts, although not racist in any way, does rival your recent Secret Jew Handshake series for sheer level of talking out of your ass.

Predicted future Trump tweet:



https://mobile.twitter.com/foxandfri...74719852990465

I thought the bots were coming after most of the smarts jobs too.