A proper English or Greek literature teacher doesnt have to present math in any detail other than very brief generic references to educate you. So no real direct details math i mean will ever be needed in their work, although something out of the blue, not ordinary, involving some math with focus of course elsewhere to support their real topic of discussion, will elevate their status enormously as a more complete thinker and responsible educator and earn respect from the students. And i expect no less from a math or physics/science teacher as well, suggesting to students that a rich culture supports analytical thinking and you cant have a rich culture and relative peace to support such thinking without literature, law, arts etc that help form a more complete education and develop intuition, cultivate imagination and offer some ethical foundation that then math and science will take upon themselves to redevelop or understand better and even improve.

A proper classical education will always make it possible to appreciate the math on your own as part of any solid education that makes a person a better more objective thinker and citizen and not only that but make sure that whatever you do with that math in your life will be for the good of the greater society or to benefit yourself without harming the world in general, arrogantly oblivious to the standard, easier to spot with a higher awareness brain, consequences. Literature is supposed to enlighten you. As such it will then become impossible to ignore the language of logic, of nature, even that subtle language of human behavior all around you.

I will however also wager that a Literature teacher that doesnt ever mention math or astronomy or physics or science in general, after hundreds of hours, in simple descriptive or encyclopedic, historical terms (not any real math) has indeed failed their students in a profound manner because they have an inferiority complex. Obviously i am not talking about a teacher that has a special highly technical class to teach that involves only grammar and syntax, strict study of linguistics (although math arises there too lol) etc. I am talking about a general literature teacher that has as students kids with ages from 12 to 18.

Reading DS's thoughts on psychology and human nature is like watching a dog trying to walk on its hind legs.

David, you might be going a bit overboard on this. The woman isn't an incompetent fool because of this one thing you happen to be stuck on. It's not as if the people in your age category are all that mathematically savvy. You're talking about a generation where most people I see think the road to financial prosperity is spending half their SS check on 3-number Lotto every week, which pays $500 on a straight win.

She is not a fool and very smart people can do errors and stupid things without becoming stupid overall. We all do it. But it shows she lacks certain assets that are supposed to be available to her, either from experience or position or personal integrity. Not all of us tend to do that often or at all. If we do we then owe it to ourselves and the public to revisit the topic and own the errors. This is what makes the difference from others as well. In particular here she must have talked about polls and been involved in elections for over a decade.

If you are to try to make a case using mathematical arguments in a topic you must be aware how well you understand in order to touch with conviction (that is a must when you criticize others), then this requires to either know the topic well enough to begin with or to care that someone does error-proof you or your notes (or whoever helped her collect data). Otherwise you need to research it better on your own. That shows poorly (even a bit not anything huge) for the team behind her and her own appreciation of her own knowledge. It certainly suggests that some issues similar in nature will arise elsewhere too.

Her overall efforts to support progressive thinking and improve the chances of such forces/voices in elections can derive further strength from such level of integrity.

Again i have no issues with anyone that suddenly in a chaotic fashion finds themselves entangled in a discussion they are not advanced or experienced. Its natural. My problem starts when it is your initiative to discuss this and you have designed your own program around such arguments. It is to her credit though that she had a poll expert nearby who tried politely to correct things. So its the overall personal research of the work one must have an issue with. And of course one must also have a ton more issues with all kinds of other people too lol (including themselves).

Quoting for quotability.

I am fairly certain that it is best that my English Literature teacher stuck entirely to teaching English Literature during the class she was teaching on English Literature.

I assume, based on the above, that you find your physics teachers to have been remiss for having never brought up Schopenhauer even once.

I am holding you to a high standard similar to when you criticized Marilyn vos Savant when she made errors. But it does detract from your qualifications to at least some degree.

Except maybe it WAS a character flaw and not dumbness. Just maybe your brain sensed the problem and your emotions chose to ignore it, perhaps subconsciously. Because it allowed you to accuse Rachel Maddow of something more egregious than their actual crime and your zeal to do that got the best of you.

Because if you are not smart enough to at least feel like those words didn't make sense to the point where you should investigate further then you are not that smart. Many millions who have never studied human thought and human nature WOULD have sensed something was wrong.

Also, "then," not "than." That sort of error should actually make the writer feel a sense of physical illness. I'm holding you to a much higher standard because you write books professionally.

No i judge their overall discussions and do not look for so specific references. In such broad sense i valued all of them that included light discussions that involved other topics in order to enhance the experience without of course spending there more than 0.01% (or less even) of the time. Some of the Physics ones have however talked about Philosophers (and even Schopenhauer in terms of free will talks possibly) if you include later years above university levels...

That's true but irrelevant. Once you set a cutoff at 10 then the ten highest in the poles are the ones most likely to have the most support.

Post of the month, calling it right now

lol

You liked the ones who spent up to and including, but no more than, 16.2 seconds on light discussion of outside topics per semester?

I was giving you a minimal guess estimate that is in fact not bad even if you try to make it look that way by using numbers that do not relate to my own experience. Of course that was a lower estimate not an upper bound as condition. Are we serious here or being on purpose sarcastic without getting the point made.

Where i grew up Literature classes, ancient and modern added up to 10*50 min per week easily (6h days say is 6 classes of various topics, so 2+ each day) and if you include also History and other related topics you go up to 16*50. Over a year that is the only relevant metric (not quarter) as you have the same 1 or 2 or 3 at best teachers all year this adds up easily to 9*16*4.5*50=32400 min per year. 0.01% of that is 32400/10000=3.24 min per year.

That easily leaves 1 min per year per teacher if you had 3 ( or 1.5 each for 2) that they could have talked pure math or science as part of the discussion (but i had many teachers for 2-3 years actually so they can put that anywhere it made sense randomly and still have a similar impact). What this means is that they could have had a talk on some issues that involved reference to these topics that lasted a few seconds multiple times. If i said for example that in that city people developed advanced math and they had architecture and public works that applied advanced geometry and gave an actual example of how they did it etc and then went ahead and talked more about these cities and the benefits they enjoyed because of this, i have technically spoken about direct math and science or technology only a few seconds each time and about the cities or the main theme the remaining of the time so a talk of 5 min used only 10-15 seconds of pure references and the rest was supporting discussion. Yes the presentation had science and math at some of its core points or broader themes but the pure math and science details were only 10-15 seconds (eg if some example was offered about a theorem of a calculation or an experiment etc, provided it relates to the main discussion that is about other things and it doesnt come in as irrelevant tangent).

The point is a 10-20 min discussion that had in it math took only 0.25-0.5 min of actual math talk with light technical terms that were mostly generic (and whoever is interested can research it further). So you have room this to happen 2-3 times a year why not.

So stop being stupid about what i meant. You know very well what i meant. It takes very minimal effort for a teacher to show they are not one dimensional with well selected very brief examples and it wont distract from their topic, it will instead improve the teaching experience by promoting the concept of a greater more expanded education involving many fields of interest.

A teacher can also between classes in breaks joke about math if the next teacher is a math/physics teacher etc plus there are many other occasions you meet them outside class that allow you to appreciate their overall character and intellect when they interact with these other teachers. If you are top student involved in extended school activities the chances to witness such encounters increases dramatically. Teachers talk to each other about their best students also.

It helps a lot any teacher to appear they are treating your overall education as a multidimensional effort that is designed to offer a more complete education that enhances the understanding that you need to draw knowledge, motivation and imagination from many topics of the human experience.

As an other example in modern literature its probably close to impossible to have a year go by (eg several essays analysis classes) without even any direct talk about technology itself and the role of sciences in modern world. That doesnt count as technical talk, it still takes a few seconds each time at best for any technical terms used and the rest of the time the focus stays elsewhere again even if this remains the theme.

It is impossible to talk about ancient Greece, Rome, the golden era of Islam or the more recent age on enlightenment (as 4 examples among many) and not involve math, astronomy, physics and other sciences that enabled the civilizations and economies of that time and impacted greater thought movements.

The funny thing about it is that Fox gets to shape the outcome without having chosen a sensible way to do it.

Lets assume that Fox wants to help Republicans pick a candidate that will win in 2016.

They seem to be going about this the wrong way. More important than a candidate being somebody's first pick would be how many people would consider that candidate as a viable choice?

To do that polls would have to ask for 2nd choice, 3rd choice, etc. Then you would get a sense of how deep a candidate was. Similar to MVP candidates in sports.

Rather than garnering an average which is so demeaning and daunting (see Rubio at 7%). You would get a sense of relative popularity and possibility.

Also, picking ten candidates is not only arbitrary it is foolish as well. Once you have a sense of depth of strength then decide how many candidates make the top tier. Use a formula for fairness and include standards of deviations difference to determine the cutoff.

This not only seems like you are brilliant (which in Fox's case would be something) but it would leave Rachel Maddow unable to even report on it!

Also once they established the top tier and the second tier, they could make it like the Premier League in England. The bottom N get relegated if they haven't moved up within 2 or 3 debates, and the top N from the second tier get a shot at the big time. I would probably watch just for that fact alone!

Should we not read anything you have to say because you don't know the difference between "then" and "than"? Or should we just go with, you made a mistake, move along nothing to see here.

And BTW she is that smart.

She may be annoying. She may be on the opposite side of your political spectrum. But she is very very smart. And she is a pit bull. Underestimate her at your own peril.

I was making a point. I am also not being serious, because it is an extremely silly conversation. A good English Literature teacher should leave math to the math teachers to avoid misleading students and also to avoid embarrassing him/herself. A good physics teacher should stick to physics for the same reasons.

Using the last 5 polls on RCP:

Darn, I really want to see Perry in this.

I wonder how many of you realize that when the squares slightly overlap it is not within the "margin of error" as to whether the wrong candidate is in front. In other words if A has 4.8% and B has 2.2% and the two margins of error add up to 2.8% you can't say its within reason that they are flipped. Hopefully it is obvious to you why, namely that its a parlay that the true numbers are both in the outer tails.

Given that, I'm pretty sure that Maddow is again making a fool of herself by claiming that if FOX used the NBC poll, the margin of error of the difference between Perry and Kasich in the average of those five polls, is higher than the actual disparity. Its close but regardless I'm almost sure that Maddow didn't check it out.

She is not on the opposite end of my political spectrum. But I don't believe she could get a Phd in physics or get into the top 1% doing logic puzzles if her life depended on it.

Neither requires nearly as much smarts as you think they do.

lol @ assuming a Rhodes Scholar wouldn't be able to get a Ph.D in physics if she really wanted to.

Rhodes scholars don't necessarily have any mathematical ability and she certainly hasn't demonstrated any here

The ability to get close to an 800 math SAT score would probably be necessary. Many students who didn't score this high could study hard enough to do it. But many could never do it. Including the very studious such as, most likely, Rachel Maddow.

lol no. Not even close.

I mean, this is a bit of a tautology here, no?. If she'd focused her studies on math instead of public policy she'd be better at math? Is there any reason to believe she flat-out wouldn't be able to learn the material if her interests were in physics instead of politics? This relatively minor slip-up sure doesn't demonstrate that.