Newmark's Door

The Door, once again answering life's most important questions.

"Let that powerful nose run free."

A problem tackled on Metafilter:

I have 232 facebook friends, and six of them share a birthday in common (not 6 different pairs of people on the same birthday, but 6 out of the 232 were born on the 17th of July. Now, I know it only takes 23 random people to get a 50% chance of at least ONE birthday collision, but how the heck do I figure out the odds on this one?

One answer: millennials don't like to gamble.

That would be the "learning styles" baloney. Another piece of (mostly) baloney: "Does a 'Growth Mindset' Really Help You Succeed?"

If you think of educational "research" as a search for the next fad, you won't usually be wrong.

Quora discussion with interesting highest-ranked response: 

She proceeded with the gentle touch of one who has been there, done that. “Some cultures quantify the severity of pain as duration. Like if you were very hungry, you might say ‘I haven’t eaten in forever.’”

Quick do a few studies to confirm the finding and if confirmed then throw a whole lot of money at it--like the Covid vaccines--to commercialize it ASAP.

"Removing the bullet," "Sucking Venom Out of a Snake Bite," and more.

In my opinion it needs to repeated again and again and again.

I try to explain that we have been socialists and we’ve been successful—but never at the same time. . . . 

And it’s actually one of the best examples we have of the benefits of free markets and the perils of socialism. Between 1870 and 1970, Sweden had a smaller government and a more open economy than most comparable countries, and that was the era when Sweden grew faster than any other developed country but Japan.

Ilya Somin discusses a bracing warning from a Liberal that yes, even Liberals can fall victim to "misinformation". 

Pro tip: everybody can. That's why after reading, writing, and arithmetic, high schools should try to teach students how to evaluate information.