North Carolina would drop NC Math 3 as a graduation requirement and let students choose any two courses above Math 2, including new classes in statistics, data science, and logic, under standards the State Board of Education takes up next month.
If you sincerely hope to persuade others that their factual claims are mistaken, you have to be open to the risk that your factual claims may turn out to be mistaken.
Political debates in the absence of valid statistics are incoherent and pointless.
Differences in definitions, variables, and study design help to explain why academic studies conducted by honest, ethical scholars often reach different conclusions.
North Carolina now has about as many residents as does the country of Sweden. Notable countries with smaller populations include Austria, Bulgaria, Switzerland, and Israel.
"An appropriate answer to the right problem is worth a good deal more than an exact answer to an approximate problem." (J.W. Tukey) And as Douglas Adams observed in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Forty-Two" isn't much of an answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, if one doesn't know what the question actually means. Statistics can obscure rather than illuminate a problem, if we aren't careful.
Numbers never lie. Or do they? American humorist Evan Esar defined statistics as “the only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.”
North Carolina is said to be facing a “hunger crisis,” but the issue is fraught with exaggeration and faulty statistics. Chronic hunger, like chronic poverty, remains rare — though each case is tragic.
High Point and Gastonia came out on top in North Carolina on a national ranking of real salaries. But that’s not the end of the story when it comes to employment choices.
There are lots of “helpful” suggestions about improving North Carolina politics, such as unconstitutional campaign reforms or loosening the voters’ leash on politicians. But there’s a more fundamental problem.
