Plus the best trees to bury your money under now that the banking system has collapsed and the SAT's blissful ignorance of our teenage sartorial choices
Love the discussion about standardized tests. The tests are not perfect, but neither is anything else, and at least with standardized tests they're the same for everyone and we know who took them. I'm a test prep professional with 25+ years of experience, and if anyone (including our esteemed host, Jeff!) wants to find out more about these issues, please reach out via my site (benparistestprep.com). Here's an essay recently published in Inside Higher Ed that addresses many of the issues talked about in the podcast. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2022/12/05/are-we-sure-were-better-without-standardized-tests-opinion
Sorry if this is frowned-upon promotion. Just trying to add to the discussion by relating my personal experience., And if you do reach out, I'll share some stories from the field that I promise will make you laugh. For real.
Worthwhile discussion about the merit of merit. Mabye you guys could have Michael Sandel (The Tyranny of Merit) on to get into more of the nuance around merit and how, in his view, the "meritocracy" rationalizes and perpetuates inequality.
I love Sandel’s suggestion that Harvard should admit one freshman class by lottery and compare the results with classes admitted through the standard method.
Okay, sorry, I don’t want to make a habit of fact checking, but the blind auditions thing is more complicated than you’d expect. There was a bit of a mania for blind auditions in tech including a startup that proposed to “masculinize” female voices, but it actually hurt women’s chances. This prompted some reexamination of the orchestra audition paper. The original paper is a complete mess but it appears that in a head-to-head comparison blind orchestra auditions made essentially no difference in whether women were hired; the increase in the number of women in orchestras appears to be largely tied to the increasing acceptance of women across all occupations in the 70s and 80s. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-orchestra-auditions-really-benefit-women/
I appreciate TCW's empathy for the embarrassment of performance anxiety. It's so saddening to see the pile-on, regardless of the merit of her argument.
I planned a nice long walk to listen to this podcast. I was thoroughly enjoying the chatting, when halfway through, it faded. Did I do something or was that a marketing ploy? I spent the rest of my walk being miffed and plotting revenge. Maybe I was wrong! I hope so.
SVB -- which does rhyme with SNF -- seems to have suffered from a lack of diversification in two ways. First, they had the bad bond investments. Second, and less widely discussed, is that they had tons of customers who were exactly the same: startups with tons of cash over the 250k limit. Once one client freaked, the clear risk was they would all freak, and they did!!
Love the discussion about standardized tests. The tests are not perfect, but neither is anything else, and at least with standardized tests they're the same for everyone and we know who took them. I'm a test prep professional with 25+ years of experience, and if anyone (including our esteemed host, Jeff!) wants to find out more about these issues, please reach out via my site (benparistestprep.com). Here's an essay recently published in Inside Higher Ed that addresses many of the issues talked about in the podcast. https://www.insidehighered.com/admissions/views/2022/12/05/are-we-sure-were-better-without-standardized-tests-opinion
Sorry if this is frowned-upon promotion. Just trying to add to the discussion by relating my personal experience., And if you do reach out, I'll share some stories from the field that I promise will make you laugh. For real.
Worthwhile discussion about the merit of merit. Mabye you guys could have Michael Sandel (The Tyranny of Merit) on to get into more of the nuance around merit and how, in his view, the "meritocracy" rationalizes and perpetuates inequality.
I love Sandel’s suggestion that Harvard should admit one freshman class by lottery and compare the results with classes admitted through the standard method.
Okay, sorry, I don’t want to make a habit of fact checking, but the blind auditions thing is more complicated than you’d expect. There was a bit of a mania for blind auditions in tech including a startup that proposed to “masculinize” female voices, but it actually hurt women’s chances. This prompted some reexamination of the orchestra audition paper. The original paper is a complete mess but it appears that in a head-to-head comparison blind orchestra auditions made essentially no difference in whether women were hired; the increase in the number of women in orchestras appears to be largely tied to the increasing acceptance of women across all occupations in the 70s and 80s. https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2019/05/11/did-blind-orchestra-auditions-really-benefit-women/
I appreciate TCW's empathy for the embarrassment of performance anxiety. It's so saddening to see the pile-on, regardless of the merit of her argument.
I planned a nice long walk to listen to this podcast. I was thoroughly enjoying the chatting, when halfway through, it faded. Did I do something or was that a marketing ploy? I spent the rest of my walk being miffed and plotting revenge. Maybe I was wrong! I hope so.
Freddie DeBoer had an excellent response to the Bethany Mandel situation. Anyone who wants to define "woke" should use this article as a template. https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what-woke-means
SVB -- which does rhyme with SNF -- seems to have suffered from a lack of diversification in two ways. First, they had the bad bond investments. Second, and less widely discussed, is that they had tons of customers who were exactly the same: startups with tons of cash over the 250k limit. Once one client freaked, the clear risk was they would all freak, and they did!!