Tag Archives: count

There’s Something Wrong With the TIMSS Advanced Math Test

by cazaresibiuieftina Posted on December 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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Excellent news! The 2015 TIMSS test results are out. This is one of two international math tests for 4th and 8th graders (the other is PISA), and it provides us with yet another chance to bemoan the shoddy education of American students.

I’ll get to that later tonight. First, though, I want to point out an odd thing about the TIMSS test. This year, for only the second time, they decided to add a third “advanced” math test for high school seniors who were in advanced math courses. Eight countries participated, and the United States did pretty well. We lagged behind only Lebanon.

Lebanon? You bet: their average score was 532, a whopping 50 points ahead of the two second-place countries (Russia and the US). But then I noticed something: only 3.2 percent of Lebanese students were in advanced math courses compared to 34 percent of Slovenian students. It makes sense that if you compare the top 3.2 percent of one country to the top 34 percent of another, the former is going to do a lot better.

So are differences in these scores just due to differences in how selective different countries are in accepting students into advanced math courses? Here’s the scatterplot you’ve been waiting for:

Selectivity doesn’t account for everything, but it does have a significant impact. If you restrict your classes to only the very brightest students (like Lebanon, Russia, and the US), they’ll do well. If you open them up to more than a quarter of your students (like Italy, Portugal and Slovenia), the average kids will drag down the mean score. But which country is actually doing a better job of education? It’s hard to say.

Regardless, there’s always something to complain about. Here is Jeffrey Mervis in Science:

Students taking the most challenging math and science courses in their senior year were found to have performed progressively worse as they moved from elementary to middle to high school. The U.S. cohort, for example… deteriorated over time, from 29 and 9 points ahead of the midpoint in fourth and eighth grade, respectively, to 15 points below as seniors. Italy recorded the steepest drops, a startling 126 points below the midpoint in physics and 78 points in advanced math by the end of high school.

It’s not clear to me that the “midpoint” of the TIMSS test means anything at all. In the advanced math test, every single country except Lebanon scored below it. What kind of midpoint is that? A pretty arbitrary one, I’d guess.

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There’s Something Wrong With the TIMSS Advanced Math Test

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After the Election, Trump Maintains His Bizarre Relationship with Conspiracy-Pushing Website

by DSIColeman Posted on November 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, as part of a multi-tweet rant against Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount effort in Wisconsin (and perhaps Michigan and Pennsylvania), President-elect Donald Trump questioned the integrity of the 2016 election.

Trump won 306 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232 (Michigan’s 16 were called for him today); so his victory was not exactly a landslide. But the bigger lie was that “millions” of people voted illegally, for which there is no evidence. Clinton’s lead of more than 2 million votes in the popular vote, and her campaign’s recent announcement that it would participate in the recount organized by Stein, seemed to have inspired yesterday’s tweet. But its origins trace back to a right-wing conspiracy theory that began to take hold shortly after the election.

According to the Washington Post, on November 13 Gregg Phillips, a former Texas Health and Human Services Commission deputy commissioner, tweeted that he had “verified more than three million votes cast by non-citizens.” He wrote that he was joining with True the Vote, a conservative group, “to initiate legal action.” The day after Phillips’ tweet, his claim was picked up by Infowars and a series of right-wing commentators and websites. True The Vote issued a statement Monday saying it “absolutely supports” Trump’s “recent comment about the impact of illegal voting, as reflected in the national popular vote.” In an email to Mother Jones on Monday, Catherine Engelbrecht, the founder of True the Vote, said a study of data was forthcoming. “We do have evidence that non-citizens are being registered and are voting,” she added, but she wouldn’t elaborate.

If Trump got his information for this weekend’s tweet from Infowars, it wouldn’t be the first time Team Trump cited this bizarre and unreliable source. Infowars, a conspiracy theory website run by Alex Jones, has been one of the Trump campaign’s go-to sources of information. On September 8, the candidate’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the Infowars story “Was Hillary Wearing an Earpiece During Last Night’s Presidential Forum?” Trump himself has used the site’s work to bolster way-out claims, including his references to Clinton’s alleged poor health and his false assertion that “thousands and thousands” of American Muslims were celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey. Trump appeared on Jones’ internet-based talk show in December 2015 and told him, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser and a conspiracy theorist who claims LBJ killed JFK, has often appeared on Infowars, and he held joint events with Jones at the Republican convention in Cleveland in July. At that convention, Jones had “special guest” credentials.

Following the election, Jones claimed that Trump called to thank him and his listeners “for fighting so hard for Americans, and for Americanism.” A spokeswoman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment.

The Trump relationship to Jones and Infowars is one of the weirdest aspects of the 2016 election. Jones’ Infowars site offers up a steady stream of red meat for the conspiratorial far right. It claims that the US government was complicit in the 9/11 attacks and that the Sandy Hook massacre was “completely fake.” (It claims those children weren’t killed, and the whole thing was a ruse to make it easier for the government to push gun control.) On Monday, the site promoted Jones’ theory that the Stein recount is a means for Democratic donors to make Trump “illegitimate to cause a civil war in this country.” Another post titled “HUGE #PIZZAGATE NEWS COMING” hyped a discredited story about a Washington, DC-based pedophilia ring connected to Clinton operating out of a pizzeria. A third story maintained that Clinton has a plan to overturn Trump’s win.

Put simply, the president-elect is calling into doubt the election because of a conspiracy theory website known for pushing the most outlandish claims. Trump’s connection to Jones did not gather much attention during the campaign. But with this latest tweetstorm, Trump has indicated that he is still hobnobbing with these dark and paranoid forces—one sign that the conspiracy peddlers of Infowars will require close watching in the Trump years ahead.

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After the Election, Trump Maintains His Bizarre Relationship with Conspiracy-Pushing Website

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Raw Data: How Big Is the Cloud Computing Market?

by AnnetteFoust Posted on November 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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I don’t know why this popped into my head, but given the enormous growth of cloud computing I got curious about how big a share it is of all computing. Roughly speaking, it turns out that total spending in 2016 is:

Cloud computing: $38 billion
All computing:1 $1.5 trillion

So cloud computing currently accounts for about 2.5 percent of all IT hardware and software spending. I have no point to make about this.

1Hardware and software only, not including telecom spending. CompTIA estimates that non-telecom spending is about $2.24 trillion in 2016 and that hardware and software account for about two-thirds of that.

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Raw Data: How Big Is the Cloud Computing Market?

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Trump: I Won the Popular Vote. I Did, I Did, I Did….

by OliverTrevino Posted on November 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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A few days ago I mentioned that the Trump campaign1 was pretty dedicated to sending Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win down the memory hole. To accomplish this, they began a gaslighting offensive to persuade the nation that Donald Trump was one of the biggest winners ever in presidential history. Kellyanne Conway kicked things off by telling Fox News, “This election was not close. It was not a squeaker.” Two days later, Trump himself defended his loss of the popular vote: “If the election were based on total popular vote I would have campaigned in N.Y. Florida and California and won even bigger and more easily.”

Then Corey Lewandowski upped the ante, claiming that Trump “won the election campaign by the largest majority since Ronald Reagan in 1984.” I guess this was a little too raw even for Trumpland, so Reince Priebus beavered away and finally found something to justify Lewandowski’s toadying: “Donald J. Trump won over 2,600 counties nationwide, the most since President Reagan in 1984.” But that still wasn’t enough. The whole popular vote thing is apparently a serious burr in Trump’s saddle, and he wasn’t happy with all this shilly-shallying. So today he decided to go for broke and insist that he just won, period:

So there you have it. It’s twisting Trump’s guts that more people voted for Hillary Clinton than voted for him. And this whole recount thing in Wisconsin seems to have driven him bananas. The result is a tweet alleging that the Clinton campaign orchestrated millions of illegal votes in 2016.2 This message went out to all 16 million of his followers, who will surely pass it along to another 16 million or so—and then the media will pass it along to yet millions more.

This is an obvious lie, and it will probably take a few hours for Trump’s TV shills to figure out how to defend it. That’s how it worked with the “thousands of Muslims celebrating on 9/11” thing. In that case, his spear carriers eventually dug up a few internet factoids that provided them with a way to claim that Trump was right, and away they went. I’m sure the same thing will happen this time. I can’t wait to see how many will join in and exactly what dreck they’ll dredge up to justify it.

Alternatively, they could just admit that the Republican president-elect is an epically insecure liar who will say anything when his fragile ego is bruised. That’s not a very appealing alternative, is it?

1As near as I can tell, Trump is still running a campaign.

2Trump says he would have won if not for these votes, so they must have all been for Hillary. And if they were all for Hillary, then Democrats must have been the ones who did the vote rigging. Right?

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Trump: I Won the Popular Vote. I Did, I Did, I Did….

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Donald Trump Claims "Millions Of People Voted Illegally." (They Didn’t.)

by TommySimmons Posted on November 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Oh boy:

This is terrifying on a number of levels. Not only does it further demonstrate that the soon-to-be leader of the free world has a skin as thin as tissue paper, but it highlights the fact that Trump will as president continue to trade in insane conspiracy theories just as he did as a candidate and as a reality show star before that. There is exactly no evidence that “millions of people voted illegally” in the election. None. Zilch. Zero. But Trump doesn’t care.

We’re screwed.

Update: This.

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Donald Trump Claims "Millions Of People Voted Illegally." (They Didn’t.)

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Clinton Campaign Says It Will Participate in Recount

by DeannaCardillo Posted on November 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Marc Elias, the lawyer for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, announced Saturday that the Clinton campaign will participate in the election recount initiated by Green Party candidate Jill Stein in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Elias, in a statement posted on Medium, wrote that the campaign has been quietly taken “steps in the last two weeks to rule in or out any possibility of outside interference in the vote tally in these critical battleground states,” including combing through election results looking for anomalies “that would suggest a hacked result” and consulting with analysts within and outside of the campaign “with backgrounds in politics, technology, and academia.”

“We believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported,” Elias wrote.

On Tuesday, New York Magazine reported that computer scientist J. Alex Halderman and a colleague had found “persuasive evidence” that vote totals in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania could have been “manipulated or hacked.” In a subsequent post on Medium, Halderman wrote that his findings had been misrepresented, and that what he was calling for was a examination of paper ballots and voting machines in those states to see if a cyberattack could have changed any results. Stein subsequently launched a fundraising push that has netted more than $5 million in order to push for recounts, according to the Wall Street Journal. She has formally requested a recount in Wisconsin, and is preparing challenges in Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to the Journal.

In Saturday’s Medium post, Elias wrote:

Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides. If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well. We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states — Michigan — well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount. But regardless of the potential to change the outcome in any of the states, we feel it is important, on principle, to ensure our campaign is legally represented in any court proceedings and represented on the ground in order to monitor the recount process itself.

The campaign is grateful to all those who have expended time and effort to investigate various claims of abnormalities and irregularities. While that effort has not, in our view, resulted in evidence of manipulation of results, now that a recount is underway, we believe we have an obligation to the more than 64 million Americans who cast ballots for Hillary Clinton to participate in ongoing proceedings to ensure that an accurate vote count will be reported.

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Clinton Campaign Says It Will Participate in Recount

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Trump Talked Big About NAFTA, But Can He Deliver?

by Junior18Pssltk Posted on November 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Killing the TPP was easy—though I suspect it will make a comeback after Donald Trump renegotiates a few bits and pieces and then loudly announces that he’s made it into the greatest trade deal in the history of the republic. But what about NAFTA? What exactly does Trump want to do? Zeeshan Aleem writes that a transition team memo makes it clear that NAFTA is at the top of Trump’s to-do list:

Suppose Trump wants to keep the US in the pact but put his self-professed negotiating skills to work in crafting what he insists would be a better version of the deal….There are a number of ways to pursue that end goal, but Trump’s rhetoric suggests he wants to do it by raising tariffs on imports from Mexico. That’s something he’d have difficulty getting Mexico to agree to, so he’d have more latitude to do it if he were to actually withdraw from NAFTA. But withdrawal is a tricky business, given how deeply the countries’ economies rely on each other.

….It would require loads of American businesses bringing existing components of their supply chains and outsourced services back onshore to avoid tariffs or other penalties — a process that takes time and money. It would also potentially increase costs for those businesses going forward.

If that’s not enough, the move could set off a trade war by prompting Mexico to raise tariffs on American goods in response. That could cause a downturn in the US economy and a spike in the unemployment employment rate that would undermine the very reason Trump is considering withdrawing from NAFTA.

….The upshot? Trump’s departure from the decades-long bipartisan consensus was politically brilliant….But following through on his promise is going to be difficult. The murky future of NAFTA may be one of the first places where Trump disappoints his followers; it won’t be the last.

Well, we’ll see. Trump almost has to do something, considering how central NAFTA was to his campaign. But in the real world, there’s not much upside. The OECD estimates that NAFTA had essentially no effect on employment, and the International Trade Commission estimates that it had essentially no effect on wages. So withdrawing wouldn’t do any good for all those working-class folks Trump appealed to, but it would cause plenty of upheaval for businesses that are tightly integrated with their Mexican supply chains.1

Of course, NAFTA’s impact hasn’t been the same everywhere. There are a few industries where employment has been negatively affected. So Trump could focus on those and boast about how he’s bringing jobs back to America. Prices of Mexican imports would go up too, but that’s a pretty diffuse effect and most people probably wouldn’t notice it.

So…who knows? As with many other things, I suspect that Trump will get agreement on a few smallish things and then take to his Twitter account to declare that he’s just done more for the American worker than any president ever. At least, I’m kind of hoping that’s what he does. The alternative is almost certainly worse.

1Needless to say, there are lots of estimates of the impact of NAFTA, and some of them suggest large employment effects—like this one from EPI. The general consensus, however, seems to be that it’s had a pretty small impact.

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Trump Talked Big About NAFTA, But Can He Deliver?

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Trump Should Think Twice Before Flying Off the Handle About China

by FrederiBoatman Posted on November 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump—or someone speaking for him, anyway—says that he plans to label China a currency manipulator on “day one” of his presidency. Fair enough. China does intervene in currency markets to manipulate the value of the yuan. Unfortunately, Trump might not like what would happen if China decides to call his bluff:

The simple act of calling out China for manipulating the value of its currency to gain an export advantage shouldn’t roil Beijing to the point of retaliation, said Derek Scissors, a China economy expert at the American Enterprise Institute….But slapping retaliatory tariffs on Chinese goods would be more difficult because it would require congressional approval — a problem given that Republican leaders have been opposed to legislation to punish Chinese currency devaluation with duties, Scissors said.

There’s also the question of whether China is actually devaluing its currency. Most economists agree Beijing intervenes heavily in its currency markets, but in recent years has actually been propping up the value of the renminbi rather than lowering it.

Hmmm. Here is Brad Setser:

The monthly data suggest China has not bought foreign exchange in the market to keep the yuan from appreciating in the past 6 quarters or so, only sold. Its intervention in the market has worked to prevent exchange rate moves that would have the effect of widening China’s current account surplus over time. Every indicator of intervention that I track is telling the same story.

….If China stopped all management (“e.g. manipulation”) and let the yuan float against the dollar, China’s currency would drop. Possibly precipitously. China’s export machine would get a new boost. And rising exports would take pressure off China’s governments to make the difficult reforms needed to create a stronger domestic consumer base.

In other words, right now China’s currency is overvalued. If they weren’t manipulating it, it would most likely have fallen even more than it has—something along the lines of the chart on the right. This would mean Chinese imports get even cheaper, American exports get more expensive, and the trade deficit increases. This is exactly the opposite of what Trump wants.

Demonizing foreigners as the cause of all our problems is apparently a good campaign tactic. Dealing with the real world is a little different. Hopefully Trump will talk to a few actual economists and trade experts before he makes good on this particular promise.

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Trump Should Think Twice Before Flying Off the Handle About China

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Staring at Defeat, Donald Trump Is Sleepless and Vengeful

by BradHeanearesg Posted on November 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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The New York Times has a truly remarkable piece this morning about the final days of the Trump campaign:

Aboard his gold-plated jumbo jet, the Republican nominee does not like to rest or be alone with his thoughts, insisting that aides stay up and keep talking to him. He prefers the soothing, whispery voice of his son-in-law.

….Mr. Trump’s candidacy is a jarring split screen: the choreographed show of calm and confidence orchestrated by his staff, and the neediness and vulnerability of a once-boastful candidate now uncertain of victory.

….Aides to Mr. Trump have finally wrested away the Twitter account that he used to colorfully — and often counterproductively — savage his rivals. But offline, Mr. Trump still privately muses about all of the ways he will punish his enemies after Election Day, including a threat to fund a “super PAC” with vengeance as its core mission.

His polished older daughter, Ivanka, sat for a commercial intended to appeal to suburban women who have recoiled from her father’s incendiary language. But she discouraged the campaign from promoting the ad in news releases, fearing that her high-profile association with the campaign would damage the businesses that bear her name.

How…Nixonian. Yikes.

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Staring at Defeat, Donald Trump Is Sleepless and Vengeful

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While Most Republicans Stampede Away From Trump, One Group Remains Loyal

by ForrestRjh Posted on October 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last Friday, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign announced additions to his Agricultural and Rural Advisory Committee: Two Nebraska farmers joined a group of more than 60 Republican elected officials and agribusiness execs, chaired by Nebraska rancher and multilevel-marketing magnate Charles Herbster.

That same day, after Trump boasted of his taste for committing acts that amount to sexual assault, Republican politicians began to stampede away from their party standard bearer. By Monday afternoon, no fewer than 50 prominent Republicans had withdrawn their support from Trump in response to his toxic remarks, The New York Times reports.

But his ag-policy committee remains nearly completely intact. Of its 60-plus members, only two—South Dakota Gov. Dennis Daugaar and Illinois Rep. Rodney Davis—count among the recent renegades.

So: Two members joined Friday, and two have left since. For a man who divides his time between Manhattan and Palm Beach, Trump enjoys loyal support from certain quarters of the ag world. For more on Trump’s food and farm agenda, see here, here, here, here, and here.

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While Most Republicans Stampede Away From Trump, One Group Remains Loyal

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