The Most Dangerous Equation [pdf]

I found this interesting:

>The article describes the conversion of Mountlake Terrace High School

> in Seattle from a large suburban school with an enrollment of 1,800

> students into five smaller schools.

> The conversion was greased with a Gates Foundation grant of almost a

> million dollars. Although class sizes remained the same, each of the

> five schools had fewer teachers.

This is really funny as there is no really sensibly put hypothesis that why the smaller schools should fare better.

So they looked at data and thought that they see that smaller schools do better but forgot to ask "why?".

Now having hypothesis that smaller classes make results better as teachers would have more time to deal with each child makes much more sense.

And this could be then tested.

Case in point: Of the ten most dangerous cities in California, seven are small towns such as Nevada City (pop. ~3,000). The other three are Emeryville, Stockton, and Oakland.

http://www.telegraphtoday.com/10-most-dangerous-cities-in-ca...

De Moivre must be spinning in his grave.