Hacker News Reader

Richard Nisbett's recent book

http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-How-Get-Schools-Cultures/...

is the subject of an academic study group I'm participating in this semester

http://www.psych.umn.edu/courses/fall09/mcguem/psy8935/defau...

and one of the amazing conclusions from broad literature reviews is that there is STILL remarkably little research on educational outcomes with sound experimental designs.

http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

There may be some rather inexpensive and simple (once discovered) interventions that could do a lot to close group achievement gaps, but today no one is sure at all.

It's actually become an annoyingly common metaphor. A good friend of mine wrote an article about it http://97.74.65.51/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=32726

(he's a hacker too.)

I noticed that too. What if the source is something that can't be shrunk?