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SavvyGuardon High-achieving teacher sues state over evaluation labeling her ‘ineffective’

Reading through the report from the ASA (that doesn't really "slam" the VAM statistic but rightly points out the flaws inherent to any attempt to use statistics in areas with many confounding factors), it appears as if the VAM is usually derived thusly:

1. Calculate a regression model for a student's expected standardized test scores based off of background variables (like previous scores, socioeconomic status etc). This includes having teacher's as variables. 2. Use the coefficient for the teacher as determined by the model to determine the teacher's "Value Added" metric.

The weaknesses in such an approach are also spelled out in the report: namely, missing background variables, lack of precision, and a lack of time to test for the effectiveness of the statistics themselves.

What's interesting is that the teacher in question was rated as "effective" the year before. The question becomes whether that was based off of her VAM score that year as well as what the standard error was on her regression coefficient. Unfortunately, the article doesn't mention any of that.

SavvyGuardon There Is No Maker Movement in China

You've got to be kidding right? Are you really surprised that an English language site that is sometimes blocked in China and lacks a Chinese language interface doesn't have obviously Chinese contributors? Do you expect a conical hat on the profile pics of all the Chinese contributors? How exactly do you expect to see who's Chinese and who's not on a site like Github?

You can easily check out Chinese language code hosting sites, like

https://code.csdn.net/explore/projects?tag_name=python

Of course, I'm pretty sure that's not going to convince you of anything.

SavvyGuardon U.S. Is No. 1, China Is So Yesterday

You are just completely wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-child_policy#Current_status

Rural Han Chinese can have up to 2 children. Minorities can have up to 4 in rural areas. Tibetans are unlimited.

You need to retract your comment. Everything in your last paragraph is false and brings question to everything you've written.

SavvyGuardon App.io Ads – Your game becomes the mobile ad, with try-before-install

I work in an ad tech company on the mobile product, and all of my coworkers are amazed by this. Congrats on actually innovating the mobile advertising space instead of another native ad/geolocation startup.

SavvyGuardon US burns through all high-skill visas for 2015 in less than a week

Why is that a problem? They wouldn't bring in H1Bs unless there was an obvious benefit. Your "problem" just reduces the gap between value produced and compensation.

SavvyGuardon I lost my dad to Fox News: How a generation was captured by thrashing hysteria

What's important is you found a way to be superior to both of them [1]

[1] https://xkcd.com/774/

SavvyGuardon Reddit to Give 10% of Its 2014 Ad Revenue to Non-Profits Picked by Its Users

As a member of the ad tech community, they're known as native ads and are the hottest thing in the business right now.

SavvyGuardon High-Speed Trading Isn't About Efficiency—It's About Cheating

I found a similar question on Quora [1], with an answer by an ex-quant. It seems to boil down to tradition and bureaucratic inefficiencies by the involved parties. So I agree, this makes the whole liquidity argument seem weak.

[1] http://www.quora.com/In-the-24-hour-world-why-do-the-New-Yor...

SavvyGuardon The Only Interview Question That Matters

We need a rule on hacker news. If you submit another "this is how you do interviews" article, it needs to be backed up with testing and facts.

SavvyGuardon China’s Deceptively Weak (and Dangerous) Military

According to the linked wikipedia article in the parent comment

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Indian_War#Events_leading_...

I'm confused what you mean about "blatant abuse of Indian trust." It throws pretty much everything else you say into question.

SavvyGuardon Google’s Reliability Team Sat Down for an AMA Right Before Gmail Exploded

Today's breakdown was a huge warning flag for me. I'm heavily integrated with Google Services, and use Hangouts as my main messenger and SMS app on my Nexus phone. While Gmail was down, I couldn't respond to anyone who was using hangouts to contact me, couldn't share any documents on Google Drive, etc.

I'm going to have to seriously think about the risks of being so heavily reliant on Google services.

SavvyGuardon Google employee shouts down protesters as they block private Google shuttle

http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2013/12/09/protesters-block-goog...

There's a pilot program that's set to start next summer that charges the corporate buses. It's halfway down the article.

SavvyGuardon Letters to my copyright infringers

You should reread the comment you're replying to.

> Most noticeably, what is almost always missing are descriptions of the images, links to where they're located on the site