shamney

Why is he "flat out wrong" about the testing? African intelligence scores are much lower.

head of quantitative research = spending all your time on pricing models for complex derivatives. it's unlikely he had anything to do with RBS's overall financial strategy

what do the equivalent systems look like in countries with nationalized healthcare systems?

There are well funded recruiting events at all good universities. That doesn't mean it is easy for the average non technical graduate to get a "top" job.

any evidence of systematic academic discrimination? any evidence of equal abilities across all ethnic groups in Germany?

It's easy to exaggerate the importance of institution. If you have a humanities degree from a top British university but little to no work experience and average academic results, you aren't going to walk into competitive jobs.

what are the standard tools for working with databases with f# and websharper?

they provide some support for some potential links between plain packaging and reduced smoking. But, on their own, they don't provide support the introduction of plain packaging causing a decline in smoking rates. This is because there are 1) other potential effects of plain packaging on smoking (for example: lower prices -> greater consumption) and 2) there is no necessary link between surveyed perceptions of plain packs and actual consumption behaviour. My original point still stands: the linked article, with its bold headline and claim of "success" for plain packs in Australia, is irresponsible shitty journalism.

student loans in the UK are provided by the government at relatively low interest rates. There is a minimum earning threshold before repayment can begin and a hard limit on the total proportion of income that can be taken for repayment. So no one is "at the mercy of the banks" and only a small number of people have been discouraged from attending university.

an unimportant distinction as it doesn't change the basic point -- none of those papers can be used to support a casual link between the introduction of plain packs and a decline in smoking.

running doesn't cause cardiovascular problems.

eh?

"Cross-sectional survey during the roll-out phase of the law, analysed by timing of survey."

"How does increasingly plainer cigarette packaging influence adult smokers’ perceptions about brand image?"

they are articles surveying people's opinions about plain packaging. they don't provide direct evidence for plain packaging <<causing>> a decline in smoking rates.

science reporting at its worst. contrary to the claim in the title, there is no evidence that plain packs CAUSED a decline in smoking.

Test preparation does not do much to increase SAT scores:

"For students that have taken the test before and would like to boost their scores, coaching seems to help, but by a rather small amount. After controlling for group differences, the average coaching boost on the math section of the SAT is 14 to 15 points. The boost is smaller on the verbal section of the test, just 6 to 8 points. The combined effect of coaching on the SAT for the NELS sample is about 20 points."

http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/Briggs_Theeffectofadmissionst...

excel 2007 vba programmers reference

How did you decide on the vocabulary list and where did you get the example sentences?

the strange thing about this is that economics is a very academic subject with little practical application

this argument supports reaching out to everyone who might have experienced educational and social disadvantages not just potential black applicants.

You misspell the name of the gene and don't seem to understand p values, so I'm not sure anyone should take this criticism of that paper seriously.

aside from the example in the original article, what sort of questions are these tool used to answer?

http://caracaschronicles.com/ is another interesting venezuelan blog, which also has the advantage of NOT being the english language mouthpiece of the venezuelan state.