If a person can’t do third grade math, they shouldn’t be admitted to college. Or high school, for that matter.
https://twitter.com/DanielAlmanPGH/status/1767670415436939386
https://apnews.com/article/college-math-test-help-6cca6a5e873d5aeb5e75b4f94125d48c
August 31, 2023
“This is a huge issue,” said Maria Emelianenko, chair of George Mason’s math department. “We’re talking about college-level pre-calculus and calculus classes, and students cannot even add one-half and one-third.”
For Jessica Babcock, a Temple University math professor, the magnitude of the problem hit home last year as she graded quizzes in her intermediate algebra class, the lowest option for STEM majors. The quiz, a softball at the start of the fall semester, asked students to subtract eight from negative six.
“I graded a whole bunch of papers in a row. No two papers had the same answer, and none of them were correct,” she said. “It was a striking moment of, like, wow — this is significant and deep.”
Abbott and Costello comedy skit: “13 times 7 is 28” – Real life students at Kennesaw State University: “15 times 4 is 48”
Abbott and Costello comedy skit: “13 times 7 is 28”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HQPQkP5y_8
Real life students at Kennesaw State University: “15 times 4 is 48”
I asked ChatGPT: “If every female Boebert became a parent at age 18, and had a total of four children by age 36, and half of those children were female, how many years would it take for the Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe?”
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
October 10, 2023
I asked ChatGPT:
“If every female Boebert became a parent at age 18, and had a total of four children by age 36, and half of those children were female, how many years would it take for the Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe?”
This is how it answered:
In this scenario, every female Boebert becomes a parent at age 18, has a total of four children by age 36, and half of those children are female. This means each female Boebert has two female children. To calculate how many years it would take for the Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe, we can use a similar method as in previous responses:
Start with one female Boebert.
At age 18, she has four children, half of whom (two) are female and will become parents as well.
These two female children follow the same pattern as their parent and each has four children, two of whom are female.
This process continues with each generation.
The number of female Boeberts in each generation follows a geometric progression with a common ratio of 2 (each female has 2 female children who will become parents). The total number of female Boeberts in the Nth generation is given by:
Total Female Boeberts = 1 * 2^(N-1)
We want to find the smallest N for which the total number of female Boeberts exceeds the mass of the observable universe, which we previously estimated at about 3 x 10^55 grams.
1 * 2^(N-1) > 3 x 10^55
Now, solve for N:
2^(N-1) > 3 x 10^55
N-1 > log base 2 of (3 x 10^55)
N > log base 2 of (3 x 10^55) + 1
Now, calculate N:
N > (log(3 x 10^55) / log(2)) + 1
N > (log(3) + log(10^55) / log(2)) + 1
N > (log(3) + 55 * log(10) / log(2)) + 1
N > (0.477 + 55 / 0.301 + 1)
N > (0.477 + 182.724 + 1)
N > 184.201
So, it would take approximately 185 generations of female Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe. Now, we need to estimate the total time based on an average generation time.
If we assume an average generation time of around 25 years, then:
Total time = 185 generations * 25 years/generation ≈ 4,625 years
It would take roughly 4,625 years for the Boeberts to exceed the mass of the observable universe under these hypothetical conditions. Please keep in mind that this is a highly theoretical scenario and doesn’t account for real-world limitations or constraints.
CNN Video: “She borrowed $34,000 in student loans. Now she owes over $500,000. As federal student loan payments restart in October, CNN spoke to a lawyer, a doctor, and a scientist about their debt, and how it’s impacted their lives.”
Source: https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2023/10/02/student-loan-debt-repayment-stories-contd-no-orig.cnn
Here’s an idea: It should be illegal to lend money to people who don’t understand the concept of compound interest.
These people are actually bragging about their own stupidity. And yet, they are a lawyer, doctor, and scientist? I don’t understand how anyone so smart could be that dumb.
On July 3, 2022, YouTuber Stipple used math to predict that YouTuber Nikocado Avocado would die on November 20, 2025
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O02sGv21ViY
Kjerstin Laine has been making tiny monthly payments on her student loan, and she doesn’t understand why her balance has been getting bigger instead of smaller. People who are this dumb should not be allowed to borrow money. Oh, and try drinking some water.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
October 31, 2022
Kjerstin Laine is yet another example of how it’s too easy to get admitted to college. Since she finished graduate school with $98,000 in debt, she’s only been paying $300 a month toward her debt. And she doesn’t understand why her balance has been going up instead of down.
It should be illegal for people this stupid to borrow money.
Also, she needs to learn to drink some water.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/meet-30-old-110-000-123000305.html
Meet a 30-year-old with $110,000 in student debt who chose her job in hopes of public-service loan forgiveness — but her balance just keeps growing
By Juliana Kaplan
October 30, 2022
Kjerstin Laine. Courtesy of Kjerstin Laine
Like millions of student-loan borrowers, Kjerstin Laine is in loan-relief limbo.
For Laine, a 30-year-old who has over $110,000 in student debt, the $20,000 in forgiveness she’s set to get from President Joe Biden’s plan is just a drop in the bucket. As a first-generation college student whose debt has shaped the trajectory of her career, she fears her balance will balloon even more after pandemic-era payment pauses end and interest starts accruing again.
“I never miss a payment, always on time, and yet my balances never go down,” Laine told Insider. “I don’t understand how people can’t see that there is something wrong with that picture.”
Despite working through college and taking measures to cut down on the cost, Laine completed her degree in 2014 with a grand total of $98,000 in debt from her undergraduate and graduate studies. In the eight years since, accruing interest has brought her balance to today’s amount, despite her consistent repayment.
Laine chose her job in communications for an education-advocacy nonprofit because it was a good fit for her skills — and because it could set her up for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which forgives student debt for government and nonprofit workers after 10 years of qualifying payments.
But that program has historically been riddled with flaws, and she recently paused that strategy to take a marketing-agency job with a salary that brings her much closer to the $90,000 the federal government estimated she needed to make a year to afford to pay back her debt. She’s also paying off medical debt.
“I also had to leave the nonprofit sector to get anywhere near that, obviously,” she said. “So it’s like that Catch-22.”
Laine is one of many millions of US borrowers stuck in an untenable situation. She’s grateful for the relief she’s set to get — though the legality of Biden’s forgiveness is still under scrutiny — but she’s not sure she’ll be able to afford monthly payments when they restart in January.
Her situation points to the larger structural issues underpinning the student debt crisis, where first-generation and lower-income students take on huge debt burdens to get ahead and up their earnings but still find themselves buried under ever-growing balances. Many, like Laine, have shaped their lives around the hope of assistance — now that it’s here in some form, it may not be enough.
“The hardest thing is that I trusted in this system that I was told from a very young age was going to be my path to prosperity or a decent — not anything exorbitant — but a decent middle-class life where I could give back to the community that helped raise me and supported me through education programs, meal programs, things like that,” Laine said. “And it feels like that’s a big broken promise now.”
Interest on student loans can balloon, meaning balances don’t go down — and could go up
As a college student in California, Laine worked at several jobs in places like restaurants and grocery stores. She took classes at her local community college and at her university in the summer and winter to try and reduce her expenses. She graduated in 2012, a semester early to cut down on costs, racking up nearly $18,000 in debt total for her undergraduate degree in journalism.
She went on to a “dream school” for a master’s in journalism, still working part time and leaving with an additional $80,000 in debt in 2014. At the end of her time in school, she was hospitalized for dehydration after she said she ran herself ragged.
Despite consistent payments, the years since graduation have seen Laine’s debt grow. It comes down to the issue of interest capitalization, which is when accrued interest tacks on to a borrower’s principal balance and can lead to debt loads being much larger than what was initially borrowed.
Biden’s administration has taken steps to prevent interest capitalization. In July, it released a proposal to end the practice in every instance that isn’t required under the Higher Education Act, like forbearance periods, but those changes won’t be implemented until next year. And borrowers are still struggling to stay on top of their payments.
For borrowers like Laine, within a few years, interest could cancel out any of Biden’s relief she received.
“I was paying $300 until the pandemic hit. I was paying $300 a month, I think, for three to four years, and my balances never went down,” she said. “They always went up.”
Public servants like Laine can get their debts forgiven — but many can’t even get in touch with their loan servicer
While Laine is a big proponent of public-service loan forgiveness, she said it “has been plagued by its own issues.”
The company that manages the entire Public Service Loan Forgiveness portfolio — MOHELA — isn’t making matters any easier. After a number of loan companies ended their federal contracts last year, all borrowers enrolled in PSLF were transferred over to MOHELA, and the process hasn’t been seamless.
Insider previously spoke with two borrowers who wanted to get simple questions on their PSLF payments answered but ended up spending hours on the phone and never even got connected to a representative who could answer their questions.
“I’m really concerned about MOHELA as a servicer in total,” Laine said.
While MOHELA never commented on the hours-long hold times, Scott Buchanan, the executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance — a group that represents federal loan servicers — previously told Insider that the Education Department decided how many resources it gave loan companies, which affects how many customer-support staff they can hire.
But with the PSLF waiver expiring on Monday, which allows past payments, including those previously deemed ineligible, to count toward forgiveness progress, borrowers are in a time crunch to access the expanded relief. The department recently introduced permanent PSLF fixes for after the waiver’s expiration, but that doesn’t eliminate confusion some borrowers may be experiencing with their payment history.
“I’d love nothing more than to be able to dedicate my entire career to serving this sector,” Laine said. “All of my career choices are kind of centered around this debt, and that’s a really tough, not fun place to be in.”
These UCLA students don’t know what the capital of the United States is. This is proof that getting into college is way too easy. No wonder why so many college students think that borrowing money doesn’t entail paying it back.
This new video from James Klug is called, “BRUTAL: Gen Z Fails To Answer The EASIEST Questions.”
He asks adults the following questions. They don’t know the answers:
What’s the capital of the United States?
How many stars are on the United States flag?
What ocean is on the east side of the United States?
What country is the Queen of England from?
What was Adolf Hitler’s first name?
What is two times two times one?
Who was the first President of the United States?
They don’t know the answers.
This is proof that getting into college is way too easy.
No wonder why so many college students think that borrowing money doesn’t entail paying it back.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsDVwYqs0ws
This person is “so confused” by the concept of compound interest
‘I’m so confused.’ I’m a school nurse who took out about $30K in student loans — but over the years they have ballooned up to $96K. How could this even happen and what can I do about it?
March 9, 2022
Question: I’d like to obtain advice on tackling student loan debt. I do not have private loans, and I owe approximately $96,000. I’m so confused because initially my loans were less than $30,000, but I think the rest of it comes from interest. I’m not sure what I am looking at with my loans. My loans have been in forbearance, and I want to investigate loan forgiveness options. I am a school nurse and support my family, so my income is limited. Can you provide direction? It would be greatly appreciated.
Ontario Schools Will No Longer Require [math] Teachers to Pass Math Proficiency Test Due to ‘Racial Disparities’ [People who don’t know math will be allowed to become math teachers, because requiring math teachers to know math is “racist”]
Ontario Schools Will No Longer Require Teachers to Pass Math Proficiency Test Due to ‘Racial Disparities’
By Cassandra Fairbanks
December 22, 2021
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice has deemed math proficiency tests for teachers “unconstitutional” due to “racial disparities.”
The court ruled that because non-white teachers are less likely to pass the math test, it should no longer be required.
As one social media commentator aptly pointed out, Ontario teachers no longer need to pass basic math in order to teach basic math.
https://twitter.com/EsotericCD/status/1472031435393585157
The Daily Caller reports that “schools in Ontario had previously offered candidates the opportunity to retake the test multiple times, but the court ruled that ‘racialized teacher candidates who have been disproportionately unsuccessful on the MPT should not have to keep retaking the test.’”
Obviously, as was pointed out in court, students learn more from teachers who understand the subject that they are teaching. However, the court ruled that it was more important to have diversity in the classroom.
“Racialized students benefit from being taught by racialized teachers,” the court decision stated. “The deleterious effects of the MPT on racialized teacher candidates who have been unsuccessful in the test outweighs its benefits.”
According to the Ottawa Citizen, “the test has 50 mathematics content questions and 21 questions about math pedagogy. The applicant has to score 70 per cent on both parts to pass.”
“Racialized teacher candidates have gone through an education system in which they have suffered discrimination and disadvantage,” the decision said. “The candidates are then required to take ‘high stakes’ standardized tests which the available data shows they are more likely to fail.”
CORRECTION: Fact check: Deviation from Benford’s Law does not prove election fraud
Link to my original post: https://danfromsquirrelhill.wordpress.com/2020/11/07/joe-bidens-votes-violate-benfords-law-mathematics/
And here’s the correction, which I have also added to my original post:
Fact check: Deviation from Benford’s Law does not prove election fraud
By Reuters Staff
Social media users have been sharing posts that say a mathematical rule called Benford’s Law provides clear proof of fraud in the U.S. presidential election. However, research papers and academics consulted by Reuters consistently say that deviation from Benford’s Law does not prove election fraud took place.
Benford’s law says that in many naturally occurring sets of numbers, the first digits of these numbers (eg. the ‘1’ in ‘15’) are not evenly distributed. Measurements with a lower first digit occur more frequently: 1 is the first digit in a number about 30 percent of the time while 9 begins less than 5 percent of numbers. In certain data sets ranging from rainfall amounts to town populations, the numbers follow a Benford’s Law distribution. Deviation of data from Benford’s law has been examined in areas such as finance to detect if something is not right, for example fraud, mistakes or misstatements (here , here) .
The posts, such as those here and here , show graphs that compare candidate’s vote tallies by leading digit to the expected distribution according to Benford’s law in order to contend that Biden’s vote tallies do not follow Benford’s Law but Trump’s do. Posts state that Benford’s law is a test that has been used before to detect fraud (here) . Captions on the posts include, “Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law”; “It’s easy to win if you cheat”; “Statistically impossible odds […] now MATH doesn’t even agree with their faux victory.”
Reuters sought comment from experts regarding these claims.
Theodore P. Hill, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, cautioned that regardless of the distribution uncovered, the application of Benford’s Law would not provide definitive evidence that fraud took place.
“First, I’d like to stress that Benford’s Law can NOT be used to “prove fraud”,” he told Reuters by email. “It is only a Red Flag test, that can raise doubts. E.g., the IRS has been using it for decades to ferret out fraudsters, but only by identifying suspicious entries, at which time they put the auditors to work on the hard evidence. Whether or not a dataset follows BL proves nothing.”
Walter Mebane, Professor at the Department of Political Science and Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan (here) authored a December 2006 article (here) around the application of Benford’s Law to the US presidential election results. The article suggested some limitations of the process, but said in the Abstract: “The test is worth taking seriously as a statistical test for election fraud.”
Nevertheless, Mebane’s article also said, in the Discussion: “In any case, the 2BL test on its own should not be considered proof either that election fraud has occurred or that an election was clean. A significant 2BL test result can be caused by complications other than fraud. Some kinds of fraud the 2BL test cannot detect.”
On Nov. 9, 2020, in response to “several queries” Mebane published a paper called “Inappropriate Applications of Benford’s Law Regularities to Some Data from the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States” (here). His paper says, “The displays shown at those sources using the first digits of precinct vote counts data from Fulton County, GA, Allegheny County, PA, Milwaukee, WI, and Chicago, IL, say nothing about possible frauds” before examining the reasons behind this statement.
“It is widely understood that the first digits of precinct vote counts are not useful for trying to diagnose election frauds,” he writes.
Elsewhere, a study called “Benford’s Law and the Detection of Election Fraud”, published in 2011 by Joseph Deckert, Mikhail Myagkov, Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon (here) and Peter Ordeshook, Professor of Political Science at Caltech (here), found that Benford’s Law was “problematical at best” when applied to elections: “We find that conformity with and deviations from Benford’s Law follow no pattern. […] Its “success rate” either way is essentially equivalent to a toss of a coin, thereby rendering it problematical at best as a forensic tool and wholly misleading at worst.” (here)
Dr Jen Golbeck, Professor of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland (www.cs.umd.edu/~golbeck/), said in a thread on Twitter (here) that the claims in the social media posts are false, citing the above article. She told Reuters, “There is just not solid evidence that Benford works in elections at all. The results are profoundly mixed. Which means it’s not evidence of anything.”
Golbeck points out that the numbers on some graphs being cited by social media users are not even labelled, whilst the law “works on very specific types of numbers”. She added that none of the research that analyzes the Benford Law is as simplistic as the analysis people are posting: instead, research uses “quite advanced statistical techniques”, often looking at the second digits which have their own expected distribution.
The specific case of the Milwaukee results was also examined by Professor Boud Roukema of Poland’s Nicolaus Copernicus University. Roukema considered the application of Benford’s Law to the 2009 Iranian elections (arxiv.org/abs/0906.2789) . He told Reuters by email: “A major flaw in applying Benford’s law to the Milwaukee results is that the logarithmic distribution – how many “powers of tens” there are – in the numbers of votes per ward in Milwaukee is very narrow. In other words, half of all the wards have total votes from about 570 to 1200, and the logarithmic average (mean) is about 800.
“Biden overall got about 70% of the votes in Milwaukee. So the most likely vote for Biden (in the simplest model, assuming no falsification) in a typical Milwaukee ward is something like 0.7 times 800, which is 560 votes. We expect about half the Biden votes to lie between about 400 and 850 in typical Milwaukee wards.
“So the most popular first digit of the votes for Biden should be 5 – the first digit of 560 – and 4s and 6s and 7s should also be reasonably frequent.
“This is just what we see in the blue vertical bars in top left figure in the diagram at (here). So Benford’s law reasoning, applied to the real data, shows no reason to suspect fraud here.”
The academic and digital research coalition Election Integrity Partnership also cautioned against the conclusion that deviation from Benford’s Law is evidence of election fraud (here). It pointed out that for the law to hold, all numbers must be equally likely to appear and the numbers must span multiple orders of magnitude (eg. Range from 100 to 10,000,000). They say that one of these conditions is not met in the election: “For vote tallies, all numbers are equally likely, but not all states meet the second assumption. In the state of Nevada, Esmeralda County has around 900 people while Clark County has over 2,250,000 people. In the state of Vermont, the bounds are much narrower.”
VERDICT
False. The degree to which Benford’s Law can be used as an indicator of electoral fraud has been debated by academics, but the application of the rule to the leading digit of local vote tallies is problematic and apparent deviation from the law cannot be used alone to prove electoral fraud, experts say.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.
California Leftists Try to Cancel Math Class
California Leftists Try to Cancel Math Class
The proposed curriculum framework aims low, abandons the gifted, and preaches ‘social justice.’
By Williamson M. Evers
May 18, 2021
Oakland, Calif.
If California education officials have their way, generations of students may not know how to calculate an apartment’s square footage or the area of a farm field, but the “mathematics” of political agitation and organizing will be second nature to them. Encouraging those gifted in math to shine will be a distant memory.
This will be the result if a proposed mathematics curriculum framework, which would guide K-12 instruction in the Golden State’s public schools, is approved by California’s Instructional Quality Commission in meetings this week and in August and ratified by the state board of education later this year.
The framework recommends eight times that teachers use a troubling document, “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction.” This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy. It sets forth indicators of “white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,” including a focus on “getting the right answer,” teaching math in a “linear fashion,” requiring students to “show their work” and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. “The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,” the manual explains. “Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates ‘objectivity.’ ” Apparently, that’s also racist.
The framework itself rejects preparing students to take Algebra I in eighth grade, a goal reformers have sought since the 1990s. Students in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan master introductory algebra in eighth grade or even earlier.
At one time, California took the goal seriously and made immense progress. California Department of Education data show that while only 16% of students took algebra by eighth grade in 1999, by 2013, 67%—four times as many—were doing so. Success rates, meaning the percentage of students scoring “proficient” or above, kept rising even as enrollment increased dramatically.
The biggest beneficiaries were ethnic minority and low-income students. While student success tripled overall, African-American students’ success rate jumped by a factor of five, and Latinos’ and low-income students’ by a factor of six.
Many highly selective colleges expect students to take calculus in high school. To get to calculus by senior year, students have to proceed on a pathway of advanced courses. The framework condemns this as a “rush to calculus” and indicates that California schools won’t provide such a pathway. California high-school grads may be put at a disadvantage in applying to top colleges.
The framework explicitly rejects “ideas of natural gifts and talents.” That some are gifted in math implies some others aren’t, and this is “inequitable.” The framework’s authors also fear that those designated “gifted” may have their fragile egos hurt if they later lose that designation. So it writes an obituary for gifted-and-talented programs, which would hobble the rise of many talented children in California.
The framework rejects ability grouping, also called tracking, even though studies show that students do better when grouped with others who are progressing in their studies at the same pace. We have known for years, including from a 2009 Fordham Institute study of Massachusetts middle schools, that schools with more tracks have significantly more math students at advanced levels and fewer failing students.
The proposal’s agenda becomes clear when it says math should be taught so it can be used for “social justice.” It extols a fictional teacher who uses class to develop her students’ “sociopolitical consciousness.” Math, it says, is a tool to “change the world.” Teachers are supposed to adopt a “culturally relevant pedagogy,” which includes “the ability to identify, analyze and solve real-world problems, especially those that result in societal inequalities.”
Under this pedagogy, “students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order.” Don’t think that kindergarten is too early for such indoctrination: “Teachers can take a justice-oriented perspective at any grade level, K-12,” the curriculum revisionists write. Students could be taught fractions in the distracting process of learning the math of organizing a protest march.
This program is quite a comedown for math, from an objective academic discipline to a tool for political activism. Society will be harmed: With fewer people who know math well, how are we going to build bridges, launch rockets or advance technologically? Students will pay the heaviest price—and not only in California. As we’ve seen before, what starts in California doesn’t stop here.
My advice to California’s Instructional Quality Commission, when it meets on Wednesday and Thursday to evaluate public comments on the curriculum framework, is to scrap the document and return to the 1997 math content standards and associated framework. Written largely by professors in Stanford’s math department, it resulted in the aforementioned stupendous statewide gains in algebra attainment. Teach math, not propaganda.
In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Who Are Gifted at Math
https://reason.com/2021/05/04/california-math-framework-woke-equity-calculus/
In the Name of Equity, California Will Discourage Students Who Are Gifted at Math
The new framework aims to keep everyone learning at the same level for as long as possible.
By Robby Soave
May 4, 2021
California’s Department of Education is working on a new framework for K-12 mathematics that discourages gifted students from enrolling in accelerated classes that study advanced concepts like calculus.
The draft of the framework is hundreds of pages long and covers a wide range of topics. But its overriding concern is inequity. The department is worried that too many students are sorted into different math tracks based on their natural abilities, which leads some to take calculus by their senior year of high school while others don’t make it past basic algebra. The department’s solution is to prohibit any sorting until high school, keeping gifted kids in the same classrooms as their less mathematically inclined peers until at least grade nine.
“The inequity of mathematics tracking in California can be undone through a coordinated approach in grades 6–12,” reads a January 2021 draft of the framework. “In summary, middle-school students are best served in heterogeneous classes.”
In fact, the framework concludes that calculus is overvalued, even for gifted students.
“The push to calculus in grade twelve is itself misguided,” says the framework.
As evidence for this claim, the framework cites the fact that many students who take calculus end up having to retake it in college anyway. Of course, de-prioritizing instruction in high school calculus would not really solve this problem—and in fact would likely make it worse—but the department does not seem overly worried. The framework’s overriding perspective is that teaching the tough stuff is college’s problem: The K-12 system should concern itself with making every kid fall in love with math.
Broadly speaking, this entails making math as easy and un-math-like as possible. Math is really about language and culture and social justice, and no one is naturally better at it than anyone else, according to the framework.
“All students deserve powerful mathematics; we reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” reads a bulletpoint in chapter one of the framework. “The belief that ‘I treat everyone the same’ is insufficient: Active efforts in mathematics teaching are required in order to counter the cultural forces that have led to and continue to perpetuate current inequities.”
The entire second chapter of the framework is about connecting math to social justice concepts like bias and racism: “Teachers can support discussions that center mathematical reasoning rather than issues of status and bias by intentionally defining what it means to do and learn mathematics together in ways that include and highlight the languages, identities, and practices of historically marginalized communities.” Teachers should also think creatively about what math even entails: “To encourage truly equitable and engaging mathematics classrooms we need to broaden perceptions of mathematics beyond methods and answers so that students come to view mathematics as a connected, multi-dimensional subject that is about sense making and reasoning, to which they can contribute and belong.”
This approach is very bad. Contrary to what this guidance seems to suggest, math is not the end-all and be-all—and it’s certainly not something that all kids are equally capable of learning and enjoying. Some young people clearly excel at math, even at very early ages. Many schools offer advanced mathematics to a select group of students well before the high school level so that they can take calculus by their junior or senior year. It’s done this way for a reason: The students who like math (usually a minority) should have the opportunity to move on as rapidly as possible.
For everyone else… well, advanced math just isn’t that important. It would be preferable for schools to offer students more choices, and offer them as early as possible. Teens who are eager readers should be able to study literature instead of math; young people who aren’t particularly adept at any academic discipline might pick up art, music, computers, or even trade skills. (Coding doesn’t need to be mandatory, but it could be an option.)
The essence of good schooling is choice. Individual kids benefit from a wide range of possible educational options. Permitting them to diversify, specialize, and chart their own paths—with helpful input from the adults in their lives—is the course of action that recognizes vast differences in interest and ability. Holding back kids who are gifted at math isn’t equitable: On the contrary, it’s extremely unfair to everyone.
Yet the framework seems to reject the notion that some kids are more gifted than others. “An important goal of this framework is to replace ideas of innate mathematics ‘talent’ and ‘giftedness’ with the recognition that every student is on a growth pathway,” it states. “There is no cutoff determining when one child is ‘gifted’ and another is not.” But cutoffs are exactly what testing and grading systems produce, and it’s absurdly naive to think there’s nothing innate about such outcomes, given that intelligence is at least partly an inherited trait.
If California adopts this framework, which is currently under public review, the state will end up sabotaging its brightest students. The government should let kids opt out of math if it’s not for them. Don’t let the false idea that there’s no such thing as a gifted student herald the end of advanced math entirely.
Equity = getting rid of advanced math classes
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
April 23, 2021
In the name of what progressives refer to as “equity,” Virginia is planning to eliminate all accelerated math courses before 11th grade.
On a personal level, as a person who always took the highest level math classes that were available during my entire schooling, and who always scored in the 99th percentile on standardized math tests, I think this is a horrible idea.
On a practical level, as a person who wants bridges that don’t fall down, I think this is a horrible idea.
And on an intellectual level, as a person who knows that Kurt Vonnegut’s “Harrison Bergeron” was written as a warning, and not an instruction manual, I think this is a horrible idea.
“Harrison Bergeron” was a fictional story that takes place in the future, where the government tries to make everyone equal. So the best ballet dancers were forced to wear weights on their arms and legs so they couldn’t dance better than anyone else. The best looking people were forced to wear masks on their faces. And the smartest people (like those who were the best at math) were forced to wear a noisemaking device inside their ears so they couldn’t concentrate on anything for more than 20 seconds at a time.
Virginia moving to eliminate all accelerated math courses before 11th grade as part of equity-focused plan
https://www.foxnews.com/us/virginia-accelerated-math-courses-equity
Virginia moving to eliminate all accelerated math courses before 11th grade as part of equity-focused plan
State says framework includes ‘differentiated instruction’ catered to the needs of the child
By Sam Dorman
April 22, 2021
The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is moving to eliminate all accelerated math options prior to 11th grade, effectively keeping higher-achieving students from advancing as they usually would in the school system.
Loudoun County school board member Ian Serotkin posted about the change via Facebook on Tuesday. According to Serotkin, he learned of the change the night prior during a briefing from staff on the Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative (VMPI).
“[A]s currently planned, this initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade,” he said. “That is not an exaggeration, nor does there appear to be any discretion in how local districts implement this. All 6th graders will take Foundational Concepts 6. All 7th graders will take Foundational Concepts 7. All 10th graders will take Essential Concepts 10. Only in 11th and 12th grade is there any opportunity for choice in higher math courses.”
His post included a chart with what appeared to be set math courses for 2022-2030.
VDOE spokesperson Charles Pyle indicated to Fox News that the courses would allow for at least some variation depending on students’ skill level. “Differentiated instruction means providing instruction that is catered to the learning needs of each child (appropriate levels of challenge and academic rigor),” Pyle said.
On VDOE’s website, the state features an infographic that indicates VMPI would require “concepts” courses for each grade level. It states various goals like “[i]mprove equity in mathematics learning opportunities,” “[e]mpower students to be active participants in a quantitative world,” and “[i]dentify K-12 mathematics pathways that support future success.”
During a webinar posted on YouTube in December, a member of the “essential concepts” committee claimed that the new framework would exclude traditional classes like Algebra 1 and Geometry.
Committee member Ian Shenk, who focused on grades 8-10, said: “Let me be totally clear, we are talking about taking Algebra 1, Geometry, Algebra 2 – those three courses that we’ve known and loved … and removing them from our high school mathematics program, replacing them with essential concepts for grade eight, nine, and 10.”
He added that the concepts courses wouldn’t eliminate algebraic ideas but rather interweave multiple strands of mathematics throughout the courses. Those included data analysis, mathematical modeling, functions and algebra, spatial reasoning and probability.
The changes were just the latest of many to prompt concern from parents in the state, which has seen in-fighting over controversial ideas surrounding equity and race.
A Loudoun parent who spoke on the condition of anonymity worried that the changes would “lower standards for all students in the name of equity.”
“These changes will have a profound impact on students who excel in STEM related curriculum, weakening our country’s ability to compete in a global marketplace for years to come,” the parent told Fox News on Thursday.
Ian Prior, a Loudoun parent and former Trump administration official, similarly panned the move as a way to “stifle advancement for gifted students and set them back as they prepare for advanced mathematics in college. This is critical race theory in action and parents should be outraged.”
Pyle didn’t provide an immediate answer to concerns that the new model would hold kids back. It’s unclear how exactly the differentiation would occur. When asked for more details, Pyle said, “Differentiated instruction is designed to provide the appropriate levels of challenge and academic rigor for each student.”
The changes come as the state also considered eliminating advanced high school diplomas in an attempt to improve equity.
In a lengthy statement to Fox News, Pyle touted the changes as an avenue to “deeper learning.”
“For many years, parents and the system have valued and rewarded speed via acceleration and ‘covering content’ rather than depth of understanding. The Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative shifts to a focus on and value for deeper learning through differentiated instruction on grade level that will promote student development of critical thinking, authentic application and problem solving skills,” Pyle said.
Pyle added that VMPI “aims to support increased differentiated learning opportunities within a heterogeneous learning environment, that will promote greater access to advanced mathematical learning for all students before high school graduation.
“Shifting to deeper learning through differentiated instruction, implementation of VMPI will promote student development of critical thinking, authentic application and problem solving skills.
“Offering an inclusive learning environment that engages and challenges students of varied levels of understanding and different interests will be a focus of the common mathematics pathways proposed in grades K-10 … These pathways seek to restructure mathematics education by focusing instruction on reasoning, real world problem solving, communication and connections while shifting away from an emphasis on computation and routine problem practice.”
Later in the statement, he adds: “VMPI implementation teams continue to work on addressing these considerations while moving forward to improve equity in mathematics opportunities for all students. VMPI Community meetings being offered this spring are intended to provide initial information regarding the initiative, but also be a venue in which feedback can be collected.”
It’s unclear how these changes would affect each school district, but VDOE said it’s currently gathering feedback regarding public concerns.
“The VMPI implementation team (VDOE, college and university staff, and school division staff) is currently working to seek feedback to help ensure local implementation practices address concerns like the shift from acceleration to deeper learning,” said Pyle.
I think the COVID-19 lockdown is killing more people than it is saving. Here are my many reasons for thinking such a thing. Updated for March 26, 2021.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 26, 2021
I think the COVIOD-19 lockdown is killing more people than it is saving.
I’m going to start out by posting the CDC’s estimated survival rates, by age, for people who contract COVID-19:
Expecting math students to get the right answer is now considered to be a form of “white supremacy”
From page 6 of this PDF:
Original: https://equitablemath.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11/1_STRIDE1.pdf
Deconstructing Racism in Mathematics Instruction
White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions. Coupled with the beliefs that underlie these actions, they perpetuate educational harm on Black, Latinx, and multilingual students, denying them full access to the world of mathematics.The table below identifies the ways in which white supremacy shows up in math classrooms.
Dismantling white supremacy in math classrooms
We see white supremacy culture show up in the mathematics classroom even as we carry out our professional responsibilities outlined in the California Standards for the Teaching Profession (CSTP). Using CSTPas a framework, we see white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom can show up when:
• The focus is on getting the “right” answer.
• Independent practice is valued over teamwork or collaboration.
• “Real-world math” is valued over math in the real world.
• Students are tracked (into courses/pathways and within the classroom).
• Participation structures reinforce dominant ways of being.
A study of more than 3,000 U.S. counties shows that, all else being equal, counties that used Dominion voting machines gave Biden an extra 5.6% of the vote, compared to counties that did not use Dominion machines. Since all other factors were taken into account, this is almost certain proof that Democrats cheated.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
December 24, 2020
A study looked at the 2020 election results in more than 3,000 U.S. counties, and compared them to the predicted results based on past elections.
In the counties that did not use Dominion voting machines, the average vote percentages for Joe Biden in 2020 were exactly what was predicted. Some were higher, and some were lower, but it all averaged out to being exactly what was predicted.
But in the counties that used Dominion machines, the average results in 2020 gave Joe Biden an extra 5.6% of the votes, compared to what was predicted.
All other factors were taken into account.
Given the large sample size, this is extremely unlikely to happen if these vote counts were honest.
This is almost certain proof of cheating.
No one has debunked this study.
The mainstream media has completely ignored it, and continues to insist that there is “no evidence” of voter fraud.
Here’s an article about it, which includes several very interesting charts and graphs. After that are some videos on it.
Fraud with Dominion machines would look exactly like they do… here’s the data, graphs, Biden will not get away with this.
December 18, 2020
An unbiased by-county analysis of over 3000 U.S. counties shows Joe Biden received 5.6 % more votes in counties using Dominion Voting Systems. “If a network system of computers was used to fraudulently affect vote counts…the results would look exactly like this.”
This Dominion advantage was observed regardless of the county’s majority political party affiliation nor urban, suburban, or rural-area demographics. Biden over-performed our estimates in “democratic strongholds” – by the same amount he over-performed in “Trump” counties.
The analysis is not directed at a single or handful of counties. Instead, this information uses data from all counties in the United States to see if there is a discernable widespread pattern involving type of voting machine and vote totals.
In the first graph, we see Biden’s actual 2020 election results. The blue line is our center “prediction” line. Half the counties should be above the blue line & half below. This is confirmed true with Biden over-performing in 45% of counties & underperforming in 55%.
We obtained data from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission showing the voting machines used by each county. Compare this graph with the same data, except this time limited to counties using Dominion. This time the majority of counties (78%) are ABOVE the prediction line.
The county data filtered by voting machines shows us that candidate Biden over performed by approximately 5% on Dominion machines AND also by approximately 6% on Hart machines.
In the Dominion/Hart machine counties, Biden performs above expectations 78% of the time. This is highly indicative (and 99.9% statistically significant) that result manipulation could be occurring with Dominion & Hart machines.
In this graph, we see green dots represent votes from counties using Dominion/Hart machines. The green dots should overlay the blue dots in a similar, mixed up/random fashion. We do not see this. Instead, we see the green dots centered higher than the center of the blue dots.
To aid in this graphical analysis we added center lines for the Dominion/Hart counties and the “other machine” counties. The green centerline stays above the blue centerline – clearly indicating Biden continuously “outperforming” in Dominion/Hart counties.
The increases in votes occurred in hundreds of Dominion/Hart counties across the U.S. Again, it is important to understand, Biden “over-performed” in “democratic strongholds” – by the same amount he over-performed in “Trump” counties as long as these machines were used.
This indicates that some or all of the Dominion/Hart machines may have been programmed or manipulated to systematically add five plus percentage points to Biden’s actual vote count. Again, the statistical significance level of these results is above 99.9%.
Video: 2020 Election shows Joe Biden over-performs in 72% of counties using Dominion Voting Systems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FCMF-FbgYMA
And in case that YouTube video gets deleted, here’s that same video at a different platform:
Here’s a different video, which includes testimony on this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMD2G_uGwWM
Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law (Mathematics) – CORRECTION: Fact check: Deviation from Benford’s Law does not prove election fraud
CORRECTION:
Fact check: Deviation from Benford’s Law does not prove election fraud
By Reuters Staff
Social media users have been sharing posts that say a mathematical rule called Benford’s Law provides clear proof of fraud in the U.S. presidential election. However, research papers and academics consulted by Reuters consistently say that deviation from Benford’s Law does not prove election fraud took place.
Benford’s law says that in many naturally occurring sets of numbers, the first digits of these numbers (eg. the ‘1’ in ‘15’) are not evenly distributed. Measurements with a lower first digit occur more frequently: 1 is the first digit in a number about 30 percent of the time while 9 begins less than 5 percent of numbers. In certain data sets ranging from rainfall amounts to town populations, the numbers follow a Benford’s Law distribution. Deviation of data from Benford’s law has been examined in areas such as finance to detect if something is not right, for example fraud, mistakes or misstatements (here , here) .
The posts, such as those here and here , show graphs that compare candidate’s vote tallies by leading digit to the expected distribution according to Benford’s law in order to contend that Biden’s vote tallies do not follow Benford’s Law but Trump’s do. Posts state that Benford’s law is a test that has been used before to detect fraud (here) . Captions on the posts include, “Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law”; “It’s easy to win if you cheat”; “Statistically impossible odds […] now MATH doesn’t even agree with their faux victory.”
Reuters sought comment from experts regarding these claims.
Theodore P. Hill, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, cautioned that regardless of the distribution uncovered, the application of Benford’s Law would not provide definitive evidence that fraud took place.
“First, I’d like to stress that Benford’s Law can NOT be used to “prove fraud”,” he told Reuters by email. “It is only a Red Flag test, that can raise doubts. E.g., the IRS has been using it for decades to ferret out fraudsters, but only by identifying suspicious entries, at which time they put the auditors to work on the hard evidence. Whether or not a dataset follows BL proves nothing.”
Walter Mebane, Professor at the Department of Political Science and Department of Statistics at the University of Michigan (here) authored a December 2006 article (here) around the application of Benford’s Law to the US presidential election results. The article suggested some limitations of the process, but said in the Abstract: “The test is worth taking seriously as a statistical test for election fraud.”
Nevertheless, Mebane’s article also said, in the Discussion: “In any case, the 2BL test on its own should not be considered proof either that election fraud has occurred or that an election was clean. A significant 2BL test result can be caused by complications other than fraud. Some kinds of fraud the 2BL test cannot detect.”
On Nov. 9, 2020, in response to “several queries” Mebane published a paper called “Inappropriate Applications of Benford’s Law Regularities to Some Data from the 2020 Presidential Election in the United States” (here). His paper says, “The displays shown at those sources using the first digits of precinct vote counts data from Fulton County, GA, Allegheny County, PA, Milwaukee, WI, and Chicago, IL, say nothing about possible frauds” before examining the reasons behind this statement.
“It is widely understood that the first digits of precinct vote counts are not useful for trying to diagnose election frauds,” he writes.
Elsewhere, a study called “Benford’s Law and the Detection of Election Fraud”, published in 2011 by Joseph Deckert, Mikhail Myagkov, Professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon (here) and Peter Ordeshook, Professor of Political Science at Caltech (here), found that Benford’s Law was “problematical at best” when applied to elections: “We find that conformity with and deviations from Benford’s Law follow no pattern. […] Its “success rate” either way is essentially equivalent to a toss of a coin, thereby rendering it problematical at best as a forensic tool and wholly misleading at worst.” (here)
Dr Jen Golbeck, Professor of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland (www.cs.umd.edu/~golbeck/), said in a thread on Twitter (here) that the claims in the social media posts are false, citing the above article. She told Reuters, “There is just not solid evidence that Benford works in elections at all. The results are profoundly mixed. Which means it’s not evidence of anything.”
Golbeck points out that the numbers on some graphs being cited by social media users are not even labelled, whilst the law “works on very specific types of numbers”. She added that none of the research that analyzes the Benford Law is as simplistic as the analysis people are posting: instead, research uses “quite advanced statistical techniques”, often looking at the second digits which have their own expected distribution.
The specific case of the Milwaukee results was also examined by Professor Boud Roukema of Poland’s Nicolaus Copernicus University. Roukema considered the application of Benford’s Law to the 2009 Iranian elections (arxiv.org/abs/0906.2789) . He told Reuters by email: “A major flaw in applying Benford’s law to the Milwaukee results is that the logarithmic distribution – how many “powers of tens” there are – in the numbers of votes per ward in Milwaukee is very narrow. In other words, half of all the wards have total votes from about 570 to 1200, and the logarithmic average (mean) is about 800.
“Biden overall got about 70% of the votes in Milwaukee. So the most likely vote for Biden (in the simplest model, assuming no falsification) in a typical Milwaukee ward is something like 0.7 times 800, which is 560 votes. We expect about half the Biden votes to lie between about 400 and 850 in typical Milwaukee wards.
“So the most popular first digit of the votes for Biden should be 5 – the first digit of 560 – and 4s and 6s and 7s should also be reasonably frequent.
“This is just what we see in the blue vertical bars in top left figure in the diagram at (here). So Benford’s law reasoning, applied to the real data, shows no reason to suspect fraud here.”
The academic and digital research coalition Election Integrity Partnership also cautioned against the conclusion that deviation from Benford’s Law is evidence of election fraud (here). It pointed out that for the law to hold, all numbers must be equally likely to appear and the numbers must span multiple orders of magnitude (eg. Range from 100 to 10,000,000). They say that one of these conditions is not met in the election: “For vote tallies, all numbers are equally likely, but not all states meet the second assumption. In the state of Nevada, Esmeralda County has around 900 people while Clark County has over 2,250,000 people. In the state of Vermont, the bounds are much narrower.”
VERDICT
False. The degree to which Benford’s Law can be used as an indicator of electoral fraud has been debated by academics, but the application of the rule to the leading digit of local vote tallies is problematic and apparent deviation from the law cannot be used alone to prove electoral fraud, experts say.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.
Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law (Mathematics)
Author: River|Himalaya Scholars
November 7, 2020
As the vote counting for the 2020 Presidential Election continues, various facts suggest rampant frauds in Joe Biden’s votes. So does mathematics in terms of the votes from precincts.
Benford’s law or the first-digit law, is used to check if a set of numbers are naturally occurring or manually fabricated. It has been applied to detect the voting frauds in Iranian 2009 election and various other applications including forensic investigations.
This is what described by Wikipedia:
“Benford’s law, or the first-digit law, is an observation about the frequency distribution of leading digits in many real-life sets of numerical data. The law states that in many naturally occurring collections of numbers, the leading digit is likely to be small.
For example, in sets that obey the law, the number 1 appears as the leading significant digit about 30% of the time, while 9 appears as the leading significant digit less than 5% of the time. If the digits were distributed uniformly, they would each occur about 11.1% of the time. Benford’s law also makes predictions about the distribution of second digits, third digits, digit combinations, and so on.”
One of the examples is the population of the world, which are naturally occurring numbers.
Distribution of first-digit (in %) of population numbers in 237 countries in 2010.
A number of people on the internet have checked the votes (precinct by precinct) of Joe Biden, Donald Trump as well as other candidates for their legitimacy in terms of the Benford’s Law.
According a Reddit user, r/dataisbeautiful’s calculation, the ‘normal’ distribution of first digits for the different candidates based on Benford’s law is illustrated below.
Youtuber Nyar has shared the observations on a number of counties, concluding that Trump and others’ votes have natural distribution but not for Joe Biden’s.
In Fulton County, Georgia, which overlaps with the Atlantic metropolitan where Joe Biden is expected to win, all of the three candidates have normal distributions for their votes. (Joe Biden 72.6%, Donald Trump 26.2%, Jo Jorgensen 1.2%.)
In Miami-Dade County of Florida, which includes the Miami metropolitan where Joe Biden is expected to win, all candidates’ votes obey Benford’s Law. (Joe Biden 53.4%, Donald Trump 46.1%, Jo Jorgensen 0.3%.)
However, in the Milwaukee County of Wisconsin, which is in one of the key swing states, Joe Biden’s votes violate Benford’s Law while other candidates’ don’t. (Joe Biden 69.4%, Donald Trump 29.4%, Jo Jorgensen 0.9%.)
And in Chicago of Illinois, Joe Biden’s votes are abnormal.
So does that of Allegheny of Pennsylvania which includes Pittsburgh. (Joe Biden 59.0%, Donald Trump 39.9%, Jo Jorgensen 1.2%.)
It looks like maybe Biden had lost big cities like Chicago and Pittsburgh, which is why the fraudulent votes need to be brought in, which skew his curve away from a normal looking one.
For those who are interested to reproduce the analysis, you can follow the instructions here and give it a go.
Author: River|Himalaya Scholars
I think the COVID-19 lockdown is killing more people than it is saving. Here are my many reasons for thinking such a thing.
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
September 24, 2020
I think the COVIOD-19 lockdown is killing more people than it is saving.
I’m going to start out by posting the CDC’s estimated survival rates, by age, for people who contract COVID-19:
0 to 19: 99.997%
20 to 49: 99.98%
50 to 69: 99.5%
70+: 94.6%
For most age groups, the survival rate is quite high. In my opinion, this does not justify a lockdown of the general population.
Now let’s take a look at my many reasons for thinking that the lockdown is killing more people than it is saving:
The National Cancer Institute estimates that there could be 10,000 additional breast and colorectal deaths over the next decade as a result of missed screenings and delayed diagnoses
Source: https://www.wjhg.com/2020/09/08/cancer-screenings-down-nationwide-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/
Cancer surgeries and organ transplants are being put off for coronavirus
Higher rates of unemployment correlate very strongly with higher rates of suicide and drug overdoses
A report by the United Nations cites the predicted harm that will happen to tens of millions of children in low income countries as a result of the COVID-19 global wide shutdown.
Examples of this harm to children include increases in malnutrition, loss of education, increased rates of teen pregnancy, reduced access to health care, reduced rates of vaccination, increased rates of infectious disease, increased rates of water borne illness, and increased rates of death:
Source: https://unsdg.un.org/sites/default/files/2020-04/160420_Covid_Children_Policy_Brief.pdf
Anxiety from reactions to Covid-19 will destroy at least seven times more years of life than can be saved by lockdowns
Source: https://www.justfacts.com/news_covid-19_anxiety_lockdowns_life_destroyed_saved
Childhood vaccine rates for preventable diseases like measles and whooping cough have fallen during the COVID-19 pandemic, raising the possibility of an additional health crisis.
In New York City… the number of vaccine doses administered from March 23 to May 9 fell 63 percent compared with the same period last year.
In children older than 2 years, it fell 91 percent…
… Doctors offices have been closed…
… The numbers in New York match a national trend…
… from mid-March to mid-April, doctors in the federally funded Vaccines for Children program for the uninsured ordered about 2.5 million fewer doses of all routine non-influenza vaccines and 250,000 fewer doses of measles-containing vaccines compared to the same period in 2019…
Polio and measles could surge after disruption of vaccine programs. A new study of 129 countries found that the interruption of inoculation efforts could put 80 million babies at risk of getting deadly, preventable diseases.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/health/coronavirus-polio-measles-immunizations.html
Why most Covid-19 deaths won’t be from the virus
Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200528-why-most-covid-19-deaths-wont-be-from-the-virus
The global lockdown was put into place based on the bogus, false, and extremely inaccurate Imperial College model.
Sweden did not have a lockdown.
Experts, who cited the Imperial College model, predicted that Sweden would have 40,000 COVID-19 deaths by May 1.
The actual number was 2,769.
The same bogus Imperial College model was used to implement the lockdowns for the rest of the world.
Sources: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/05/sweden-suppressed-infection-rates-without-lockdown/
https://www.aier.org/article/imperial-college-model-applied-to-sweden-yields-preposterous-results/
Nobel Prize-winning scientist: “the damage done by lockdown will exceed any saving of lives by a huge factor”
This is a scientific paper called “Full lockdown policies in Western Europe countries have no evident impacts on the COVID-19 epidemic.”
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.24.20078717v1.full.pdf
Do lockdowns save many lives? In most places, the data say no.
U.S. medical testing, cancer screenings plunge during coronavirus outbreak – data firm analysis
Some medical experts fear more people are dying from untreated emergencies than from the coronavirus
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/25/health/coronavirus-heart-stroke.html
How the COVID-19 lockdown will take its own toll on health
A study of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in New York showed that 66% of them were people who stayed home
End all restrictions, they were unnecessary, Hebrew University researchers say
A scientific paper states:
Background: The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has forced governments to implement strict social mitigation strategies to reduce the morbidity and mortality from acute infections. These strategies however carry a significant risk for mental health which can lead to increased short-term and long-term mortality and is currently not included in modelling the impact of the pandemic. Methods: We used years of life lost (YLL) as the main outcome measure as applied to Switzerland as an exemplar. We focused on suicide, depression, alcohol use disorder, childhood trauma due to domestic violence, changes in marital status and social isolation as these are known to increase YLL in the context of imposed restriction in social contact and freedom of movement. We stipulated a minimum duration of mitigation of 3 months based on current public health plans. Results: The study projects that the average person would suffer 0.205 YLL due to psychosocial consequence of COVID-19 mitigation measures. However, this loss would be entirely borne by 2.1% of the population, who will suffer an average 9.79 YLL. Conclusions: The results presented here are likely to underestimate the true impact of the mitigation strategies on YLL. However, they highlight the need for public health models to expand their scope in order to provide better estimates of the risks and benefits of mitigation.
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20069716v3
In the U.S., the lockdown caused 1.4 million health care workers to be laid off:
Take the Shutdown Skeptics Seriously
Americans should carefully consider the potential costs of prolonged shutdowns lest they cause more deaths or harm to the vulnerable than they spare…
… minimizing the number of COVID-19 deaths today or a month from now or six months from now may or may not minimize the human costs of the pandemic when the full spectrum of human consequences is considered…
… the warnings of thoughtful shutdown skeptics warrant careful study…
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/take-shutdown-skeptics-seriously/611419/
Cyril H. Wecht, one of the country’s most well regarded doctors, made this excellent argument against the lockdown
Stanford University doctor: ‘You are mistaken’ if you think coronavirus lockdowns provide safety”
Source: https://www.theblaze.com/news/stanford-university-doctor-mistaken-coronavirus-lockdowns
Relapses are through the roof, overdoses are through the roof: How the pandemic is upping substance abuse
… They can’t go to a 12-step based meeting…
… People are self-medicating due to the quarantine. And they’re drinking more, and abusing more, and relapses are through the roof right now.
Neil Ferguson’s Imperial model “could go down in history as the most devastating software mistake of all time, in terms of economic costs and lives lost”
Rise in female genital mutilation in Somalia linked to coronavirus shutdown
Somali girls out of school and stuck at home have been subject to a “massive rise” in female genital mutilation…
“It’s a lifetime torture for girls. The pain continues … until the girl goes to the grave. It impacts her education, ambition … everything.”
… the UNFPA has warned that globally 2 million more girls could be cut over the next decade because of how the global pandemic has disrupted efforts to end the practice.
More than 500 doctors signed this letter, which is says, “In medical terms, the shutdown was a mass casualty incident.”
Source: https://www.scribd.com/document/462319362/A-Doctor-a-Day-Letter-Signed#fullscreen&from_embed
Dr. Mike deBoisblanc, head of the trauma department at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek, California, said, “… we’ve seen a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks…”
Source: https://abc7news.com/suicide-covid-19-coronavirus-rates-during-pandemic-death-by/6201962/
Rampant unemployment, isolation and an uncertain future – could lead to 75,000 deaths from drug or alcohol abuse and suicide
Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-deaths-suicides-drugs-alcohol-pandemic-75000/
In the U.S., the first nine weeks of the lockdown caused 38 million people to lose their jobs
The fatality rate of COVID-19 “would probably be 0.13 percent for people outside nursing homes”
A scientific study said, “Home outbreaks were the dominant category (254 of 318 outbreaks; 79.9%)”
Source: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.04.20053058v1.full.pdf
New England Journal of Medicine: “We know that wearing a mask outside health care facilities offers little, if any, protection from infection”
Source: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2006372
Knut Wittkowski, former head of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design at The Rockefeller University’s Center for Clinical and Translational Science, said the lockdown “most likely made the situation worse”
Source: https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/05/15/we-could-open-up-again-and-forget-the-whole-thing/
Denmark, Finland say they saw no increase in coronavirus after schools re-opened
Kanchan Soni, who lived in India, died because the lockdown prevented her from getting dialysis
Chewing gum, wire-cutters, and superglue: the alarming rise of DIY Dentistry under coronavirus
A scientific paper on the lockdown states, “In high burden settings, HIV, TB and malaria related deaths over 5 years may be increased by up to 10%, 20% and 36%, respectively”
Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-05-01-COVID19-Report-19.pdf
Polio and measles could surge after disruption of vaccine programs. A new study of 129 countries found that the interruption of inoculation efforts could put 80 million babies at risk of getting deadly, preventable diseases.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/health/coronavirus-polio-measles-immunizations.html
World Health Organization: “If you are healthy, you only need to wear a mask if you are taking care of a person with COVID-19”
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/cdc-offer-conflicting-advice-masks-expert-tells-us/story?id=70958380
Reopening schools in Denmark did not worsen outbreak, data shows
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-denmark-reopening-idUSKBN2341N7
One month later: top Israeli mathematician predicted COVID-19 peaks after 40 days with or without economic lockdowns – and he was right!
Dr. Kelly Fradin: “I’m a pediatrician and I think we should reopen schools, even with the risk of coronavirus outbreaks”
Source: https://www.insider.com/pediatrician-reopen-schools-even-if-it-leads-coronavirus-outbreaks-2020-6
This video shows Dr. Anthony Fauci removing his mask when he thought he was no longer being filmed
https://twitter.com/CHIZMAGA/status/1278029614070153217
Slowing the coronavirus is speeding the spread of other diseases. Many mass immunization efforts worldwide were halted this spring to prevent spread of the virus at crowded inoculation sites. The consequences have been alarming… cargo flights with vaccine supplies were halted… Now, diphtheria is appearing in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal. Cholera is in South Sudan, Cameroon, Mozambique, Yemen and Bangladesh. A mutated strain of poliovirus has been reported in more than 30 countries. And measles is flaring around the globe, including in Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, Central African Republic, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Nigeria and Uzbekistan.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/14/health/coronavirus-vaccines-measles.html
Norway health chief: lockdown was not needed to tame Covid
Source: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/norway-health-chief-lockdown-was-not-needed-to-tame-covid
Antibody tests point to lower death rate for the coronavirus than first thought
Mounting evidence suggests the coronavirus is more common and less deadly than it first appeared.
Coronavirus pandemic could push 122 million to brink of starvation: Oxfam
Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/7155931/coronavirus-starvation-oxfam/
Dr. Dan Wohlgelernter said, “What we needed to do was not lock down all of society. Not shut down schools. Not shut down all businesses. You needed to protect the elderly. Particularly the elderly in the nursing homes. It’s a small segment of our population. We could have allowed the rest of the population to continue with their lives, take adequate precautions but not be completely shut down. The cost of the shut down in terms of the physical, emotional, and psychological health of people is enormous. We’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg of people who have been shut-in. Who’ve lost their businesses. Who are facing depression. Who are facing issues of mental health because of the consequences. This should never happen again. If we ever face this situation again we need to learn the lessons from the mistakes and policies that were implemented.”
People are more likely to contract COVID-19 at home, study finds
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/people-more-likely-contract-covid-122611396.html
No known case of teacher catching coronavirus from pupils, says scientist. There has been no recorded case of a teacher catching the coronavirus from a pupil anywhere in the world, according to one of the government’s leading scientific advisers. Mark Woolhouse, a leading epidemiologist and member of the government’s Sage committee, told The Times that it may have been a mistake to close schools in March given the limited role children play in spreading the virus.
Coronavirus lockdown ‘made no difference to number of deaths’, study claims
Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/1190721/coronavirus-lockdown-no-difference/
Stop stealing our children’s youth in the name of their grandparents. Every person I know in his 70s says kids should go back to school. Behind ensuring Americans have food, ensuring our children are well educated is a very close second in societal priorities.
Citing educational risks, scientific panel urges that schools reopen
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/health/coronavirus-schools-reopening.html
Stanford doctor Scott Atlas says the science shows kids should go back to school
German study finds no evidence coronavirus spreads in schools
As of September 2020, Sweden, which never had a lockdown, or a mask mandate, had a lower total, cumulative per capita COVID-19 death rate than the U.S.
Sources: https://web.archive.org/web/20200907000001/https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
https://fortune.com/2020/07/29/no-point-in-wearing-mask-sweden-covid/
https://unherd.com/2020/07/swedens-anders-tegnell-judge-me-in-a-year/
Now this last one is just speculation, as I do not have proof. But I do think it is worth mentioning.
At least since March 2020, and perhaps even earlier, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, from New York, has been claiming to have successfully treated COVID-19 patients with a triple combination of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin.
Dr. Zelenko’s alleged treatment is different than other treatments (which have been debunked) because of these two things:
First, Dr. Zelenko’s alleged treatment involves a triple combination of hydroxychloroquine, zinc, and azithromycin.
And secondly, Dr. Zelenko’s alleged treatment must be given before the patient has become so sick that they need hospitalization.
Other treatments with hydroxychloroquine have been debunked. But those other treatments do not meet the two above criteria.
I don’t know if Dr. Zelenko’s alleged treatment actually works or not. But I have not seen it debunked.
On July 3, 2020, preprints.org reported the following on Dr. Zelenko’s alleged treatment:
COVID-19 Outpatients – Early Risk-Stratified Treatment with Zinc Plus Low Dose Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin: A Retrospective Case Series Study
Of 335 positively PCR-tested COVID-19 patients, 127 were treated with the triple therapy. 104 of 127 met the defined risk stratification criteria and were included in the analysis. In addition, 37 treated and eligible patients who were confirmed by IgG tests were included in the treatment group (total N=141). 208 of the 335 patients did not meet the risk stratification criteria and were not treated. After 4 days (median, IQR 3-6, available for N=66/141) of onset of symptoms, 141 patients (median age 58 years, IQR 40-60; 73% male) got a prescription for the triple therapy for 5 days. Independent public reference data from 377 confirmed COVID-19 patients of the same community were used as untreated control. 4 of 141 treated patients (2.8%) were hospitalized, which was significantly less (p<0.001) compared with 58 of 377 untreated patients (15.4%) (odds ratio 0.16, 95% CI 0.06-0.5). Therefore, the odds of hospitalization of treated patients were 84% less than in the untreated group. One patient (0.7%) died in the treatment group versus 13 patients (3.5%) in the untreated group (odds ratio 0.2, 95% CI 0.03-1.5; p=0.16). There were no cardiac side effects. Conclusions: Risk stratification-based treatment of COVID-19 outpatients as early as possible after symptom onset with the used triple therapy, including the combination of zinc with low dose hydroxychloroquine, was associated with significantly less hospitalizations and 5 times less all-cause deaths.
Source: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202007.0025/v1
And here is still even more proof that the lockdown is a scam: New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio does not understand math
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
May 21, 2020
Here’s another one that I’ll be adding the next time I update my list, which you can read here: Here are 70 reasons why I’m against the COVID-19 lockdowns
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio does not understand math.
According to the CDC, for children who contract COVID-19, the death rate is zero:
https://www.businessinsider.com/most-us-coronavirus-deaths-ages-65-older-cdc-report-2020-3
And here’s a recent news headline:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/risk-coronavirus-spreading-schools-extremely-194143983.html
Risk of coronavirus spreading in schools ‘extremely low’, study finds
Despite those two pieces of information, this is a recent tweet by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio:
https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/1262509072051470340
The text of de Blasio’s tweet says: (the bolding is mine)
“Earlier today the NYPD shut down a Yeshiva conducting classes with as many as 70 children. I can’t stress how dangerous this is for our young people. We’re issuing a Cease and Desist Order and will make sure we keep our communities and our kids safe.”
Clearly, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio does not understand math.
Note from Daniel Alman: If you like this blog post that I wrote, you can buy my books from amazon, and/or donate to me via PayPal, using the links below:
Note from Daniel Alman: I’d like to recommend that you visit Whatfinger News. It’s a really awesome website.
The real death rate of COVID-19 in the U.S. may be 140 times smaller than what is being reported
By Daniel Alman (aka Dan from Squirrel Hill)
March 30, 2020
It’s possible that the number of people in the U.S. who are infected with COVID-19 is much bigger than the number that is being currently reported, but many of those people haven’t gotten substantially sick, and so haven’t gotten tested.
The death rate is calculated by dividing the number of people who die by the number who get infected.
But while we do have accurate information about the numerator, we really have no idea what the denominator is. It’s possible that the real denominator is magnitudes bigger than what is being reported, because most infected people have either no symptoms or minor symptoms, and thus, don’t get tested. If this is indeed the case, then it’s possible that the real death rate is far, far lower than the one that is being reported.
As of this writing (early March 30, 2020), in the U.S., 142,735 people have tested positive for COVID-19, and of those, 2,489 have died from it. (I got those numbers from this link, which is continuously being updated.)
Based on these numbers, the fatality rate in the U.S. is 1.744%
Meanwhile, Iceland tested a large segment of its population, including people with no symptoms, and found that 6.3% of them have COVID-19.
The U.S. has 328 million people. If we extrapolate Iceland’s figure of 6.3% to the U.S., it would suggest that more than 20 million people in the U.S. have COVID-19. (I realize that extrapolating Iceland’s test results to the U.S. is not the ideal way to determine the rate of infection in the U.S. But given the absence of this particular type of widespread testing in the U.S., it’s probably the most accurate guess that we can make at this point in time. Hopefully, such widespread testing will be done in the U.S., and we will then have a more accurate number.)
So for the U.S., the real denominator may be 140 times bigger than the one that is being reported.
Which, if true, would indicate that the estimated real death rate in the U.S. is more than two magnitudes smaller than what is being reported.
And, if true, would mean that the estimated real death rate in the U.S. is 0.01246%.
Note from Daniel Alman: If you like this blog post that I wrote, you can buy my books from amazon, and/or donate to me via PayPal, using the links below:
The flu kills over 8,000 people in the U.S. and nobody bats an eye. The Wuhan coronavirus kills 40 people and everybody loses their minds!
Source of image: http://regime.adidaseqtsupportadv.com/?img=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgflip.com%2F3n5lbm.jpg
According to MSNBC’s Brian Williams and the New York Times’s Mara Gay, 500 million / 327 million = 1 million
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_i0QrK2814
Rebecca Watson: The CDC can take my cookie dough out of my cold, dead, E. coli-infested hands
This is one of the reasons why Rebecca Watson is one of my favorite liberals. She uses statistics to explain why you can ignore the government’s warning against eating raw cookie dough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8meTpecIt0M
Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog 
