Trump marked the first 100 days milestone of his campaign with a rally in Harrisburg the State Capitol touting his achievements and his plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.  In my last post I looked at uninsured trends in the state.  This time I will look at uninsured, poverty rates, educational attainment […]

When I posted last week on the correlation between the population hate group numbers and Trump’s % of the vote, one friend on Facebook asked whether the result would hold up if third variables such as poverty and education were added to the model.  The figure below shows the association from last week,  I thought […]

    The Pennsylvania class A high school football championship this year was a matchup of two schools with proud football traditions: Clairton High School near Pittsburgh and Bishop Guilfoyle High School in Altoona, PA.  The two teams met in the title game in 2014 and again this year.  Guilfoyle won the game 17-0 giving […]

In my last post I showed that there was a higher percentage of students at Bishop McCort High School in the national honor society (NHS) in the class of 2016 than in the late 1980’s when I was there.  This week I thought I would take a deeper look at which colleges the classmates were […]

As the school year begins, I was looking at the Alumni newsletter from my alma mater, Bishop McCort High School in Johnstown, PA.  They had a listing of last year’s graduating class; their names, where they were going to college or if they had other plans, and whether or not they were in the National […]

Andrew Hacker, a political scientist has written a book called The Math Myth.  In it he argues that the emphasis on everyone learning algebra, geometry and for the elite students calculus is misguided and the curriculum should be tailored to meet individual needs.  He says “At most, 5 percent of people really use math, advanced […]

Oftentimes the importance of an issue isn’t realized until it hits home.  The film Stand and Deliver tells the story of math teacher Jaime Escalante who’s students (20 in total) all passed the advanced placement (AP) Calculus test in the 1980s.  The education testing service (ETS) (which administers the AP test as well as the […]

The yin and yang of statistics vs anecdotes from University of Pittsburgh I have completed my third Master’s degree with this presentation on the conflicts if anecdotes and statistics in persuading the public on an issue.  The slides are above and the videos from it are below.  I believe they speak for themselves.  **Related Posts** […]

The Daily Show Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook We all are capable of dismissing scientific observations when it doesn’t confirm our beliefs, even scientists.  The above video talks about how those on the left can reject science and put themselves in danger.  Below is a lampoon of the […]

The website and YouTube channel Science Hive has been created to answer basic questions about science, especially about biology.  It’s creator, Bee, is featured in the video above.  In it she gives a good definition of the difference between living and nonliving things.  In her next video whe gives a good explanation of mutations.   […]