Blogs

There is a concept in statistics called “expected value.” This is the expected outcome of any situation that involves probability, and is found by multiplying the possible outcomes by the probability that each will occur and then adding these products together. Expected value calculations are why it is generally thought that one should not play the lottery, as some claim that the lottery is a “tax on people who did not do well in math

I almost always choose the chocolate cake.

Well, maybe not the pets themselves. Maybe more their owners. Especially when it comes to dogs, because dogs can't help the fact that for millenia they've been bred for subservience. Cats, on the other hand, might have to take the rap themselves.

Summer is the time when many faculty members vacate our shared campus space and retreat to home offices (or travel)...

In a conversation a few days ago, some thoughtful faculty noted in passing that the state’s constant drumbeat about job placement and STEM fields -- two different things, btw -- was becoming a factor in faculty morale in the humanities and social sciences. They heard every invocation of college-as-personnel-office as an attack on what they do, and as a harbinger of even-more-diminished resources to come.

These past few months have been a bit of a reading frenzy.

Currency is truly an anachronism. We continue to hold on to our paper money and our coins because - well because why?

CUNY’s New Community College, in New York City, is attracting plenty of attention in higher ed circles. It’s an attempt to apply a panoply of best practices in raising graduation rates to a population that desperately needs it. Whether it becomes an exemplar of a new model, or withers on the vine as an expensive boutique project, remains to be seen.