> In the late 1990s the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation began supporting small schools on a broad-ranging, intensive, national basis. By 2001, the Foundation had given grants to education projects totaling approximately $1.7 billion... There are many claims made about the advantages of smaller schools, but I will focus here on just one...
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-most-dangerous-equation
#HowardWainer #TheMostDangerousEquation #BillGates #GatesFail #deMoivresEquation #uspol
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The Most Dangerous Equation

Ignorance of how sample size affects statistical variation has created havoc for nearly a millennium

American Scientist
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> ... de Moivre's equation in action. The variation of the mean is inversely proportional to the sample size, so small counties display much greater variation than large counties. A county with, say, 100 inhabitants that has no cancer deaths would be in the lowest category. But if it has 1 cancer death it would be among the highest. Counties like Los Angeles, Cook or Miami-Dade with millions of inhabitants do not bounce around like that.
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#StatisticsClass #Variance #EstimatingMeans

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> We also identified the 50 lowest-scoring schools. Nine of these (18 percent) were among the 50 smallest schools. This result is completely consonant with what is expected from de Moivre's equation—smaller schools are expected to have higher variance and hence should be over-represented at both extremes.

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#SmallSchoolsMovement #GatesInSchools #StatisticsVariance #uspol #BillionairesBrittle #BilionairesNotResilient

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> ... a study.. by Barbara Schneider, Adam E. Wyse and Venessa Keesler of Michigan State University. An article in Education Week that reported on the study quoted Schneider as saying, "I'm afraid we have done a terrible disservice to kids."
> Spending more than a billion dollars on a theory based on ignorance of de Moivre's equation—in effect serving only to increase variation—suggests just how dangerous that ignorance can be.
#uspol #EducationDisservice #GatesDisservice
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