Grade inflation is an obvious problem. It does a disservice to students, making them believe they are exceptional at something they are actually mediocre at. Some rants related to this and how awful grade inflation is for students and the world.
AP score data is especially indicative of this. In AP classes, most high school students earn As from their teachers (I estimate around ~60%). Yet, when you look at the AP scores, few get 5s on exams (the equivalent of an A). For example, 5-10% get 5's on AP English and Science-related exams. Scores are a bit higher on Social Sciences (10-15% 5s) and math/CS (~25%). But only ~50% of students even get above a 3 on the exam (the equivalent of a C). So there are people who essentially get a D by the standard (a 2) that are getting an A in their high school class.
I could go on with countless examples of how students aren't nearly as capable as their grades would indicate. At McKinsey, I interviewed over 100 people from top schools with high GPAs. Many couldn't solve simple math problems when given the problem in the context of a real-world case.
At out top institutions with our top students, we should be pushing them extremely hard and measuring them against a higher bar. I find it disappointing that they are being measured against the same (or even a lower bar) than students at other institutions. It's so bad that it seems clear that a Harvard Education isn't any better than a Penn State, Nebraska, or even UC Riverside education. The only difference is having the Harvard brand and network. It's an embarrassment. And it's not just a problem at Harvard. It's a problem at every top institution.
Grade-motivated students don't put in the extra work when little effort still earns them As. One example stands out. I run an edtech company, and in our early days, we ran an experiment at doesmyessaysuck.com. You could submit your essay, get a score, and 2 pieces of feedback on how to improve the content and structure of your writing. We did about a thousand essays before abandoning it. I always think about one student. He submitted an essay we generously gave a C (it was really bad). It was incoherent, poorly structure, didn't answer the prompt, and lacked sound logical reasoning. He responded we were wrong because he had gotten a 93% on it.
Also – https://www.gradeinflation.com/ is a good read. It's out-of-date data. But it proves the point even further than this article.
Note: There is some research out there that claims grade inflation is false and that more students actually have learned more than in previous years (i.e., the academic bar hasn't changed, but more students are above it). However, this research is unconvincing (and ripe with errors). There's essentially been zero improvement (and even a decline) in basic math and literacy skills over the past couple of decades (as measured by standardized tests). Yet grades are much higher. And high school and college graduation rates are up by about 10 percentage points since the early 2000s. As it turns out, when your only measure of success is graduation rate, you end up with more graduates – even if those graduates don't have any skills.
> In AP classes, most high school students earn As from their teachers (I estimate around ~60%). Yet, when you look at the AP scores, few get 5s on exams (the equivalent of an A).
There's absolutely no problem with this.
Your grade in your AP class is a measurement of your achievement at the high school level. An A indicates you did what's expected of you as a junior/senior in high school.
The AP exam is measuring whether you achieve at a first year college level enough to skip that first year in the subject.
More people should get As in AP Physics than get 5s. If they measured the same thing you wouldn't need the AP exam.
This is false. AP classes are meant to be college-level classes. The goals of these classes is to earn scores that yield college credits. The tests exist to provide some form of standardization around understanding a student's performance against a standard in these classes. AP exams are not measured on a curve like an SAT (although even the SAT has massive score inflation. AP exams are measured against a standard for learning – and the standards are clearly not being met as clearly evidenced by the scores. Similarly grades are meant to be a measurement of learning against a standard. Yet, grades have increased and learning outcomes have not increased. This is a fact.
> AP classes are meant to be college-level classes.
They are high school classes at an honors level that may generate college credit. A two on the exam is deemed “possibly qualified” to skip a year of college, for example, but colleges won’t take it. Many won’t take the three score’s “qualified” either.
For purposes of your GPA and high school physics, that’s not a D.
The AP physics exam gives you a 5 if you miss like half the questions, too. That doesn’t fit a ten point GPA scale very well.
Selling shares in people isn't a new idea. Upstart started by doing this exact same thing in 2012 (they pivoted to personal lending and were very successful). But Upstart couldn't make the investing in people marketplace work.
There's too much information asymmetry. The highest-potential people (i.e., the ones you'd want to invest in!) know they're rockstars. And they value their future earnings potential as such. But it's very difficult to evaluate someone's potential as an ordinary investor. Just look at the hit rate on hiring people into jobs (not ideal) – and hiring likely has more diligence than here.
The highest-potential people therefore feel the deal the investors would give them is bad (and don't take it). The mediocre people will take the deal. But investors won't get a good return, and the company will need to make the deal less and less advantageous to the mediocre people until the mediocre people even find it unappealing.
There are many examples of failures in people-related investment products. The information asymmetry leaves someone holding the bag – typically the investor. 3 examples:
1. Income share agreements (ISA) for education. Many companies and even states (e.g., Oregon) have tried this to poor effect. People majoring in STEM degrees didn't take the deal (as it was a bad deal for them given their future earnings power). And people majoring in humanities did take the deal (as it was a good deal for them given their lower future earnings power). Also, many people who actually may benefit from ISAs don't really understand them and also won't take them. Note: Bloom Tech seems to be making ISA's work through force of will. But they also are in a specific niche where the ROI is much clearer and the ISAs are therefore easier to underwrite.
2. Life insurance for people with illnesses. There's a market for paying ill people money now in exchange for being the beneficiary on their life insurance. It provides the ill people a better living now and provides a return later for the investors. But, the information asymmetry and potential fraud with medicals can lead to a bad outcome for investors. For example, if I agree to pay someone $50k per year until they die in exchange for being the beneficiary on a $500k life insurance policy, then I'm in the red if they live for more than 10 years. The medicals may indicate the person may have 3 to 5 years to live. But what if they live 20? So while this market exists, it's very niche and very risky due to the information asymmetry.
3. Buying shares in an athlete. Fantex pioneered this starting with NFL players. Players took the deal because they are injury-prone and many have short careers. There was information asymmetry at work again. And nearly all investments in athletes went poorly (shorter careers, less than expected earnings).
So overall, I think we'd all love to see a model work where we can bet on individual people to succeed and share in their success. However, it just doesn't work. It's not the same as investors betting on the founders of companies – those founders have to have the money for success. The individuals probably don't need substantial capital (and even if they were using the money to create something – wouldn't you rather have the piece of the company than a piece of their earnings?).
It's clear the SAT/ACT has predictive power for highly-selective colleges, such as MIT. And therefore, they are valuable for these colleges – especially for the Math scores as MIT suggests. The value of SAT/ACT scores decreases as selectivity decreases or as math abilities matter less for admission (e.g., liberal arts programs).
Here are some related points:
- Harvard considers roughly 4 in 5 applicants to be academically capable of doing the work at Harvard (about 50,000 applicants of which Harvard only accepts 2,000). This data is pulled from their court documents, and my team wrote about it here: https://writingcenter.prompt.com/posts/strong-essays-increas....
- This means that most applicants at highly-selective colleges are very similar academically. Colleges are mostly just using grades, academic rigor, and test scores to determine whether the student will be able to succeed doing the work in college. Absent other information on academic preparation (e.g., not having access to AP/IB classes), the SAT/ACT score can be a critical signal of whether the student can do the work. Students with well-above-the-bar academics are admitted at a 3x clip to those just above the academic bar. But other parts of the application (e.g., essays, athletics) can have a much stronger effect on admissions chances (e.g., a strong personal score, much of which is essay-related, can have a 10x increase on admissions chances).
- Math SAT really is highly predictive of math abilities. When I was with McKinsey, we asked for applicants' SAT scores because it was highly predictive of people succeeding at McKinsey. People hired with scores below 700 struggled to succeed analytically. So, McKinsey used 700 as a bar. MIT is roughly doing the same thing here. Other colleges do this as well.
- Outside of highly-selective institutions, the SAT/ACT can have less predictive power in student success in college than other factors (e.g., GPA). There are a bunch of great analyses at fairtest.org that looks at these exams - e.g., breaking scores down by race.
So overall, we tend to give weight to what we know and what data we're looking at. Most of the SAT/ACT analyses out there are looking across all students. Here, MIT is looking at just their proportion of students. So, both things can be true – the SAT/ACT may not be a useful predictor for the vast majority of students. But scores can (and do) matter for the highest performers, the approximately 1% of high school graduates attending the most selective colleges.
And as MIT states, a perfect SAT/ACT score doesn't matter all that much. All they're using the scores for is to provide an indication of whether the student is above their bar for being able to do the work (e.g., not failing multivariable calculus).
Note: I did go to MIT – some of you may think this is relevant. I also run the largest college essay coaching company globally, Prompt.com. So I've spent a lot of time understanding college admissions.
> Harvard considers roughly 4 in 5 applicants to be academically capable of doing the work at Harvard
I have no doubt that this is true of Harvard. I mean, after all, you can pick your own classes! That said, I think there is a difference between admitting just those capable of doing the work vs. a set of some of the best of the best, in that that second group will be the one filling the advanced physics classes for first years or whatever.
Best of the best is very subjective. Once you're over the academic bar of being able to do the work, other factors are far more important for success in college and life.
Essentially, there's a bar for intellectual horsepower – which 4 in 5 Harvard applicants are above. And this is the same for all highly-selective institutions.
Then, other factors become far more important. Specifically, colleges look for people who are unusual even in a pool of extremely higher-performers (essentially the top 1% of all high school graduates). Students who are unusually driven, unusually intellectually curious, unusual contributors, unusual experiences, unusual at taking the initiative.
These personality traits are very similar to what YC looks for in founders. Raw intellectual horsepower is important – but only to a point. Given the choice between a student far above the academic bar without any other distinguishing features and a student just above the academic bar but is unusually driven – we'd pick the unusually driven person pretty much every time.
I've given significant thought to the writing problem, and I firmly believe the lack of writing is dramatically slowing the pace of innovation in the world. Writing is really Amazon's superpower. It's why they get big things done quickly.
Both the author and the audience greatly benefit from the writing. Writing clarifies and structures thinking – helping the reader understand the points the author is making.
As a bit more context, I used to work at McKinsey and much of my job fit into two roles: (1) translating what employees were thinking into something executives could understand, and (2) making PowerPoint slides. In other words, I was often there because employees couldn't write well. But, I also found PowerPoint lacking – it's hard to get some of the more important points across (creating some confusion) because it doesn't allow for longer-form thought.
I've put a bunch of thoughts together on why writing is important and how we fix our education system to make people better writers. It's based on my experiences supporting tens of thousands of students on improving writing skills – https://bradsblog.com/2020/05/15/1-writing-is-the-most-impor....
Amazon has a few superpowers. One is writing, but the other is so many metrics. I worked at AWS and saw how the weekly metrics meeting was ran, with execs questioning why some metric, out of 10s of thousands, was behaving in a certain way. A good product manager had a good reason, an acceptable one found a reason quickly after the meeting. Without an understanding of the business writing is worthless, and one of the ways Amazon creates this understanding is comprehensive metrics gathering.
It is the combination of business understanding and writing
that is Amazon's superpower.
Agreed that understanding the business is critical. Writing is one of the best ways for someone to develop a better understanding of the business - e.g., what metric are we tracking and why?
Overall, I'm not saying that there aren't a bunch of other important things to running a business, just that great writing makes running a business far easier.
On a side note – implementing performance management gets crazy gains without requiring process changes. I used to get an immediate 30%+ productivity bump when I'd implement performance management (e.g., metrics, daily huddles) in a place that had little of it.
Hey, just want to say I read your blog posts and was searching for a call to action, how do I sign up for Prompt?! I kept asking myself while reading the blog posts. Then I tried googling Prompt / Prompt writing, that name is -not- favorable to SEO. When I hit the landing page, I found out that Prompt is meant for students, not people already in the workplace. I don't even know how it would work, but I was hoping there was some way a working professional could improve their writing. That said, when you do hit the Prompt landing page, the I am a student is highlighted and there is no other call to action or thing to do, I guess you are supposed to sign up in the top right? Anyways, wish you well!
Hey! Thanks for the comment and going to the site (Prompt.com). We're focused on students for now, but we will be launching supports for professionals in the future. We're almost all B2B sales, which is why you found it harder to find us than you'd have probably liked.
As it turns out, most people aren't similar to the Hacker News population – they won't seek out and act on feedback on their own. As such, we've found the best way to improve writing skills is to require people to get feedback and act on it. This means working with K-12 and higher ed institutions.
Are there any great examples of how Amazon writes their white papers? I've heard of the Press Release method, but are there any examples online? Also curious if there are white papers that don't fit the Press Release model.
The philosophy of Deliberate Practice applies very well to writing. There are some online writing courses you can take (e.g., David Perrell has one), but there's a lot you can do on your own (and with the help of some friends). Here are the two biggest things.
1. Start with an outline. This will help you cement the most important points of your writing/argument in your mind and enable you to start filling in the gaps. Often, I'll spend a lot of time getting the major points I'm making very crisp before I write a full draft. Doing this will also help you identify what's missing. The most important parts to focus on are (1) where a reader may disagree (i.e. where you'll need to make your argument stronger and back with evidence), and (2) where your reader will have questions that you'll need to answer.
2. Get feedback and revise 2-3 times. Getting feedback and acting on it is the single most valuable thing you can do; however, most people don't know how to provide writing feedback. They'll focus on grammar unless you specify what you want the reader to think about. There are two strategies here – (1) Provide your reader with a list of questions you want them to answer. I always use the following four: What did you learn? Is what you learned compelling (if not, why wasn't it compelling)? What didn't you learn that you wanted to learn? Where was it clear/not clear? (2) add specific comments/questions within your writing in places you are less comfortable with and want feedback.
I'd test out some of your more thoughtful and detail-oriented friends. You may find one or two who you feel are adding value and pushing your work forward. If you're going to pay for someone, it's very difficult to find a good editor. Most "editors" are only used to providing sentence-level feedback and may not have enough context about the subject your writing about to be helpful with content feedback. At Prompt, we find only 2% of the thousands of Writing Coach applicants we receive are good enough to make it into our network – i.e., the writing feedback skill is really hard to find.
The sure advantage of a powerpoint is that it gives much less way to criticism.
Imagine someone wants details on a graph or table, the presenter replies orally and can often remain as vague as desired, possibly making the requester look like an a*e if he/she insists.
I think what's missing here is that the product is sticky for a number of people and spending on user acquisition costs are likely to go down. Each company essentially takes a 10% rake on every game and I'd imagine these companies will be profitable in the long. I don't think legal issues will destroy these companies as it's really only a matter of time before sports gambling becomes legal across the US and New York is already letting these companies continue to operate this year.
I don't believe the issue around small numbers of players making all of the money is important. As someone who uses both platforms for fun, I find I'm willing and many of my friends are willing to lose a bit of money each week as it makes the games far more entertaining to watch when you have a rooting interest. Many of the sports leagues and ESPN realize this which is why you saw them invest in these companies. Fantasy leads to more engagement with the sports and daily fantasy leads to even more engagement.
Daily fantasy is not for everyone, but it'll likely maintain a core number of users, many of whom use both FanDuel and DraftKings. Acquisition costs will be less important in the future and provided that fixed costs such as legal fees decrease in the coming years, these companies will become stable and profitable.
> ... it's really only a matter of time before sports gambling becomes legal across the US and New York is already letting these companies continue to operate this year.
According to the article we're discussing, NY passed a bill, the Governor signed it into law, and both DraftKings and FanDuel started accepting NY customers again the following Monday.
One of the big issues with the credit card business is fraud. Fraud is around 1% of all credit card transactions. Fraud tends to be higher on online payments where the "card not present" rate that merchants pay is higher than the "card present rate" enjoyed by brick and mortar stores.
In addition to fraud, credit card companies have to contend with the purchasing power of large companies (e.g., the Costco example ditching Amex) and also their own expenses as many people like concierge services and other "perks" that cost money and are becoming more standard on cards for people with higher credit and income.
In practice, it's fairly difficult to offer much of an incentive beyond 2% cash back (which Fidelity Amex and the Capital One Visa Spark Card offer). However; these cards are closer to being loss leaders for their institutions as they want to incentivize you to do your banking with them as well (Fidelity does this fairly well as the cash back must be deposited into a Fidelity account). Charles Schwab was the first to have a 2% cash back card many years ago and they discontinued it, likely because they lost money on it.
Travel-based rewards cards can get away with offering seemingly better incentives because of their margin. Starwood is a perfect example of this as hotels have a high fixed cost base and low variable cost base. The variable cost to stay at a high-end hotel is something like $50-60 per night if the room is vacant. So while Starwood seems to be paying out 2 cents on the dollar (e.g., 10,000 points for a $200 room), they are really only paying out 0.5 cents on the dollar. This is why the Starwood Amex is seemingly the best Credit Card. It's all about the economics of the company that brands it.
>>In addition to fraud, credit card companies have to contend with the purchasing power of large companies
For online transactions, credit card companies have -0- liability for fraud. 100% of the costs come from the merchant's pockets.
It's really a shame, because they are the ones with the broad access to data that would enable tools to reduce it. Of course, since there's no incentive on their end, nothing is provided.
> 100% of the costs come from the merchant's pockets.
I get that you're referencing the cash part of the transaction but the card companies still have to maintain code that detects fraud early, hire staff to support customers and investigate fraudulent transactions. That's not 0 cost to them.
>>still have to maintain code that detects fraud early, hire staff to support customers and investigate fraudulent transactions
In addition to sticking me with the bag for every online fraudulent transaction, they also levy an additional fee, which I assume offsets some or all of that cost. In fact, if it was a low-end purchase, they may make more on the chargeback fee than the original purchase.
I see no evidence of "code that detects fraud early", at least for online transactions. Any merchants ever get a call from a cc company, or issuing bank saying "hey, you know that transaction we approved a few days ago? you might not want to ship that." ? Nope.
But one other thing. Did you ever notice that there is no feedback loop where you can inform the issuer or bank that you have discovered a fraudulent charge? For what we do it's easy to spot a fraud charge. We void (or credit it) and move on (still a big pain of course). But the thing is there is no way to alert the credit card company (manually in some way or even by email) that we have figured out a card is stolen. Otoh, as a card user I've received calls from my bank from time to time when a particular purchase doesn't fit a pattern (and that pattern has never caught any fraud, only purchases that I have made).
The issuing bank is in business of keeping their cardholders happy not the merchants. That's just the reality of the situation. As a merchant however you have options to utilize the services of managed risk providers (obv there's an additional cost involved) to protect yourself from online fraud.
EDIT: some of these providers are either directly operated by or have very tight relations with cc networks so they do have access to enormous amount of data which they use to make their risk management decisions.
EDIT #2: at a risk of sounding like an ad - one example would be Cybersource who is owned by Visa.
>>you have options to utilize the services of managed risk providers
Helps a little, but they are, of course, still dealing with a tiny fraction of the available data out there, and the cost is pretty high.
For small to medium sized players you're much better off just doing what you can with AVS, CVV2 match codes, known freight-forwarder addresses, ip geolocation, etc. That's all free other than a bit of dev time.
It's just a shame that the kind of improvements that could be made with access to data only the CC companies and issuing banks have aren't ever going to happen.
> I see no evidence of "code that detects fraud early", at least for online transactions. Any merchants ever get a call from a cc company, or issuing bank saying "hey, you know that transaction we approved a few days ago? you might not want to ship that." ? Nope.
They definitely do do this. But when they see a likely-fraudulent transaction, they call the cardholder, not the merchant. I have received calls of this type.
>>when they see a likely-fraudulent transaction, they call the cardholder, not the merchant
Right. Which means the item gets shipped. Because...yep.
Edits: a) In the real world, the bank does not catch these things in between auth/capture. b) 3rd party companies are limited in what they can do. They don't have the full picture.
Not necessarily :)
If the bank calls the cardholder on file and the cardholder tells them the tx is not his they will at least reverse the auth so the merchant can't issue a capture against it when shipping the actual goods. In some cases they call them before the auth is approved.
But again the banks are not in business of protecting the merchant. There are companies that are in that business however and as a merchant you have an option to use their services.
All the UK card issuers I've used decline the transaction at my end and then contact me to verify I was trying to make that payment. Once that's done I can try again and the transaction will clear.
>For online transactions, credit card companies have -0- liability for fraud. 100% of the costs come from the merchant's pockets.
Which credit card companies are you referring to? If you're talking about issuing banks then liability for the fraudulent transaction is shifted towards the bank vs the merchant in some cases including card not present txs.
This will depend on a couple of things. 3DS for example shifts the liability towards the bank. Another example would be a payment facilitator entity handling fraud liability on merchant's behalf.
> One of the big issues with the credit card business is fraud. Fraud is around 1% of all credit card transactions. Fraud tends to be higher on online payments where the "card not present" rate that merchants pay is higher than the "card present rate" enjoyed by brick and mortar stores.
These are things that will change over time. 3DSecure is standard in Europe because the EU pushes transaction fees so low that credit card companies need to reduce fraud because they cannot afford it any more.
Do consumers all have little usb smartcard things so they can use the smartcard to make online purchases? or does this mostly just make 'card present' transactions that much safer?
3D Secure basically redirects you to a webpage run by a third party (usually your bank) to enter additional details, like a seperate password.
I find it much more annoying. My New Zealand (.co.nz) bank redirects me to a .co.uk domain with their logo (!!), where it doesn't even prompt me for any additional details, just forwards back to the original merchant.
It is likely that they are processing a risk score for your transaction, based on browser fingerprint, referer, ip, time of day and so on. That is, the "bounce" may not be entirely useless.
If the risk score exceeds a certain threshold then they can then require additional security. While this may seem very weak, in practice a lot of fraud has pretty obvious signatures.
huh. yeah, there's a 'verified by visa' thing that America has that is similar... I think it does some statistical something something. It sure looks a lot weaker than a public key transaction where the key never leaves the card. The 'verified by visa' site itself looks pretty fishy.
In theory, a chip and pin solution where the user owns the reader is more secure than a transaction in the store where the vendor owns the reader. but, I guess that's too expensive and inconvenient or something.
When 3dsecure just redirects it means the bank decided to trust the transaction based in something. For instance for me it skips it for some known vendors and transactions.
My Austrian bank embeds a 2FA system on the iframe. I get an authentication code on my phone and enter that. It typically asks that when shipping to a new address or dirst use of a vendor that uses 3dsecure
While 3DSecure and Verified by Visa is a good idea in theory, the implementation is a mess. For example, my bank requires me to enter my banking username and password into the banking website, which is loaded via an iframe inside the merchants site. How is a regular user supposed to verify that the iframe loaded his banking website and not some phishing website?
My bank is marginally better than this and includes a string I set when I first configured 3D Secure in the iframe, but its still a mess and asking for phishing attacks.
Sounds like a problem with your bank. Mine prompts me for a token that is sent to my phone where it also shows me what transaction i confirm. In addition the iframe pops up a memorable message I can configure to verify that it's a frame from the bank. Even in the absence of ssl this would be safe.
> In addition the iframe pops up a memorable message I can configure to verify that it's a frame from the bank. Even in the absence of ssl this would be safe.
No, they can do a replay attack on this setup when not encrypted
Sure, but that memorable message is not really all that useful on a non SSL page, but it's also not particularly important from a security point of view.
>>No, card fraud rates are in the 5-20 basis point range (0.05%-0.2%).
Depends on the "total pool" you're drawing from, and whether you're counting money, or transactions. The 5-20 basis points fits if you include, for example, all ATM withdrawals.
You get close to the 1% claimed in the parent if you count just "online card transactions", and count revenue instead of number of transactions.
Because in some places the fees are set by legislation. For instance in the EU the fees are so low that credit card companies are forced to combat fraud or they lose money.
For example, from the Fed: "By number, the fraud rate for general-purpose cards was 3.60 basis points (3.60 unauthorized transactions per 10,000 transactions) and by value the fraud rate was 8.27 basis points."
I should clarify, I was only talking about online payments, which I know a lot better than physical transactions.
From talking to some acquiring banks, I gathered that 1%-1.5% was the maximum fraud rate they would tolerate, depending on the value of your account. With fraud rates like that, you will not see volume discounts anytime soon either.
I wish people and broadcasters would stop using "basis points" and "three tenths of one percent".
Both of them are and sound ridiculous. As the above comment illustrates, are pointless because either people have to do the math to understand what the hell you are saying or you have to spell it out.
Not saying anything at all about the content or merit of your post, you, your family, neighbors, cousins, dogs or cats. Just saying this "financial" language is, well, kinda silly.
Some TV news anchors would have said: "five one-hundreds of one percent to two tenths of one percent". Or "half a tenth of one percent".
I hear you. I put both since I know the in-the-biz term, basis points, isn't universally understood. I feel like % can be confusing because 0.05 is 5% so putting 0.5% might not always be immediately understood.
My pet peeve is "quarter of a billion" to try to make the number sound bigger.
I guess my point may have been lost. There is no need to learn a new term. "1%" is read "one percent". "0.5%" is read "zero point five percent" or, shorthand, "point five percent".
How did we get from "zero point five percent", which is the literal value, to "one half of one percent", which imposes a cognitive load?
Or, better yet, why "one half of one percent" and not "half a percent"
It's like reading the number "1" as "one-hundredth of one hundred", or "10" as "one tenth of one hundred".
Question: Do they do the same in Europe? I must admit, I've been there tons of times but never paid attention to this (probably because I never watched enough TV while there). Of course, in Europe (and the rest of the world, as far as I know) it's "comma" not "point".
I can understand the use of basis points in some financial circles as a term of trade or convenient insider's unit. I don't understand it when used to communicate with the public. Go out there and ask a random sampling of people what a basis point is. I'll bet very few will say "0.01%", even if they own stocks.
Oscar is great in the NYC / NJ area (https://www.hioscar.com/). They do a good job of lveraging technology and are less confusing than other insurance companies. They even have a program with Misfit where you get $1 per day for reaching your steps goal. Lowest premiums I've found. I'm paying less than $1,000 per month total for myself, my wife, and my kid.
Second vote for Oscar here. My wife and I pay north of $1,000 but have something of a Platinum plan and it covers everything.
The Affordable Care Act has really taken the pain out of insurance when working for yourself. Things like Freelancers Union were almost a necessity before the ACA. Now individuals can buy insurance at competitive rates and without worrying about "pre existing conditions".
AP score data is especially indicative of this. In AP classes, most high school students earn As from their teachers (I estimate around ~60%). Yet, when you look at the AP scores, few get 5s on exams (the equivalent of an A). For example, 5-10% get 5's on AP English and Science-related exams. Scores are a bit higher on Social Sciences (10-15% 5s) and math/CS (~25%). But only ~50% of students even get above a 3 on the exam (the equivalent of a C). So there are people who essentially get a D by the standard (a 2) that are getting an A in their high school class.
I could go on with countless examples of how students aren't nearly as capable as their grades would indicate. At McKinsey, I interviewed over 100 people from top schools with high GPAs. Many couldn't solve simple math problems when given the problem in the context of a real-world case.
At out top institutions with our top students, we should be pushing them extremely hard and measuring them against a higher bar. I find it disappointing that they are being measured against the same (or even a lower bar) than students at other institutions. It's so bad that it seems clear that a Harvard Education isn't any better than a Penn State, Nebraska, or even UC Riverside education. The only difference is having the Harvard brand and network. It's an embarrassment. And it's not just a problem at Harvard. It's a problem at every top institution.
Grade-motivated students don't put in the extra work when little effort still earns them As. One example stands out. I run an edtech company, and in our early days, we ran an experiment at doesmyessaysuck.com. You could submit your essay, get a score, and 2 pieces of feedback on how to improve the content and structure of your writing. We did about a thousand essays before abandoning it. I always think about one student. He submitted an essay we generously gave a C (it was really bad). It was incoherent, poorly structure, didn't answer the prompt, and lacked sound logical reasoning. He responded we were wrong because he had gotten a 93% on it.
Also – https://www.gradeinflation.com/ is a good read. It's out-of-date data. But it proves the point even further than this article.
Note: There is some research out there that claims grade inflation is false and that more students actually have learned more than in previous years (i.e., the academic bar hasn't changed, but more students are above it). However, this research is unconvincing (and ripe with errors). There's essentially been zero improvement (and even a decline) in basic math and literacy skills over the past couple of decades (as measured by standardized tests). Yet grades are much higher. And high school and college graduation rates are up by about 10 percentage points since the early 2000s. As it turns out, when your only measure of success is graduation rate, you end up with more graduates – even if those graduates don't have any skills.