What is the average?

When I am interested in the “average”, I am usually trying to get a picture of a typical case.  The words average, typical and some synonyms and semi-synonyms are often attempts to get a feeling about a phenomenon.  I was interested in how long people often spend in hospice, a semi-medical service for those thought to be close to death.  

The best book on actual hospice experience I have seen is “The In-Between” by Vlahos, a hospice nurse.  

I wondered how long the typical period between a physician seeing signs that say this patient has 6 months or less to live and that patient actually dying.  The book “How to Lie with Statistics” by Huff makes clear that sets of numbers can be somewhat distorted by, for instance, having a few very high numbers while mostly being numbers that are not high. That same book describes three common measures of “central tendency”: mean, median and mode.  I taught calculation of the “mean”, often called the average, to 5th graders who took the step of adding a set of numbers together to get their sum but often failed to divide the sum by how many figures were in the set.  Doing that gives an average or “mean” for 5, 6 and 7 of 18.   The students didn’t have an adult feeling for “average” or typical. 

Many people placed in hospice care live for a short time while a few live much longer. 

Activities needed

It is the season of the year.  Graduations as well as school concerts both vocal and instrumental.  Plays, games and championships.  But I see there is a big chunk missing.  We have students, sure.  And each year does show they are growing up, passing milestones and making progress.  But what about those who have married and have children?

Don’t think that just because a person has regular employment, you don’t want to see them in action.  We have family members who work at computers, golf courses, investments, and teaching.  We have some retirees.  Wouldn’t it be fun to see them all at their work, solving problems you wouldn’t know what to do with? Quietly, those former members of the cross-country team, those choir soloists have gone to master grown-up skills for which they are paid.  Let’s arrange to visit them doing what they do and get into their worlds!

Beautiful here

 I like to think that every season of the year has its advantages and beauty but spring is easy to like.  With trees developing leaves in striking bright green and flowering trees in colorful blossoms, with clear strong blue sky scattered with extra white clouds, one just has to glance out a window to be distracted and mesmerized.  True, we are subject to mosquito hordes after a little of our blood, strong winds and stubborn cold.  We do have sandy soil that allows extra water to drain but sometimes it drains too quickly.

Stop reading my mind

Google keeps reading my mind.  Before the deluge of comments and information about artificial intelligence, I often found valuable suggestions and angles in the published inquiries other people had made.  Related questions and searches often suggested to me interesting angles and related searches and questions.  

But now I sometimes get annoyed by Google or my computer reading my mind.  I can’t get a search or question completely typed before the question on my mind is supplied by digital forces.  Who should I complain to about brain invasion?

A visit to the department of motor vehicles

I don’t live far from an office of the state department of motor vehicles.  When I got a notice that my auto license plate renewal date was approaching, I figured I would use my computer and renew online.  It is easy but it might subject me to scams.  I mentioned to my digital savvy wife that I was thinking of driving to the DMV to renew my license, she commented that I should be prepared to stand in line.

You see, I am an American, which means I somewhat childishly want every duty and task to be accomplished very quickly and smoothly. As usual, she was right.  When I got into the business room, I joined the line of 6 or 7 people waiting for service.  The line did move quickly and soon I was led to a desk with a computer on it and told to type answers to its questions.  I did that carefully.  I have to be careful and check everything I do since I am a male and not a good keyboarder nor typist.  After maybe ten minutes, the computer said I should rejoin the line.  I had no sooner joined the line when the clerk said I should take the papers he offered and leave.

I was reminded by many notices and signs that I could have avoided the drive and simply renewed online.  I had tried that but ran into suspicious responses.  The trip was interesting and worthwhile.

Happy Mother's Day

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-9-2026

Two books by Jo Marchant

About 2023, I read “Cure” by Jo Marchant and I liked it very much.  Recently, I saw that her book “In Search of Now” came out.  I could use the more recent wording and say that her book dropped but I don’t feel comfortable with that. I like Kindle ebooks since they take up no noticeable room, are weightless and are delivered immediately over the Internet.  Another feature is that a reader can mark impressive passages and all of them form a file that can be searched, sent to a friend or oneself.  Amazon makes it clear when I look up a book that I once bought it and supplies the date of purchase.

Possibly the logical, scientific and personal aspects of the subject of now simply don’t hit me the way aspects of the mind and its medical influences do.  Whatever, we stopped my reading Now and switched to Cure.  The sub-title of Cure is “A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body” but the text focuses on mind over body in medical matters.  So, the subject of placebos comes up.  A typical way of testing a medicine is to give it to a group and give some inert fake, the placebo, to another group of people and see how the groups compare.

Generally, the medicine and the fake are delivered under cover so people are not aware of which they got.  I learned about “honest placebos” where people getting the fake treatment are informed they are not getting the medicine being tested.  There are cases where placebo group members know they received a fake but feel benefitted anyhow and request another dose. 

Video libraries

You may know that YouTube is in many ways the hottest website.  It has billions of videos and something like 500 hours of additional video is added EACH MINUTE!

A library of videos could be an important tool in learning. Distance educators often make use of a real-time lecture that tends to become an addition to a video course and content of a video library.  That content can be available after the teacher has retired or died.

You may have heard of Canvas, software for making educational videos available to students and today’s hack that interfered with Canvas.  That system is back online now.

It is a different world when many people habitually spend their days with video equipment right in their pocket or purse.

Grade of A

Today’s Numlock News reports that some faculty at Harvard are unhappy that so many grades at the end of a course are A.    The item reports from The Atlantic that 64% of the course grades were A.  I notice that when people are trying to name a college or university that has a reputation for high quality, they often name Harvard. If Harvard gets very high level students, doesn’t it make sense that most, if not every single one of them earns a high grade?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dwilDyXwbXG_vQm7vKpMA5HwTuUiiAEZ/view

The link leads to my chapter on ways of grading students.  A single symbol such as a letter grade can mean many different things.  Many people assume some sort of competition that results in those who ‘win’ getting the prize of the highest grade.  I recommend that some sort of clear arrangement be constructed about the grading method so that if a student wanted to get the highest grade offered, it would be clear just how to do that.  

To me, it is the meaning of the grades, the basis for giving them, that matters. 

Lynn's photo of our apple tree in bloom