October 11, 2009
Britain's Central Planning Death Panels
October 11, 2009
Free Market M.D.
October 11, 2009
Economies of Scale in Compliance
October 11, 2009
Balan's Challenge
October 10, 2009
The Pleasure of Telling Others What to Do
October 10, 2009
Gonick the Great - and How He Could Have Been Greater
October 9, 2009
More Scott Sumner
October 9, 2009
Not From The Onion
October 9, 2009
Thoughts on a Second Stimulus
A "continuous variable" is a variable with a continuous distribution. The opposite is a discrete or categorical variable.
It sounds like the quoted author is referring to steady growth rate rather than a continuous distribution.
Sorry to be a nerd about it.
I always wonder in education debates why there is so little talk about what it is that people do not know that is hurting them and how to most efficiently get this beneficial knowledge into them.
Floccina:
> how to most efficiently get this beneficial knowledge into them.
From my experience, even in a relationship with very high leverage (an employer working with an employee), it is practically impossible to motivate somebody to work on any relative deficits, even if the rewards would be considerable.
Self-satisfaction is a primary human trait.
To a first approximation, in a western democracy, the best we can do is corral and socialize humans until the age of 16 (sometimes the age of 20), and hope they pick up the habit of motivating and improving themselves. If that doesn't happen, then corral them for 50 more years, in institutions differentiated by the tiny amount of liberty they allow.
@mass:
The underlying schooling data is categorical. People are classified as (a) not having finished high school, (b) finished high school but no college, (c) some college, (d) completed college, (e) post-graduate work.
The "years of schooling" variable is artificially created out of this categorical data. I have a lot of problems with that approach.
Good article.
The cheapest and most direct tool the government has for impacting the amount of human capital in the populace is immigration policy.
Since Trudeau, Canada has subscribed to a policy of seeking out mercantile minorities from around the world to be immigrants while keeping out the uneducated. That kind of hard-headed thinking is deeply unpopular in the U.s.
Wow, I feel like a bonehead. Thanks for the clarification.