I like it. I think you've got one too many lines, though: you don't need both a confuse-o-meter and an understand-o-meter - they're reporting the same metric. I'd consider averaging them into one line for overall sentiment.
> A business is valuable to own if you think it may bring you more value in the future […]
The mistake is conflating money and value: money can be a value, but other things, like riding into space, the prestige of owning a paper, and general quality of life are also values. A decision makes economic sense if the value you gain from it exceeds the value you give up to get it, regardless of the form those values take.
Not to mention they're just Gorgeous. I had a set I picked up at a thrift store just for the look - Wikipedia's faster, but damn, Britannica had Gravitas.
In my rather limited experience as a sysadmin, I've found avoiding those calls to be one of my best motivators: My systems work like they're supposed to because I like my sleep.
Two reasons:
1. Logs filling up with login failures from drive-bys masks legitimate/focused hack attempts.
2. If there's a security vulnerability found for sshd, non-standard port choice reduces the risk of drive-by scanners.
Non-standard ports don't stop dedicated attacks, but they do reduce noise that can obfuscate a dedicated attack and can reduce your exposure to uncommitted attackers.
Aside from the privacy issues, I think this is the biggest cock-up of the whole thing: They managed to predict, with shocking accuracy, the fact that the girl was pregnant - yet they missed that she was a teenager living with her parents. This is why I worry about algorithms: We're extremely bad about identifying what's important information until we screw something like this up. In this case, the father called Target sheepishly. In other cases, he may have beaten his daughter or disowned her.
This touches on one of the biggest problems when using compute-driven data. I'm pretty sure the data could easily tell you her age and residential status... if you had thought of checking. Ultimately, the algorithms can only answer the questions you ask.
In this case, the difference is if Foozits were something you used to stop your whatzit from itching, the proprietor probably wouldn't mention that out loud in the company of others. Target, on the other hand, is fine sending you an ad for it - and I suspect when the day comes that they can announce that to you when you walk in the store, they'll use all the tact and grace they apparently used in divining a girl was pregnant without also divining her age.
I think part of the problem is that it's a very difficult question to quantify - we can't control the inputs, we're not totally sure what we want from the outputs, it's unlikely that a uniform process will work to get the outputs we want, and we don't have the materials to guarantee a uniform process from start to finish.
On the input side, each incoming class is different: they vary across geographic and socioeconomic lines, they're all affected by factors which occurred years before we ever got them in a classroom to begin with.
On the output side, we really _Don't_ know what we want. It's easy to say, "students who can read, write, and do math," but the devil, as always, is in the details - how do we measure that in a way that doesn't immediately become a metrics problem á la No Child Left Behind?. More than anything, we need to foster successful individuals - but we're not sure how to do that on a large scale and the education system is but one part of a child's life.
The answer in a lot of ways seems to be "Very Good Teachers" - but what makes a good teacher? What sort of support structure is required? Are we willing to pay for enough Very Good Teachers? Do we have enough? Can we train more?
Further, to what degree does the attempt to constrain the education system so we can quantify the results inhibit individuality? In assuring a child knows his multiplication tables, are we imposing a system that will prevent that child from the free expression that would eventually lead to a great artist? Many of our finest works - the pieces of art by which we define our culture, spring from people who would, by any other metric, be considered failures by a system intended to raise successful individuals.
All this is complicated by the fact that the end result of a good education system ultimately is a good society - something we won't know until 20, 30, 40 years later. Everything else is a proxy: We think a high college attendance or graduation rate will get us there, we think more scientists and engineers will get us there, we think more well-rounded individuals will get us there, but ultimately, we don't know what makes a good society, nor what works to get us there.
I think there are improvements we can make, teaching methods that work better than others, and probably ways to quantify some of those differences, but ultimately, we don't even know the bounds of the problem we're trying to solve in education.
Great comment. I think the difficulty in defining what makes a good teacher is as difficult as what defines a good parent. In rough terms, I think a good parent means someone who raises a compassionate, honest child.
Similarly, a good teacher / education system is one that raises inquisitive students. I've long believed it's better to graduate kids who love algebra vs. those that know and hate calculus. Because in 10 years, the ones who loved algebra will probably end up loving calculus too (instead of developing a lifelong aversion to math, and learning in general).
So, my meta-reply would be to search for a system that tries to generate genuine interest in learning. (Plug: I try to blog in this manner at http://betterexplained.com).
