"John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> wrote in message
news:CqB%8.17733$Fq6.2119128 at news2.west.cox.net...
>> "Parse Tree" <parsetree at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:Wfp%8.6912$DN4.1074154 at news20.bellglobal.com...> >
> > Yes. There are too many assumptions in these questions though. I can
see
> > why they're difficult. There was another question about probability
which
> > didn't even seem to specify if the two values involved were independent
or
> > not.
> >
> >
>> You "can see why they're difficult"?
>> To whom are they difficult? To the 29% of American boys (after correcting
> for guesses), it obviously wasn't difficult.
>> Maybe to the 47.7% of Norwegian boys who got it wrong it was difficult,
but
> you can't claim that the other half found it to be difficult, can you?
>http://christianparty.net/timssh04.htm>> It's notable that the international average for girls who got it correct,
> after correcting for guesses, was only 1.7%, which is lower than the 3%
> standard error, which suggests that most women in the world probably agree
> that with you that "they're difficult". But is that a fact? No.
>> What's truly awesome about this forum is that you've already been given
the
> answer, and you *still* find it "difficult". If you already know the
answer
> and still find it "difficult", what does it take to get you to understand
> it?
More details. The questions are ambiguous, and I could answer that stats
question given earlier in many ways.
> You've done a great job of demonstrating the thesis of this thread, which
is
> that there's no way to educate the uneducable. It's like teaching a pig
to
> sing. It frustrates the teacher and irritates the pig.
It's difficult because I made certain assumptions in my answer.
Additionally, the tension is not ZERO in the string, it's just the closest
to the correct answer.
