Tearful care home bosses saying they've been let down and old folk are dying because of lack of testing to date. Others saying they've put their infection control procedures in place they would have done against a bad flu season but it hasn't been enough.
The thing that really got me was one care home manager saying if only he'd been able to get his staff and patients to test negative, they could have skipped the PPE and that would have made care much more personal/comfortable for the old dears.
I can see the attraction of that but it did worry me that they all seemed to view the testing as foolproof and a silver bullet, with a negative test indicating that all was clear.
Seems dangerous to me, as false negatives appear to be rather common. If you're testing a care worker because they've got symptoms or they believe they've been exposed to it at home or whatever then wouldn't it be safer for them to be staying at home anyway? The negative test doesn't "prove" they're safe to return. And if you did a mass testing of all your staff regardless of symptoms or possible prior exposure, then even if you did believe all the negative test results were correct, that only shows they were clear today. What about tomorrow, or next week?
Obviously it would be great if you just so happened to test someone who was asymptomatic but infectious and stopped them bringing the virus in, but it would involve a big a stroke of luck that you tested them after they caught it rather than just before and cleared them, but not so long after that the symptoms had started to show (I think the eggheads reckon some people never know they had it while others have a brief pre-symptomatic stage before the symptoms kick in). And in the meantime while you're waiting for the test result, should these apparently asymptomatic and unexposed people be coming to work?
A big difference between care homes and hospitals is that we accept that COVID is going to be floating around in hospitals and even with PPE it's inevitable some of the staff are going to catch it too. With care homes the arithmetic of the risk is rather different, you just don't want it getting in at all, if you can avoid it.
Those care homes that have just locked down a crew of managers, care staff, cooks and cleaners inside have given themselves a fighting chance. Even then, it's quite common for frail residents to have to go to hospital (eg if they've had a fall) and then come back again, and they might bring something in with them. If staff are going in and out every day, and spending time with the kiddywinkles or out shopping, then no matter what you do with the testing I can't see how, with current technology, you can stop it.
From the article posted by isam on the previous thread:
"...looking at the experience of other countries, it is not clear that a lockdown caused the epidemic to reverse, and if Sweden suggests that sensible hygiene and modest distancing measures are likely just as effective as draconian lockdown; and covid-19 deaths per day are clearly levelling off in the UK; and there is clear evidence of a matching slowdown in reliable forward indicators"
The fellow whose graphs I posted, to much consternation, has written an article about the Covid lockdown. Toby Young's involved, so I'm sure it will receive a fair hearing
"Does peak infection sync with lockdown enforcement? The lockdown logic’s basic arithmetic doesn’t add up"
From the article posted by isam on the previous thread:
"...looking at the experience of other countries, it is not clear that a lockdown caused the epidemic to reverse, and if Sweden suggests that sensible hygiene and modest distancing measures are likely just as effective as draconian lockdown; and covid-19 deaths per day are clearly levelling off in the UK; and there is clear evidence of a matching slowdown in reliable forward indicators"
From the article posted by isam on the previous thread:
"...looking at the experience of other countries, it is not clear that a lockdown caused the epidemic to reverse, and if Sweden suggests that sensible hygiene and modest distancing measures are likely just as effective as draconian lockdown; and covid-19 deaths per day are clearly levelling off in the UK; and there is clear evidence of a matching slowdown in reliable forward indicators"
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
I have had a pile of chips thrown at me from a moving car once, but I was a pedestrian not cycling at the time. Perhaps they knew I cycle occasionally.
Italy also has a large elderly population that go to mass.
Now, I could be wrong, but I suspect the communion cup might as well be called the covid-19 cup.
Catholic over-70s ALL made their First Communion before lay people were allowed to drink communion wine: we simply took the host (the bread wafer, for the benefit of any pagans reading this).
My experience is that most of us - in Italy as much as in England - continue to receive only the host. Communion under both kinds is definitely a young person's choice in Catholicism.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
Italy also has a large elderly population that go to mass.
Now, I could be wrong, but I suspect the communion cup might as well be called the covid-19 cup.
Catholic over-70s ALL made their First Communion before lay people were allowed to drink communion wine: we simply took the host (the bread wafer, for the benefit of any pagans reading this).
My experience is that most of us - in Italy as much as in England - continue to receive only the host. Communion under both kinds is definitely a young person's choice in Catholicism.
I was wondering. But not being an expert on Catholicism and the reservation of the sacrament I didn’t like to comment.
The constant attempts to try and prove points by comparing ant 2 or more countries with the UK is pretty useless - you'd need a very sophisticated model comparing population density and distribution, time and nature of lockdown, age breakdown, nature of housing typicality, average family size, social customes.... the list goes on and on.
All we get instead is country A has fewer deaths than UK --Gotcha!
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
These NHS England daily death figures look really encouraging. Peak 8th April of 771, reducing to 399 and 133 in last two days.
Don't be mislead by the last two days. They are yet to be filled out, as they will tomorrow and the day after.
They are indicative of a small decline, or perhaps a plateau.
This is similar to other countries which also had a long tail following a peak, contrary to the exponential fashion in which they added cases (/deaths).
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Out of interest how would you have gone about it? I looked at the problem and decided that I was very glad it wasn’t mine to solve.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Graham's number is so large that any physics-based analogies massively understate its scale
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Why will they be meaningless? My daughter`s school has confirmed that her GCSE grades will be based on assessed work and mock result. And each teacher has been asked to rank each pupil in the class from best to worst. The school has been told that the school`s exam performance in previous years will also be considered.
This seems the best they can do in the circumstances I guess.
The upshot for my daughter is this, I`d expect her to end up with a grade one higher on each subject as compared to her mock results. If this doesn`t happen I shall be appealing as it seems to me that the mocks (which were proper exams under exam conditions) represents the best guide of all.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Out of interest how would you have gone about it? I looked at the problem and decided that I was very glad it wasn’t mine to solve.
This has practical consequences. If results are published on their normal schedules and distributed at schools as normal, I expect things to turn very ugly at a lot of schools - teachers will not have exam boards to hide behind, and will be the direct authors of little Jonny's unfair results.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Graham's number is so large that any physics-based analogies massively understate its scale
For anybody who wants to know more here is a video with Graham himself explaining it.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Why will they be meaningless? My daughter`s school has confirmed that her GCSE grades will be based on assessed work and mock result. And each teacher has been asked to rank each pupil in the class from best to worst. The school has been told that the school`s exam performance in previous years will also be considered.
This seems the best they can do in the circumstances I guess.
The upshot for my daughter is this, I`d expect her to end up with a grade one higher on each subject as compared to her mock results. If this doesn`t happen I shall be appealing as it seems to me that the mocks (which were proper exams under exam conditions) represents the best guide of all.
We discovered last week that the other best school in County Durham doesn't do Mocks in exam conditions they were held over 3 lessons, and anyone with a good memory could use the time between exams to research their answers. So in that case it's possible to argue that Mocks may overstate the end result.
And there really isn't much that the exam boards can do now to fix this beyond ranking pupils against previous years and awarding marks that will be very similar to last year's results from that school,
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
I dumped AQA some time ago when they started to set question that were too open to crazy markimg. I've been with Eduqas (was the Welsh board) since. Apart from the (to me) unreadable pages in Welsh that I mistakenly click on, they've been very good so far.
We didn't run mocks as they've been done before, so the NEA is going to be one of my main pointers.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Out of interest how would you have gone about it? I looked at the problem and decided that I was very glad it wasn’t mine to solve.
I would have waited before seeing whether it was necessary to cancel the fecking exams. They made the call far, far too soon without thinking through all the consequences.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Why will they be meaningless? My daughter`s school has confirmed that her GCSE grades will be based on assessed work and mock result. And each teacher has been asked to rank each pupil in the class from best to worst. The school has been told that the school`s exam performance in previous years will also be considered.
This seems the best they can do in the circumstances I guess.
The upshot for my daughter is this, I`d expect her to end up with a grade one higher on each subject as compared to her mock results. If this doesn`t happen I shall be appealing as it seems to me that the mocks (which were proper exams under exam conditions) represents the best guide of all.
We discovered last week that the other best school in County Durham doesn't do Mocks in exam conditions they were held over 3 lessons, and anyone with a good memory could use the time between exams to research their answers. So in that case it's possible to argue that Mocks may overstate the end result.
And there really isn't much that the exam boards can do now to fix this beyond ranking pupils against previous years and awarding marks that will be very similar to last year's results from that school,
If one good thing comes of this it will be pupils taking their mock exams more seriously...
These NHS England daily death figures look really encouraging. Peak 8th April of 771, reducing to 399 and 133 in last two days.
The daily figures will be adjusted upwards as more data comes in. The upwards adjustment will be biggest for recent days. Having said that, we can be reasonably confident that the highest day in that set of figures will be 8th April with slightly smaller figures on the 11th and 12th April.
What kind of idiot takes a Mail story at face value?
Oh..
As big an idiot as takes a Nat Onal story at face value?
Your inability to let this lie is a joy. It's almost as hilarious as the afternoon of hundreds of posts dedicated to 'proving' that the anti Brexit march was only X hundreds of thousands rather than Y hundreds of thousands, though nothing will ever beat that for pure choleric nuttiness.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Why will they be meaningless? My daughter`s school has confirmed that her GCSE grades will be based on assessed work and mock result. And each teacher has been asked to rank each pupil in the class from best to worst. The school has been told that the school`s exam performance in previous years will also be considered.
This seems the best they can do in the circumstances I guess.
The upshot for my daughter is this, I`d expect her to end up with a grade one higher on each subject as compared to her mock results. If this doesn`t happen I shall be appealing as it seems to me that the mocks (which were proper exams under exam conditions) represents the best guide of all.
Because not all schools do mocks, not all schools who do mocks base them on exam papers, and the standard of marking is not consistent in classroom assessments.
So what I grade at 3 or 4 in the school I work in would be an 8 at the school I live closest to (that’s not a joke, I’ve inspected some of their work and was appalled).
As for previous years, that’s even more worrying as it assumes consistency between cohorts. Last year my highest grade was a C and I was glad to get that because they were all without exception lazy thickos. This year 50% should be A or B because they are bright and hardworking. Are they to be penalised because last year my ablest students thought a page of handwriting was enough for a 30 mark essay?
[Ironically, the spellchecker shows 'gaol' as an apparent error].
Not acceptable in Le Royaume-Uni.
Last summer I had to meet a French friend in London. She texted her whereabouts to me, based on her GPS. Damned if I could see a pub called the Royaume-Uni.
Many Americanisms are actually old English terms with one variant being retained by us and the other by the US. (Fall and Autumn spring to mind).
The courts might believe themselves infallible, but in this instance I must contend that judgement is perfectly valid.
Indeed I believe our use of the "u" in the word color/colour (and other similar words) post-dates the American spelling, and is believed to be an affectation from the 18th century to make our language appear more French! There is one to wind up the Brexiteers!
It may not be what he was trying to achieve, but coupled with his recent increased pressure on Maduro, who picked a silly moment to quarrel with the Russians, it might just force a change in Venezuela at last.
5G is a bad idea in my opinion because smartphone addiction is a bad thing and 5G can only make the addiction even worse than it is now.
The poor chap with the red flag will get puffed out too.
We should never forget the women whose uteruses (uteri?) fell out after going 50mph+ on a train. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.
My Dad got a letter today telling him he is on the vulnerable list and must’ve go out for 13 weeks. This has to be wrong doesn’t it? His best mate has leukaemia and he got the letter 3 weeks ago
Why would my Dad, who has only been out for a walk over the park a few times in the last month, have to stay in for a further 13 weeks of leukaemia patients can go out in 10?
I quite like being properly offline when not on the computer. How the internet affects psychology of individuals and groups (even without nefarious propaganda and so forth) remains to be explored.
Mr. Foremain, not sure about that either way... as an aside, TA Dodge is one of my favourite historians and his work (written around 1900) has far fewer 'American' English spellings than one might think, given he was an American.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Why will they be meaningless? My daughter`s school has confirmed that her GCSE grades will be based on assessed work and mock result. And each teacher has been asked to rank each pupil in the class from best to worst. The school has been told that the school`s exam performance in previous years will also be considered.
This seems the best they can do in the circumstances I guess.
The upshot for my daughter is this, I`d expect her to end up with a grade one higher on each subject as compared to her mock results. If this doesn`t happen I shall be appealing as it seems to me that the mocks (which were proper exams under exam conditions) represents the best guide of all.
Does it matter? Serious question. Are GCSEs used for anything these days? If you've promised her £100 per top grade, you could save yourself a few quid, and if she is going to university, the academics will look at her A-levels, so is it worth the stress of an appeal?
5G is a bad idea in my opinion because smartphone addiction is a bad thing and 5G can only make the addiction even worse than it is now.
The poor chap with the red flag will get puffed out too.
We should never forget the women whose uteruses (uteri?) fell out after going 50mph+ on a train. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.
Perhaps we should make womb for them on a memorial.
5G is a bad idea in my opinion because smartphone addiction is a bad thing and 5G can only make the addiction even worse than it is now.
The poor chap with the red flag will get puffed out too.
We should never forget the women whose uteruses (uteri?) fell out after going 50mph+ on a train. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.
There must have been a lady somewhere that risked it, despite the advice.
Yes, it looks like we are over the peak. Caveats re tails and plateaux but nevertheless fantastic news.
It's a moment where one instinctively reaches for poetry and what better than this one. It's close to perfect.
We made it through the rain We kept our world protected We made it through the rain We kept our point of view We made it through the rain And found ourselves respected By the others who Got rained on too And made it through
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Sounds like this ‘professional judgement’ system the drunken imbeciles Department of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.
I’m currently very glad I did not get the Head of Department job when I applied for it.
It’s a shambles. It’s such a joke that I’ve emailed my friends in academia to tell them grades this year will simply be meaningless.
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Why will they be meaningless? My daughter`s school has confirmed that her GCSE grades will be based on assessed work and mock result. And each teacher has been asked to rank each pupil in the class from best to worst. The school has been told that the school`s exam performance in previous years will also be considered.
This seems the best they can do in the circumstances I guess.
The upshot for my daughter is this, I`d expect her to end up with a grade one higher on each subject as compared to her mock results. If this doesn`t happen I shall be appealing as it seems to me that the mocks (which were proper exams under exam conditions) represents the best guide of all.
Does it matter? Serious question. Are GCSEs used for anything these days? If you've promised her £100 per top grade, you could save yourself a few quid, and if she is going to university, the academics will look at her A-levels, so is it worth the stress of an appeal?
TBH, it’s the A-levels I’m worried about. GCSEs can be managed next year if necessary, but A-levels are now pretty much one shot.
I'm relieved that the daily number didn't jump up today - it does seem quite likely that the worst has passed for now. It would have been about two weeks after the "Stay Home" announcement from Johnson on the 23rd, so that fits.
Now the government have to decide what the strategy is. Will it be herd immunity through allowing the virus to spread as much as the NHS can deal with, or will it be local eradication, followed by quarantine for travellers and improved contact-tracing?
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was....
3.
Graham's number is so large that any physics-based analogies massively understate its scale
But not that big...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver ...Likewise, we know that S(10) > Σ(10) > 3 ↑↑↑ 3 is a gigantic number and S(17) > Σ(17) > G, where G is Graham's number - an enormous number. Thus, even if we knew, say, S(30), it is completely unreasonable to run any machine that number of steps. There is not enough computational capacity in the known part of the universe to have performed even S(6) operations directly...
China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web. Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.
5G is a bad idea in my opinion because smartphone addiction is a bad thing and 5G can only make the addiction even worse than it is now.
The poor chap with the red flag will get puffed out too.
We should never forget the women whose uteruses (uteri?) fell out after going 50mph+ on a train. At the going down of the sun and in the morning we will remember them.
Perhaps we should make womb for them on a memorial.
China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web. Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.
China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web. Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.
A modern ethics question. My son was doing an online maths exam today on a part of the course they had not covered. He received 3 text messages asking how to do the log question. Should he have told them? His answer was to tell them how to do it but not the answer.
What exams taken in this way is supposed to tell the examiner board is simply beyond me but the Highers don’t cover metaphysics.
A modern ethics question. My son was doing an online maths exam today on a part of the course they had not covered. He received 3 text messages asking how to do the log question. Should he have told them? His answer was to tell them how to do it but not the answer.
What exams taken in this way is supposed to tell the examiner board is simply beyond me but the Highers don’t cover metaphysics.
Why was he having to take an exam on material they hadn't covered?
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
Graham's number is so large that any physics-based analogies massively understate its scale
A modern ethics question. My son was doing an online maths exam today on a part of the course they had not covered. He received 3 text messages asking how to do the log question. Should he have told them? His answer was to tell them how to do it but not the answer.
What exams taken in this way is supposed to tell the examiner board is simply beyond me but the Highers don’t cover metaphysics.
I would have advised against it, put it that way. Because that may now be used to determine their Highers grade even though they didn’t know how to do it.
On the previous thread some people were commenting on a particularly large range of predicted results. The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration). This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was....
3.
Graham's number is so large that any physics-based analogies massively understate its scale
But not that big...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver ...Likewise, we know that S(10) > Σ(10) > 3 ↑↑↑ 3 is a gigantic number and S(17) > Σ(17) > G, where G is Graham's number - an enormous number. Thus, even if we knew, say, S(30), it is completely unreasonable to run any machine that number of steps. There is not enough computational capacity in the known part of the universe to have performed even S(6) operations directly...
+1
All these numbers are countable - there is a bigger space, and in fact there's a bigger number of bigger spaces (endlessly far).
A modern ethics question. My son was doing an online maths exam today on a part of the course they had not covered. He received 3 text messages asking how to do the log question. Should he have told them? His answer was to tell them how to do it but not the answer.
What exams taken in this way is supposed to tell the examiner board is simply beyond me but the Highers don’t cover metaphysics.
Why was he having to take an exam on material they hadn't covered?
Because they would have covered it before the Higher exam and the school wants evidence in case their judgment is challenged by the SQA.
China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web. Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.
I'm relieved that the daily number didn't jump up today - it does seem quite likely that the worst has passed for now. It would have been about two weeks after the "Stay Home" announcement from Johnson on the 23rd, so that fits.
Now the government have to decide what the strategy is. Will it be herd immunity through allowing the virus to spread as much as the NHS can deal with, or will it be local eradication, followed by quarantine for travellers and improved contact-tracing?
I predict the former because the latter is too difficult. But I wouldn't call it herd immunity. It's just managing the disease within health system capacity. Whether we get herd immunity that way depends on various factors, including the timing of a vaccine.
A modern ethics question. My son was doing an online maths exam today on a part of the course they had not covered. He received 3 text messages asking how to do the log question. Should he have told them? His answer was to tell them how to do it but not the answer.
What exams taken in this way is supposed to tell the examiner board is simply beyond me but the Highers don’t cover metaphysics.
I would have advised against it, put it that way. Because that may now be used to determine their Highers grade even though they didn’t know how to do it.
Although it shows he is a nice person.
His view is that if it is open book (which it inevitably is online) he is a resource they can use. He’d make a better lawyer than me.
From the article posted by isam on the previous thread:
"...looking at the experience of other countries, it is not clear that a lockdown caused the epidemic to reverse, and if Sweden suggests that sensible hygiene and modest distancing measures are likely just as effective as draconian lockdown; and covid-19 deaths per day are clearly levelling off in the UK; and there is clear evidence of a matching slowdown in reliable forward indicators"
China has imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of the novel coronavirus, according to a central government directive and online notices published by two Chinese universities, that have since been removed from the web. Under the new policy, all academic papers on Covid-19 will be subject to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to the now-deleted posts.
Comments
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52289607
Tearful care home bosses saying they've been let down and old folk are dying because of lack of testing to date. Others saying they've put their infection control procedures in place they would have done against a bad flu season but it hasn't been enough.
The thing that really got me was one care home manager saying if only he'd been able to get his staff and patients to test negative, they could have skipped the PPE and that would have made care much more personal/comfortable for the old dears.
I can see the attraction of that but it did worry me that they all seemed to view the testing as foolproof and a silver bullet, with a negative test indicating that all was clear.
Seems dangerous to me, as false negatives appear to be rather common. If you're testing a care worker because they've got symptoms or they believe they've been exposed to it at home or whatever then wouldn't it be safer for them to be staying at home anyway? The negative test doesn't "prove" they're safe to return. And if you did a mass testing of all your staff regardless of symptoms or possible prior exposure, then even if you did believe all the negative test results were correct, that only shows they were clear today. What about tomorrow, or next week?
Obviously it would be great if you just so happened to test someone who was asymptomatic but infectious and stopped them bringing the virus in, but it would involve a big a stroke of luck that you tested them after they caught it rather than just before and cleared them, but not so long after that the symptoms had started to show (I think the eggheads reckon some people never know they had it while others have a brief pre-symptomatic stage before the symptoms kick in). And in the meantime while you're waiting for the test result, should these apparently asymptomatic and unexposed people be coming to work?
A big difference between care homes and hospitals is that we accept that COVID is going to be floating around in hospitals and even with PPE it's inevitable some of the staff are going to catch it too. With care homes the arithmetic of the risk is rather different, you just don't want it getting in at all, if you can avoid it.
Those care homes that have just locked down a crew of managers, care staff, cooks and cleaners inside have given themselves a fighting chance. Even then, it's quite common for frail residents to have to go to hospital (eg if they've had a fall) and then come back again, and they might bring something in with them. If staff are going in and out every day, and spending time with the kiddywinkles or out shopping, then no matter what you do with the testing I can't see how, with current technology, you can stop it.
Maybe it’s because Italian houses are smaller on average? (If they are, which I don’t know for sure.)
"Your mobile phone is becoming your ankle bracelet"
Interview with Edward Snowden on the privacy implications of Covid-19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5OAjnveyJo
"...looking at the experience of other countries, it is not clear that a lockdown caused the epidemic to reverse, and if Sweden suggests that sensible hygiene and modest distancing measures are likely just as effective as draconian lockdown; and
covid-19 deaths per day are clearly levelling off in the UK; and
there is clear evidence of a matching slowdown in reliable forward indicators"
https://thecritic.co.uk/does-peak-infection-sync-with-lockdown-enforcement/
*sound of Tazer*
"It is now...."
"Does peak infection sync with lockdown enforcement?
The lockdown logic’s basic arithmetic doesn’t add up"
https://thecritic.co.uk/does-peak-infection-sync-with-lockdown-enforcement/
Now, I could be wrong, but I suspect the communion cup might as well be called the covid-19 cup.
Or should I save them to throw at passing cyclists?
Honestly, what do you have against cyclists? Nice people like me are cyclists, though we won’t be very nice if you start throwing things at us.
https://twitter.com/cricketwyvern/status/1250400567085748225?s=21
Other cyclists? Not so much it seems...
The largest range I know of involves Graham’s Number. When it was first published in the early 70s it was then the largest number ever used in a mathematical proof. It is a number so large the the visible universe is too small to write out the number which is the number of digits needed to write out the number. If you could somehow know the number then the information contained in it would cause your brain to collapse as a black hole (and that is not an exaggeration).
This was not the answer to the problem though, it was nearly the upper bound. The lower bound was...
3.
My experience is that most of us - in Italy as much as in England - continue to receive only the host. Communion under both kinds is definitely a young person's choice in Catholicism.
drunken imbecilesDepartment of Education expect us to come up with in the next six weeks.the list goes on and on.
All we get instead is country A has fewer deaths than UK --Gotcha!
Of course, any grades from AQA are meaningless anyway, but it will apply to all four exam boards this year.
Pregnant nurse with cornavirus dies but baby is saved
A pregnant 28-year-old nurse who was diagnosed with Covid-19 has died.
An emergency caesarean section was performed to deliver the nurse's child, Channel 4 News repored.
The baby is alive and being cared for, the broadcaster said.
In an internal email, the Trust’s chief executive described her as a “wonderful young woman who made a huge contribution”.
He said the survival of her baby daughter was a “beacon of light at this very dark time”.
They are indicative of a small decline, or perhaps a plateau.
This is similar to other countries which also had a long tail following a peak, contrary to the exponential fashion in which they added cases (/deaths).
FPT: As big an idiot as takes a Nat Onal story at face value?
Italy's deaths peaked on 27/3, at 919 deaths, taking the total to 9134.
Their latest figures still contain 622 new deaths, bringing the total to 21067.
The tail is long, and deaths still have some way to increase. They are suppressing the new case numbers by around 20% per week.
So the peak day for deaths look to be nearer 30% than 50% of the way through in terms of the total death toll.
What we are taking as the UKs peak day for deaths, 9/4 with 980, took the total to 8958, so those numbers are very close to Italy's at this stage.
It’s judgment.
This seems the best they can do in the circumstances I guess.
The upshot for my daughter is this, I`d expect her to end up with a grade one higher on each subject as compared to her mock results. If this doesn`t happen I shall be appealing as it seems to me that the mocks (which were proper exams under exam conditions) represents the best guide of all.
But I’m quietly encouraged with recent figures, if pleased is the right adjective for several hundred of my fellow countrymen dying each day.
Off to language gaol with you!
[Ironically, the spellchecker shows 'gaol' as an apparent error].
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuigptwlVHo
I differentiate by using "judgment" to refer to court decisions and "judgement" outside the forensic sense.
And there really isn't much that the exam boards can do now to fix this beyond ranking pupils against previous years and awarding marks that will be very similar to last year's results from that school,
We didn't run mocks as they've been done before, so the NEA is going to be one of my main pointers.
'One's country' and 'nationalism' obviously. Did you think I meant pizza and pineapple?
There is a significant puzzle about how the Italians hung on to the pizza concept for so long without having actually discovered pineapple though
Many Americanisms are actually old English terms with one variant being retained by us and the other by the US. (Fall and Autumn spring to mind).
The courts might believe themselves infallible, but in this instance I must contend that judgement is perfectly valid.
So what I grade at 3 or 4 in the school I work in would be an 8 at the school I live closest to (that’s not a joke, I’ve inspected some of their work and was appalled).
As for previous years, that’s even more worrying as it assumes consistency between cohorts. Last year my highest grade was a C and I was glad to get that because they were all without exception lazy thickos. This year 50% should be A or B because they are bright and hardworking. Are they to be penalised because last year my ablest students thought a page of handwriting was enough for a 30 mark essay?
https://www.bloomberg.com/energy
*Grabs tinfoil hat and ducks*
My Dad got a letter today telling him he is on the vulnerable list and must’ve go out for 13 weeks. This has to be wrong doesn’t it? His best mate has leukaemia and he got the letter 3 weeks ago
Why would my Dad, who has only been out for a walk over the park a few times in the last month, have to stay in for a further 13 weeks of leukaemia patients can go out in 10?
I quite like being properly offline when not on the computer. How the internet affects psychology of individuals and groups (even without nefarious propaganda and so forth) remains to be explored.
Mr. Foremain, not sure about that either way... as an aside, TA Dodge is one of my favourite historians and his work (written around 1900) has far fewer 'American' English spellings than one might think, given he was an American.
Ah, my coat.
It's a moment where one instinctively reaches for poetry and what better than this one. It's close to perfect.
We made it through the rain
We kept our world protected
We made it through the rain
We kept our point of view
We made it through the rain
And found ourselves respected
By the others who
Got rained on too
And made it through
Now the government have to decide what the strategy is. Will it be herd immunity through allowing the virus to spread as much as the NHS can deal with, or will it be local eradication, followed by quarantine for travellers and improved contact-tracing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busy_beaver
...Likewise, we know that S(10) > Σ(10) > 3 ↑↑↑ 3 is a gigantic number and S(17) > Σ(17) > G, where G is Graham's number - an enormous number. Thus, even if we knew, say, S(30), it is completely unreasonable to run any machine that number of steps. There is not enough computational capacity in the known part of the universe to have performed even S(6) operations directly...
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/12/asia/china-coronavirus-research-restrictions-intl-hnk/index.html
If so, may I refer President XI to the Streisand Effect...
His answer was to tell them how to do it but not the answer.
What exams taken in this way is supposed to tell the examiner board is simply beyond me but the Highers don’t cover metaphysics.
Although it shows he is a nice person.
All these numbers are countable - there is a bigger space, and in fact there's a bigger number of bigger spaces (endlessly far).
And he is nice when he’s not showing off. :-)
Therefore we must boycott the racist Chinese Government.