The Minister was quoted as saying: “My  parents had six children.  My first home as a young boy was a rental flat in Zion Road.  We shared it as tenants with other families” Citing individuals who made it, may be of no “statistical” relevance, as what we need are the statistics as to the proportion of poorer kids to richer kids, who get scholarships, proportional to their representation in the population.

“More spent on primary and secondary/JC schools.  This means having significantly more and better teachers, and having more programmes to meet children’s specific needs” What has spending more money, which what most countries do, got to do with the argument whether poorer kids are disadvantaged?

Straits Times journalist, Li XueYing put the crux of the debate in the right perspective: “Dr Ng had noted that ensuring social mobility “cannot mean equal outcomes, because students are inherently different”, But can it be that those from low-income families are consistently “inherently different” to such an extent?”

Relevant statistics Perhaps the most damning statistics that poorer kids are disadvantaged was the chart from the Ministry of Education (provided by the Straits Times), which showed that the percentage of Primary 1 pupils who lived in 1 to 3-room HDB flats and subsequently progressed to University and/or Polytechnic, has been declining since around 1986.

Group identification also plays a major role in how we make decisions — and that's another way facts can get filtered. Declining belief in climate science has been, for the most part in America, a conservative phenomenon. On the surface, that's curious: you could expect Republicans to be skeptical of economic solutions to climate change like a carbon tax, since higher taxes tend to be a Democratic policy, but scientific information ought to be non-partisan. Politicians never debate the physics of space travel after all, even if they argue fiercely over the costs and priorities associated with it. That, however, is the power of group thinking; for most conservative Americans, the very idea of climate science has been poisoned by ideologues who seek to advance their economic arguments by denying scientific fact. No additional data — new findings about CO2 feedback loops or better modeling of ice sheet loss — is likely to change their mind.

What's the answer for environmentalists? Change the message and frame the issue in a way that doesn't trigger unconscious opposition among so many Americans. That can be a simple as using the right labels: a recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan found that Republicans are less skeptical of "climate change" than "global warming," possibly because climate change sounds less specific. Possibly too because so broad a term includes the severe snowfalls of the past winter that can be a paradoxical result of a generally warmer world. Greens should also pin their message on subjects that are less controversial, like public health or national security. Instead of issuing dire warnings about an apocalyptic future — which seems to make many Americans stop listening — better to talk about the present generation's responsibility to the future, to bequeath their children and grandchildren a safer and healthy planet.

The bright side of all this irrationality is that it means human beings can act in ways that sometimes go against their immediate utility, sacrificing their own interests for the benefit of the group.

Our brains develop socially, not just selfishly, which means sustainable behavior — and salvation for the planet — may not be as difficult as it sometimes seem. We can motivate people to help stop climate change — it may just not be climate science that convinces them to act.

Dr Altuna not only includes the lack of involvement of teaching staff amongst the limitations for incorporating ICT, but also that of the involvement of the families. It was explained that families showed interest in the use of Internet and ICTs as educational tools for their children, but that these, too, excessively delegate to the schools. The researcher stressed that the families also need guidance, as they are concerned about the use by their children of Internet but do not know the best way to go about the problem.

Educational psychologist Dr Jon Altuna has carried out a thorough study of the phenomenon of the school 2.0. Concretely, he has looked into the use and level of incorporation of Internet and of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) into the third cycle of Primary Education, observing at the same time the attitudes of the teaching staff, and of the students and the families of the children in this regard. His PhD, defended at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), is entitled, Incorporation of Internet into the teaching of the subject Knowledge of the Environment during the third cycle of Primary Education: possibilities and analysis of the situation of a school. Dr Altuna’s research is based on a study of cases undertaken over eight years at a school where new activities involving ICT had been introduced into the curricular subject of Knowledge of the Environment, taught in the fifth and sixth year of Primary Education. The researcher gathered data from 837 students, 134 teachers and 190 families of this school. This study was completed with the experiences of ICT teachers from 21 schools.

it's in these companies' hands to do this ethically--to build algorithms that show us what we need to know and what we don't know, not just what we like.

why would the Googles and Facebooks of the world change what they're doing (absent government regulation)? My hope is that, like newspapers, they'll move from a pure profit-making posture to one that recognizes that they're keepers of the public trust.

most people don't know how Google and Facebook are controlling their information flows. And once they do, most people I've met want to have more control and transparency than these companies currently offer. So it's a way in to that conversation. First people have to know how the Internet is being edited for them.

what's good and bad about the personalization. Tell me some ways that this is not a good thing? Here's a few. 1) It's a distorted view of the world. Hearing your own views and ideas reflected back is comfortable, but it can lead to really bad decisions--you need to see the whole picture to make good decisions; 2) It can limit creativity and innovation, which often come about when two relatively unrelated concepts or ideas are juxtaposed; and 3) It's not great for democracy, because democracy requires a common sense of the big problems that face us and an ability to put ourselves in other peoples' shoes.

Stanford researchers Dean Eckles and Maurits Kapstein, who figured out that not only do people have personal tastes, they have personal "persuasion profiles". So I might respond more to appeals to authority (Barack Obama says buy this book), and you might respond more to scarcity ("only 2 left!"). In theory, if a site like Amazon could identify your persuasion profile, it could sell it to other sites--so that everywhere you go, people are using your psychological weak spots to get you to do stuff. I also really enjoyed talking to the guys behind OKCupid, who take the logic of Google and apply it to dating.

Nobody noticed when Google went all-in on personalization, because the filtering is very hard to see.

We could continuously sample a news source’s output to produce ongoing accuracy estimates, and build social software to help the audience report and filter errors. Meticulously applied, this approach would give a measure of the accuracy of each information source, and a measure of the efficiency of their corrections process (currently only about 3% of all errors are corrected.)

Real world reporting isn’t always clearly “right” or “wrong,” so it will often be hard to decide whether something is an error or not. But we’re not going for ultimate Truth here,  just a general way of measuring some important aspect of the idea we call “accuracy.” In practice it’s important that the error counting method is simple, clear and repeatable, so that you can compare error rates of different times and sources.

Subjective errors, though by definition involving judgment, should not be dismissed as merely differences in opinion. Sources found such errors to be about as common as factual errors and often more egregious [as rated by the sources.] But subjective errors are a very complex category

One of the major problems with previous news accuracy metrics is the effort and time required to produce them. In short, existing accuracy measurement methods are expensive and slow. I’ve been wondering if we can do better, and a simple idea comes to mind: sampling. The core idea is this: news sources could take an ongoing random sample of their output and check it for accuracy — a fact check spot check

Standard statistical theory tells us what the error on that estimate will be for any given number of samples (If I’ve got this right, the relevant formula is standard error of a population proportion estimate without replacement.) At a sample rate of a few stories per day, daily estimates of error rate won’t be worth much. But weekly and monthly aggregates will start to produce useful accuracy estimates

the first step would be admitting how inaccurate journalism has historically been. Then we have to come up with standardized accuracy evaluation procedures, in pursuit of metrics that capture enough of what we mean by “true” to be worth optimizing. Meanwhile, we can ramp up the efficiency of our online corrections processes until we find as many useful, legitimate errors as possible with as little staff time as possible. It might also be possible do data mining on types of errors and types of stories to figure out if there are patterns in how an organization fails to get facts right.

I’d love to live in a world where I could compare the accuracy of information sources, where errors got found and fixed with crowd-sourced ease, and where news organizations weren’t shy about telling me what they did and did not know. Basic factual accuracy is far from the only measure of good journalism, but perhaps it’s an improvement over the current sad state of affairs

it’s still helpful but if I don’t get to it for a few days I have never felt like I missed anything.

PLEASE! if the pictures taken are "offensive", then the "victims" in the pictures should be charged for INDECENT EXPOSURE! Where is the logic that a picture of a sexy girl is offensive but the same sexy girl walking in public is not offensive?IS IT UPSKIRT? NO! if i take a 18megapix wide lens camera and take the picture of a crowd, then crop out a sexy girl in the picture taken.. is that offensive? whats the diff? it is a publicly taken picture without anyone's consent!!!! IF PEOPLE DRESS SEXILY, THEY MUST BE EXPECTED TO BE OGGLED AND STARED AT!!

The Fiolas say they have health problems from the stress of the case. They say they've talked to dozens of lawyers but can't get one to sue the state, because of a cap on the amount they can recover. "It ruined my life, my wife's life and my family's life," he says. The Massachusetts attorney general's office, which charged Fiola, declined interview requests.

The Access guide provides tips for keeping communications safer in such a climate. It recommends Gmail, for example, because it uses a secure connection by default, known as HTTPS, like at banking Web sites; Hotmail provides HTTPS as an option, and Facebook began offering it in January. The guide also explains how to disguise browsing histories and how to gain access to banned sites.

China also sees hypocrisy in American discussions of Internet freedom. China comes in regularly for criticism over its "Great Firewall," but it suggests that the US government also restricts the Internet. While advocating Internet freedom, the US in fact imposes fairly strict restriction on cyberspace. On June 24, 2010, the US Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs approved the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act, which will give the federal government "absolute power" to shut down the Internet under a declared national emergency. Handing government the power to control the Internet will only be the first step towards a greatly restricted Internet system, whereby individual IDs and government permission would be required to operate a website. The United States applies double standards on Internet freedom by requesting unrestricted "Internet freedom" in other countries, which becomes an important diplomatic tool for the United States to impose pressure and seek hegemony, and imposing strict restriction within its territory. An article on BBC on February 16, 2011 noted the US government wants to boost Internet freedom to give voices to citizens living in societies regarded as "closed" and questions those governments' control over information flow, although within its borders the US government tries to create a legal frame to fight the challenge posed by WikiLeaks. The US government might be sensitive to the impact of the free flow of electronic information on its territory for which it advocates, but it wants to practice diplomacy by other means, including the Internet, particularly the social networks. (The cyberspace bill never became law, and a revised version is still pending in Congress.)

Finally, there's pornography, which China bans. Pornographic content is rampant on the Internet and severely harms American children. Statistics show that seven in 10 children have accidentally accessed pornography on the Internet and one in three has done so intentionally. And the average age of exposure is 11 years old - some start at eight years old (The Washington Times, June 16, 2010). According to a survey commissioned by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 20 percent of American teens have sent or posted nude or seminude pictures or videos of themselves. (www.co.jefferson.co.us, March 23, 2010). At least 500 profit-oriented nude chat websites were set up by teens in the United States, involving tens of thousands of pornographic pictures.

The terminology of “Third World” and “First World” are also problematic. The more “politically correct” terms used now are “developing” and “developed”. Whatever the charge, whatever your choice of terminology, Moscow and Tallinn are hardly “Third World” or “developing”. I have never been there myself, and unfortunately have no personal account to give, but a brief look at the countries listed below Singapore in the Wage Levels index- Beijing, Shanghai, Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Delhi, Mexico City even – would make me cautious about abstracting from these statistics any indication at all about “living standards”.

The living “habits” and rhythms of life in all these various cities are as heterogeneous as these statistics are homogenizing, by placing them all on the same scale of measurement. This is not to say that we cannot have fruitful comparatives across societies – but that these statistics are not sufficient for such a venture. At the very least UBS’ mathematical methodology requires a greater analysis which was not provided in the previous KRC article. The burden of proof here is really on my fellow KRC writer to show that Singapore has Third World living standards, and the analysis that has been offered needs more to work.