Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

December 12, 2013

Harvard gives new meaning to meritocracy

Filed under: Data,Government,IT — Patrick Durusau @ 7:00 pm

Harvard gives new meaning to meritocracy by Kaiser Fung.

From the post:

Due to the fastidious efforts of Professor Harvey Mansfield, Harvard has confirmed the legend that “the hard part is to get in”. Not only does it appear impossible to flunk out but according to the new revelation (link), the median grade given is A- and “the most frequently awarded grade at Harvard College is actually a straight A”.

The last sentence can be interpreted in two ways. If “straight A” means As across the board, then he is saying a lot of graduates end up with As in all courses taken. If “straight A” is used to distinguish between A and A-, then all he is saying is that the median grade is A- and the mode is A. Since at least 50% of the grades given are A or A- and there are more As than A-s, there would be at least 25% As, possibly a lot more.

Note also that the median being A- tells us nothing about the bottom half of the grades. If no professor even gave out anything below an A-, the median would still be A-. If such were to be the case, then the 5th percentile, 10th percentile, 25th percentile, etc. would all be A-.

For full disclosure, Harvard should tell us what proportion fo grades are As and what proportion are A-s.

And to think, I complain about government contractors having a sense of entitlement, divorced from their performance.

Looks like that is also true for all those Harvard (and other) graduates that are now employed by the U.S. government.

Nothing you or I can do about it but something you need to take into account when dealing with the U.S. government.

I keep hoping that some department, agency, government or government in waiting will become interested in weapons grade IT.

Reasoning that when other departments, agencies, governments or governments in waiting start feeling the heat, it may set off an IT arms race.

Not the waste for the sake of waste sort of arms race we had in the 1960’s but one with real winners and losers.

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