Not good at math? Monkeys might actually do it better: a new study shows that monkeys can perform mental addition in a manner remarkably similar to college students.
Monkeys and college students took the same test - one that showed possible totals for the number of dots on a computer screen. The average response time for both monkeys and humans was about one second; the college students were correct 94 percent of the time and the monkeys 76 percent.
The findings point to ancient origins of math in humanity and our distant relatives. The researchers did say that monkeys will not pass college math tests anytime soon, although 76 percent probably will do it for most math classes.
Showing posts with label Duke. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Duke. Show all posts
Monday, December 24, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
College rankings
Today’s issue of the U.S.News and World Report ranked U.S. colleges, and Princeton came out on top for the eighth straight year.
I thought it might be interesting to compare the college rankings with rankings of endowment size. It’s like what they do in baseball to answer the question, do the teams with the largest payrolls win more?
Based on numbers from the US Department of Education, six of the best colleges also had the largest endowments and they’re the usual suspects: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, and Columbia.
Four schools with the largest endowments didn’t make the top ten best school list: University of Texas, University of California, Texas A and M, and University of Michigan. In fact, Texas A and M finished a dismal 62nd in the U.S.News and World Report rankings.
Three schools: California Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, and Duke, were all ranked in the top 10 best schools but didn’t have the largest endowments. Now there’s like an opportunity for fund raisers.
Of course whenever there’s a survey there’s controversy. It seems that some colleges don’t approve of U.S.News and World Report’s reliance on reputation as a contributing factor to the rankings. They say it’s too nebulous and not sufficiently quantitative.
Gee, I wonder where those colleges ranked.
I thought it might be interesting to compare the college rankings with rankings of endowment size. It’s like what they do in baseball to answer the question, do the teams with the largest payrolls win more?
Based on numbers from the US Department of Education, six of the best colleges also had the largest endowments and they’re the usual suspects: Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, MIT, and Columbia.
Four schools with the largest endowments didn’t make the top ten best school list: University of Texas, University of California, Texas A and M, and University of Michigan. In fact, Texas A and M finished a dismal 62nd in the U.S.News and World Report rankings.
Three schools: California Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, and Duke, were all ranked in the top 10 best schools but didn’t have the largest endowments. Now there’s like an opportunity for fund raisers.
Of course whenever there’s a survey there’s controversy. It seems that some colleges don’t approve of U.S.News and World Report’s reliance on reputation as a contributing factor to the rankings. They say it’s too nebulous and not sufficiently quantitative.
Gee, I wonder where those colleges ranked.
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