Those Cheating Teachers! - Freakonomics Radio

In recent years, teachers cheating on behalf of their students have become national news stories. But why is this happening?

The hosts of the show looked through data, and estimated that 5 percent of all elementary school classrooms in Chicago have cheated for their students. The major reason for this is incentives.

With new laws and policies, the stakes are higher for teachers to have their students do well on tests. Because of this, a tiny portion of teachers have been caught erasing and filling in correct answers so their students do better.

While the most common approach to handling this situation is to fire the teachers, an alternate route would be to make it harder to cheat. To do this, teachers from other schools can come in and proctor the tests. They could also hire exam proctors and create part time jobs, much like the U.S. government does with census takers.

Economics is all about incentives and opportunity costs. In order to make the problem of cheating go away, a solution that would yield positive benefits would be the best option. Simply firing these teachers would do no good, because other cheaters would pop in and take their place. Finding out a way to disincentivize cheating would be the most economical solution.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson's One-man Mission - 60 Minutes Podcast

This segment on the 60 Minutes podcast is a profile on astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. This was first broadcast on CBS on March 22. Watch it here.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the most famous astrophysicists, is on a mission to make people think about the Earth from a cosmic perspective. This means realizing that the Earth isn't the only thing that matters. Selling out auditoriums all across the country, he wants to convince people that the planet is just a tiny speck in the grand scheme of the universe.

By convincing people of this fact, Tyson hopes this will bring the people of Earth close together. Maybe there won't be wars and conflict if people realized their insignificance.

The most mind-altering photo ever taken, according to Tyson, is the one taken by Apollo 8 nearly 46 years ago. This was a photo of Earth from outer space.

"This was the first time any of us had seen Earth the way nature intended. We're thinking we were exploring the moon, but really we discovered the Earth." - Neil deGrasse Tyson

After that picture was released, all of a sudden people were thinking about the Earth from a cosmic perspective. This reminded people that the universe is bigger than just us. After this, Earth Day was founded, legislation was passed to curb carbon emissions, and DDT was banned.

Earth from the moon, taken by Apollo 8

Tyson is been an influential figure on television, hosting Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, and the upcoming talk show Star Talk. He became interested in the universe after visiting a planetarium.

He hopes others will become "star-struck" like he was. But in order to start thinking from a cosmic perspective, people need to start looking up.

Three Miles - This American Life (Pt. 2)

This blog post covers part one of the This American Life episode "Three Miles."

Melanie did not pursue college, which was at first her dream. But many students from her high school did end up going to college--around two-thirds. Melanie did not end up with the life she wanted, though seeing the Fieldston campus did motivate her to try.

Part two of this story follows Jonathan, a student who has the complete opposite story as Melanie. Jonathan also went to University Heights and was in the exchange program with Fieldston. When he arrived on campus, he showed no emotion. He didn't believe that kind of life was for him and had no reaction. Jonathan also applied for the same scholarship as Melanie, and Jonathan won it though Melanie did not. When he was accepted to Wheaton College in Massachusetts, he felt no excitement. In fact, he didn't believe he was worthy of college, due to his environment growing up.

Jonathan had a girlfriend, Raquel, who graduated high school with him and is going to a different college. Over time, Jonathan started skipping classes and falling behind on his homework. He eventually dropped out. Raquel did finish her schooling, and is the only on of her friends who went to college who graduated. She and Jonathan broke up. Raquel is now a teacher, and Jonathan works in a gym.

What does this mean? Raquel, a minority having finished school, is now twice as more likely to move into the middle class than Jonathan and Melanie.

In order to achieve what Raquel's peers could not, she had to get past the fact that she did not get to enjoy all the luxuries those who attended Fieldston got. Other hardships faced was that she was the only black student in her classes, she saw her friends one by one dropping out of school, and her then boyfriend believed that he and other University High students are unworthy of college. She was at a clear disadvantage.

"How could you convince somebody that you deserve it when you don't even believe it yourself? It's a reoccurring theme in my life. I have to tell myself that I deserve this, because I work really hard for it." -- Raquel Hardy

In the end, Melanie did not achieve her goals. She now works at a supermarket and is embarrassed to tell people that. There could be people like Melanie working at grocery stores all across the country. Can anything be done to create less disadvantages for students?

Three Miles - This American Life (Pt. 1)

This blog post covers part one of the This American Life episode "Three Miles."

American public schools are more segregated today than they were a generation ago. The poorest congressional district in the country is the South Bronx, home to two very different schools separated by just three miles.

The first is University Heights High School, a public school. It is 97 percent black and Hispanic. The second is Fieldston, an elite private school. It is 70 percent white. The school boasts an 18-acre campus, complete with a pool, dance studio and art gallery. This explains the $43,000 tuition.

Students from University Heights started a pen pal program with Fieldston. One day, students from the the high school visited Fieldston and were overwhelmed.

This experience was an experiment in the concept of exposure. It's been said that seeing how the other half lives makes someone more likely to try to achieve that success. It's been 10 years since the University Heights students visited the private school. How did this experience change their life path?

The reporter is especially interested in one student in particular. Her name is Melanie and she had a powerful reaction when she stepped foot on the Fieldston campus. Melanie started to cry.

She had a strong reaction because that is what she always thought high school was supposed to look like, not a run-down school in the middle of the city. She was described by her teachers and peers as an overachiever and a bright girl. Melanie realized that she was not like these students, and that her high school was not adequately preparing her for the future.

Melanie was up for a very competitive scholarship, which takes students who go to high schools like hers, and gives them a full scholarship to an elite college. After passing many rounds of the application, she became a finalist. In the end, she did not get picked, and was so distraught, she decided not to pursue any college. Melanie believes that if she did get that scholarship, her life would be different.

Part two of this story explores what life for Melanie would be like, had she gone to college.

Go Ahead, Make Up New Words - TED Talks

Watch this podcast here

This talk was delivered by Erin McKean, a lexicographer. Her job is to put words into the dictionary. She says it is not her job to decide what is a word and what is not. That is the job of all English speakers.

"Every language is just a group of people who decide to understand each other" - Erin McKean

McKean points out that people are always encouraging each other to be creative, except in the case of words. There are certain words that describe different things and that is it. However, McKean says that creating new words is what keeps languages alive. She outlines six ways to create new words.

1. Steal from other languages. For example, we took "kumquat from Chinese and "caramel" from French
2. Compounding. Take two English words and mush them together (bookworm, sandcastle).
3. Blend words together (brunch, motel).
4. Functional shift. Change the way that words operate (friend is a noun, but on social media it is a verb).
5. Backformation. Take one word, and form a related word from it. For example, editors "edit" and bulldozers "bulldoze."
6. Take the first letters from something and push them together. "NASA"

We should keep making words because they grab people's attention and helps get our meaning across. We all can make words whenever we want. As long as they have a meaning for a group of people, the word is valid.

The Bus Stop - RadioLab

Sometimes, forgetting somethings can the both the problem and the solution. This episode of RadioLab tells the story of how a nursing home in Dusseldorf, Germany helped their Alzheimer and Dementia patients.

A common problem among these patients is that they become disoriented and confused. They sometimes believe they are still living in the past and want to escape. Nurses try to stop them, but there have been cases where they left the home. For example, one patient was found wandering in the woods. Another made it back to their old house, only to find other people living there. 

Most of these cases involve a patient getting onto a bus. One patient even got on one and made it 20 miles away before the nursing home found him. 

Patients would have to be locked in their rooms so they couldn't escape. One solution to this problem was seen as crazy, but had to be tried. A bus stop was erected at the entrance of the nursing home. Only buses would never stop there; it was fake. Staff would bring back patients who were seen waiting there. 

At first, citizens of the town who were not in the home believed it was a real bus stop and would wait there. Since then, this idea has had great success for the facility. One patient began to think she was a little girl again, and said she needed to get home to her parents. The staff let her put on her coat and go wait at the bus stop. After awhile, she forgot why she was waiting and a nurse brought her back inside. The patient was fine and relaxed after that experience. 

The bus stop would be used every couple of days at the nursing home. Patients would always have a sense of urgency to go home, but then after a while forget why they would want to go home and come back to the present. 

Would this idea work in America? Just by having a bus stop, the nursing home would be lying to their patients. But as it was shown in Germany, the concept works. 

Vanishing Words - RadioLab

It's been almost five years since I first heard this story. I love writing, words, and interpreting data, so it's natural that this episode of RadioLab always stuck with me. What if you could pinpoint the moment a person's health started to decline, just from what they wrote? This episode does just that, with the work of the influential detective novelist Agatha Christie.

The story starts with Ian Lancashire of the University of Toronto. He compiled the work of Agatha Christie and turned her words into data. Prior to this, Lancashire has analyzed the works of other authors to unlock the secrets of their minds. For example the word "because" does not appear in John Milton's poetry for an unknown reason.

He wanted to analyze a more modern author, so he looked at Agatha Christie, who was the most published author at the time. Lancashire is analyzing 50 years worth of her writing. Christie has written over 80 books and sold a billion of them. The computer that her books were scanned into is looking for word choice, word frequency, vocabulary, etc.

The computer found that her vocabulary and structure was consistent for the first 72 books.

"Something happened on Book #73. Something drastic." -- Jad Abumrad (host)

Her use of indefinite words (something, anything, etc.) increased 6 times. Her vocabulary went down by 20 percent.

"That is astounding. That's 1/5 of her vocabulary lost." -- Ian Lancashire, University of Toronto 

Perhaps Christie knew somethings in her mind was slowing down? the 73rd book was titled Elephants Can Remember, about an aging female novelist with memory loss who helps a detective solve a crime.

This book shows the beginning of her Alzheimer's, which was never officially diagnosed. This shows that writing from anyone can hold clues to what can come in your health. What can we determine from our writing skills?