oflovefaithhopedream

Today's SAT Problem of the Day is a true classic, the one that Princeton Review made its bones with. Please remember before answering that this is from a late 1970s SAT (though a student-generated (free) response version with different numbers appeared within the last decade. It will be obvious in a bit that a non-multiple choice version requires actually knowing how to calculate this accurately). Calculators did not become available on the SAT until 1995. The section on which this appeared contained either 25 or 35 problems, and it was the last one in the section (meaning that it would be among the most difficult for students, based on previously-acquired empirical evidence during the screening process ETS uses for its test items and section construction).  A woman drove to work at an average speed of  miles per hour  and returned along the same route at  miles per hour . If her total traveling time was   hour, what was the total number of miles in the rou...

There is a reason he is our president. Barack Obama regained my faith in him tonight.  Here are some of his most important words. Here in Newtown, I come to offer the love and prayers of a nation. I am very mindful that mere words cannot match the depths of your sorrow, nor can they heal your wounded hearts. I can only hope it helps for you to know that you’re not alone in your grief, that our world, too, has been torn apart, that all across this land of ours, we have wept with you. We’ve pulled our children tight.... ....We bear responsibility for every child, because we’re counting on everybody else to help look after ours, that we’re all parents, that they are all our children. This is our first task, caring for our children. It’s our first job. If we don’t get that right, we don’t get anything right. That’s how, as a society, we will be judged. And by that measure, can we truly say, as a nation, that we’re meeting our obligations? Can we honestly say that we’re doing enough t...

It's impossible to tuck our kids in tonight, seeing the complete and utter excitement in their eyes about their futures (my daughter, age 2, said "I need to eat more foods so I can get tall and be allowed to go on the bus with my brother to school!"), without understanding that it is our responsibility as the adults to DO something to make them safer.   Enough already with the childish fear of the NRA!  The tobacco lobby was once all-powerful too.  Then we woke up and realized cigarettes were killing  us all, and we put a stop to it.  Smoking is way down, including among teens.  The tide can turn. It's on us to make it happen. Wherever there's a powerful lobby there are powerful wealthy backers. The strength of the NRA lies not in the many average fools who think that having guns in their homes makes them safer (tell that to the gun-toting mama whose boy killed her before shooting those 20 children in Connecticut), but in the obscene wealth possessed by the...

"What happens when the gun shoots through you, Mom? Does your heart come out?" These are not the sorts of questions I expected my 5-year-old son to be asking me on this, the seventh night of Chanukah. What happened to "can I have another piece of chocolate?" As impossible as it sounds, a young man walked into a school this morning, shoved past a brave principal and school counselor, and did his best to shoot as many young children as possible.  Little boys and girls whose parents had kissed them goodbye after packing their lunch, bundling them up in coats, hats, and mittens, and sending them off to practice their reading and handwriting and maybe do a little art.  Off at work, these parents sat, as my husband and I do every day, thinking of them but mainly unconcerned, knowing that hugs would reconnect the dots at day's end. Never again. I spent this afternoon fighting off tears in a faculty meeting, trying not to play out the scenarios that confronted my son...

As expected, the UW Regents moved forward Friday, approving the proposal from the UW-Madison Administration to raise the cap on out-of-state enrollment even though it hadn't been vetted through proper shared governance channels.  The cap was moved from 25% to 27.5%, rather than to 30% as requested. In typical style, everyone involved acted like this represented the wise, informed choice arrived at through careful decision-making. Of course, we have real choices given the "new normal," a context so normalized at this point that the vast majority of our campus intellectuals can't even see that "normal" is a political agenda. But as I constantly work to help my students understand, there is always  a choice. And the lack of careful thought being paid by the state and its universities to this particular choice could easily come at the expense of Wisconsin residents. Sure, there are other options.  Let's consider the range of possibilities. Assumptions 1. Unl...

UW-Madison is bringing a proposal before the UW System Board of Regents this week to change the cap on the percentage of undergraduates from out-of-state from 25 to 30%. In this post, I'm going to focus on the factual basis for the proposal itself.  I'm not going to speak to the process through which it was brought to the Regents, which I am fairly certain violated shared governance. I'm just going to examine the veracity of statements the UW-Madison Administration has made in support of this proposal using publicly available data.   I think the numbers alone suggest a need for further consideration before any decisions can be made . This motion should be tabled . In its proposal, Madison makes the following remarks: 1. The UW Admissions Policy counts Minnesota residents -- who receive tuition reciprocity--  in a separate category, and thus they are not counted as either residents or non-residents.  This is uncommon.  It means that the percent of out-...

Greetings From "Princeton, NJ"  Another day, another math SAT Problem of the Day from your friendly Educational Testing Service/College Board (always like to mention that while the ETS has a "Princeton, NJ" address - and also one in Berkeley, CA - they are not affiliated with Princeton University or UC-Berkeley. Of course, neither is test prep giant The Princeton Review, but they're small fry compared with the ETS. Even better, the ETS is actually located in nearby but less academically-impressive-sounding Lawrenceville. I suppose it's "poetic license." Or something like that). So, here's today's problem, answer, and ETS explanation: Mathematics > Standard Multiple Choice Read the following SAT test question and then click on a button to select your answer.  The stopping distance of a car is the number of feet that the car travels after the driver starts applying the brakes. The stopping distance of a certain car is directly proportional...