The plural of anecdote is not data.

And that's how you do it.

Can we send 500,000 notes, letters, and cards to the people of Chicago, too? It seems they've lost quite a few people to gun violence recently.

You can keep arguing with independent statistical research with your personal experience, but my point remains that where you are now would not be any different had you been educated under the model you just suggested. You may say that you could have achieved more if the 'dumb' kids had been in a separate class, but…

In addition, if you don't see education as a collaborate process undertaken through to cooperation and participation of both peers and instructors, and truly resented helping those not as fortunately-intelligent as you, then you really didn't/don't grasp what your education was all about. Extra attention wouldn't…

Regardless of your personal experience, those "dumber" kids in your class did far better as a result of being grouped with you than they would have without. Are you suggesting we purposefully ignore (and limit) the educational opportunities of ~70% of students in order to see no meaningful improvement for the top…

Funnily enough, all the educational outcome research on 'tracking' students based on ability show the opposite effect. More advanced students achieve exactly the same long-term life outcomes (education, income, etc.) even when placed in classes with "dumber" students, while those 'dumber' students have far better…

For those looking for further reading or alternative perspectives on these observed phenomena, adolescent culture has been a fruitful area of academic research in the field of Sociology, in addition to Psychology. I may be biased towards my field, but I would classify the explanation gleaned from the longitudinal…

Well, I'm not exactly saying that necessarily. For a religious (or functional equivalent) ritual to work, be it Holy Mass at the Vatican, a Presidential inauguration, or the 7th inning stretch at Yankee Stadium, there simply must be measures of distinguishing insiders from outsiders. In capital-R 'Religion', this…

Thank you. I'm just trying to counter-balance all of the ignorance and misinformation.

It goes back to the division between Islam (which actually is defined in the Qu'ran as any belief in the Abrahamic God) and polytheistic religions ("idolaters"). In effect, the Qu'ran says that as long as you accept the Abrahamic God, no matter Christian, Jew, or other, you're okay. It's just their version of the…

Verse 2:62: Surely, those who believe, those who are Jewish, the Christians, and the converts; anyone who (1) believes in GOD, and (2) believes in the Last Day, and (3) leads a righteous life, will receive their recompense from their Lord. They have nothing to fear, nor will they grieve.

I'll keep that in mind the next time I feel the urge to shoot someone with my PB&J.

No one is considering that the following:

Because it rests upon the conceptualization of gender and sexuality as dichotomous, which is not the case. 'Acceptance' for the LGBT community is fine, but I think most marginalized sexualities and genders would prefer to be integrated as well, rather than relegated to merely "the opposite of normal". Yes, we ought…

Except, after 39 years and countless revisions to safety standards both from governmental policy and self-regulation on the part of auto manufacturers, we seem to be no closer to this 'grim' future. Meanwhile, both the total number of automobile-related deaths per year, and the number of deaths per capita have…

Nate, thank you so much first of all for your hard work and insight during this past election. The seemingly-endless capacity for certain parts of the political spectrum to react like children in the face of inconvenient mathematics must have been hard to deal with.

I can't speak for Native Americans on this issue, but I agree with the point that a few commenters have made that if one is to be outraged by this, then one ought to be outraged by every misappropriation of cultural artifacts by everyone. This seems to be far from the case however, because every March there is a day…