NYTimes states the blindingly obvious, as if it was a problem?

[acroyear]

Editorial - Their Future Is Ours - NYTimes.com:

Whereas native-born children’s language skills follow a bell curve, immigrants’ children were crowded in the lower ranks: More than three-quarters of the sample scored below the 85th percentile in English proficiency.

Mark @ Good Math Bad Math takes that down (after he gets past the shock of such profound stupidity in evidence).  Whether it is a typo, a misunderstanding of what "percentile"  means in a teaching/testing environment (like "theory", it is a word with a *very* specific meaning in the professional context independent of any common vernacular uses), or downright ignorance of statistics in general, it really doesn't look good for the Times.

As someone said in the comments, for kids not intending to reach the Calculus level before college (or ever), it would be better to side-track them through an understanding statistics course than to force-feed them heavy maths past analytic geometry.

Comments

[katrinb.livejournal.com]

I did take calculus before college, and I still benefited very much from a good stats course in college. Sidetrack or not, it's useful.