College admissions and Blair high school courses

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Somebody's kid didn’t get into the Blair or TJ magnet. This isn’t prospective magnet parents trying to figure out if a magnet is worth it for their kid. I mean, nothing else explains the bitterness and refusal to listen.

See? That shows you how wrong you are. Most posters, if not all, are not jealous or bitter or whatever. It's just that senseless (and endless) braggings bring out the worst reactions from people.

[Anonymous]

Sad. Parents living vicariously through their kids' lives

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I mean at Blair...

DC is in college and I’m not going to harass DC and waste my own time with a question from an internet bully and stalker. From memory, though, I’m not sure they had a textbook. If they did, I have no clue what it was.

You got me: I can’t time travel back to when DC was in high school. Congrats. Tell yourself you won.

For the rest of you, who have been trying to follow this thread through the massive derailment involving weird personal attacks on me,
- I stand by my comparison of the Blair magnet statistics class against my highly regarded graduate school course (which I hope the post above makes clear), and
- Magnet parents have told you in this thread that magnet classes are indeed comparable to college classes, and also that their kids ran out of classes at their colleges.

Every one of you can choose to believe these things, or not believe them and make personal attacks on the parents. It’s your choice. Let me suggest, however, that ignoring actual information from actual parents would be your loss.

??? I've never bullied you here. I'm the poster above who said from experience that covering regression doesn't necessarily imply an accelerated course. I then asked specifics on the Blair course (since you have direct experience with a child who took it) to try to figure it out.

I'm not out to get you or anything. It would help to see if the Blair Applied Stats class is an "advanced" AP stats, or if it is modeled after a Stats with Programming course which is the usual course math majors who took AP stats would take in college.

I can’t answer specific questions about Blair magnet curriculum, although magnet classes generally tie into each other and I know that in at least one instance DC had problems with a project that the magnet kids were simultaneously doing in another magnet class. I can confirm, however, that the level of work was not the watered-down, baby stats that some here are claiming, but rather it was at a level comparable to or faster than my first grad school stats class. FWIW, Blair magnet kids can take the related AP tests in the various subjects but they don’t always. My kid didn’t take the AP Stats test because this would have required additional home study of stuff that wasn’t covered in the class, and my kid was a senior and had been accepted ED at a university that doesn’t give credit for AP.

The simple point of my original post was that the magnet covered regression after 4 weeks, faster than my grad school class. That’s all I was trying to say. I was pushing back on the hostile posters claiming that magnet stats is just a watered-down or baby stats class. From my deep familiarity with stats thanks to my current job, and from my own experience studying stats at a top-ranked graduate school, I don’t believe the magnet is doing baby stats.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the info! (genuinely)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Somebody's kid didn’t get into the Blair or TJ magnet. This isn’t prospective magnet parents trying to figure out if a magnet is worth it for their kid. I mean, nothing else explains the bitterness and refusal to listen.

See? That shows you how wrong you are. Most posters, if not all, are not jealous or bitter or whatever. It's just that senseless (and endless) braggings bring out the worst reactions from people.

Who’s on the attack here? Right, you are. You’re the one starting every little fight by making up random bs and stalking other posters. Everybody else here is just trying to defend their POVs against you.

Why are you behaving like this? Obviously, if you don’t want to hear magnet parents talking about their kids, then you shouldn’t open a thread that—whoa—asks magnet parents to talk about their kids. Responding to OP’s question is in no way “boasting.” Geez.

The real questions are, why are you on this thread if you don’t care about magnets? And why exactly are you so threatened when magnet parents answer OP’s question about magnets? Bitterness about rejection seems as good a theory as any, until you explain otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the info! (genuinely)

You’re welcome!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Somebody's kid didn’t get into the Blair or TJ magnet. This isn’t prospective magnet parents trying to figure out if a magnet is worth it for their kid. I mean, nothing else explains the bitterness and refusal to listen.

See? That shows you how wrong you are. Most posters, if not all, are not jealous or bitter or whatever. It's just that senseless (and endless) braggings bring out the worst reactions from people.

Who’s on the attack here? Right, you are. You’re the one starting every little fight by making up random bs and stalking other posters. Everybody else here is just trying to defend their POVs against you.

Why are you behaving like this? Obviously, if you don’t want to hear magnet parents talking about their kids, then you shouldn’t open a thread that—whoa—asks magnet parents to talk about their kids. Responding to OP’s question is in no way “boasting.” Geez.

The real questions are, why are you on this thread if you don’t care about magnets? And why exactly are you so threatened when magnet parents answer OP’s question about magnets? Bitterness about rejection seems as good a theory as any, until you explain otherwise.

Uh... It wasn't me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Somebody's kid didn’t get into the Blair or TJ magnet. This isn’t prospective magnet parents trying to figure out if a magnet is worth it for their kid. I mean, nothing else explains the bitterness and refusal to listen.

See? That shows you how wrong you are. Most posters, if not all, are not jealous or bitter or whatever. It's just that senseless (and endless) braggings bring out the worst reactions from people.

Who’s on the attack here? Right, you are. You’re the one starting every little fight by making up random bs and stalking other posters. Everybody else here is just trying to defend their POVs against you.

Why are you behaving like this? Obviously, if you don’t want to hear magnet parents talking about their kids, then you shouldn’t open a thread that—whoa—asks magnet parents to talk about their kids. Responding to OP’s question is in no way “boasting.” Geez.

The real questions are, why are you on this thread if you don’t care about magnets? And why exactly are you so threatened when magnet parents answer OP’s question about magnets? Bitterness about rejection seems as good a theory as any, until you explain otherwise.

Uh... It wasn't me.

Right, I get that. This is addressed to the poster who claimed I couldn’t possibly know anything about Blair magnet stats because I lied about taking stats myself in an Econ grad school, because it couldn’t possibly have been stats if it wasn’t in a math department and called whatever she says. Because of the sheer weirdness, I assume that poster is one and the same as the the poster who is threatened by talk of magnet kids on a thread asking about magnet kids.

Worth noting, however, that math track stats are a concern for future math majors, but necessarily for other majors.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:How the hell did you take graduate Econometrics without taking undergraduate Econometrics?

It’s pretty hard to fathom
a. Why you hate the Blair magnet program—which is after all just a program of smart, hard-working kids—so much.
b. Why you refuse to believe what actual magnet parents tell you about the program, and keep spewing your bs about subpar classes as of this were some AP program at a 3rd-tier public, and
c. Where all your obnoxious, childish bluster comes from.

Um... I have a kid at TJ and a PhD in Economics from a top 3 program. I wouldn't put up with this crap from TJ parents either.

PS: That Math prof that posted earlier was spot on.

No wonder why.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Linear regression can be taught at many different levels. Your post gave no indication of the level at Blair or at UPenn.
(I highly doubt that you took "Statistics" in a grad econ school. That should be called Econometrics.)

...and I thought TJ parents were deluded and obnoxious.

Actually, it was called Statistics. You should know this. I’ve taken several stats classes starting in high school, and after all the distributions and t-tests they all wind up doing regression at some point—but my kid’s magnet class got to regression really early on. If you had ever taken Statistics yourself, you’d know this.

Guess what else: I routinely do logistic regressions at work.

What exactly about the Blair magnet makes you foam at the mouth like a rabid dog? So weird.

He/she has a kid at TJ.
Inferiority complex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:


My textbook at Penn: Johnston’s Econometrics Methods. It’s on my shelf at work. Some of us turned to Maddala when Johnston was too opaque, but Maddala wasn’t assigned. This was in the heyday of Wharton Econometrics, several Wharton Econometrics principals taught in Penn’s Econ Department, and my prof was one of them. Penn’s Econ Department was at the time one of the most quantitative in the country, in econ as well as stats. I should probably clarify, for the bully who doesn’t know what a logit is, that Wharton Econometrics was in its heyday in the 80s and 90s, when it was the #1 econometrics consulting firm in the country.

You can’t cover OLS until you’ve covered distributions and basic stats like t and f tests (otherwise r-squared isn’t going to make sense) and things like ANOVA. You also need to know how to invert a matrix, at least for as long as the course lasts. These aren’t actually simple topics for newbies, and lots of colleges take them slow.

OK. I have to go back to work.

This thread is like a slow motion car wreck--too ugly to pass up.

Since it is me who you besmirched, let me whip out my textbooks:

For the LAC stats class, we had Larsen and Marx, "Mathematical Statistic and its Applications." You damn well better have calculus to follow this book, but linear algebra is less important as the course was less applied.
For the LAC undergraduate econometrics course, we used Gujarati, "Basic Econometrics." This course did not require linear algebra as a prerequisite, but all the basic intuitions of Econometrics can be derived using only two independent variables. No if I am not mistaken, the course started using Maddala after my time, but, hey, that over 30 years ago. (It's not surprising that the course didn't require linear algebra: there wouldn't be sufficient student demand for such a course.)
My graduate econometrics course used, surprise, surprise, Johnston. I don't remember it every being so obtuse that I needed to refer back to my undergraduate textbook.
My econometrics field courses used Judge et al, "The Theory and Practice of Econometrics" and Amemiya, "Advanced Econometrics." There, I've probably outed where I went to grad school.

Of course you can learn OLS without having to invert a matrix: there are computer programs for this. Obviously r-squared makes sense with knowing what t-test and f-tests are: It's simply the explained sum of squares divided by the total sum of squares. And since you ragged me for saying logit rather than the pretentious logistic regression, I say that you must be a psychiatrist since only they say ANOVA rather than analysis of variance.
If we are insisting on pretense, I insist that you address me as Dr. Anonymous.

No, I am not ragging on Wharton either.

So, my kid at TJ (this is not a brag) knows how to fit a line using her TI-64 (or whatever) graphing calculator. Does this mean she is learning linear regression? In a sense, yes, but that doesn't say anything about the difficulty of the class or its comparability to college.

TSP stands for Time Series Processor and was viewed as a better Econometrics program for time series. While some folks used SAS and SPSS, others used matrix programs like MATLAB. Of course, some of us would program in FORTRAN and use things like the IMSL library.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


My textbook at Penn: Johnston’s Econometrics Methods. It’s on my shelf at work. Some of us turned to Maddala when Johnston was too opaque, but Maddala wasn’t assigned. This was in the heyday of Wharton Econometrics, several Wharton Econometrics principals taught in Penn’s Econ Department, and my prof was one of them. Penn’s Econ Department was at the time one of the most quantitative in the country, in econ as well as stats. I should probably clarify, for the bully who doesn’t know what a logit is, that Wharton Econometrics was in its heyday in the 80s and 90s, when it was the #1 econometrics consulting firm in the country.

You can’t cover OLS until you’ve covered distributions and basic stats like t and f tests (otherwise r-squared isn’t going to make sense) and things like ANOVA. You also need to know how to invert a matrix, at least for as long as the course lasts. These aren’t actually simple topics for newbies, and lots of colleges take them slow.

OK. I have to go back to work.

This thread is like a slow motion car wreck--too ugly to pass up.

Since it is me who you besmirched, let me whip out my textbooks:

For the LAC stats class, we had Larsen and Marx, "Mathematical Statistic and its Applications." You damn well better have calculus to follow this book, but linear algebra is less important as the course was less applied.
For the LAC undergraduate econometrics course, we used Gujarati, "Basic Econometrics." This course did not require linear algebra as a prerequisite, but all the basic intuitions of Econometrics can be derived using only two independent variables. No if I am not mistaken, the course started using Maddala after my time, but, hey, that over 30 years ago. (It's not surprising that the course didn't require linear algebra: there wouldn't be sufficient student demand for such a course.)
My graduate econometrics course used, surprise, surprise, Johnston. I don't remember it every being so obtuse that I needed to refer back to my undergraduate textbook.
My econometrics field courses used Judge et al, "The Theory and Practice of Econometrics" and Amemiya, "Advanced Econometrics." There, I've probably outed where I went to grad school.

Of course you can learn OLS without having to invert a matrix: there are computer programs for this. Obviously r-squared makes sense with knowing what t-test and f-tests are: It's simply the explained sum of squares divided by the total sum of squares. And since you ragged me for saying logit rather than the pretentious logistic regression, I say that you must be a psychiatrist since only they say ANOVA rather than analysis of variance.
If we are insisting on pretense, I insist that you address me as Dr. Anonymous.

No, I am not ragging on Wharton either.

So, my kid at TJ (this is not a brag) knows how to fit a line using her TI-64 (or whatever) graphing calculator. Does this mean she is learning linear regression? In a sense, yes, but that doesn't say anything about the difficulty of the class or its comparability to college.

TSP stands for Time Series Processor and was viewed as a better Econometrics program for time series. While some folks used SAS and SPSS, others used matrix programs like MATLAB. Of course, some of us would program in FORTRAN and use things like the IMSL library.

Johnston was always a masters level text book, although quite good. I also used Amemiya as a supplement, which suggests we are both old.

TSP - do they even make that anymore? Same with SPSS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


My textbook at Penn: Johnston’s Econometrics Methods. It’s on my shelf at work. Some of us turned to Maddala when Johnston was too opaque, but Maddala wasn’t assigned. This was in the heyday of Wharton Econometrics, several Wharton Econometrics principals taught in Penn’s Econ Department, and my prof was one of them. Penn’s Econ Department was at the time one of the most quantitative in the country, in econ as well as stats. I should probably clarify, for the bully who doesn’t know what a logit is, that Wharton Econometrics was in its heyday in the 80s and 90s, when it was the #1 econometrics consulting firm in the country.

You can’t cover OLS until you’ve covered distributions and basic stats like t and f tests (otherwise r-squared isn’t going to make sense) and things like ANOVA. You also need to know how to invert a matrix, at least for as long as the course lasts. These aren’t actually simple topics for newbies, and lots of colleges take them slow.

OK. I have to go back to work.

This thread is like a slow motion car wreck--too ugly to pass up.

Since it is me who you besmirched, let me whip out my textbooks:

For the LAC stats class, we had Larsen and Marx, "Mathematical Statistic and its Applications." You damn well better have calculus to follow this book, but linear algebra is less important as the course was less applied.
For the LAC undergraduate econometrics course, we used Gujarati, "Basic Econometrics." This course did not require linear algebra as a prerequisite, but all the basic intuitions of Econometrics can be derived using only two independent variables. No if I am not mistaken, the course started using Maddala after my time, but, hey, that over 30 years ago. (It's not surprising that the course didn't require linear algebra: there wouldn't be sufficient student demand for such a course.)
My graduate econometrics course used, surprise, surprise, Johnston. I don't remember it every being so obtuse that I needed to refer back to my undergraduate textbook.
My econometrics field courses used Judge et al, "The Theory and Practice of Econometrics" and Amemiya, "Advanced Econometrics." There, I've probably outed where I went to grad school.

Of course you can learn OLS without having to invert a matrix: there are computer programs for this. Obviously r-squared makes sense with knowing what t-test and f-tests are: It's simply the explained sum of squares divided by the total sum of squares. And since you ragged me for saying logit rather than the pretentious logistic regression, I say that you must be a psychiatrist since only they say ANOVA rather than analysis of variance.
If we are insisting on pretense, I insist that you address me as Dr. Anonymous.

No, I am not ragging on Wharton either.

So, my kid at TJ (this is not a brag) knows how to fit a line using her TI-64 (or whatever) graphing calculator. Does this mean she is learning linear regression? In a sense, yes, but that doesn't say anything about the difficulty of the class or its comparability to college.

TSP stands for Time Series Processor and was viewed as a better Econometrics program for time series. While some folks used SAS and SPSS, others used matrix programs like MATLAB. Of course, some of us would program in FORTRAN and use things like the IMSL library.

Pp again, the one you declared you were going to “beat down,” not either of the two posters immediately above who pointed out your kid is at TJ. Get a grip: I didn’t “besmirch” you, instead you attacked Blair magnet parents and announced a “beat down” (your own words) on me. People here are just defending themselves against you.

This just piles on with the flakiness. SPSS and MATLAB are irrelevant to your attack on me because nobody used them when I was in grad school, so it’s unclear where you’re going with this. I’m pretty sure my kid at Blair inverted a matrix, although again this was just a few years ago, anyway I’m sorry your kid just used the TI calculator. I’m not a psychiatrist, I do quantitative research in a specific economics field at an institution you’ve definitely, certainly, absolutely heard of and would probably die to work at. And so on.

I think my point is clear to the sane people on this thread. I’m done tussling with you, bye.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


My textbook at Penn: Johnston’s Econometrics Methods. It’s on my shelf at work. Some of us turned to Maddala when Johnston was too opaque, but Maddala wasn’t assigned. This was in the heyday of Wharton Econometrics, several Wharton Econometrics principals taught in Penn’s Econ Department, and my prof was one of them. Penn’s Econ Department was at the time one of the most quantitative in the country, in econ as well as stats. I should probably clarify, for the bully who doesn’t know what a logit is, that Wharton Econometrics was in its heyday in the 80s and 90s, when it was the #1 econometrics consulting firm in the country.

You can’t cover OLS until you’ve covered distributions and basic stats like t and f tests (otherwise r-squared isn’t going to make sense) and things like ANOVA. You also need to know how to invert a matrix, at least for as long as the course lasts. These aren’t actually simple topics for newbies, and lots of colleges take them slow.

OK. I have to go back to work.

This thread is like a slow motion car wreck--too ugly to pass up.

Since it is me who you besmirched, let me whip out my textbooks:

For the LAC stats class, we had Larsen and Marx, "Mathematical Statistic and its Applications." You damn well better have calculus to follow this book, but linear algebra is less important as the course was less applied.
For the LAC undergraduate econometrics course, we used Gujarati, "Basic Econometrics." This course did not require linear algebra as a prerequisite, but all the basic intuitions of Econometrics can be derived using only two independent variables. No if I am not mistaken, the course started using Maddala after my time, but, hey, that over 30 years ago. (It's not surprising that the course didn't require linear algebra: there wouldn't be sufficient student demand for such a course.)
My graduate econometrics course used, surprise, surprise, Johnston. I don't remember it every being so obtuse that I needed to refer back to my undergraduate textbook.
My econometrics field courses used Judge et al, "The Theory and Practice of Econometrics" and Amemiya, "Advanced Econometrics." There, I've probably outed where I went to grad school.

Of course you can learn OLS without having to invert a matrix: there are computer programs for this. Obviously r-squared makes sense with knowing what t-test and f-tests are: It's simply the explained sum of squares divided by the total sum of squares. And since you ragged me for saying logit rather than the pretentious logistic regression, I say that you must be a psychiatrist since only they say ANOVA rather than analysis of variance.
If we are insisting on pretense, I insist that you address me as Dr. Anonymous.

No, I am not ragging on Wharton either.

So, my kid at TJ (this is not a brag) knows how to fit a line using her TI-64 (or whatever) graphing calculator. Does this mean she is learning linear regression? In a sense, yes, but that doesn't say anything about the difficulty of the class or its comparability to college.

TSP stands for Time Series Processor and was viewed as a better Econometrics program for time series. While some folks used SAS and SPSS, others used matrix programs like MATLAB. Of course, some of us would program in FORTRAN and use things like the IMSL library.

Pp again, the one you declared you were going to “beat down,” not either of the two posters immediately above who pointed out your kid is at TJ. Get a grip: I didn’t “besmirch” you, instead you attacked Blair magnet parents and announced a “beat down” (your own words) on me. People here are just defending themselves against you.

This just piles on with the flakiness. SPSS and MATLAB are irrelevant to your attack on me because nobody used them when I was in grad school, so it’s unclear where you’re going with this. I’m pretty sure my kid at Blair inverted a matrix, although again this was just a few years ago, anyway I’m sorry your kid just used the TI calculator. I’m not a psychiatrist, I do quantitative research in a specific economics field at an institution you’ve definitely, certainly, absolutely heard of and would probably die to work at. And so on.

I think my point is clear to the sane people on this thread. I’m done tussling with you, bye.

Please don't come back.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


My textbook at Penn: Johnston’s Econometrics Methods. It’s on my shelf at work. Some of us turned to Maddala when Johnston was too opaque, but Maddala wasn’t assigned. This was in the heyday of Wharton Econometrics, several Wharton Econometrics principals taught in Penn’s Econ Department, and my prof was one of them. Penn’s Econ Department was at the time one of the most quantitative in the country, in econ as well as stats. I should probably clarify, for the bully who doesn’t know what a logit is, that Wharton Econometrics was in its heyday in the 80s and 90s, when it was the #1 econometrics consulting firm in the country.

You can’t cover OLS until you’ve covered distributions and basic stats like t and f tests (otherwise r-squared isn’t going to make sense) and things like ANOVA. You also need to know how to invert a matrix, at least for as long as the course lasts. These aren’t actually simple topics for newbies, and lots of colleges take them slow.

OK. I have to go back to work.

This thread is like a slow motion car wreck--too ugly to pass up.

Since it is me who you besmirched, let me whip out my textbooks:

For the LAC stats class, we had Larsen and Marx, "Mathematical Statistic and its Applications." You damn well better have calculus to follow this book, but linear algebra is less important as the course was less applied.
For the LAC undergraduate econometrics course, we used Gujarati, "Basic Econometrics." This course did not require linear algebra as a prerequisite, but all the basic intuitions of Econometrics can be derived using only two independent variables. No if I am not mistaken, the course started using Maddala after my time, but, hey, that over 30 years ago. (It's not surprising that the course didn't require linear algebra: there wouldn't be sufficient student demand for such a course.)
My graduate econometrics course used, surprise, surprise, Johnston. I don't remember it every being so obtuse that I needed to refer back to my undergraduate textbook.
My econometrics field courses used Judge et al, "The Theory and Practice of Econometrics" and Amemiya, "Advanced Econometrics." There, I've probably outed where I went to grad school.

Of course you can learn OLS without having to invert a matrix: there are computer programs for this. Obviously r-squared makes sense with knowing what t-test and f-tests are: It's simply the explained sum of squares divided by the total sum of squares. And since you ragged me for saying logit rather than the pretentious logistic regression, I say that you must be a psychiatrist since only they say ANOVA rather than analysis of variance.
If we are insisting on pretense, I insist that you address me as Dr. Anonymous.

No, I am not ragging on Wharton either.

So, my kid at TJ (this is not a brag) knows how to fit a line using her TI-64 (or whatever) graphing calculator. Does this mean she is learning linear regression? In a sense, yes, but that doesn't say anything about the difficulty of the class or its comparability to college.

TSP stands for Time Series Processor and was viewed as a better Econometrics program for time series. While some folks used SAS and SPSS, others used matrix programs like MATLAB. Of course, some of us would program in FORTRAN and use things like the IMSL library.

Johnston was always a masters level text book, although quite good. I also used Amemiya as a supplement, which suggests we are both old.

TSP - do they even make that anymore? Same with SPSS.

Johnston has at least as much calculus as whatever pp’s book had.