New PSAT: Super Quick Tips for Doing Your Best

READING: READ ACTIVELY.

WRITING: WRITE NATURALLY.

MATH: WRITE DOWN EVERYTHING ON EVERY PROBLEM. DOUBLE-CHECK EVERYTHING. MAKE SURE YOUR ANSWER ANSWERS THE QUESTION

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READING TEST:

MOST PEOPLE read the passage quickly, then have to re-read it many times to answer all the questions; or even worse, they answer the questions without reading the entire passage.

INSTEAD, YOU SHOULD read the passage ACTIVELY (analyzing, questioning, and thinking about the meaning of every little piece of it as you read). This will make most questions easy to answer without having to do much re-reading.

PASSIVE READING: Lady Carlotta stepped out on to the platform of the small wayside station and took a turn or two up and down its uninteresting length, to kill time till the train should be pleased to proceed on its way.

ACTIVE READING: Lady Carlotta ["Lady" must mean she is from a noble or royal family.] stepped out [Out of what?] on to the platform of the small wayside station [What kind of station? Bus? Train?] and took a turn or two up and down its uninteresting length [She is walking back and forth along the station. There is nothing interesting to see.], to kill time [She has nothing else to do while she waits.] till the train [Aha! It's a train station.] should be pleased to proceed on its way [She is thinking of the train as having feelings, and of it having a choice in when it will leave the station.].

WHY THIS WORKS: Active reading takes more time at first, but probably less time than having to re-read the passage for each new question. By reading actively, you will remember much more, and if you have done it well, you will notice that the questions are asking you things you already thought about and answered for yourself!!

PS: Read the questions carefully, too, then eliminate the wrong answers. If you can't decide between two answers, don't just pick one (if you want a high score); instead, go ahead and look at the passage again and figure out which answer is the better one. On well-designed standardized tests, the answer does have to be contained in the passage!!

PPS: If there are charts or graphs, analyze those thoroughly first, before reading the passage.

WRITING AND LANGUAGE TEST:

MOST PEOPLE pay too much attention to just the underlined words.

INSTEAD, YOU SHOULD pay attention to the meaning and flow of the WHOLE text. If something about the underlined text sounds odd or makes the sentence hard to read, that is your brain telling you there is probably an error. You should look at the entire sentence to decide how to fix it in a way that would sound direct, simple, and NATURAL to an educated native speaker of American English.

AN EXTREME EXAMPLE: Yet some of the earliest known works of art, including paintings and drawings tens of thousands of years old found on cave walls in Spain and France, portrays animals.

Yet some of the earliest known works of art, including paintings and drawings tens of thousands of years old found on cave walls in Spain and France, portrays animals. (Information between commas is often just extra information, and on the PSAT is often there to distract you.)

Yet some of the earliest known works of art...portrays animals. (This is the relevant part of the sentence.)

Yet some of the earliest known works of art...portrays animals. ("Of art" is just a prepositional phrase describing what kind of works are being discussed. The real subject of this sentence, though, is "works.")

Yet some of the earliest known works...portray animals. ("the…works…portray" is correct; "the…works…portrays" is not.)

PS: Sometimes the PSAT asks you to replace incorrect text with "correct" text that has a different meaning. Don't fight it. Just pick the one that works best, based on what the question is asking.

MATH TEST:

MOST PEOPLE read the question once, then have to read it one or two more times, and they also make the mistake of trying to do too much in their heads instead of on paper. (Doing math on paper is almost like having two heads, and two heads are better than one! At least if you want to get the right answers, and the points!)

INSTEAD YOU SHOULD WRITE DOWN EVERY PIECE OF INFORMATION AS YOU READ THE QUESTION THE FIRST TIME. Make a habit of doing this on every question. Then all the information will be where you can see it, and you will spend less time having to re-read questions. ALSO, if the question is "What is the value of x+5?," then write down "x+5=?" and CIRCLE IT. NEXT write down everything else you know about the problem (if there is a square with side of length 2, then write "2" on every side and mark right angles in every corner; if the problem says "segment AB, not shown," then draw in the line segment between points A and B; etc.). ONCE YOU HAVE every possible piece of information written down and visible, give yourself a couple seconds to see if there is an easy way to get the answer. If so, do it. If not, just try going step-by-step, ALWAYS DOUBLE-CHECKING EVERYTHING ("OK, 5 + 18 is 23 [Is 5 + 18 really 23? Yes, it is.] and 23 times 4 is 82 [Does 23 times 4 equal 82? No wait, 92. Right? Yes.]"), and then MAKING SURE THE ANSWER YOU GET REALLY DOES ANSWER THE QUESTION ["Yay! x is 12! Wait. What is the question I circled earlier? 'x+5=?' Uh-oh! x is 12, but x+5 is 17. The answer to the question is 17."]

PS: If you are having trouble with a question, circle the question number and move on. Go get the easy points first! Then come back to the difficult questions, starting with the easiest one.

PPS: On the whole test, but especially on the math test: 1. BE CAREFUL, 2. BE CAREFUL, 3. BE CAREFUL! Most lost points are from not reading the question correctly, going too quickly, not double-checking everything, etc., and all of these errors are avoidable if you just ALWAY REMEMBER TO ALWAYS BE CAREFUL!

IN GENERAL:

GO INTO THE TEST—and into each problem—with A POSITIVE ATTITUDE, telling yourself YOU CAN DO THIS! YOU CAN BEAT THE TEST! YOU CAN DO YOUR BEST ON EACH PROBLEM! YOU CAN GET YOUR BEST SCORE POSSIBLE BY STAYING CALM, STAYING POSITIVE, ALWAYS BEING CAREFUL, AND DOING YOUR BEST!!

GOOD LUCK! DO YOUR BEST! YOU CAN DO THIS!!!

How to fail at getting someone the help they need, while really trying

When person's mania tips into full-blown psychosis, call friend with similar condition to decide whether to call 9-1-1. Call 9-1-1. Explain the screams, the delusions, the rantings to the operator and again to the police and firemen. Everyone sees person is acting crazy and is in need of help (and clothing), but that the person won't come to the door voluntarily and, although throwing onto the floor every item in the place while yelling, does not appear to be holding a weapon and does not appear to be hurt. All emergency personnel say there is nothing they can do and they leave.

Call the psychologist and leave detailed report of the above on voice mail. No response. (Duh, HIPAA.) No apparent instruction for involuntary treatment at next appointment with patient.

Call the Crisis Line, then Crisis Resolution Services, and hear again (and again) that unless person is an "imminent" threat to themselves or others or are willing to seek treatment voluntarily, they cannot do anything, either.

Hear from numerous other members of the community that person is clearly not well, not on prescribed medication, and needing treatment. Hear of suicide threat, call 9-1-1 again, only to be told that is not enough, because suicide threat was two days ago and not today, so no imminent threat.

Hear of numerous shoplifting events, but of clerks sympathetically paying for stolen items from their own pockets. Lost opportunities for contact with authorities that may or may not have led to help.

Long-suffering, patient saint of a person convinces ill person to seek treatment, requests call from psychologist to speed admission. No call evident. Saint cannot wait for hours in emergency room (has a job to go to), leaves the ER trusting patient will be admitted to hospital and treatment. Ill person leaves the ER of own accord.

In the meantime, wait for mentally ill person to come to realization of the need for resumed treatment (may take months), wait for Legislature to act to reduce standard from "imminent" threat to "substantial" likelihood of harm to self or others or grave disability (may take years), and wait for some disaster to befall person, self, or others when everyone can see person needs help (except for person) and yet no one is able to offer any until things spin gradually further and further out of control and person's life deteriorates (is happening every day).

In the meantime, when it comes to helping someone with severe mental health problems in Washington state, ask and you will not receive, knock and it will not be opened to you. If you should happen, yourself, to desperately need mental health treatment someday, rest assured that though your friends will all rush to try to help you, they will all be told "no" at every turn, as the authorities allow your condition to go from bad to worse and allow your life to fall apart, possibly even completely and forever, all the time refusing to help you when you need it most—and when you are least able to recognize it. Despite your support network of family and friends, the state leaves you flying and without a net.

It will be of no comfort to anyone to mourn your loss and to appear in the inevitable news stories afterwards saying to the impotent authorities, "I told you so."

The Legislature must fix this now, before more damage is done to more lives and before even more lives are lost.

SIDS statistics

Response to a misleading headline at http://www.thehoopsnews.com/2014/07/14/211/infant-death-syndrome-kills-babies-share-beds-parents/, since corrected:

"Infant death syndrome kills most babies that share beds with parents"? Wrong. Misleading. That would mean that out of 1,000 babies who share beds with their parents, more than 500 die of SIDS! This is not true.

Out of 100,000 babies, roughly 15000 share beds with their parents [see note 1 below], and 97 (per 100,000) die of SIDS or SIDS-related causes (hereinafter "SIDS"). [2]

What this article implies is not that there are more than 7500 SIDS deaths out of those 15000 bed-sharing babies(!), but that, of the 97 deaths (per 100,000 babies) from SIDS, about 71 [3] were in bed-sharing babies and about 26 [4] in babies who did not share a bed with their parents.

In other words, for babies who sleep on their own, the SIDS death rate is roughly 1 SIDS death per every 3300 babies [5], and for babies who sleep with their parents, the SIDS death rate is roughly 1 SIDS death out of every 210 babies [6].

According to the available data then, by having a baby sleep with its parents, its risk of death from SIDS does not just double, triple, or quadruple—it increases to about 15 times the risk of death from SIDS for babies who sleep on their own. [7]

Even at that the risk is still "small." Statistically, in a town of 10,000 bed-sharing babies, only about 47 will die of SIDS. But in a town of 10,000 babies sleeping on their own, only 3 will die of SIDS.

So it is wildly inaccurate to say "[SIDS] kills most [of] the babies [who] share beds with parents." I think most people would have noticed by now if over half the bed-sharing babies were dying!!!

It is, however, accurate to say "Most babies who die of [SIDS] share beds with parents," if you are describing a study (this one) that says that of every 3 SIDS deaths, 2 are in babies who share beds with their parents. [8]

The take home message, though, is that bed-sharing babies are about 15 times as likely to die from SIDS as are babies who sleep alone.

Notes
[1] A study found a rate of 14% in 2010, and that rate had increased from 7% in 1993, with bed sharing continuing to increase in popularity. http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/02/health/bed-sharing-infants-increases/

[2] SIDS/SUIDS, accidental strangulation/suffocation in bed, or unknown/undetermined cause, at rates of 55 per 100,000; 27 per 100,000; and 16 per 100,000 babies, respectively: http://mchb.hrsa.gov/chusa13/perinatal-health-status-indicators/p/SIDS-SUID.html; I chose 2009 data for the purposes of this analysis, as they were closest to the data used in the Pediatrics study: http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/07/09/peds.2014-0401.full.pdf+html.

[3] 69.2 percent of 97 = 71.34

[4] 97 - 71 = 26

[5] 26/85,000 = 0.00030588 = 0.03%; 1/0.00030588 = 85,000/26 = 3269

[6] 71/15,000 = 0.004733333333 = 0.473%; 1/0.004733333333 = 15,000/71 = 211

[7] 3269/211 = 15.49

[8] 69.2%. Be careful not to misinterpret this statistic! The fact that only 15 percent of babies are bed sharing, versus 85 percent that are not, means that, given the overall SIDS death rate of 97 deaths per 100,000 babies, bed-sharing babies die from SIDS at a rate that is 15.5 times the rate of SIDS deaths for babies who do not share beds, as explained above. If you are reading this as bed-sharing babies having only twice the rate of SIDS death, you are either assuming that just as many babies are sharing a bed as are not [a bed-sharing to non-bed-sharing ratio of 50/50, rather than 15/85] or you may need to brush up on math.

"Race" is a racist concept

Race is an idea created to justify racism.

Studies based on race serve only to perpetuate racist ideas, while obscuring the true factors behind the observed variations in results. This is why studies which use race as a category produce ambiguous or conflicting results, while studies which use fine divisions of household wealth or income produce clear results.

Race is not a cause of anything; only a creation of racists.

Studying economic disparities and their effects is understandably unpopular in some circles--especially among the elites and upper classes, for some odd reason. Unfortunately these are the same people who have the most influence on what gets studied.

The danger in studies based on fine gradations of income (unlike, for example, the 50-50 division in studies of students on "free or reduced-priced lunch" compared, not with the richer half, but with students "overall") is that results showing a greater negative effect on families making $0-$4,999 per year versus families making $95,000-$99,999 per year, with the degree of negative results tied directly to the degree of poverty--the trouble with these clear results is that, once we learn them, there is something we can clearly do to fix the problem; namely, do whatever necessary to bring an end to poverty.

The "advantage" (for racists and for economic elites) of race-based studies is that once we draw the conclusion that the browner someone is, the worse off they are, there is nothing we can do about it, except congratulate our less brown selves for doing better (through "hard work," presumably), pity the other "races" for being "inferior" (as "proved" by yet another race-based [racist] study), and throw up our hands in futility, because we think that being "black" or "Hispanic" is what causes these problems, and there is nothing anyone can do about someone being a certain race!!

But the honest answer is we can do something about it. We can give up these few-centuries' old falsehoods about "race," we can stop treating other people as fundamentally different from ourselves (they are not), we can reject the continued use of this racist "race" concept in what should be scientific(!) studies, and we can instead scientifically study true causes (injustice, racism, power imbalances, corrupt economic and political systems, greed) of our problems in ways that will lead to real answers that we can take real actions to address and fix.

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Originally thumb-typed in response to the Medical News Today article at http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/279260.php (Nutrition and health 'have greater influence on newborn's size than race').

Culture Shock Advice

Some advice about culture shock from a letter I was writing: ----- If you have not lived overseas before for an extended length of time, you might find it helpful to have read this book before going over there:

http://www.amazon.com/Survival-Kit-Overseas-Living-4th/dp/185788292X/ (Survival Kit for Overseas Living: For Americans Planning to Live and Work Abroad)

It's a good introduction to being an American and living overseas, dealing with stereotypes and culture shock, and knowing about them ahead of time, so that you are more prepared to understand them and deal with them more positively.

If you are unlikely to read a 200 page book (even though it is a great one), the main point to know is that there are usually a couple low points emotionally for anyone living overseas. The first one, which is relatively minor, comes around the end of the first month, after the newness and excitement has worn off. The second one, comes close to halfway through one's time overseas, which is funny in a way because, if you are going for two years, it tends to hit close to the one year mark, but if you are going for six months, it will hit close to the three month mark. If you know it's coming, and know that most people do get through it, it can be easier to manage. (The few people who don't get through it tend to fly home at that point, even though they would have done better to stick it out a few more weeks till it passed.) Culture shock is to overseas living what Wednesday is to the workweek.

I certainly went through it during my year in Costa Rica. At a certain point I just felt separate, even judged, for being an American everywhere I went. Then, one day, I realized that the only thing that all Americans have in common, the only thing that makes them American, is their citizenship. There is nothing else that all Americans have in common. From then on I no longer felt any of the pressure I used to feel as the representative of all things American, because I wasn't. I was also able, then, to get closer to the Costa Ricans in my life, because I realized they weren't some monolithic foreign other, either.

There are also some quite good books out there on culture and etiquette for each country. Those are enormously helpful to read before going, and while there, too. Different country, different rules, different views of life. It is always helpful to learn about these ahead of time!

I used to work at an exchange program here for students who came from Spain and Latin America, and it drove the Spanish students nuts that the host family would pick them up at school, drive them home, and then stay in all afternoon and evening. They were used to going home, maybe hopping on a scooter, and going into town with friends. Quite a number of them smoked, too, though that has probably changed quite a bit in the past 25 years.

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Nemnanait

Wishing a happy Chinese No Internet Day to one and all:

We will never tire of repeating it: The freedom of opinions about doctrine has never been fatal to any people, but all the events of modern history substantiate, down to the last piece of evidence, the dangers and risks that nations have run when some faction has succeeded in taking control of the press, has dominated the government, and by taking advantage of this, has silenced through terror those who could have enlightened it.

But governments never learn, in spite of so many repeated examples. Always stuck in the present moment, they neglect the future….

We conclude our reflections then, recommending to those entrusted with power that they be persuaded that, when they raise opinions to the status of crimes, they open themselves to punishing talents and virtues, to losing their way, and to making illustrious the memory of their victims.

—José María Luis Mora

And we'll be saying a big "Hello" to all intelligent lifeforms everywhere, and to everyone else out there, the secret is to bang the rocks together guys!
—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The NRA's War on America(ns)

This has to stop:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/25/us/santa-barbara-shooting-victims/index.html?hpt=hp_c3