QTRS Feb 28, 2025

Graphs and interesting content for the curious

As I see it…

I listened to The Chronicle’s What’s Up with Grade Inflation? podcast. The conversation, in my opinion, was largely ambiguous, suggesting that the issue of grade inflation may not be as severe as it seems, that teachers may be improving, and that maybe we should simply shift the focus to a narrative and accept failure. Very little data; besides, students are earning more As. No mention of the fact that the time students are studying outside of class has gone down, as I note in Higher education's self-devaluation (3/26/2024), meaning students are getting higher grades with less effort.

There was only a slight mention of the push at non-elite colleges to increase retention. It is often referred to as student success. There is a strong encouragement to faculty to be more “flexible” or really make it easier for students to pass so as to not lose a paying “customer.” As getting a C has gotten easier, that has generally pushed all grades higher. There is also this underlying assumption that everyone is curious and wants to learn stuff.

I would say that most humans aren’t all that curious, and learning isn’t really a priority. Heck, even faculty aren’t all that curious. Yes, I know, they have Ph.D.s, but I don’t think there is all that strong of a correlation between getting a Ph.D. and general curiosity, and at best it means a person is curious about some small area. Generally, most humans are happy to do as little as they need to to get what they want. With all this said, something key was ignored.

As I see it, grades are an important signal to students. It does not serve a student well, for example, to give them unearned As in their biology class and lead them to believe they have a chance to get into medical school. Similarly, a student with As in all their accounting courses should pass the CPA exam. Of course, an A at Harvard doesn’t mean the same thing as an A at a regional college. But, if historically, say 10% of your biology majors get into medical school and you lower expectations, you end up with a student with As who thinks they have a 10% chance of getting into medical school.

Worse, though, are the easy Cs that are often handed out. To me, there is nothing worse than pushing a student through college when they are doing and learning very little. Passing a student along like this sends the signal that they should stay in college and consequently keep spending the money, when maybe they shouldn’t. Or just as bad, staying in a major when they would be better off choosing a different one.

I really wonder when the lawsuits will start over the student that got all As and couldn’t come close to passing the CPA exam or the student with a 2.0 gpa is no better off by going to college. The later, I think we are already seeing with the push for student loan forgiveness. Relatedly, the more colleges graduate students that did and learned little, the more the signal to society that college is a joke or scam.

Yes, there are some colleges out there that don’t have traditional grades. For some subset of students, that might work, but I would be surprised if it generalizes to many other colleges. I say in class regularly that I work under the theory that if it isn’t collected and part of the grade somehow it doesn’t get done. I don’t get pushback.

Now some data.

How hot was Jan 2025?

Here are my all-month and just January anomoly graphs. First off, January 2025 was warmer than January 2024, and January 2025 is expected to be a La Niña month. For January at least, there are no instances where an anomaly folling a record El Niño year is followed by a new record. We have one instance of an El Niño year (2019) that is lower than a following neutral year. This is surprising. From NOAA

The new January global record is particularly notable for having occurred during a La Niña episode, the cold phase of El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Global temperatures tend to be cooler during periods of La Niña in comparison to periods with an El Niño present. According to NOAA's Climate Prediction Center's January 9 ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, La Niña conditions emerged in December 2024 and are expected to persist through February–April 2025 (59% chance), with a transition to ENSO-neutral likely during March-May 2025 (60% chance).

When we look at all months, January 2025 doesn’t look particularly surprising if it were a neutral month, but for a La Niña month it will be higher than we might expect. Stay tuned.

Map of the week

Excellent use of colors from the paper Zoonotic Host Richness in the Global Wildland–Urban Interface (2/5/2025). The reds are the number of zoonotic hosts and the blues population.

Do unions pay?

Based on BLS data (2/27/2025), it would seem so.

Among full-time wage and salary workers, nonunion workers had usual median weekly earnings that were 85 percent of earnings for workers who were union members in 2024 ($1,138 compared with $1,337).

Eggs

With eggs in the news, here is the average price of a dozen grade A large eggs in U.S. cities from FRED. This is not adjusted for inflation, but still the spikes are noticeable. Maybe having my own egg layers will finally pay off. You can download the data from FRED.

Data center update

Why is so much money being poured into data centers? Well, this (2/27/2025): Nvidia posted record-breaking data center revenues of $115.2 billion for FY25, a 142 percent increase on the revenue generated by the segment during the previous financial year.

NRG partners with GE Vernova to develop 5.4GW of gas generation for US data center market. First facility is expected to begin commercial operations in 2029. (2/27/2025)

Stoneshield plans 6.8 million sq ft data center campus outside Santander, Spain. A dozen 40MW buildings planned for site (2/26/2025)

The spinning CD

Good song and an entertaining video.

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Please let me know if you believe I expressed something incorrectly or misinterpreted the data. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreement. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

Bio

I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks “R for College Mathematics and Statistics” and “Applied Calculus with R.” I welcome any collaborations. I welcome any collaborations.

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