4 ms·

Wow. I'm a bit shocked. At first I thought the title was a misinterpretation of the statistics presented in the article by the poster, but it seems that the aut

Wow. I'm a bit shocked. At first I thought the title was a misinterpretation of the statistics presented in the article by the poster, but it seems that the author actually offered that comparsion themselves. 'an annual average “rate of return”—actually a pay premium, the increase in hourly earnings from an extra year of schooling—of 8.8%. The analogy is inexact, but for comparison America’s stockmarket returned an annual 5.6% over the past 50 years.' Those are in no way comparable! Encouraging poor interpretations of statistics on important issues like this is actively harmful! This has to be some of the laziest reporting I have ever seen. At a minimum, can we please change the title on this?

darawk 8y ago
This isn't even a misinterpretation of statistics, which is actually complicated and understandable...it's literally a misunderstanding of how rates work.
- tripletao 8y ago
  From the article: > The analogy is inexact, but for comparison America’s stockmarket [...] So the author thought, "I know this is wrong, but I'll do it anyways and add a note"? And they literally call the publication The Economist... The return on investment of education is an interesting and difficult question, to distinguish the difference between the people who do and don't seek the education from the difference actually caused by the education. The best results come from natural experiments, like sudden changes in the number of university places available; but even those capture only the effect on the marginal applicant. This of course is mostly unrelated to the article.
dang 8y ago
Yes. We've changed it to the subtitle, since it's less baity than the main title. Submitted title was "In past 50 years rate of return in Education = 8.8% and in US stockmarket = 5.6%". I assume that was a well-intentioned attempt to rewrite a baity title as the guidelines ask (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), but it's better to use language from the article, and the magic numbers violate the guidelines in another way.

darawk 8y ago

This isn't even a misinterpretation of statistics, which is actually complicated and understandable...it's literally a misunderstanding of how rates work.

tripletao 8y ago
From the article: > The analogy is inexact, but for comparison America’s stockmarket [...] So the author thought, "I know this is wrong, but I'll do it anyways and add a note"? And they literally call the publication The Economist... The return on investment of education is an interesting and difficult question, to distinguish the difference between the people who do and don't seek the education from the difference actually caused by the education. The best results come from natural experiments, like sudden changes in the number of university places available; but even those capture only the effect on the marginal applicant. This of course is mostly unrelated to the article.

dang 8y ago

Yes. We've changed it to the subtitle, since it's less baity than the main title. Submitted title was "In past 50 years rate of return in Education = 8.8% and in US stockmarket = 5.6%". I assume that was a well-intentioned attempt to rewrite a baity title as the guidelines ask (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html), but it's better to use language from the article, and the magic numbers violate the guidelines in another way.