The New Math

Just when you think law school professors have tapped their mighty innovation-sticks dry, surely requiring a long refractory period before another great thrust of intellectual energy can sprout, they pleasantly surprise, making one wonder whether it's pill enhanced because it just doesn't seem fair.

Over at The Faculty Lounge, they're now veering out of the law and developing whole new mathematics:

It is not possible for all ABA schools to achieve an 85% (or even 75%) pass rate in Florida.

See, initially, I was thinking that each bar exam taker's pass or failure is independent of other bar exam takers' passes or failures, so it's entirely possible for any individual school to have 85% of its graduates pass the bar, and if it's possible for one school to achieve that, then it's possible for all such schools to achieve that.  Likely, no, but possible.  Like duh.

New math!  It's impossible, apparently.  Why?  I don't know - me not smart enough.

Let's continue with our lesson.

The reality is that if one ABA school gets a passage rate that is above the state average, another one will be below it.

I would've said this was bullshit as well, as law schools do not fall evenly on a bell curve with equal numbers of applicants or anything else that would possibly mandate this result.

For example, the average of 11, 11, 11, 11, 11, and 5 is 10.  Five numbers above the average, one outlier below.  None of this one goes up, one goes down crap.

But hey, new math!  Averages fall on the apex of a bell curve even if they aren't otherwise likely to. Eat your dead departed heart out, Paul Erdos.

The learning doesn't stop there.

[T]he pass rate on the Florida bar has been declining fairly dramatically over the last eight years:

 The numbers provided are 80, 79.2, 80.1, 80.2, 77.2, 71.8, 68.9, 68.2.  Stupid, old-math-me would have looked at the list and concluded that there was no drop-off at all until the 4th entry (2013) and no significant - much less "dramatic" - decline until the 5th (2014).

Nope.  New math.  80 to 80.2 is not a 0.25% increase, but rather a dramatic drop over three years.

Next Fields Medal isn't being awarded until 2018, but I'm not sure why they're bothering with the wait.