A new research paper, and a census surprise, are calling into question some long-held beliefs about a morbid bit of math: how much mortality rates increase with age.

It's no surprise that the older a group of people get, the higher the percentage of them who will die in any given time period. Benjamin Gompertz, a 19th-century British mathematician, charted the increase in mortality rates as very regular. His Gompertz law of mortality says that each additional period brings a constant percentage increase in mortality rates.

I have about had it with "The Numbers Guy" at the Wall Street Journal.

Because almost =every=one= of his articles are of the form: "People try to quantitatively estimate -blah-, but it's so haaaaaaaaard, and who can say?"

Gabriel Sterne, an economist with the investment-banking company Exotix in London and a former IMF economist, says the IMF's projections for Greece have gotten more realistic. Mr. Sterne praised their work but added, "Any forecast has a top-down element. There's a politically acceptable number you need to get to, and you get there."

Eshaghoff: Oh yeah, absolutely. Just like any other business person, you wanna have a good track record, right? And essentially like my whole clientele were based on word of mouth and like a referral system. So as soon as I, like, as soon as I saved one kid's life...

Stewart: Saving his life?

Eshaghoff: Saving his life.

Steart: What do you mean by saving his life?

Eshaghoff: I mean a kid who has a horrible grade point average, who no matter how much he studies is gonna totally bomb this test, by giving him an amazing score, I totally give him this like, a new lease on life. He's gonna go to a totally new college, he's gonna be bound for a totally new career and a totally new path in life.

But while Eshaghoff routinely furnished sky-high scores for his clients — usually between 2170 and 2220 — many ended up in colleges that fell short of Ivy caliber.

One batch of busted customers included entrants to noted party schools like Arizona State and the University of Colorado.

A longtime friend on the school board of one of the largest school systems in America did something that few public servants are willing to do. He took versions of his state’s high-stakes standardized math and reading tests for 10th graders, and said he’d make his scores public.

By any reasonable measure, my friend is a success. His now-grown kids are well-educated. He has a big house in a good part of town. Paid-for condo in the Caribbean. Influential friends. Lots of frequent flyer miles. Enough time of his own to give serious attention to his school board responsibilities. The margins of his electoral wins and his good relationships with administrators and teachers testify to his openness to dialogue and willingness to listen.

.....
“I won’t beat around the bush,” he wrote in an email. “The math section had 60 questions. I knew the answers to none of them, but managed to guess ten out of the 60 correctly. On the reading test, I got 62% . In our system, that’s a “D”, and would get me a mandatory assignment to a double block of reading instruction.

He continued, “It seems to me something is seriously wrong. I have a bachelor of science degree, two masters degrees, and 15 credit hours toward a doctorate.

7) Well this is big and interesting news. Kim Il Sung, leader of North
Korea, died and the last 2 weeks have been quite a sob fest for the North
Koreans and even some South Koreans. I sometimes wonder if the people
feel =obliged= to make that big deal of a show. My host ma is kind of
amused/surprised by all the wailing of the North Koreans -- Japanese would
never make such a display of losing all composure -- and Americans haven't
really either. Usu we just get really quiet. \

Anyway a few interesting things have come of this situation. North Korea
is welcoming any Koreans who want to pay their respects, but the South
Korea leaders, of course, do not want their people to be lining up w/
North Koreans, so the prime minister criticized Sung for starting the
Korean war and breaking up Korea. Of course, this did not go over too
well w/ the North Korean powers and one of the official radio stations
went so far as to say this speech was a declaration of war. Whoopee. And
talks were supposed to begin between the 2 Koreas...

Repealing a ban on women drivers in Saudi Arabia would result in ‘no more virgins’, the country’s religious council has warned.

A ‘scientific’ report claims relaxing the ban would also see more Saudis - both men and women - turn to homosexuality and pornography.

The startling conclusions were drawn by Muslim scholars at the Majlis al-Ifta’ al-A’ala, Saudi Arabia’s highest religious council, working in conjunction with Kamal Subhi, a former professor at the King Fahd University.

His South Korean counterpart, meanwhile, warns of a glut of university graduates and a work force hard-wired to outdated 20th-century manufacturing skills. "Reckless entrance into college is bringing huge losses to families and the country alike," said President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea recently.

Mr. Lee has raised eyebrows, and hackles, by suggesting that fewer people should go to college from a population of 50 million that sustains 3.8 million undergraduate and graduate students.

....
But with a demographic crisis looming, the government now admits that the expansion has gone too far. "We allowed too many universities to open," says Sung Geun Bae, director general of South Korea's education ministry. Mr. Sung points out that his country simultaneously has one of the world's highest university enrollment rates—and one of the world's lowest birthrates. "Fifteen years ago we needed all those universities, but times have changed."

What that means for the nation's 40 public universities and 400 private colleges is still being debated across the nation, but the writing is on the wall. Education Minister Lee Ju-Ho warns that student enrollment at Korean colleges will plummet by 40 percent in the next 12 years. By 2016 there will already be more university places than high-school graduates, and many institutions will be forced to shut their gates or merge in what is likely to be a very painful downsizing for a nation that reveres education.

....
In an effort to move the debate forward—and help families decrease education-related expenses—President Lee has proposed that parents lower their educational aspirations and consider vocational schools or other job-training opportunities rather than expensive four-year universities. The idea has been condemned by some, but Lee Seongho, a professor of education at Chung-Ang University says the president is correct—and that Mr. Obama shouldn't hold up South Korea as a model of education success.

"President Obama suffers from an illusion about South Korean education," he says.

Mr. Lee says that his students have unrealistic expectations about college and that an increasing number are out of work after graduation. "I say, 'Think seriously: Do you really want to waste a huge amount of money and four years of your life for nothing?'"

Commentators like Mr. Lee accept that the notion of downsizing a nation of such high educational achievers is politically fraught, but many say South Korea's higher-education system will emerge stronger. Ms. Yu of the Korean Educational Development Institute believes that competition will force universities to focus on quality and change how they teach. "I think we will start to think about whether it is necessary to have students in classrooms at all. There is a lot of innovation in digital and online colleges."