And in other gender swapping news...

Isn't it short for "cuckold", which does mean almost exactly that (it specifically refers to husbands with unfaithful wives)?

The issue is that the modern use also refers to men who are perceived as weak and dominated by a woman.

 

Well, I've usually marked in fields adjacent to philology, so lingual standards might be higher there than elsewhere; or in analytical philosophy, where lingual precision is pretty much everything. Also, Germany. But within those confines, it seems to me that standards are lowering rather than rising.

 

"Cuckold" derives from "cuckoo", whose parenting strategy frequently involves displacing the eggs of another bird from the nest and laying their own. The outcome is that the deceived bird will sit on the cuckoo's eggs and subsequently raise the young. This isn't exclusive to the species but they are particularly notable for it.

"Cuckolding" in nature therefore refers to a process of infanticide followed by deception between females. The cuckolded party is not a betrayed male, in fact males need have nothing to do with the process at all beyond the fact of being necessary to the initial reproductive act. The way the word is used in modern slang is akin to using the word "heat" to refer to a police investigation, it's a commonly understood misuse of a word which becomes synonymous with that siutation.

This post made me think about the differences between disciplines.

Something that occurred to me is that my earlier academic efforts were in psychology and "pure" science, whereas latterly I've done post grad nursing qualifications. Whether nursing should be considered an academic field is still a point of contention for many and I'm not going to lie and pretend I can't see why. It occurred more than once that there's an inferiority complex at play amongst academic staff who overcompensate for the perception they aren't taken seriously by raising the bar in terms of adherence to standards of grammar, spelling, sentence structure, etc.

I had people show me essays which had received merits but clearly deserved distinctions by any estimation of the actual presentation of an argument, critical thinking and use of evidence, but had been marked down 5% or more because of a double space, misplaced comma, or not quite conforming to a bizarrely imposed standard of requiring one reference per hundred words (not as an average across the piece, but more literally as a count of the words in between references to ensure the author did not type a hundreds words without a reference). I had more than one run in on behalf of others with one particular lecturer who for reasons I never fully understood was running a module in a post grad degree course despite not having attended a university herself. Pointing out I already massively outstripped her in terms of clinical experience and qualifications (had, in fact, done for decades) and my being on the course was a legal formality to be able to re specialise and set up a forensic learning disability service made us....less than friends.

 

It can depend heavily on the way the lecturer has been taught. I will almost never mark to 100%, because you simply cannot turn in a perfect piece - unless it's purely a right/wrong question. There are time constraints, word limits, etc... I could write an answer to my own question and wouldn't award myself 100%.

To me, a piece falls into the degree categories and to some extent the marking schema support that. Getting 70% or above reflects a First. Typically the highest mark I will give is 85%, though I have had some rare examples of 90%+

But a lot of students today demand to know why and where they lost marks, so it may be that rather than give my nuanced answer above, some lecturers will use bad spelling/punctuation/grammar as an easy excuse.

 

This depends on the standard you are using. Does "100%" mean "100% of a theoretical perfect paper, which absolutely covers every imaginable aspect of the subjet" or "100% of what I can reasonably expect from a very competent student in this exercise"? Personally, I use the latter definition, because I find the former definition to have absolutely no relationship to the real world. In my mind, it is just scholastic pretentiousness, because if you mark on the basis of such a standard, that implies that you are qualified to make that evaluation. I, at least, am the first to admit that I am not.

 

Possibly true, but in this particular case I think the answer was much less about a nuanced assessment of the work and more about someone who was perhaps a bit out of her depth and doubting her skill to make one. When I took it upon myself as course rep to raise people's concerns about marking it seemed to get a defensive reaction and I could have handled it better to be honest.

Still, I came away with a distinction without being anywhere near the line so meh and poopy doo.

Must confess I've lost track of what this has to do with gender swapping, lol.

 

A 100% score is obviously going to be much more accessible in a purely objective subject such as Mathematics than in one with interpretive elements such as English lit or a mickey mouse one like American Studies


Runs for cover.........

 

Which is, of course, why higher grades are so much easier to come by in mathematics than in literature

 

That depends on the level of mathematics. If it is relatively simple mathematics, such as algebra, boolian logic, calculus, or other well-defined subjects, that is true. Answers are either "correct" or "incorrect".

But if you get far enough into mathematical theory, you find there is much more room for debate than the average person might think. For example, if you have to evaluate the validity of a non-computer-based demonstration of the 4-colour map theorem, you can't just say it was "right" or "wrong". You can only point out the strengths, insights, and limits of the demonstration.

 

Lost me, I get by with statistics, can determine when to use an ANOVA, a chi square, so on and so forth, can organise data sets and structure a study with the later analysis in mind. Give me pure mathematics and I shrug, pick my nose and start to sing Cliff Richard songs.

Kinda hoping you did realise the whole post was just a lead in to the obligatory anti America joke...

 

^ Not to worry, I get lost in that stuff, too. I know just enough higher mathematics to know that I don't know all that much about higher mathematics.

 

We know, you don't even know the difference in a million and a hundred thousand, and that is not to mention your problems with graphing. Really, that is not even high level mathmatics as a million is a fairly small number when you get into it.

 

Sounds more like a geography/cartography discussion, so permit me to weigh in...

 

Ok. I am basically illiterate when it comes to higher mathematics - my 16 year old son insists I’m not an idiot, but he talks circles around me - mostly when he’s trying to explain Space X’s success and how they can land a booster.
But I will tell you, even though you can score 100% on a math test, the nuances in statistics, the difference between collecting data and analyzing data is vast.
Take for example, TLS’s statement that 52% of homicides, in the US, are committed by African Americans.
The report from which he pulled that data had 183 pages of analysis.

So, one may be able collect data and get 100% score means absolutely nothing if they can’t also analyze and interpret that data.

Not disputing anyone’s stance here, just adding that math can be just as nuanced as English Literature.

 

^TLS and OF translate statistics into an arcane language that the rest of us don't understand. It translates as "Me got FEELINGS!!!! Me find numbers that say my feelings are GOOD!!! Fuck anyone who don't believe me!!!!"

 

Statistics are not higher mathematics. To the extent they are mathematical, they are relatively simple mathematics. To the extent they are sociological (that is, in their interpretation), they are not mathematics.

Tensor calculus is beginning to get into what I would consider higher mathematics. And the real specialists would probably say that isn't higher math either.

Things like aleph numbers and operations that involve them are much more complicated than tensor calculus. (For example, is there anything that, even in theory, corresponds to aleph-3 or higher?) Did you realize that if you raise a googol plex (the highest named number, unless someone has come up with something higher since "my time") to the power of googol plex, you still have exactly 0% of aleph-0? And that's the lowest aleph number.

Getting from one aleph number to another is crazy, too. Aleph-0 plus aleph-0 is still aleph-0. Aleph-0 times aleph-0 is still aleph-0. You have to raise aleph-n to the aleph-n power to obtain aleph-n+1.

And what happens if you divide 0 by 0? I started working on that one when I was in high school, and it was probably ten years before I could explain it (and the curious results it produces if you dare introduce it into an equation) to my satisfaction.

I wonder if Muad Dib is spinning in his grave yet?

 

I think right now he's spinning so fast that the local BLM movement's using the generated electricity to tear down some statues

 

My apologies if I was unclear. That’s exactly what I was saying. I understand statistics and they are not higher math. I do not understand a bit of your post beyond the first paragraph. ;-). But I’ll show it to James and he can explain it to me.
my point was that ... not higher math, that basic mathematics can be nuanced as well.