I went to a school presentation evening last night and it went well enough although it was held in the gym and was decidedly parky (that's nippy, chilly or even cold if you've not heard that expression before!). The headmaster stole the opening part of the show with his yellow shirt and brown tie: can't imagine who his style guru is but they must have been having a night off. The kids were reasonably smartly turned out on average but I did find it surprising that some parents and children think it's suave to turn up to a formal presentation evening in torn jeans, horrifically untidy hair or wackily masticating chewing gum as they collected their awards. These events are often the highlight of a person's life in many ways and who needs someone else to make some kind of poxy statement and lower the tone? The senior girl's choir did well but I did wonder why they had chosen to sing nothing but songs from across the Pond: as if we don't have enough of our own songs to celebrate. They also had a large painting by the stage that included a prominent version of the Stars and Stripes: I don't get it. I do know that if this had been an American school or even a French or German one there would have been our own national flag in a prominent place of display. Not in good old modern Britain, you don't. Apart from that it was interesting to see that the most successful children at that school excelled both academically and as people: they spent a lot of their own time volunteering, organising, working in the community AND working hard at their school work. These young people have realised that they are in charge of their own lives: they don't wait for someone to tell them what to do, they just get up and do it. Ask these people if they are ever bored, if they ever have nothing to do and do they ever just sit at home glued to the television. You know the answers. Well done them! I also believe that if you got to know these young achievers well enough you would find that they aren't especially privileged: they're not necessarily super smart either. Clever enough of course but the important point is that they drive themselves: they are smarter than the average for that reason. They will beat many of their contemporaries in many of life's races because of their positive attitude and they deserve it. The lesson is, get off your @rse and get on with it! DW

I thought I'd cracked this archiving lark by finally getting Blogger.com to accept my full archive path ... I have done the same thing many times but this time it worked EXCEPT that it then decided that the files didn't need the .html extension adding to the hyperlink. So I added the extension only to find that blogger then fouled up the name in another way. I will either be giving up on an archive or moving to another WeBlog site. Watch this space. DW

I have just come across two brilliant Christmas/New Year cards and feel the need to share them go to www.cardmaker.co.uk and take a look at Christmas Humour. Here's one of them: DW

A propos the way things happen, here is the copy of a contribution I made to a discussion board to do with Economics and Business Studies Teaching: A couple of issues of interest: well, I think so anyway! On my web site at www.duncanwil.co.uk/solvlp.html I have a demonstration of the use of Excel's SOLVER function: a linear programming maximisation problem. Over the last couple of days I have been in correspondence with a visitor to my site and as a result I have added a useful section on plotting linear programming graphs in Excel. I know a lot of people have difficulties with plotting LP graphs on paper, let alone in Excel so this addition should prove useful for many. Your feedback will be welcome! Tutor2u.net have as their chart of the day a comparison of the GfK Consumer Confidence Index and Base Interest Rates and their headline reads Consumer confidence drops sharply in November following base rate rise. I think this is an excellent discussion case for anyone wanting to draw students’ attention to the development and presentation of an argument. On the face of it there is a high degree of correlation between the fall in the confidence index and the rise in base rates in November of this year. Moreover, go to http://www.martinhamblin-gfk.com/library/news_item.asp?NewsID=118&usa= which is the source of tutor2u.net’s data for the consumer confidence index and you will see this: Roger Wright, Director of Martin Hamblin GfK, commented: 'We are seeing consumer confidence falling again from its peak in July after a period of uncertainty. The increase in interest rates has probably affected how consumers perceive whether it is the right time to make major purchases.' Is this the final word on the subject? No it isn’t! Take a look at the rest of tutor2u.net’s graph and you will see that rises and falls in consumer confidence can be absolutely independent of changes in the base rate: Dec 2001 – Dec 2002 being an excellent example of where this is demonstrated. At other stages you will see that a fall in base rates has apparently led to a fall in consumer confidence: see Jul 2001 – Oct 2001 for evidence of that. So, read more from Martin Hamblin GfK to appreciate more of a balanced view of the consumer confidence index than the headline view from tutor2u.net: Martin Hamblin GfK provide us with a variety of additional reasons why consumer confidence might change in addition to changes in the base rate. Finally, in terms of the presentation of a stilted debate, take a look at the presentation of the value added measures relating to Key Stages 2 and 3 that begins here: http://www.dfes.gov.uk/performancetables/vap_02/docB.shtml Follow the links from page to page and you will find a huge amount of discussion on this topic … but there’s something missing! There are no real comparators to the value added data. All that we see are last year versus this year but there is nothing to help us to appreciate how and why value might have been added to or subtracted from. Get your better students to discuss the additional information needed by parents, teachers and government to provide much more balance to the debate. Otherwise we will all believe that Grammar Schools are the only ones managing their value added effectively: again the headline comments from today’s television and radio. In reality, of course, when all information is taken into account Grammar Schools might be performing badly. Let’s see absolute and relative data, as appropriate, for SSRs, revenue expenditure levels, capital expenditure, levels of administrative support, repairs and maintenance expenditures and more and only then we will see better balance. You could also ask the question of why industry hasn’t reported value added in its annual reports and accounts for a decade or more now. Best wishes DW

Maureen asked: I was looking at the solver example on your website. Can you tell me how you created the graphical solution. I have been trying something similar using Excel's XY scatter and just can't get it work. Thanks Maureen D I answered by telling Maureen to go back to www.duncanwil.co.uk/solvlp.html to see the addition I have made to the page in which I take you through plotting the graph step by step as LP graphs can be horrible to plot in Excel! In addition, I almost forgot to point out that I prepared a PowerPoint Presentation a while ago to help people to prepare Linear Programming graphs: it's here and it's an animated presentation so all you need to do is to start the slide show then sit back and relax. Another excellent service from yours truly! DW

I know, I know, I rant on about broken links on my site but leave the archive of this blog unreachable. I'm doing it, I'm doing it! I can't fathom it at all so I'm giving it another crack! I've tried to change the path again but blogger.com updates on the batch basis so it could be 24 hours before the changes take effect. Trust me! I have just been correcting a few more File Not Found Errors and can happily reveal that the following pages SHOULD run error free now: spreaddes.html split.html intpiv.html cbeh.html ... although I can run this and couldn't find the error that was in my error log file and I have uploaded the various jpg and gif files that were missing from here and there. Thanks to everyone who reported errors and although I am sure there are more I am working to get rid of them. DW