#statistics #rant

I’m at my high schooler’s back-to-school night. At the entrance, you pick up your kid’s schedule. There were four people at the table, one for each grade: 9, 10, 11, 12.

Of course, as kids age, parents are less likely to go to this event (having gone in previous years). So there was nobody in the Senior line, and long lines for underclassmen.

Now, a much better approach would be to have lines based on last name, irrespective of grade: A-G, H-L, M-S, T-Z. (These letters are guesses, ideally each line would have ~25% of students). That way, no matter which grade shows up, the load would be roughly balanced.

This should be obvious. The high school has been running these events for years and years. It should be no surprise that the load is unbalanced. And yet they do it the same, line-producing way each year.

This is basic statistics folks, not rocket science. /rant