MORE COMING SOON
We like the thinking behind the William and Marian Ghidotti Early College
High School. The school is designed for students who thrive in a smaller
academic environment - high school classes are hosted on the Sierra
College campus courtesy the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Students usually take college courses and emerge with an AA or AS degree.
Professionally, we despise using one number (an average) to stand for 121
students at William and Marian Ghidotti, let alone 2317 students at
Nevada Union High or even the 3876 students in the district. What you
should want to know as parents is given your child's 8th grade scores, what
are the probability distributions for his or her scores after four years at
available schools. Suppose you know that your child is starting high school
with four scores around 800. If the chances are better than 50% his or her
scores would drop to 700 after four years at Sierra Mountain High, you'd
likely want to look elsewhere. Suppose then chances are better than 75% he
or she graduates from Bear River High with the same 800s. A safe bet, but
not inspiring either as a parent or taxpayer.
In its simplest form, the hyperbola illustrated some pages ago can be
described by the equation x * y = 1. This means x and y are reciprocals. Due
to the long and exotic evolution of the English language reciprocal can also
mean mutual or interchangeable. Although Gauss himself does not seem to
have used the term, there is an interesting fusion of unlikely words known
in number theory as quadratic reciprocity. We regret to report that Gauss'
golden theorem about how the moduli of two prime numbers are related
has absolutely no application to education. With apologies to Fermat,
Gauss, Euler, Legendre and others, we will borrow the phrase.