Sarah Bana

100% agree on both the devastating report and that multiple things are going wrong in math (and ELA, I suspect).

Thanks, Dan. My goal was not to lower the quality of the conversation. That report was devastating. Multiple things are going wrong in math education (and maybe college admissions).

The American Math Crisis

Terrific podcast (includes @joshua-goodman.com) on the shocking UCSD report about the remedial math needs of incoming students and declines in math achievement more generally: open.spotify.com/episode/06Ve...

It took until 2025

Our team at American Journal of Health Economics is looking for a social media editor! The position is compensated ($1000 per year) -- if you're interested, please apply using this Google form:
docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

kidding aside, that is a hell of a shot from there (via SN)

Cool new working paper on why and how cable news threw gasoline on the culture war fire. The culture war isn't optimal for electoral candidates, but it's optimal for cable news companies.

ungated: www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/27v4x...

Yes - definitely get to work on my overhead compartment lift!

My favorite flight day technology: Mobile order at airports — Panera Bread and Starbucks in a class above the rest.

Protein powders and shakes, like all dietary supplements, fall into something of a regulatory gray area. There is no federal limit specifying the amount of lead allowed in protein powders. And while the FDA requires that manufacturers keep their products free of harmful contaminants, it largely leaves it up to companies to decide what counts as harmful and test their own products for compliance. Before 1994, manufacturers had to prove herbal products were safe before selling them. That changed after Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. The law sharply limited the FDA’s authority, leaving supplements far less regulated than drugs. Today, supplements are “presumed safe unless found otherwise,” says Cohen at Harvard Medical School, and most products face scrutiny only after reaching the market—meaning unsafe or contaminated supplements can reach consumers before problems are caught.

i was surprised to learn that bc most protein powders are considered dietary supplements, they basically fall into a regulatory grey area

there's no federal limit on the amount of lead they can contain and neither manufacturers nor the FDA have to prove these products are safe before they're sold

Super news for @brownuresearch.bsky.social and all. Let us all appreciate growth-openness link. Aghion at the news conference said he is worried about the protectionist wave and warned against obstacles for growth such as deglobalization and tariffs! He said openness is a driver of economic growth!

IRS Halts Layoff Plans, Begins Rehiring Amid Staffing Shortages The agency is attempting to rebuild its workforce and restore public confidence.

Treasury Department: Treasury cut 1,446 employees on Friday. Two Internal Revenue Service employees confirmed layoffs were taking place at the tax agency, which has already shed more than 25,000 employees. One employee who was laid off was working Friday and exempt from shutdown furloughs.

The IRS is laying off people during the shutdown, even though it was rehiring staff it previously fired because it was so shorthanded.
This one stands out because firing IRS employees costs the government money, since they bring in about $6-8 for every dollar spent on tax enforcement

But it says that he got a COVID booster and a flu shot!

Hopefully some of these make audio form!

Has Your Scientific Work Been Cut? We Want to Hear.

We will be writing more of these. If you’re a scientist and your science has been disrupted, we want to hear from you: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/c...

Working on a dissertation in American political behavior and need money for survey research? Apply for a grant worth up to $15,000 from the Rapoport Family Foundation. They’re planning on awarding up to 15 grants this cycle.

Deadline Oct. 22.

www.rapoportfamilyfoundation.com/phdgrant

We just spent 6 months to add 1 figure to this paper. Some people said, "Couples aren't prioritizing men's careers. Men just have better earnings opportunities when moving."

Earnings effects of moves for couples on the left, singles on the right. Negligible gap between single men and women.

Moving to Opportunity, Together Many couples face a trade-off between advancing one spouse’s career or the other’s. We study this trade-off using administrative data from Germany and Sweden. We first conduct an event-study analysis of couples moving across commuting zones and find that relocation increases men’s earnings more than women’s, with strikingly similar patterns in Germany and Sweden. Using a sample of mass layoff events, we then find that couples in both countries are more likely to relocate in response to the man being laid off compared to the woman. We investigate whether these gendered patterns reflect men’s higher potential earnings or a gender norm that prioritizes men’s career advancement. We provide suggestive evidence of a gender norm using variation in norms within Germany. We then develop and estimate a model of household decision-making in which households can place more weight on the income earned by the man compared to the woman.

Our new paper shows that men benefit from couples' long-distance joint moves more than women do, in both Germany and Sweden. Is this just b/c men are usually the main breadwinner? No, it's hard to explain the patterns we see w/o a gender norm prioritizing men's careers. www.nber.org/papers/w32970

Thanks for sharing, I definitely hadn’t seen data on this

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 was awarded jointly to Mary E. Brunkow, Frederick J. Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi "for their discoveries concerning peripheral immune tolerance"

I love this story about Fred Ramsdell being at Yellowstone the week the Nobel Prize was incredible
www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medic...

Just full-time jobs in US academic institutions:
Definitely better (+84%) than the worst COVID year (2020) but still worse than other post-COVID years; e.g. one-third fewer such jobs than last year.

I got the option to use Lossless audio on Spotify -- but don't most folks (including me) use bluetooth audio? What is the return on investment on this type of feature?

Just trying to understand.

The Department of Labor has released its plan in the event of a government shutdown.
Key takeaway for econ data: There will NOT be a jobs report on Friday (or any subsequent data releases) if funding isn't restored in time. #NumbersDay #EconSky
www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov...

I loved this segment!!! And @sifill.bsky.social shouted out the Townsend - Ostapenko comments 🎾
Same stones being thrown at successful folks, across contexts.

I read the paper yesterday after I saw your post and I am interpreting productivity as very traditional “study skills” but I would be curious as to what some concrete examples of those are in the context of 5th and 6th grade math.

Bad decisions tour

CHICAGO!
See us live! For our big TERM PREVIEW EPISODE! There will be games ….

Tickets won’t last long. Get yours now: crooked.com/events 🎟️

Most US workers see fluctuating monthly earnings. Firms are one main cause. Workers don't like these volatile jobs as it makes their spending more volatile and they quit more, from Peter Ganong, Pascal J. Noel, Christina Patterson, Joseph S. Vavra, and Alexander... https://www.nber.org/papers/w34227

🚨NEW RESULTS (w/ Slattery & Nober)
- When gov't engineers retire, highway projects cost more: the engineers pay for themselves 6 times over
- Improving gov’t engineer quality from the 25th to 75th percentile reduces costs by 14%, equal to 3x avg. engineer pay

Paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Are there any experts in information retrieval and RAG systems in digital history and the humanities?