Overview:The United States is arguably the world’s oldest existing democracy. Its people benefit from a vibrant political system, a strong rule-of-law tradition, robust freedoms of expression and religious belief, and a wide array of other civil liberties. However, in recent years its democratic institutions have suffered erosion, as reflected in partisan manipulation of the electoral process, bias and dysfunction in the criminal justice system, and growing disparities in wealth, economic opportunity, and political influence.
Key Developments in 2017:
- Newly elected president Donald Trump, who took office in January, defied ethical standards observed by his recent predecessors, for instance by retaining and promoting his private business empire while in office, naming his daughter and son-in-law as presidential advisers, and refusing to divulge his tax records.
- The president repeatedly made major policy decisions with little prior consultation or transparency even within the executive branch—including a January executive order restricting travel to the United States from a group of Muslim-majority countries and a July directive that sought to ban transgender people from serving in the military—prompting legal challenges, revisions, and reversals.
- Investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election gathered force under the leadership of a special counsel, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Robert Mueller. Mueller was appointed in May after Trump fired FBI director James Comey, who had been overseeing the probe.
The problem with month-over-month growth rates
What all of these charts and their headlines have in common is that they’re trying to convey exponential growth. Since traction is the #1 factor that determines fundraising success, it’s understandable that founders try hard to show exponential growth (which talking about a m/m growth rate implies). This is especially true if you’re one out of 50 startups that present at a “demo day” and you have three minutes to get investors excited. At some of the demo days that I’ve attended, I felt like this led to an arm’s race for the highest growth rates and sometimes made me feel like this:
You can calculate a growth rate of 40% per month on average or a compound monthly growth rate (CMGR) of 35% without having to lie, and you can have Excel draw a trendline using an exponential regression. But I believe this is highly misleading. A more reasonable way of describing this company’s revenue growth would be to say that the company has been adding between $300 and $700 in net new MRR per month in the last ~ 12 months.
.. When you’re talking to investors you of course want to show your numbers in the best possible light, and to say that you’re increasing revenue by $300-700 per month (to use the example from above) may not sound as exciting as a CMGR of 35%. However, keep in mind that experienced investors have very fine-tuned BS antennas, and if an investor gets the impression that you’re getting too creative in your interpretation of your data, that’s a huge turn-off.
.. the problem with an exponential growth assumption is that for early-stage startups it makes short-term goals too easy and longer-term goals too hard
.. The problem with a plan like this is that if you’re at $8000 after month 6 you think you’re on track, but actually you’ve only achieved 1/10th of what you have to achieve in the year.
.. The problem with a plan like this is that if you’re at $8000 after month 6 you think you’re on track, but actually you’ve only achieved 1/10th of what you have to achieve in the year.
The ‘H-Bomb’ Fizzles: The Harvard Brand Takes a Hit
There exists a species of person — typically a well-groomed overachiever — who, when asked where he or she went to college, rather than state its name directly, will provide a Russian nesting doll set of geographical responses.
In New England. Massachusetts. Well, Boston. Um … Cambridge.
Finally, sotto voce, with an apologetic wince or sheepish smile, anticipating the word’s being volleyed back in an affected
.. that formerly contrived embarrassment may be ceding to sincere shame and a reassessment of the merits of a Harvard education.
.. Harvard had the sixth-most-reported rape cases on campus in 2014, and its law school figured prominently in the controversial documentary about campus sexual assault
.. Daniel Golden’s 2006 book, “The Price of Admission,” about how the rich buy their way into elite schools, has become newly relevant for its disclosure that Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, received acceptance to Harvard despite an unremarkable academic record, possibly thanks to his father’s donation of $2.5 million.
.. A spokeswoman for Mr. Kushner denied the allegation, noting that Mr. Kushner graduated with honors; Mr. Golden observed that, in a climate of rampant grade inflation, so did about 90 percent of Mr. Kushner’s graduating class of 2003.
.. The acquisitive-rather-than-inquisitive Harvard grad is not a baseless stereotype: Nearly two-fifths of the class of 2016 said they were going into finance or consulting
.. By comparison, just 6 percent went into nonprofit or public service work, and 4 percent into education.
.. In fairness to Harvard, it asks no contribution from families making less than $65,000 per year and provides sliding-scale tuition for those earning more. The New York Times 2015 College Access Index, measuring schools’ efforts to promote economic diversity, ranked it 11th over all and fourth among private colleges, far ahead of places better known for their diversity, such as Oberlin (ranked 132nd).
However, its ratio of federal Pell Grant recipients (for low-income students) to endowment per student is much less impressive.
.. over a third of the student body comes from families earning more than $250,000 a year (the wealthiest 4 percent of households), with more students from the $500,000-and-up 1 percenters than $40,000-and-below families.
.. A 2005 book, “Equity and Excellence in American Higher Education,” determined that, all else being equal, top schools do not offer any admission advantage to low-income students, despite lip service to the contrary.
.. Some parents, though, including alumni, are rebelling against the Harvard-or-bust mentality, not only because of the stresses it places on their overworked children, but from misgivings about the conformist and careerist atmosphere of the Ivy Leagues.
.. “I would like my kids to find their passion, take risks and be curious, engaged, educated people,”
.. “Elite schools discourage kids from being that; they want them to build résumés, to build careers, to be cautious. The kinds of people who go to Harvard tend to be people who succeed by traditional metrics, and that continues after Harvard. I’d like my kids not to be so beholden to those metrics.”
.. “only privileged people” like himself “can afford not to be concerned” about the attainment of privilege.
.. he encounters more students who question whether going to a prestigious school “is something that’s really going to make me happy and lead to a fulfilling life.”
“But there’s a feeling like you don’t have a choice” in an increasingly aristocratic society in which one’s college is a primary determinant of status, he added.
.. what privilege says about each of our characters — makes us uncomfortable. Our privilege forces us to question our worthiness and our merit, two of the things most highly valued at an institution like this one.”
Cyclotron: A web application for constructing dashboards.
Cyclotron is a platform for creating and hosting dashboards, independent of any single data source. It’s a batteries-included solution for loading and visualizing data without programming. It’s the CMS of dashboarding.