Both 90% and 8% could be valid sample sizes depending on the nature of the study, the outcome you are trying to observe, and the effect size of the variables in question. There is a specific area of biostatistics, called sample size analysis and power analysis, that determines what makes up an acceptable sample size.

The scientific community specifically refers to “levels of evidence,” meaning that different types of studies and assessments are deemed to give varying degrees of evidence supporting or against a particular topic. Prospective, randomized, double blinded, multi-center, controlled trials are generally at the top of the list, and “expert opinion” and case reports are are the bottom, but there are several other types of studies in between.

That seems mature…

Well I was assuming it stood for pseudomembranous colitis, but that’s a term that people in the know don’t really use, so…

Sparkly –

By memorization I mean exactly what it sounds like. I will give you an example. Conceptually, you need to understand oxidation of alcohols. You need to know the difference between primary, secondary and tertiary alcohols and understand how oxidation of alcohols works. Which ones get oxidized to ketones, which to aldehydes, which to carboxylic acids. Understanding that is conceptual. The memorization aspect comes into play when you are asked HOW to actually do that. Which oxidizing agent should you use if you want to generate butanoic acid from 1-butanol? Which would you use if you wanted butaldehyde instead? What if you wanted to oxidize 2-butanol to butanone? This involves you understanding the concept of oxidation, of course, but also requires that you have memorized a list of oxidizing agents and memorized which is appropriate to use in which situations.

It has to do with how many atoms the electrons are spread over. A localized lone pair stays near one atom in a molecule, whereas a delocalized lone pair is spread between two, or even more, atoms. An example of a localized lone pair would be an ammonia molecule, NH3, because the lone pair on the N cannot be spread over the hydrogen atoms. An example of a delocalized lone pair would be in acetic acid (CH3-COO), where the lone pair on the oxygen can be spread over the entire carboxyl group. You need to know about resonance structures in order for this to make sense. In a nutshell, if you can draw a resonance structure, the lone pair is delocalized. If you cannot, it is localized.

Well, we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Though if you haven’t gone through medical school yet, I think you may be surprised to find out how wrong you are about this, if that is where you are headed.

Bais Yakov Maidel – I’d take it as a ‘no’ too, but I can tell you as someone who is a few months away from being a medical doctor that you are pretty much entirely correct in your assessment of the pre-med curriculum. True, no one is gonna ask you to synthesize a Grignard reagent, explain nucleophilic substitution, calculate Gibbs free energy constant or ask you to find the velocity of an electron in an electromagnetic field, in medical school. However, the underlying principles in many of the courses that teach you how to do those things are pretty important to medicine, and certainly do form a basis on which to build further scientific knowledge.

Some of the info given regarding medical school admission requirements are not quite correct. While not every single school requires a degree from a four year school, the vast majority do. I have never heard of a single case of anyone going to medical school with only a BTL plus the prerequisite classes for applying. I can absolutely tell you that it would not be viewed favorably, and would certainly be viewed as “worse off” than an english or jewish studies major from an actual college.

Even people who are very smart can still make mistakes. Einstein made some, and certainly someone with no background in psychology can make a mistake when it comes to evaluating the efficacy and validity of various treatment models. Also, please do not put words in my mouth. I did not say that minority opinions do not exist, or that every single psychologist in the field agrees with it. Furthermore, I did not call popa stupid. However, he is wrong to write off an extensively tested and studied and effective treatment modality as ‘narishkeit’. I’d even turn what you said to me around on him – perhaps he doesn’t agree with CBT himself (for reasons that I certainly don’t understand, but sound personal), but why does mean that it should be so flippantly dismissed as ‘narishkeit’ when clearly the vast majority of reputable therapists support CBT? Although, now that I’ve seen from above comments that he doesn’t seem to really understand what CBT is, perhaps that is the root of the problem here.

I think it’s very important to be realistic about what kind of college you really envision for your child. For many people who post here, the types of places they are likely to go for undergrad are not the kind of places that are looking for tons of extracurriculars. For example, the CUNY system, Touro, FDU, etc., will not really care about extracurriculars as long as the applicant did reasonably well in high school and on the SAT or ACT. If your aim is to get into Columbia, Cornell, maybe even NYU, or other schools like those, then the story may be a bit different. That being said, I have to unfortunately disagree with akuperma with regards to your child being inherently desirable just because he is in a religious school. Trust me on this one – they don’t see it that way. If anything, it could even be the opposite depending on which undergrad it is.

It’s an interesting question, and one that I’ve heard before. I think a fitting bit of imagery that helps explain this is that of a mountain. Imagine “frumkeit” on one side, and “OTD” on the other side. Going up the mountain in either direction can be very difficult, but once you get over the top, sliding down the rest of the way to the other side is much easier. Yes, now that I’m not frum, I don’t think it would be very easy to somehow persuade me that I’m wrong (though of course, nothing is impossible). But on the other hand, it was also very difficult when I was leaving frumkeit – certainly not an easy overnight decision.

Note that this really would only apply to those who leave due to intellectual reasons. This would not be a fitting analogy for someone who decides they don’t want to be frum because they are angry, or trying to hurt someone, or simply want a less restrictive lifestyle. But again, for those of us who are no longer frum because we couldn’t make it fit with how we see the world, it often was a very difficult and excruciatingly slow process that led us to leaving, and would therefore be very difficult to reverse.

At least that’s how it was for me and several others that I know. Maybe someone else has a different way of seeing it.

Someone remind me of the gemara term for “Believe my claim that somewhat implicates me, because otherwise I could’ve kept quiet and no one would’ve known.”… It’s been a while and the name for that claim escapes me, but this whole conversation reminds me of that a bit. Anyone?

Again, a bad analogy. This isn’t the same as asking someone how to RUN a school, or how to BE a mechanech, but like with any good school, getting feedback about what might have made the experience better is certainly helpful. Of course I wouldn’t ask a law school dropout how to run the place, but I definitely would ask him or her why they felt they had such a bad experience that it induced them to leave.

I think her point is simply that if one wishes to maximize the chances that their kids will stay frum, especially if there is already some type of “at risk” behavior, it might be better to pick your battles. She isn’t trying to tell you what would or wouldn’t convince her to become frum now, just giving some helpful advice to those for whom it might be relevant. And as a formerly frum person myself, I think this is mostly spot on.