Montaigne in his Essays cites this line of Horace that I like but also don’t really understand. “Dare to be wise! Begin now. The man who puts off the day when he will live rightly is like the peasant who waits for the river to drain away. But it flows on, and will flow on for ever.” I don’t know much (or really anything at all) about the world of Horace, but I can think of no suitable explanation for why the peasant might wait for a river to drain away. Or is that the point? That there is no sensible reason for a peasant to do this random, illogical thing invented by Horace is the point of the comparison?

(Click for full-size image.)

Source is 2011 NAEP school surveys, so respondents are schools and the percentage is their students in remedial math.

Florida's kids are not amused by math, apparently.

(click for full-size image)

Without impugning the independence of the writer of this report, it's probably at least worth noting that this is a problematic sentence to find in a report about small-dollar lending: "The Center for Economic and Policy Research thanks the National Bankers Foundation for its generous support of our work on financial markets."

From their website, the National Bankers Association describes themselves thusly: "The National Bankers Association was founded in 1927 as the trade association for the nation's 103 minority and women-owned banks (MWOBs). Our members include banks owned by African-Americans, Native-Americans, American-Indians, East-Indians, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans and Women."

If you accidentally multiply all your formulas by 2 needlessly, and then accidentally divide those same formulas by 2 later on, does it count as totally screwing everything up or merely as wasting time? Asking for a friend…