Author: JesseDenier

The ideology of most schools in America is to teach all the information throughout the semester having quizzes or projects as you progress, leading up to one cumulative exam. This practice has been heavily scrutinized and tested around the country and the world. There is no one correct way to teach or to learn, but this article gives an interesting take on the effects of pretesting and how the average person learns.

We should be encouraging students to learn and grow for their betterment, not for a better GPA.

http://www.kvue.com/news/local/eeyores-54th-annual-birthday-party-held-in-central-austin/435231412

For my second story I focused on the 100th anniversary of Zilker Park. While this was an exciting milestone for Austin, Austin has some weirder parks and even weirder traditions. Eeyore’s Birthday began in 1963 for seemingly no definitive reason other than to, “Keep Austin Weird.” The event has stuck to this theme, sporting family friendly petting grounds, live music, and great food. However it has also stuck to it’s hippie roots by turning Pease District Park into a drug fueled party for some attendees. This year everyone stayed safe, and the event was a success.

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

In the Journalism world many times data and comparisons are used to make points or provide background information. This is a necessary and useful aspect of the news, but can be used to lead people to incorrect conclusions. The human mind naturally chooses that when two situations or results are directly correlated, we assume one caused the other or they have some effect on each other. This seems obvious to most, but many times this is blatantly not true. Tyler Vigen gives some amazing examples of things that may be correlated, but there is no causation.

Hays County was third-fastest-growing county in nation in 2016

For my first story I focused on the issues rising between older citizens of San Marcos and the student body, mainly involving noise. This is a problem that may not seem too important because it takes place in almost every college town from Washington to Florida. However San Marcos’s massive spike in population combined with rising real estate prices has forced this issue to be something much more than simple. I found this to be an interesting read, that proved this point.

What other issues with this increased population cause?