Feedback is our weekly column of bizarre stories, implausible advertising claims, confusing instructions and more
Primary school puzzler
THE Welsh government recently circulated to literacy and numeracy tests in the country’s schools. Feedback now seeks help with our homework, which is to interpret a graph from the guide.
It plots “progress score†against school year. The caption explains, perhaps: “progress scores shown are for a child taking the Year 3 test in 2013 and the Year 4 test in 2014. The solid line on the progress score charts represents the mid-point in the progress scores achieved in each year group. Half of the children taking the tests would be expected to achieve a score that lies between the two dotted lines.†These, on the graph, were labelled “Progress score 2013†and “Progress score 2014â€.
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The caption goes on: “A quarter of the pupils in each year group would have progress scores above the higher dotted line and a quarter of the pupils in each year group would have progress scores below the lower dotted line. This pupil has made progress that is in line with what is expected for her year group.â€
“Tell me it’s not me,†pleads Julia Jones, noting the pamphlet’s “Crystal markâ€, by which the Plain English Campaign approved its clarity. Her husband Neal Hockley, also a lecturer at Bangor University, concurs.
The revised graphs put online a few days later make a little more sense, with marks showing a child’s scores. We wonder: did a statistician or a numerologist offer clarification?
The scientific acknowledgement of the week “warmly thanks Coopérative Nogent l’Abbesse [and others] for regularly supplying us with various champagne samples†(see )
Telepathic Tubes
TRANSPORT for London informed Matthew Carse it has “installed ‘next-stop’ audio-visual systems, to let you know when you are approaching your destinationâ€. These were now on all buses and “most Tube trainsâ€. Matthew asks: “how does this exciting new system know where I’m going?â€
Underground plain and simple
FEEDBACK confirmed friends’ suspicions in checking the above Transport for London announcement by, er, spotting a train. At Edgware Road station we found surviving and refreshingly innocent of spiffy next-stop digital displays.
George and Trumpet, please
RE-READING the announcement above, on the assumption that it’s written in pressreleasese, a language we have studied, we decided it was true. It requires that, before venturing by bus into unfamiliar territory, you first go to to find out whether the name of your stop, which will be announced by an intrusive semi-synthetic voice, is “The George and Trumpet†or “Fish Islandâ€. (One of these is real.)
Pressure cooker reminiscences
PRESSURE cooking, we suggested, might be a partial example of a metaphor without foundation – what we dubbed an “athelemic metaphor†– because we had never encountered an actual pressure cooker in the US (26 April). This inspired 20 readers to tell us their memories of them, seven from the US. Several recalled experiences similar to ours, in which an ill-advised release of steam left rice embedded in the kitchen ceiling. Thank you, all.
On tenterhooks
THE above discussion of athelemic metaphors has left Robert Harding on tenterhooks: will we mention his message?
The Brussels Interpretation
ELECTIONS are now taking place for the European Parliament, reminding us of an article in UK newspaper The Guardian in February which argued that the EU is ““. The author, Mike Galsworthy of Scientists for Labour, gave figures for research funding but seemed mostly to be responding to of being “anti-scienceâ€.
That claim, in the group’s report on ““, seems to centre on European institutions’ keenness that foods with genetically modified ingredients be labelled as such.
Then on 14 March The Daily Mail – a newspaper not known for europhilia – produced one of its inimitable whole-story-in-the-headline scoops: ““.
Such policy debate can make quantum mechanics seem plain.
The Danube is not blue
MEANWHILE a colleague trying (and failing) to discover the science policy of the anti-EU UK Independence Party was tickled to find that its on-hold music was Johann Strauss’s . The usual lyrics to this classic piece exalt the unity of the Germanic peoples.
Gravity-free chairs for all!
FINALLY, several readers have alerted us to adverts appearing recently in the UK for “Gravity-free†and “Zero Gravity†chairs. One to use “anti-gravity technology originally developed for astronautsâ€.
Steve Tunnicliff observes that “the anti-gravity effect isn’t too strongâ€, because in an illustration “someone gently leaning on the chair overcomes it†and presumes that this is why “NASA’s interest wanedâ€.
Do we want, Monica Dalby asks, “to experience weightlessness for only £59.99?†Perhaps. But we recall writing about this marvellous furniture some years ago: and we have utterly failed to find it in the archive. Have we accidentally acquired a Zero-Memory chair?