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Greenspan Voices Doubt on Statistics
According to a September 5th article in The New York Times, Alan Greenspan, the Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve will articulate his concerns about the quality of economic statistics in a speech to be delivered the evening of September 5th before the Center for Economic Policy Research at Stanford University. In his speech, Mr. Greenspan was to discuss how policymakers had abandoned as formal guidelines past predictors of inflation like gold prices and money supply data when the changing nature of the economy made such data less meaningful. Such data have not been useful in predicting the current economy - where, despite strong growth, wages and prices are stable. According to traditional measures of the economy, the U.S. should be in a zone of inflationary danger.
Mr. Greenspan's speech will repeat his often-stated belief that the most widely-used measures of productivity are not capturing the improved efficiency of American businesses, and that productivity growth is not being effectively measured. Written by Times business journalist Richard Stevenson, the report appears on page 29.
Cardiac Auscultatory Skills of Internal Medicine
and Family Practice Trainees: A Comparison
of Diagnostic
Proficiency
A paper in the September 3rd issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association, "Cardiac Auscultatory Skills of Internal Medicine and Family Practice Trainees," compared the cardiac auscultatory proficiency of medical students and physicians in training. A total of 453 physicians in training (internal medicine and family practice residents) and 88 medical students participated. The participants listened to 12 cardiac events (e.g., murmurs of mitral stenosis and mitral regurgitation) that are clinically important. The events were recorded and their waveforms digitally analyzed. The participants were told the chest area of the recording and listened to each event through high-fidelity stethophones for 90 seconds, and could listen again if necessary.
On average, internal medicine and family practice residents recognized 20 percent of all cardiac events. The number of correct identifications improved little with year of training and was not significantly higher than medical students. The same test was given to a group of 10 cardiologists, whose accuracy rates ranged between 80 and 90 percent. The authors of the paper, Drs. Salvatore Mangione and Linda Newman, from the Allegheny University of the Health Sciences, believe their data show a disturbing inaccuracy in cardiac auscultatory skills among generalists in training. Their paper is discussed in the September 3rd issue of The New York Times (page C8).
Students' Test Scores Show Slow but
Steady Gains at Nation's Schools
According to a report in the September 3rd issue of The New York Times, three major tests of educational achievement indicate modest but significant improvement in test scores since 1990. All three tests (the S.A.T., A.C.T., and National Assessment of Educational Progress) show similar increases - typically a 12 point rise in the S.A.T. Math scores and a 5 point rise in S.A.T. verbal scores. The test scores improved for all major racial and ethnic groups. Moreover, while private school students continue to outscore public school students at all levels, the greatest progress apparently has been made by public school students.
The progress comes at a time when students tend to be ethnically more diverse and poorer than in the past and when college prepratory tests are taken from a broader segment of the student population. The S.A.T. results reflect the recentering of test scores that took place two years ago. The article attributes the increase in test scores to the nationwide effort begun about 15 years ago to improve primary and secondary education. The article fails to mention any other factors that may have caused the test scores to rise (e.g., significant changes in the the tests or a significant increase in the numbers of students taking test preparation courses). The report was written by Peter Applebome and appears on page A29.