http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-union-registers-at-th-grade-reading-level-112236.html
:eek:
:horrormirth:
:fnord:
Most "serious" news registers at around that level, as well.
Tabloids register at effectively the reading level of a 9 year old.
Newspapers, iirc, are written at a sixth grade level. So not really surprising here.
hah! I just spent a good chunk of the workday scoring things on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. The "grade level" of writing has nothing to do with content or anything--it's calculated by the average sentence length and the average number of syllables per word. It's fairly rare to see anything written for the public that's over a 6th grade level.
Personally, I think it's kind of a weird to use the flesch-kincaid to score oral communication - it's for reading comprehension. People never say "that guy talks at a ninth grade level". I guess it is useful for comparing which speeches have the longest sentences, but I'm not sure that FK-reading comprehension scores are necessarily correlated with speech comprehension.
just for kicks, the article in the OP is written at the 14th grade.
This post is 11th grade.
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 10:15:24 PM
Most "serious" news registers at around that level, as well.
Tabloids register at effectively the reading level of a 9 year old.
Pretty fucking highbrow, considering their audience :eek:
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 25, 2012, 11:09:06 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 10:15:24 PM
Most "serious" news registers at around that level, as well.
Tabloids register at effectively the reading level of a 9 year old.
Pretty fucking highbrow, considering their audience :eek:
You don't have to jump very high, that's true.
He could have just stood there grunting and whistling, and he'd have had 90% of the nation in his pocket.
QuoteObama's use of simple language is in part a reflection of his audience: the American voter in an election year. And it's part of a larger trend in simpler State of the Union language as the speech as transitioned from a simple address to Congress into a prime-time televised event.
I can't wait till politicians start giving speeches like someone talking to their dog after he takes a shit on the couch.
Quote from: Thurnez Isa on January 27, 2012, 04:22:56 AM
QuoteObama's use of simple language is in part a reflection of his audience: the American voter in an election year. And it's part of a larger trend in simpler State of the Union language as the speech as transitioned from a simple address to Congress into a prime-time televised event.
I can't wait till politicians start giving speeches like someone talking to their dog after he takes a shit on the couch.
Never heard a Reagan speech, I see.
The problem is whenever I heard a Reagan speech I was below an 8th grade level.
I'm getting old, not quite there yet.
Quote from: Thurnez Isa on January 27, 2012, 04:25:37 AM
The problem is whenever I heard a Reagan speech I was below an 8th grade level.
I'm getting old, not quite there yet.
:horrormirth:
8th grade is actually the sweet spot when trying to communicate with the general public. What's everyone bitching about?
You ever listened to a cabbage reading something out loud? 8th grade is joe public's equivalent of a phd. Most of the world are thick as pigshit. Enjoy your edge, don't whine about it. :evil:
The only devil's advocate/caveat I would throw into the mix is that we do have folks in our population that have had some significant socio-economic barriers that have been a hindrance to academic achievement and advancement. Then there are also the ESL Americans whom also benefit from a SOTU speech that uses simpler language. Certainly, there are also many, many Americans who are just lazy and willingly stupid.
Was this imbecile born or made? It's a perfectly valid question. Call me a heartless bastard but it's the last thing that I think about when there's one standing in front of me.
Quote from: Queen_Gogira on January 27, 2012, 02:42:20 PM
8th grade is actually the sweet spot when trying to communicate with the general public. What's everyone bitching about?
Some mistake "smart enough to tailor speech to the intended audience" for "too stupid to speak at a college level."
This is especially amusing after Obama caught flak for being too intellectual and hard to understand last year, for a speech at the 9th grade reading level.
http://illinois.edu/blog/view/25/28947?count=1&ACTION=DIALOG
Well, I would say more often than not they are made. But they can be made by varying forces. Generational poverty is a biggie where I live and work. Families where it is pretty much a given that they are not going to go anywhere with their lives. Of course, people can fight out of that lot if they want to and really apply themselves. But, it can be pretty challenging for a person if they are surrounded by loved ones who constantly send them messages, explicit and implicit, that there is simply nothing they can do to get ahead in life. I think it is important that they still have some kind of voice and connection with their government, if they want it.
So I guess I'm saying I don't think it is inherently a bad thing that the President has to "dumb down" his speeches so more Americans can understand what he's talking about. But, at the same time, it certainly is something of a reflection upon our populace, and indicative of the need for programs and solutions to help raise literacy levels amongst the poor.
Quote from: RWHN on January 27, 2012, 04:25:59 PM
So I guess I'm saying I don't think it is inherently a bad thing that the President has to "dumb down" his speeches so more Americans can understand what he's talking about. But, at the same time, it certainly is something of a reflection upon our populace, and indicative of the need for programs and solutions to help raise literacy levels amongst the poor.
Agreed. Hell, I was always "ahead of the class" through school, especially in reading/comprehension, and can usually pick up on new concepts pretty easily. However, I'm not well-versed in politics (working on it), economics, etc., so I appreciate when those sort of things are discussed it *simple-enough* terms, to an extent at least, so that I can pick up on what's going on. Wasn't really something that was incorporated into school at all, unless one took an elective covering the basics, so again, probably a product of our society and something that needs to be addressed. So add unfamiliarity with politics to the difficulty in comprehension a lot of people may have, and I can understand keeping speeches to the general public fairly simple.
Not being well versed in a particular topic doesn't require that the language be 'dumbed down' by measure of sentence and word length, though.
It is simply a matter of not using jargon and defining terms not likely to have been encountered by the audience.
Quote from: Iptuous on January 27, 2012, 05:39:56 PM
Not being well versed in a particular topic doesn't require that the language be 'dumbed down' by measure of sentence and word length, though.
It is simply a matter of not using jargon and defining terms not likely to have been encountered by the audience.
Yea, that is true - I was thinking "dumbed-down" vocabulary wise, when it's more the sentence/word length that determines grade level (though I'd imagine vocabulary would be a factor to some extent). But yea, I get what you're saying.
Quote from: RWHN on January 27, 2012, 04:25:59 PM
Well, I would say more often than not they are made.
Case in point - I'm currently watching Jesus Camp on teevee. Sure I think it's appalling that children are brainwashed like this but, ultimately, they're going to grow up into fully formed retards, utterly immune to any form of logic and common sense and spread this stupidity onto their progeny like intellectual sickle cell. Can I empathise? Hell yeah! Should they be rounded up and sent to death camps? Hell yeah!
Quote from: Cramulus on January 25, 2012, 11:01:36 PM
hah! I just spent a good chunk of the workday scoring things on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. The "grade level" of writing has nothing to do with content or anything--it's calculated by the average sentence length and the average number of syllables per word. It's fairly rare to see anything written for the public that's over a 6th grade level.
Do you have a tool for that, or do you need to count syllables by yourself?
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/math/4/e/0/4e00010b3dbb079fb3c8ab74482b9bef.png)
(90–100 = easily understood by an average 11-year-old student; 60–70 = easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students; 0–30 = best understood by university graduates)
Would a tool help? I bet one must be out there. Counting words and sentences is easy for a computer. Counting syllables is a bit harder, but I bet there's some computational linguistics lib out there that can do it--as the scale is designed specifically for English, a straightforward dictionary-lookup would suffice
1.
1with German or Dutch, words can theoretically be of arbitrary length by combining them according to certain rules, so extra cleverness is needed. But then, a readability scale in such languages would probably also need to be adapted to take this into account (reading long words that are combinations of others is easier than reading long singular words that just happen to be really long).
QuotePersonally, I think it's kind of a weird to use the flesch-kincaid to score oral communication - it's for reading comprehension. People never say "that guy talks at a ninth grade level". I guess it is useful for comparing which speeches have the longest sentences, but I'm not sure that FK-reading comprehension scores are necessarily correlated with speech comprehension.
This. Very good point.
It's complete media-bait bullshit. Especially how they imply that lower grades (meaning
better comprehension*) are somehow a bad thing!
(*ASSUMING that you can apply a reading-comprehension scale to oral communication)
"President Obama's three addresses have the lowest grade average of any modern president"
OH NOES!! HE DOESNT USE ENOUGH BIG WORDS
What would be
interesting is applying a scale test of how much
information he's actually conveying with his speech. Which you can do almost just as well with small words as big words.
Designing such a scale may be harder, but it
can be done, especially with today's computational linguistics algorithms. There's already tools that can estimate change of subject in a text, so how many subjects does he cover per 1000 syllables? (a kilosyllable, that is)
A bit harder (at least I don't immediately see how it can be done) would be to also check in how much he just touches on a certain subject with trite soundbites that don't really tell anything, versus whether he actually makes a statement or takes a stance on some topic (because the subject-detection algo might not distinguish between that).
Yeah, (afaik) all the major reading level scales are computer automated. The tricky bit is exactly the syllable count; some of the scales are more popular than they are good simply because they don't use the syllables and thus are easier to apply. My understanding is the the syllable count is mostly meant as an indirect measure of how obscure vs. well known the word is.
The other awesome thing about these scales is that they care about words per sentence. When your sentences mostly express a single thought, more words imply a more convoluted thought (or at least one expressed that way) and words/sentence is reasonable. If the body of text just has a lot of run-on sentences, you get ridiculously high scores. Feed punctuation-light poems, forum posts, or rambling politician speak into them and they'll spit back grade levels 60+. The scales weren't designed for that, obviously, but neither were they designed for speech, so I question their use to grade an address all together.
Making things easier to understand is not the same as "dumbing it down." Nobody ever says "Hey, these furniture assembly instructions are as hard to understand as my old college texts - I'm glad they respect my intelligence, rather than catering to the lowest common denominator."
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 27, 2012, 06:42:25 PM
Quote from: RWHN on January 27, 2012, 04:25:59 PM
Well, I would say more often than not they are made.
Case in point - I'm currently watching Jesus Camp on teevee. Sure I think it's appalling that children are brainwashed like this but, ultimately, they're going to grow up into fully formed retards, utterly immune to any form of logic and common sense and spread this stupidity onto their progeny like intellectual sickle cell. Can I empathise? Hell yeah! Should they be rounded up and sent to death camps? Hell yeah!
So, is Ratatosk "one of the good ones" ?
Quote from: Iptuous on January 27, 2012, 05:39:56 PM
Not being well versed in a particular topic doesn't require that the language be 'dumbed down' by measure of sentence and word length, though.
It is simply a matter of not using jargon and defining terms not likely to have been encountered by the audience.
There's a very real cognitive load associated with parsing longer sentences. English (or any other natural language) has unbounded lookahead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookahead). That's problematic, because it means that you could potentially need to wait all the way until the end of the sentence to even figure out which part of speech the first word was, which requires keeping the entire sentence in working memory, unparsed, for as long as it takes they guy to finish saying all of the words.
Shorter sentences put a cap on this memory management (mostly; you still need additional context to resolve sentences like "They are hunting dogs."), which means that the listener can spend more brainpower thinking about what is being said, as opposed to merely parsing it. Given that the speech is televised and there's no way to know or control how many things are competing for the home viewers' attention (cooking, kids running around, whatever) it's common sense to make your speech require as little dedicated cognition as possible.
On the other side you have leaders like PM Kevin Rudd who always spoke to the public as though everyone was on his level.
He's now Foreign Minister.
Quote from: Golden Applesauce on January 28, 2012, 05:58:49 AM
Quote from: Iptuous on January 27, 2012, 05:39:56 PM
Not being well versed in a particular topic doesn't require that the language be 'dumbed down' by measure of sentence and word length, though.
It is simply a matter of not using jargon and defining terms not likely to have been encountered by the audience.
There's a very real cognitive load associated with parsing longer sentences. English (or any other natural language) has unbounded lookahead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookahead). That's problematic, because it means that you could potentially need to wait all the way until the end of the sentence to even figure out which part of speech the first word was, which requires keeping the entire sentence in working memory, unparsed, for as long as it takes they guy to finish saying all of the words.
Shorter sentences put a cap on this memory management (mostly; you still need additional context to resolve sentences like "They are hunting dogs."), which means that the listener can spend more brainpower thinking about what is being said, as opposed to merely parsing it. Given that the speech is televised and there's no way to know or control how many things are competing for the home viewers' attention (cooking, kids running around, whatever) it's common sense to make your speech require as little dedicated cognition as possible.
was this meant to address the point i was making?
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 27, 2012, 10:38:42 PM
Do you have a tool for that, or do you need to count syllables by yourself?
Yep. MS Word has it built in. Tools --> Spelling and Grammar.
and there's tons of websites you can use to calculate it: http://www.standards-schmandards.com/exhibits/rix/
incidentally
GA is writing at an 11th grade level
000's last post was at the 14th grade level
and the search for the smrtest presidurnt is on!
Archive of presidential speeches:
http://millercenter.org/president/speeches
I'm rooting for you Jefferson! (1st inaugural speech: grade level 21)
Quote from: Cramulus on January 30, 2012, 05:25:24 PM
Quote from: Triple Zero on January 27, 2012, 10:38:42 PM
Do you have a tool for that, or do you need to count syllables by yourself?
Yep. MS Word has it built in. Tools --> Spelling and Grammar.
and there's tons of websites you can use to calculate it: http://www.standards-schmandards.com/exhibits/rix/
incidentally
GA is writing at an 11th grade level
000's last post was at the 14th grade level
Sweet! That means I can cast GREATER POLYMORPHISM!
wait, how come they're not in college? is 14th grade a good thing? (except for buffing your base attack bonus?)
Quote from: Iptuous on January 30, 2012, 05:06:48 PM
Quote from: Golden Applesauce on January 28, 2012, 05:58:49 AM
Quote from: Iptuous on January 27, 2012, 05:39:56 PM
Not being well versed in a particular topic doesn't require that the language be 'dumbed down' by measure of sentence and word length, though.
It is simply a matter of not using jargon and defining terms not likely to have been encountered by the audience.
There's a very real cognitive load associated with parsing longer sentences. English (or any other natural language) has unbounded lookahead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lookahead). That's problematic, because it means that you could potentially need to wait all the way until the end of the sentence to even figure out which part of speech the first word was, which requires keeping the entire sentence in working memory, unparsed, for as long as it takes they guy to finish saying all of the words.
Shorter sentences put a cap on this memory management (mostly; you still need additional context to resolve sentences like "They are hunting dogs."), which means that the listener can spend more brainpower thinking about what is being said, as opposed to merely parsing it. Given that the speech is televised and there's no way to know or control how many things are competing for the home viewers' attention (cooking, kids running around, whatever) it's common sense to make your speech require as little dedicated cognition as possible.
was this meant to address the point i was making?
Yes. Although, I think I might have misjudged what the point that you were making was.
The more important fact, being missed ITT, is who cares about the SOTU? It's bullshit, filler for DC gossips, propagandizing for policy twerps.
Quote from: Cain on January 31, 2012, 01:32:27 PM
The more important fact, being missed ITT, is who cares about the SOTU? It's bullshit, filler for DC gossips, propagandizing for policy twerps.
It made a cool drinking game when Bush 43 was in office.
Just saying.
Quote from: Cain on January 31, 2012, 01:32:27 PM
The more important fact, being missed ITT, is who cares about the SOTU? It's bullshit, filler for DC gossips, propagandizing for policy twerps.
I remember RAW writing that what qualifies as "information" is inverse to the amount of predictability in a signal; as an example, he said a political speech has very low information. I think the SOTU makes his case.
I did a lot of speech analysis in my dissertation. From what I remember, shorter snappier sentences evoke a greater sense of urgency and energy. Repetition of key words and phrases is paramount, and everything should be vague enough that it could be interpreted to mean any number of things; which means avoiding specifics and focusing on intangibles.
Obama's election campaign was full of lots of perfect examples of this. Hope! Change! Yes We Can!
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 31, 2012, 01:50:20 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 31, 2012, 01:32:27 PM
The more important fact, being missed ITT, is who cares about the SOTU? It's bullshit, filler for DC gossips, propagandizing for policy twerps.
It made a cool drinking game when Bush 43 was in office.
Just saying.
Bush 43 was
special. In many senses of the word.
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 31, 2012, 01:55:09 PM
I remember RAW writing that what qualifies as "information" is inverse to the amount of predictability in a signal; as an example, he said a political speech has very low information. I think the SOTU makes his case.
Well, yeah. It's not information: it's propaganda. Lets get the voters all fired up by talking a big talk about jobs, and killing Bin Laden, and jobs and stuff! It's a campaign speech.
Honestly, the world would be better off if it ignored all such speeches entirely, and just focused on what political actors actually do.
Quote from: Cain on January 31, 2012, 02:09:46 PM
Honestly, the world would be better off if it ignored all such speeches entirely, and just focused on what political actors actually do.
This!
No, he's not a liberal
This is a wall street big business president.
Yes, now soldiers can kiss, that's awesome, and I guess it's a cultural victory.
No, he's not "saving the middle class".
Oh wait, RAH! RAH! Jobs! Bin Laden! Flags!
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on January 31, 2012, 01:55:09 PMI remember RAW writing that what qualifies as "information" is inverse to the amount of predictability in a signal; as an example, he said a political speech has very low information. I think the SOTU makes his case.
Originally formulated by Claude Shannon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Shannon), founder of Information Theory. The inverse of the predictability of a signal is called its "entropy" (in the Information Theory sense of the word--parallels with the physics term). Among other things it explains why an optimally compressed/encoded signal is statistically indistinguishable from random white noise. You may know his name from the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem used in signal processing.
Checking his Wikipedia article, seems he was one of those really awesome scientists, I should read up some more about him:
QuoteOutside of his academic pursuits, Shannon was interested in juggling, unicycling, and chess. He also invented many devices, including rocket-powered flying discs, a motorized pogo stick, and a flame-throwing trumpet for a science exhibition[citation needed]. One of his more humorous devices was a box kept on his desk called the "Ultimate Machine", based on an idea by Marvin Minsky. Otherwise featureless, the box possessed a single switch on its side. When the switch was flipped, the lid of the box opened and a mechanical hand reached out, flipped off the switch, then retracted back inside the box. Renewed interest in the "Ultimate Machine" has emerged on YouTube and Thingiverse. In addition he built a device that could solve the Rubik's cube puzzle.[4]
He is also considered the co-inventor of the first wearable computer along with Edward O. Thorp.[19] The device was used to improve the odds when playing roulette.
Quote from: Cramulus on January 31, 2012, 02:33:28 PMOh wait, RAH! RAH! Jobs! Bin Laden! Flags!
Hey, there is no evidence he was behind the death of Jobs.
Quote from: Telarus on January 25, 2012, 10:14:09 PM
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-union-registers-at-th-grade-reading-level-112236.html
:eek:
:horrormirth:
:fnord:
Ah, the good old days. :lulz:
Needed more discussion about his tan suit IMO
SIRI, GIVE ME AN EXTREME CLOSEUP OF THE AMERICAN FLAG LAPEL PIN
:saddam:
Quote from: Cain on January 29, 2020, 06:02:10 PM
Needed more discussion about his tan suit IMO
I am just enjoying reading people talk about how awful Obama was, through the lens of HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCKism.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2012, 11:10:06 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 25, 2012, 11:09:06 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 10:15:24 PM
Most "serious" news registers at around that level, as well.
Tabloids register at effectively the reading level of a 9 year old.
Pretty fucking highbrow, considering their audience :eek:
You don't have to jump very high, that's true.
He could have just stood there grunting and whistling, and he'd have had 90% of the nation in his pocket.
PROPHECY
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2020, 05:43:35 PM
Quote from: Telarus on January 25, 2012, 10:14:09 PM
http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/01/state-of-the-union-registers-at-th-grade-reading-level-112236.html
:eek:
:horrormirth:
:fnord:
Ah, the good old days. :lulz:
Right?? Trump's shit is absolutely at, like, a 3rd-4th grade level.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on January 29, 2020, 06:14:03 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 25, 2012, 11:10:06 PM
Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 25, 2012, 11:09:06 PM
Quote from: Cain on January 25, 2012, 10:15:24 PM
Most "serious" news registers at around that level, as well.
Tabloids register at effectively the reading level of a 9 year old.
Pretty fucking highbrow, considering their audience :eek:
You don't have to jump very high, that's true.
He could have just stood there grunting and whistling, and he'd have had 90% of the nation in his pocket.
PROPHECY
Prophets gonna prophecy.
This ain't the first.
It will surely not be the las...
Oh yeah he's dead and shit.