Word: skewness
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...appetite for sadism--at least if it's cleverly conceived. Another Saw quickly followed. So far the franchise has earned more than $250 million worldwide, and Saw III will open in roughly 3,000 U.S. theaters Oct. 27, the biggest release of the films to date. Saw films skew to the under-25 audience and are as popular with girls as with guys. "Good horror movies don't need stars, and they don't need special effects," says Tom Ortenberg, Lionsgate president of theatrical films. "They earn their scares through twists, through intelligent writing and great up-and-coming directors...
...SURVEY found that Yale's Class of 2006 graduated with a median grade point average between 3.6 and 3.7. The paper asked 400 newly minted Elis to anonymously report their GPAs online, and 50% responded. (Props for noting the response rate could skew the results.) The conclusion's right there in the headline: "Poll suggests grade inflation...
...However, the media overlooked that the study's underlying test data was from 1988, meaning this tiny skew toward a teacher's sex was evident among 8th graders almost 20 years ago. We have no idea if it's still true today. Nor could the study's author, Thomas Dee, convincingly explain why this "teacher gender effect" appeared in science class but disappeared in math class...
...Today, movies are an adornment to popular culture, not an essential, indoctrinating part of it. The number of tickets sold annually is about five per person, but the demographic skew is much more severe, with the young accounting for a lopsided percentage of the audience. As for moving pictures of current events, TV and the Internet offer as many as anyone could want, but the newsreel is as dead as Free Dishes Night. Thus movies are now more escapist than the old Hollywood product ever was, more reticent to turn the nation's central anxieties into screen drama...
...also likely that the relatively small market for MND drugs has dulled the pharmaceutical industry's motivation to develop them. Kiernan and Vucic hope their findings - combined with evidence that the incidence of MND seems to be rising, while it is claiming younger victims, with a baffling skew toward male professional athletes in their 30s - will generate more research into the disease. And that one day, a neurologist delivering the bad news to a patient won't be handing down a death sentence...