No grade inflation at UNC

By Harold

My friend Zachary Pincus-Roth has written articles about how the list of top-grossing movies never takes inflation into account, so journalists can fall over themselves saying Twilight had the best opening weekend ever while Gone With the Wind actually sold twice as many tickets.

The same thing is happening with all these reports that Canada and the U.S. had the best Olympics ever because Canada won the most golds and the U.S. won the most medals. Well maybe we should calm down a little bit, or at least offer a little context. In fact, it was the best any two countries have done — since 2002!

There were 258 medals given out in Vancouver, and the U.S. won 14.3 percent of them. Likewise, Canada won 14 of 86 gold medals (16.3 percent). Just eight years ago, Germany won 36/234 medals (15.4 percent) and Norway won 13/80 gold medals (also 16.3 percent, but since it wasn’t the host country that’s more impressive in my opinion). In 1924, before snowboard half-pipe or women’s ice hockey, Norway and Finland each won 25 percent of the gold medals (4/16) and Norway actually won 34.7 percent of the total medals (17/49).

What does this have to do with the Triangle? Well fortunately, there is one media outlet that does not stand for hyperbole — The Daily Tar Heel.

In between appearances at Lincoln Center in New York, the London Philharmonic came to UNC’s campus for performances on Tuesday and Wednesday night. Having one of the world’s premier orchestras may have been enough for some campus newspapers, but not the Daily Tar Heel, which gave the concert four out of five stars! Perhaps they were waiting for Beethoven to rise up and conduct in order to give that elusive perfect score.

In any case, I think it says something that the London Philharmonic would even come to UNC, and that the Chapel Hill community would support it by paying between $75-$125 a ticket. And because student tickets were only $10, Laura has now seen the London Philharmonic more than the New York Philharmonic despite living in New York for seven years.