Your Child a Millionaire

Your child or grandchild can become a millionaire.  Software is the best way for young people to get rich.  Everyone has heard of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, but he is not alone.  David Karp started programming as a teenager and got rich as a young man.  Nick D'Aloisio became a millionaire while still a teenager with his product, Summly.  We will consider David Karp and Nick D'Aloisio in just a minute.  First, let us discuss the child prodigy.

There are fields where the child prodigy can exceed the capabilities of mature adults.  These fields include mathematics, where Carl Friedrich Gauss and Blaise Pascal were child prodigies, music, where Mozart was one of many prodigies, and chess, where Sammy Reshevsky is a fine example of a child prodigy.  I believe that computer programming has enough in common with mathematics, music, and chess that we should have wunderkind programmers.  Perhaps there are wunderkind programmers and we have not heard about them. Perhaps if enough young people are exposed to computer programming at a younger age, then the wunderkinds would start to appear. Are David Karp and Nick D'Aloisio programming wunderkinds?
 

David Karp at Tumblr

David Karp was a teenager when his parents decided he could drop out of school and focus on computer programming.  You might have heard of Tumblr, the product he developed that made him a millionaire.  If you are unfamilar with Tumlr, check out this website, McKayla Is Not Impressed: http://mckaylaisnotimpressed.tumblr.com/

Tumblr is a blogging website, not unlike this Blogger website, although Tumblr seems more oriented towards posting photos than posting articles.  Tumblr was purchased by Yahoo and David Karp's take is estimated at $250 million.  That is as much money as Mitt Romney made at Bain Capital, a private equity investment firm, after a lifetime of work and a Harvard MBA. David Karp is just 27 and dropped out of high school.

Here are two articles about David Karp.
Before Tumblr, Founder Made Mom Proud. He Quit School
By JENNA WORTHAM and NICK BILTON, New York Times

Weekend Confidential: David Karp
by ALEXANDRA WOLFE, Wall Street Journal

Nick D'Aloisio at Summly

Nick D'Aloisio started programming at age 12.  At age 15 he started working on a a newsreader app, Summly, which he sold to Yahoo for an undisclosed amount, estimated to be in the tens of millions range.  At age 17 Nick is estimated to be worth millions of dollars.  He had help from SRI International, a California think tank, in developing algorithms for summarizing articles.  His product is more sophisticated than Tumblr, and he had a number of investors, so he has to share the money.  The moral of this story is that complex products are not necessarily more profitable than simple products, like Tumblr.

Here is an article about Nick D'Aloisio and Summly from the Wall Street Journal Online:
At 17, App Builder Rockets to Riches From Yahoo Deal
by AMIR EFRATI

A Blog to Assist You

If your child is interested in computer programming, he or she might hit it big and become a millionaire.  If your child is interested in computer programming, I have started an entire blog to assist you.

Canright on Software and Programming
http://canrightonsoftwareandprogramming.blogspot.com/


Good for Your Child, Good for Texas

Developing a greater supply of computer programmers is good for Texas.  I have described the importance of software and the supply of programmers in these posts:

The Texas Software Initiative  Thursday, January 3, 2013

The Texas Young Programmers Project  Friday, January 4, 2013


If your child is interested in computer programming, do not discourage him.  There are many paths and many resources for a person to pursue programming at a young age.  It is not unusual for programmers to start while they are teenagers or younger.

Robert Canright

The Importance of Sound Leadership

The entire world economy went into a tailspin in the financial meltdown of 2008.  The meltdown was not an accident.  It was not a normal business cycle.  It was a failure of leadership and it was avoidable.  The failure was not isolated to 2007-2008.  In 2011 the company MF Global Holdings failed under the leadership of Jon Corzine.  Since Mr. Corzine had previously been CEO of Goldman Sachs, U.S. Senator for New Jersey, and Governor of New Jersey, you would think he would have been a success at MF Global.  But former FBI Director Louis Freeh accused Mr. Corzine  of "acts and omissions" over several months that were "grossly negligent" and a "breach of fiduciary duty" that led to the company's collapse in a 61 page lawsuit (Corzine Sued Over Collapse by AARON LUCCHETTI, JULIE STEINBERG and JACQUELINE PALANK, Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2013).  Bad leadership led to the 2008 meltdown, just as bad leadership led to American failure in Vietnam.

American leadership is dragging our country down, but we can do something about it.  We can quit accepting failure.  We can recognize the fruits of bad leadership and reject bad leadership, and keep rejecting bad leadership.  The old school board put Plano schools into decline so that our neighbors (Richardson, Frisco, and Allen) all had better academic results in their schools.  But we saw the problems and voted out the old board that was up for re-election.  Now it is time to vote out what is left of the old board and support those members of the new board who are up for re-election.

As Thomas Jefferson said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

Please join me in voting for these wonderful people who are running for the Plano ISD Board of Trustees.  Our children deserve the very best!


     TAMMY RICHARDS – PISD Place 1
     PAUL KAMINSKY – PISD Place 2
     NANCY HUMPHREY – PISD Place 3
     MARILYN HINTON – PISD Place 6
     STEVEN KRAVIT – PISD Place 7

Early voting has already started.  Here is a link to early voting schedules and locations.  Please ask your friends to join us in voting for sound leadership.

Robert Canright

School Board Election is on the Way

Plano ISD school board elections are now held every 2 years.  This year is an election year for the school board.  This year the positions up for re-election are Places 1, 2, 3, 6 and 7.  The positions on the board are called "Places."  Here are the election choices:

Place1
Tammy Richards (incumbent)
Tammy Hooker

Place 2
Paul P. Kaminsky
Allison Johnston
Carrolyn Moebius (incumbent)
Mark Hanna

Place 3    
John Caldwell
Nancy C. Humphrey (incumbent)

Place 6    
Patty Harris
Marilyn Hinton (incumbent)
Yoram Solomon

Place 7    
Missy Bender (incumbent)
Steven Kravit

Election day is  May 11.  I hope you follow the campaigns and vote in the PISD election.  Parental involvement is important for successful school districts.  You get to vote for all 5 Places.

Robert Canright

College Loans

Teaching our kids about debt is an important lesson we can provide them.  It is especially important that we coach our kids about college loans.  The laws were changed so that kids cannot shed college loans.  Heavy debt can follow a child throughout his life.  I remember reading one story of a lady who went through college and medical school on borrowed money and would not be free of college debt until she was in her 70's.  She said she would never be able to buy a house.  I did not save that article, but the theme is still around, as described in Student Loans: Debt for Life By Peter Coy, September 18, 2012 Businessweek.

Debt is dangerous and we need to inform and guide our children through the process of borrowing for college.  The truly wealthy can pay for college out of their regular cash flow, but even families with incomes in the top 5 percent cannot do that.  There is a huge difference between the top 5 percent and the top 1 percent.  Google for the Wall Street Journal article College Debt Hits Well-Off By RUTH SIMON and ROB BARRY, August 9, 2012 and you can read how the upper middle class is being squeezed out of the top tier schools by high tuition costs.  The financially astute can tell when the cost is excessive.

People in the middle income ranges sometimes cannot understand the consequences of the college loans made available to them and end up being crushed by the debt, as described in To Pay Off Loans, Grads Put Off Marriage, Children by SUE SHELLENBARGER, Wall Street Journal, April 17, 2012.  You need to Google for this article.

The poor often cannot understand the consequences of large college loans and are also crushed by heavy debt, as described in For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall by JASON DePARLE, New York Times, Sunday December 23, 2012, pages 1, 28, and 29.  (You can read it online by Googling for it.)  In this story, an expensive private college tells a poor student that she would be provided with enough grants and financial aid to put this private college within her reach.  But then the process of financial aid was too complicated for the poor girl and by bungling the financial aid process she ended up with large loans instead of large grants.  Three girls are profiled in this in-depth article.

We need to explain to our children how much debt they can afford to incur for college and to steer them towards good interest rates and safe loan programs.  There are a lot of bad loans looking for suckers.  It is heartbreaking to read about the plight of the poor and the uninformed.  And our children will be uninformed if we do not help them through the process.

Robert

PS: An explanation of why college tuition has sky-rocketed can be found in Deans List: Hiring Spree Fattens College Bureaucracy - And Tuition by By DOUGLAS BELKIN and SCOTT THURM, Wall Street Journal, December 29, 2012, pages A1 and A10. You can read this article by Googling for it.  The online date is usually a day earlier than the newspaper date.  The gist of this article is that colleges have hired hoards of highly paid managers.

Microsoft Mathematics Instead of MATLAB

I tried to buy a student version of MATLAB for my son, but could not.  You have to go through a sales department and that process did not work when I tried it.  Maybe that company is not interested in single item sales of student versions.

Microsoft Mathematics is available for a free download.  You might want to google for the download site. Here is the URL for today:  http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=15702

You will want to read the system requirements. Microsoft Mathematics is nice.  You can help with math without having to learn to use your child's calculator, or to borrow it, or to look around for it. Microsoft Math will do linear algebra and solve equations.  Here is a review of it on the internet: http://www.remo-knops.com/review/microsoft-mathematics-4/

Here is a screen shot of the equation solver with an equation input:

Next, you hit the solve button.  This tool solves for x automatically.  You have to click next on the link that says "solve for y."

Next, you can click on the link that says "plot this equation in 2D."

Now you have the graph, but the equations seem to be gone.  They are still available on the "Worksheet" tab, to the left of the "Graphing" tab.  If your child is doing a science project, the graph can be exported as a picture file (I chose JPEG):

It is not a pretty graph for reports, but it is free and I don't believe you can export graphs to a computer from a handheld calculator.  I think if you want pretty graphs for reports, you will want a different tool.

Microsoft Mathematics is a nice tool to use for education, and you cannot beat the price.

Robert

Where Can Our Children Go?

If there are not enough jobs in Texas for our children, where can they go to find employment?  If the rest of America is in no better shape than Texas, do they have to leave America?  The economy all around the world is in bad shape, so if our children have to leave America to find employment, where can they go?

I have read that engineers from Spain are finding work in Germany.  Perhaps our children who are trained in engineering and computers can find work in Europe.  I have heard that in America McDonald's pays higher wages to their managers than trained machinists can make running numerically controlled machines.  American companies have given up on manufacturing, but some of the European countries have not.  Where in Europe can our children go?  Certainly not Greece or Spain.  Maybe Germany, or maybe the Scandinavian countries:  Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.

Norway is prosperous according to the Wall Street Journal article, They All Scream for Edvard Munch, but Oslo Can't Satisfy Demand by Saleha Mohsin, November 28, 2012, page A1.  Yet it seems that Norway is the most expensive country to live in  amongst the Scandinavians.  Sweden is much more affordable according to  Scandinavian On $125 a Day by Seth Kugel, New York Times, Sunday December 2, 2012.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of unemployment in Sweden, as described in the Wall Street Journal, Saturday December 22, 2012, p. A10, Jobless Swedes Heed Call From Booming Norway by Charles Duxbury and Kjetil Malkenes Hovland.

England is not a place for our children.  The English are moving out, as described in the book Time to Emigrate? by George Walden, one of whose children left Great Britain for Canada.  Australia and New Zealand might have opportunities for our children if they have the skills that are sought.  I did read of a skilled welder who left America and did well in Australia, although it did take years to get the paperwork approved to emigrate to Australia.

Technically, the American welder is a boilermaker.  You can read about his experiences by googling for this Wall Street Journal article: American Fills a Jobs Shortage in the Aussie Outback by JOHN W. MILLER, October 23, 2012

Of course, the best recourse is to provide good opportunities here in Texas for our children, which is why I have started the Texas Ascendant Campaign.  We need to work together to help our children have a prosperous future in America, in Texas.

Robert Canright

Follow-up:
The December 8, 2013 Wall Street Journal ran an article called, "A Move to New Zealand" by Susanne Ames (p. R7).  The on-line version is entitled "A New Life in New Zealand."  You can read the article by Googling on the title an author..  Don't ask my why the same article has two titles (print and on-line).  Ms. Susanne Ames moved to New Zealand from Washington state and enjoys life in Wellington, New Zealand.

The Tuesday February 11, 2014  Wall Street Journal ran an article called, "Badly Raised Kids? Sweden has a Word for That" by Jens Hansegard.  You can read it by using Google to find it.  The online edition of WSJ has a slightly different title:  "Is Sweden Raising a Generation of Brats?" by Jens Hansegard.  This article says that Sweden is a bad country to raise a family because the government has undermined the authority of parents and teachers.  So Sweden might be a fine country to work in, but you would not want to settle there to raise a family.

The Texas Top 10 Percent Rule

Dear Friend,
You asked me about the Texas top 10 percent rule.  It is a rule created by the Texas Legislature.  It guarantees the top 10 percent of each high school graduating class admission to Texas universities.  When Texas thought that its current practice of racial discrimination was going to be declared unconstitutional, the top 10 percent rule was created to force the top universities in Texas to accept under-performing students.  The hope was that the racial and ethnic mixtures would be similar to those achieved through overt racial discrimination.  The top 10 percent rule was a success from that regard.  Yet it is a hazard to education in Texas, as will be discussed soon.

First, however, we should be aware that the universities in Texas added overt racial discrimination on top of the top 10 percent rule.  That is when Abigail Fisher sued (Fisher v University of Texas, No. 11-345).  Her case is finally reaching the U.S. Supreme Court tomorrow, October 10, 2012.  What has happened is that state legislators from districts with large numbers of under-performing students are helping the children of their constituents to cut to the head of the line by playing the race card.  The legislature is corrupting the ideal of an academic meritocracy by giving their kids special privileges.  The side effect is that the reputation of Texas universities is declining.

A friend of mine who interviewed for an engineering job up north was told that they almost rejected his resume because he was from Texas.  They told him they don't hire graduates of Texas universities, but they noticed he went to college in Ohio.  Seventy-five percent of the freshman class at UT Austin enters through the 10 percent rule, and many of them would not have gotten in otherwise because they are sub-par.  The legislature has been leaning on the universities to pass the under-performers, so we have social promotion from elementary school all the way through the universities.

Today a diploma from the University of Texas at Austin does not mean much.  An employer has to look at the transcripts, examine the grades, and determine if the UT graduate is a product of social promotion.  Objective assessments like SAT and GRE scores must be examined.  Perhaps individual colleges within UT, like the College of Engineering, the Business School, and the School of Architecture can say that admission to the university does not guarantee admission to their school, but now they have to overcome the cloud of suspicion that hangs over the entire university.

The University of Chicago was founded about the same time as the University of Texas.  The University of Chicago is a world class university.  The University of Texas had a good reputation and was building it up, but then the state legislature shot it in the foot.  The world is becoming increasingly competitive and universities are part of the competition.  The Wall Street Journal ran an article, "Can U.S. Universities Stay on Top?" by Michael J. Silverstein and Abheek Singhi, September 29, 2012, page C3.  The last thing we should be doing in a competitive world is diminishing the quality of our universities.  The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, said that if they adopted a top 10 percent rule like UT, the average SAT score of entrants would drop by 55 points ("Justices Face a Test on Race" by Jess Bravin, Wall Street Journal, 10-9-2012, page A3).

Education is vital for a competitive world.  After Germany was defeated by Napoleon in the Battle of Jena in 1806, Germany revamped its education system, developing some of the best universities in the world.  American research universities are modeled after the German universities.  Germany was tough to beat in World War I, tough to defeat in World War II, and is an economic powerhouse today.  Superior education is a key factor in Germany's competitive strength.

Superior education can be a key factor in making Texas more competitive on the world stage.  We must free our best universities -- U.T. Austin, Texas A&M, and Texas Tech -- from the academic damage inflicted by the Texas top 10 percent rule.

Robert Canright