u/Ill-Replacement-5576

The lack of basic world knowledge middle school students have nowadays is downright disturbing (and I imagine it’s the same for high school). It’s things like:
- not knowing the continents
- not knowing even/odd numbers
- not knowing what a capital city is, much less the capital city of their state or country
- being off by 2 or 3 orders of magnitude when asked to guess the population of the US or their state
- having never heard of [insert major historical figure or event]
- 4 x 6 =…
- etc, etc, etc, etc

The only solution, it seems to me, is (1) require a basic knowledge exam at the end of 5th and/or 8th grade, and (2) have a 20-30 minute class 3-5 times a week where it’s just really basic fact building and retrieval practice activities (rote memorization): Monday, geography—label in (features) on map of (place); Tuesday, history—Kahoot about dates and faces; Wednesday, multiplication tables and formulas; Thursday, academic vocabulary or spelling; Friday, did you know the world is round? Make it fun and keep it simple, stupid.

Maybe kids are exempted if they pass the test early, or they get put in an advanced version. This could take the place of a normal advisory or foundations type class.

Hi Everybody,

I am nearing completion on a spreadsheet project that involves an interactive budgeting simulation for life in a specific North American city in a specific year a fairly long time ago. It is meant to be comprehensive, with numerous selectable options (dropdowns or checks) in a spending category (e.g., income source, housing, car, food...). As a humanities guy with essentially zero relevant experience prior to starting on it, the spreadsheet feels rather complex, with multiple interlinked sheets in the workbook and abundant vlookups and if functions, oftentimes nested within one another, in addition to pictures and collapsible groups. In particular, there are automatic calculations for income tax taking into account marginal brackets, marital status and number of income sources.

Anyway, the goal is to turn it into a website by July or at least have an interactive version of it embedded into a website. My tech friends have assured me, rather dismissively, that I should just "ask Claude to do it." However, the more I talk to the AIs and do my own research, the less sure I am that this is feasible as someone with no tech experience and little willingness to spend money. At worst, I can make it available as a download, but I'd prefer not to given the friction for the user and loss of control for myself.

What do the humans think? Is there any straightforward way to take a spreadsheet of this kind and have it converted or embedded into an interactive website? I am willing to set aside a small budget in the low hundreds if needed but would prefer not to.

Thanks!

Hi Everybody,

I am nearing completion on a spreadsheet project that involves an interactive budgeting simulation for life in a specific North American city in a specific year a fairly long time ago. It is meant to be comprehensive, with numerous selectable options (dropdowns or checks) in a spending category (e.g., income source, housing...). As a humanities guy with essentially zero relevant experience prior to starting on it, the spreadsheet feels rather complex, with multiple interlinked sheets in the workbook and abundant vlookups and if functions, oftentimes nested within one another. In particular, there are automatic calculations for income tax taking into account marginal brackets, marital status and number of income sources.

Anyway, the goal is to turn it into a website by July or at least have an interactive version of it embedded into a website. My tech friends have assured me, rather dismissively, that I should just "ask Claude to do it." However, the more I talk to the AIs and do my own research, the less sure I am that this is feasible as someone with no tech experience and little willingness to spend money. At worst, I can make it available as a download, but I'd prefer not to given the friction for the user and loss of control for myself.

What do the humans think? Is there any straightforward way to take a spreadsheet of this kind and have it converted or embedded into an interactive website? I am willing to set aside a small budget in the low hundreds if needed but would prefer not to.

Thanks!