Have a heart for justice? Like glow in the dark events? 

As part of Relationship Violence and Prevention month, UNITED Christian Council is hosting Glow for the Girls, a 5K to raise awareness about the realities of human trafficking, specifically sex trafficking locally and internationally.

The walk/run is open to everyone, FREE for UMBC students and $20 for non-UMBC students. Donations will be given to local and international organizations working to combat human trafficking. There are also perks for donating! 

To register for the walk, create a team, donate, or learn more about human trafficking go to:

www.raisingkarma.com/glowforthegirlsumbc

*(Meeting at the Commons Terrace (rain location-Sportszone) and walking/running the inner loop. After party [Sportszone]: Student-documentary showing: "A Single Seed" and Q&A session).

• TV weather forecasters referring to "normal" temperatures (as in, "Today's high of 74 was ten degrees above normal") when they mean "average." There are two problems here. First, the average high temperature for a given date encompasses many past instances of higher-than-average temperatures for that day, as well as many instances of lower-than-average temperatures for that day. There is nothing abnormal about a day on which the temperature does not exactly equal the long-term average. Second, average temperatures are increasing over time due to climate change--so more and more, the average temperature is not "normal" at all. A hundred years from now, when the polar ice caps have melted and coastal cities are under water, will the weather forecasters be saying "Well, today's 120 degree high temperature seemed hot, but that's perfectly OK, because 120 degrees is normal for this date"?

• "Nelson Cruz led the American League in six offensive categories." "218 high temperature records were broken today." Those sentences seem to be telling you something very specific. But do you see the problem? I think of it as the "statistical numerators for which there are no agreed-upon denominators" problem, though there is probably a  better name for it. Here's the issue: Exactly how many offensive categories are there in baseball? (There is no answer, because there are infinite ways to keep track of information about players' performance). Exactly how many places are keeping track of temperature records, and do those places overlap? If you don't have answers to those questions, the initial pieces of information are essentially meaningless.

• The use of the phrase "statistical dead heat" or "statistical tie" to describe a polling result where the difference in support for two candidates is within the poll's margin of error: "Candidate A leads Candidate B by 52%-48% in the latest poll, but the margin of error is +/- 4%, so it's a statistical dead heat." Wrong! This is not a tie. A more appropriate interpretation of this poll result is: "While we don't know for sure that Candidate A leads Candidate B by 52%-48% among the population sampled, that's the most likely scenario. And while there's a small chance that support for the two candidates among the population sampled is 50%-50%, there's an equal (small) chance that Candidate A's lead is twice as large as the poll indicates."

The Society of Research Administrators International / Chesapeake Chapter is soliciting presenters and session proposal ideas for the 2015 Chapter meeting to be held in Baltimore, Maryland at the John Hopkins University on March 20, 2015. You can present by yourself or with a panel or topics related to research administration, practices or procedures. The call for proposals will be posted soon to the SRA/Chesapeake Chapter website.

For more information or to forward an idea for a presentation, please contact Tim Sparklin, 5-2737 or sparklin@umbc.edu