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A comment on Ask HN: What is the most important publicly unknown fact in your industry?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What is the most important publicly unknown fact ... by qb45 on Sunday March 19, 2017 @09:37AM (#13906965)
I think it's a matter of value being shaped by under- or oversupply.

Speaking of illiteracy, there's an urban legend (not sure if true, anyone with access to data please check it) that literacy rate has actually dropped in the US throughout the 20th century, coinciding with increase of education "supply".

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Re:Ask HN: What is the most important publicly unknown fact ... by VLM on Sunday March 19, 2017 @10:06AM (#13907141)
No data exists for that because the definition of illiteracy depends too strongly on the axe being ground.

Everything from 1% to 66% illiteracy has been attempted to sell to people.

It does seem that illiteracy clusters with various citizenship status, racial and other demographics, simple age distribution of a geographic location, and socioeconomic level to an extent that if you successfully filter those effects out you end up with a boring flat line at 100% literacy when ends up meaning nothing. The largest factor is literacy graphs and maps are basically a restatement of immigration data.

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