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Every color on your screen is really just three tiny lights: red, green, and blue.

This short visual explainer follows one color on its whole journey. From the glowing pixels you are looking at right now, to the hex codes programmers type, to the ink that hits the paper when you print.

Simple math, no coding needed. The STEM and STEAM hiding inside a single color.

Watch it here:

How Colors Work on a Computer--The Math Behind the Art Every color on your screen is really just three tiny lights — red, ...

What does a panicking KFC manager have in common with a frozen grant writer? Both confronted basic arithmetic and blinked in confusion.

Chapter 7 of Mismatched finally names the pattern that has been building all book: the Lotta Chicken Principle. Institutional authority meeting basic quantitative reasoning and freezing up.

A few of the moments it traces:
- A KFC manager named Dave, stunned that numbers could solve a real problem: how much chicken a Little League order needs.
- A head grant writer who called enrollment projections impossible, until a simple spreadsheet modeled student flows and secured 10 million dollars in federal funding.
- PhDs summing columns by hand on paper printouts. Computers sitting on desks as expensive electric typewriters.
- Data departments where no one could build a pivot table, write a formula, or run a query, making decisions in an evidence vacuum while surrounded by unused data.

The solution was almost always trivially simple. The blindness was the problem.

Dr. Janet Johnson conclusion: the taxonomy that sorts students also sorts educators, rewarding credentials over capability at every level. The sorting machine doesnt just sort students. It sorts everyone.

Watch the Chapter 7 summary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdbNlZNp1jk&list=PLKQ6KcvXIo068Cl7pDLpr3ErSeAnz5Z7r&index=10

EDSTAR Analytics has a new look.
The work behind it has not changed. For more than 32 years we have helped schools, community colleges, and grant-funded programs turn educational data into better decisions. Program evaluation, grant writing, data management, and technical assistance, every engagement led by senior consultants who stay with you from proposal through reporting.
Refreshed brand. Same standard: evidence you can use, not just report.
See what we do at edstaranalytics.com

What does a Kentucky Fried Chicken kitchen teach us about leadership in America?

In Chapter 4 of "Mismatched," Dr. Janet Johnson shares the moment a fast-food manager froze at a simple math problem — and what it revealed about authority, competence, and the systems that promote people.

A napkin calculation solved the problem in minutes. But the real lesson wasn't about chicken. It was about how institutions reward credentials and connections over actual capability.

Watch Chapter 4 now: https://youtu.be/j316S9eWyk8

EdstarAnalytics Lotta Chicken, Lotta Boxes (Summary) | Mismatched Chapter 4