"Heroin's doing the heavy lifting"

I'm pretty sure I'll quote this some time in the near future.


From Kumail Nanjiani:



I first heard this on This America Life. If you enjoyed it, go by and give them a buck. They're good people.

What is rich?

This was a very interesting post by Brad Delong. There is a response by the original author here.

One thing strikes me immediately. If we look at the expected expenses of this particular person, the $60,000 per year in private school costs immediately jumps out as interesting. Perhaps part of why our public schools are having issues is that the Upper Middle class has pulled out of them?

Another thought is interesting; the author suggests that:

Returning to those “small government” days of 2000 would be a start, as this would result in a huge cut in the size of government.

But appears to be against returning to the same tax levels as 2000. At some point I would really like to see more concrete proposals for what to cut in order to make lower taxes a sustainable option.

Alex Tabarrok's literary leverage

There's a very good discussion about superstars and the winner-take-all economy over at Economist's View. Alex Tabarrok argues that the winner-take-all effect in literature can be explained by factors like technology and venue size:

J.K. Rowling is the first author in the history of the world to earn a billion dollars. I do not disparage Rowling when I say that talent is not the explanation for her monetary success. Homer, Shakespeare and Tolkien all earned much less. Why? Consider Homer, he told great stories but he could earn no more in a night than say 50 people might pay for an evening's entertainment. Shakespeare did a little better. The Globe theater could hold 3000 and unlike Homer, Shakespeare didn't have to be at the theater to earn. Shakespeare's words were leveraged.

Tolkien's words were leveraged further. By selling books Tolkien could sell to hundreds of thousands, even millions of buyers in a year - more than have ever seen a Shakespeare play in 400 years. And books were cheaper to produce than actors which meant that Tolkien could earn a greater share of the revenues than did Shakespeare (Shakespeare incidentally also owned shares in the Globe.)

Rowling has the leverage of the book but also the movie, the video game, and the toy. And globalization, both economic and cultural, means that Rowling's words, images, and products are translated, transmitted and transported everywhere - this is the real magic of Ha-li Bo-te.

But it's possible to look at these examples in an entirely different way.

There's no question that technology and the ability to leverage creative works has a tremendous effect on the economics (and therefore the content) of popular culture, but how well does this particular account support that conclusion?

Homer is a bad example partially because he probably never existed, but mainly because the model Prof. Tabarrok describes, traveling performers working small venues, didn't really apply to writers at all. These minstrels were simply repeating stories that they had accumulated. The closest analogy today would be a cover band working bars and small clubs. (Hesiod throws in a bit of a monkey wrench here, but that's a topic for another day.)

If you skip ahead two or three hundred years you do have successful writers like Sophocles having their works performed in large venues. Though it's difficult to draw an analogy between forms of compensation then and now, they were certainly well rewarded for their work. Go on to the Roman era you have successful writers producing book length poems and even novels despite the lack of printing presses.

As for Shakespeare sticking to the stage, this had little to do with the relative cost of books and actors. There were the equivalent of cheap paperback versions of Shakespeare's plays published during his lifetime. There were also productions of his plays away from the Globe. Shakespeare's words were widely leveraged. The problem wasn't technology or venue; it was the lack of modern copyright laws. The revenue went to other people.

Tolkien is a bad example for other reasons. His body of work is small. His books were difficult to translate into other media. Significant sales didn't start until years after the books were written (prompted, in part, by the mistaken belief that the copyright was limited to Britain).

A better example would be Erle Stanley Gardner who had a large body of work, sold more books than Tolkien and was, during his lifetime, adapted into movies, TV, radio, comic books and probably a few other media. Was Rowling better leveraged than Gardner? Sure, but not by as much as you might think.

There is obviously more behind the rise of the superstar author than technology and the ability to leverage words, more than I have time to address now, but if I were to pursue it, I think I'd make the case for this being a story of lobbying and government regulation of the market in the form of copyrights. Technology has changed, but so has the law.




And now, just in case any of the above might be read as a slight against Rowling, I'll let Stephen King have the last word with his comparison of Harry Potter and the Twilight books:

Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people… The real difference is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good.

OT: More table gaming thoughts

A Paladin in Citadel has an interesting post on how experience points where awarded in the pre-dungeons and dragons proto-role playing games. Note:

In the fantasy game originally played by Arneson, it was primarily through the recovery, and appropriate expenditure, of long-lost treasure hoards, that characters advanced in levels. Appropriate expenditure is a critical component for all classes, as it is only through the expenditure of gold (and the Wizard's case, both expenditure of gold for the spell-making materials, and time, in creating his spells) in ways meaningful to the character's motivations and interests that the characters can advance.


If you have not taken note yet, let me draw something striking about this experience points system to your attention now. No experience points for monsters killed in D @ D.

I think that this approach has some advantages. One, is that it militates against the recovered treasure being used to shop for the newest and coolest magic item. To expend gold in this manner is to reduce the rate of character advancement. Two, it gives character's goals outside of their adventuring life and makes the creation of a game world a necessary part of character development. Finally, it allows the monsters to remain scary and difficult to fight (as a major goal is to avoid combat, especially if it is mostly risk with little reward).

In more recent edition of dungeons and dragons, advancement is based on either defeating opponents or advancing the plot. However, plot advancement can reduce the options that players have and make them feel less in control of the direction of the game. On the other had, defeating monsters means that the monsters have to be relatively weak in every single combat. After all, with between 10 and 30 encounters per level, a high level character needs to be the victor of hundreds of combats. Not even the great duellists of history tended to manage that!

There is another (subtle) advantage to this approach -- high-level characters will tend to be accomplished in the world. High level wizards will run laboratories and teach apprentices because that is how they generate experience. High level clerics will have supported and developed churches. Even high level fighters will have connection to the world (perhaps as petty nobility) through their investment of their adventuring loot.

It's an interesting system . . .

KIPP and the Teach(er) for America (or you don't know Jake)

Sometimes the most instructive passages are the most painful to read. This account from the New York Times had me wincing every third word (though I will admit to a little schadenfreude at seeing the top of her class at Stanford being outmaneuvered by Jake from Two and a Half Men).

Time permitting I'll do a post on why this was such a disastrous lesson and how a better, more experienced teacher would have done things differently. For now, though, let's approach it from the other side: what would happen if we kept Ms. Nguyen and lost Jake. Putting aside for a moment peer effects, assuming no one else steps up to take the role, how would the Jake-less class be different?

The lesson plan would still be weak, but this is a math class and most of the actual learning in a math class takes place after the lesson when the students start on their worksheets and homework. With more time and a less adversarial relationship with the class, the teacher can go from desk to desk, checking to make sure that problems are being done correctly and helping the students who are having trouble.

Now let's add in the peer effects. Jake has reset the norms of behavior for the class. He has also established that it is possible to jerk the teacher's chain and create great entertainment value with few negative consequences. In a Jake-less class this wouldn't be an issue. The inability to assert authority is only an issue when someone questions it.

In short, losing Jake should produce a substantial gain in student performance and classroom metrics.

Charter schools are designed to be Jake-free zones but none of the effects of removing Jake are likely to show up in the lottery-based analyses so favored by charter school supporters. This creates a fatally flawed set of metrics.

Worse yet, it creates a system of reforms that have, too often, based their claims of success on leaving behind the very students who needed the most help.

Complex Systems

Libertarian Megan McArdle is in favor of education reform. However, in her latest column she points out the major obstacle faced by reformers:

That's why radical reformers so often end up vilified (and frankly, so often end up making some colossal bloomers; institutions are complicated, and reformer's prescriptions are never as complex as the institution they are trying to change).

I think observations like this elevate the debate. They raise the legitimate question of how do we improve a complex system (my view: incrementally and experimentally). But, as Mark has noted, the debate has often drifted into the surreal with even staunch leftists desperately opposing government regulation of education. It is an odd debate.

XKCD understates its case

There's no reason to resort to a double negative. Just check this out.

At last, something that Paul Krugman and Alex Tabarrok can agree on

Though it involves Middle Earth, not macroeconomics.

One reason to look forward to the Republicans retaking Congress and the White House

At least liberals can be happy again.

A day in the life of a Teach(er) for America -- posted for future comment

I've been meaning to post this for a long time (from Michael Winerip's NYT article on Teach for America):

The 774 new recruits who are training here are housed in Rice University dorms. Many are up past midnight doing lesson plans and by 6:30 a.m. are on a bus to teach summer school to students making up failed classes. It’s a tough lesson for those who’ve come to do battle with the achievement gap.

Lilianna Nguyen, a recent Stanford graduate, dressed formally in high heels, was trying to teach a sixth-grade math class about negative numbers. She’d prepared definitions to be copied down, but the projector was broken.

She’d also created a fun math game, giving every student an index card with a number. They were supposed to silently line themselves up from lowest negative to highest positive, but one boy kept disrupting the class, blurting out, twirling his pen, complaining he wanted to play a fun game, not a math game.

“Why is there talking?” Ms. Nguyen said. “There should be no talking.”

“Do I have to play?” asked the boy.

“Do you want to pass summer school?” Ms. Nguyen answered.

The boy asked if it was O.K. to push people to get them in the right order.

“This is your third warning,” Ms. Nguyen said. “Do not speak out in my class.”

Lots of interesting jumping off points here about Teach for America, classroom life and how not to handle a math lesson. Now if I can just find time to write them up.

"We've made huge advances in what they're called" -- New Republic edition

This post by Joseph got me thinking. Charter schools are private contractors providing services that were previously provided by the government. Any statement that's true about charter schools should still be true if you substitute in the phrase "some private contractors."

But if you actually make the substitution, you often end up with statements the author would never think of making. Statements like this:

But Mead says ... she’s seen Gray hint that he’d like to more tightly regulate [private contractors]. “We have a law that gives a tremendous amount of autonomy to the [private contractors] but enables them to implement programs that can be effective. If you try to put more regulation on that, if can dissuade people from [privatizing],” Mead says.

Would Seyward Darby normally describe a push for tighter regulation of private contractors as "disappointing"? Would the New Republic normally endorse a candidate because he was against stricter regulation of private contractors? Would everyone take a moment and see if Rod Serling is taking a smoke break in the vicinity?

I strongly believe that there is a place for charter schools in our system, but those schools have to meet exactly the same criteria as other contractors. Two of those criteria are transparency and openness to regulation, and given recent history, it's safe to say that some charter schools are failing these tests.

[note: typo in the title has been corrected]

Tenure Track Jobs

Somehow the blogroll for Prof-like Substance isn't updating so I missed this post. But it is excellent advice. The worst thing that can happen is that people decline your applications. But it can be remarkable how somebody can end up as a great fit in a place that they never expected . . .

Implications of the DC primary on education

Mark and I have been talking a lot about education. Today Seyward Darby has an article on the implications of Michelle Rhee leaving. What struck me as most interesting is that there are three concerns raised:

1) The fate of the new teacher evaluation system

2) That performance pay, based on IMPACT score, might not go forward

3) There could be increased regulation of character schools

Mark has commented on issues with a focus on narrow methods of teaching evaluation. But I think it is safe to say that items 1 and 2 depend critically on the quality of the method used.

As for number 3, deregulated private educational entities have geenrated concerns as the quality of instruction is hard to measure.

So everything hinges on how good the IMPACT evaluation score is. Now, this score is a hybrid (as opposed to pure standardized test scores) so it might not be awful:

It rates its teachers based partly on how well they improve student learning from year to year, and partly on intensive classroom observation by their supervisors.

However, it does not address the concern about teachers learning to game the system. Many ranking systems work very well at first and then people learn to optimize against them. Just consider how many articles there are on how to improve your FICO score.

But the core ideas remain to find a way to measure teacher performance on some sort of low dimensional scale and to reduce regulation of private sector competitors. It is unclear that these approaches will get at the key issues, even if (due to an extraordinarily dysfunctional school system) they may produce some improvements in the Washington DC schools.

More on the SRI KIPP report

This is a fairly small case of researchers being (deliberately?) obtuse, but it's representative enough to merit a brief post.

First look at this passage from Wikipedia:

Some observers, such as the authors of The Charter School Dust-Up,^[5] say that KIPP's admission process self-screens for students who are both motivated and compliant, from similarly motivated and compliant—and supportive—families. Parents must commit to a required level of involvement, which rules out badly dysfunctional families.

You'll notice this is consistent with some points Joseph and I have been arguing for awhile about how selection and peer effects can affect a school.

Now pay close attention to the following from SRI:

KIPP schools’ higher-than-expected test score results draw both attention and claims that they “cherry-pick” high-achieving students from poor neighborhoods. This is the first report to closely scrutinize the praise and criticisms associated with KIPP, as well as key challenges facing Bay Area KIPP schools today.

In the three KIPP schools where they were able to draw comparisons, SRI researchers found that students with lower prior achievement on the CST were more likely to choose KIPP than higher-performing students from the same neighborhood, suggesting that, at least at these schools, cherry-picking does not occur.

Did you catch the shift? Like most areas, academic success is largely determined by attitude and work habit. This is particularly true in a school with extended hours of instruction and a longer year. There is every reason to believe that these traits are strongly selected for here, just as suggested by the Economic Policy Institute.

The Charter School Dust-Up came out from the EPI in 2005, three years before the SRI report, but the SRI researchers never directly acknowledge the EPI's conflicting findings. Instead they pull the researchers' version of the old school kid's trick of pretending to mishear an inconvenient question.

Calling Yves Smith

(Via Andrew Gelman) John Sides has good take-down of Steven Hayward's odd screed for the American Enterprise Institute's house journal. Here's a choice exchange.

From Hayward:

Of course, this is just the silly stuff. The real problem with academic political science is its insistence on attempting to emulate the empiricism of economics and other social sciences, such that the multiple regression analysis is considered about the only legitimate tool of the trade. Some regressions surely illuminate, or more often confound, a popular perception of the political world, and it is these findings Klein rightly points out. But, on the other hand, I have often taken a random article from the American Political Science Review, which resembles a mathematical journal on most of its pages, and asked students if they can envision this method providing the mathematical formula that will deliver peace in the Middle East. Even the dullest students usually grasp the point without difficulty.

And from Sides:

This is sort of bizarre. Let’s leave aside the notion that “multiple regression analysis” is the “only legitimate tool.” That’s the impression of someone who doesn’t read much political science. I’m more interested in Middle East peace. Here’s my question: if Hayward picks up the American Economic Review, does he envision that their mathematical formulas will produce global prosperity? That’s the standard to which he seems to hold academic research. If so, he should be disappointed by virtually the entire corpus of social science, and perhaps by a decent bit of the hard sciences as well. After all, there’s still that cancer thing.

I'm going to have to take Sides' side here (and not just for the wordplay), but what really struck me as amusing was the use (starting with the subtitle) of economics as the gold standard of empiricism. Is that really the way you want to play it give the current state of economics in general and macroeconomics in particular?