Comments, observations and thoughts from two bloggers on applied statistics, higher education and epidemiology. Joseph is an associate professor. Mark is a professional statistician and former math teacher.
"Eventually, for a democracy, the information
comes out," @JamesFallows
says on @ReliableSources.
"Democracies eventually learn the truth. It's better
for the administration, better for the military, better for the public
if we shorten the time that it takes to learn that
truth."
The same disinfo
formula I described in my CNN op-ed last month: Lie on Fox News,
apologize on Twitter or CNN. GOP wants two realities so they can be
Trump propagandists and respected representatives at the same time.
https://t.co/i7G0FrdZot
Two past-weekend
reads: 1) Michael Lind in WSJ arguing that response to
left-behind America is revived labor movement. From book ‘New Class War’
https://t.co/udNs5GPp2D 2) @ChristopherIngraham in WaPo on oversimplifications /
stereotypes re Rural America https://t.co/Hl1yBUQtRFpic.twitter.com/24mAR6xfXe
Please enjoy this
1939(!) brochure introducing the new science of polling.
"Within the past few years a technique for
measuring public opinion has been developed....In the past, estimates of
the strength and trends of public opinion have been based on pure
guesswork." https://t.co/JercykJ75x
Upper income
Republican-leaning Americans are REALLY dug in on the narrative of
individual effort and making your own “good luck”. Lower income
Republicans are not so sure! https://t.co/4hD7hCR7Z8pic.twitter.com/1LEztQwPDh
41% of
Republicans (61% of all Americans) say economic inequality is a major
issue in US today. Of those Republicans, 2/3 agree with higher taxes on
the wealthy. 84% of total population do. Isnt this an open goal? https://t.co/4hD7hCR7Z8pic.twitter.com/KvdBEqN9z3
This is a decidedly unhappy sequel to our previous stories on patent trolls, a grim little good news bad news joke. The good news is that we have found a way to prevent trolls from holding companies hostage with illegitimate claims of intellectual property; the bad news is that we did it by taking away the rights of people with legitimate claims.
If you’re not a patent aficionado, you have probably never heard the phrase “efficient infringement.” Not to blow the punch line, but it’s yet another example of how big tech companies use dubious means to squeeze their smaller rivals. When critics complain that Facebook, Google, Apple and Amazon are squashing innovation, this is the sort of tactic they’re talking about.
I first heard the phrase some years ago when I looked into a patent dispute between Apple Inc. and the University of Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, which owns the university’s patents, had sued Apple over its use of an innovation that university scientists had dreamed up and patented in the mid-2000s. Apple had installed it in iPhones and iPads without bothering to negotiate a license and had been using it with impunity for years before the case finally went to trial. A jury found for the foundation in 2015 and ordered Apple to pay $234 million.
That was actually a victory for Apple. Consider: Apple got free use of valuable technology that it took from a smaller, less powerful entity. Losing at trial was unfortunate, perhaps, but the $234 million was just another business expense. Pocket change, really, considering Apple’s size.
How common is this kind of move? Boris Teksler, Apple’s former patent chief, told the Economist recently that “efficient infringement, where the benefits outweigh the legal costs of defending against a suit, could almost be viewed as a ‘fiduciary responsibility,’ at least for cash-rich firms that can afford to litigate without end.” In other words, stealing patented technology is practically required if you’re focused on shareholder value. And who isn’t these days?
...
“What is the definition of a patent?” asked Brian Pomper, the executive director of the Innovation Alliance, which represents small and medium-size patent holders. “It means you have the right to exclude others from your invention.” He added, “How can a patent be meaningful if you don’t have the right to exclude others?” But that’s where we are. Companies like Sonos have virtually no leverage to stop bigger companies with deep pockets from infringing their patents.
One, the movie was beautiful. The special effects were stunning and the visuals were memorable.
Two, are there no proof-readers in Hollywood? Can we not decide what the antagonist's plan is?
But the part that was the most challenging to me as a viewer was that there was simply no continuity with previous plot points in the other movies. Some of this is forgivable, when you decide on an awesome twist it can be okay to have to patch over a rough spot. Think of Obi-Wan's retroactive deception about Darth Vader, once the writer puzzled out the family tree (or the even more awkward Leia is your sister moment).
But Kylo Ren is just confusing. The second movie seems to give him every chance to decide on his allegiance, even insofar as there was much doubt after the first movie. His history of misdeeds is . . . extreme. He was involved in a mass murder terror attack (Starkiller base). He murdered his fellow students at a school because he disliked the teacher (and focused so much on the other children that the teacher survived). He massacred a village in a terror attack. He murdered a family member as a part of a gang initiation. So his final arc is redemption?
It isn't that it couldn't have been plotted well. It is just that writers seemed to keep changing their minds, and that is only worth it if the overall outcome is exceptional. The movie was fine, but the plot had a lot of obvious holes (why where the ships buried and were the crews on them when they were)?
Finally, it detracts from the previous movies. What is the point of the middle part of the trilogy now? The heroes fail at pretty much everything and not in a way that teaches lessons or because of a character flaw. No, they fail because the Emperor can survive being blown up and the protagonist doesn't sense the deception.
So it was nice to watch and I am glad I saw it. But it will generate a month of people wondering exactly what happened.
I keep meaning to do a post about the terrible state of targeted marketing. When I get around to it, remind me to embed this. At least half of the points I want to hit are illustrated here.
Pre-update:
After I scheduled this in the form above, Josh Marshall posted a piece on internet advertising and the death of Gawker. It contains an informative primer on how this stuff works.
Many people think that the more popular a publication gets the more ads it will sell. The bigger the audience, the more eyeballs, the more ads wanting contact with those eyeballs. That's not how it works.
There are a million dimensions to the advertising economy, just as many ways of describing it. But you can understand a whole lot about how the whole thing works by thinking in terms of three factors: 1) endemic sales proposition, 2) controversy and 3) influence.
Let's talk first about endemic sales proposition. Because I think it may have played some role in Gawker's demise (on-going legal liability may have played more of a factor or have been the entirety of the issue). A site about clothes has an endemic sales proposition: selling clothes. A site about books: books. You may say well, I only read sites about news and sports but I still buy a lot of clothes so ... Not how it works.
For a variety of reasons, some good and evidence based, others silly, advertisers want to sell you their product when you are thinking about it and in the mindset to buy. This doesn't just mean impulse purchases, but buying in general. In many cases that makes a lot of sense.
For instance, aside from people being really into tech, why do you think there are so many tech sites? Right, because there's a ton of money in video games, devices, computers, everything under the sun. People also tend to buy those things online. Again, we're not just talking about impulse buying. It can be more nuanced and less direct. But if you stand up a site about tech, gaming, computers, etc. and it does well, you have a ready made channel for ad sales. And in the case of tech an extremely lucrative one.
Sometimes it's a little more amorphous but no less ad driven. Why so many 'lifestyle' publications? Well, we all need a lifestyle, of course. And general interest magazines cover many interesting topics. But by and large that's because you're aiming for an audience of people who are affluent and want to read about cool things affluent people do: travel, toys, aspirational personal development. Not that there's anything wrong with that, as they used to say on Seinfeld. But that's what it's about.
Next, controversy. This largely speaks for itself. Advertisers don't want to be around things that upset people or divide people. They want to be everyone's friend. They don't want negative ideas or stories to rub off on them. This isn't an absolute of course. Plenty of sites which court controversy sell tons of ads. Gawker's a prime example. But controversy is always a constraint on ad sales. You just may have other factors that overcome it.
Next, influence. This is an inherently small and nebulous part of the equation. But it's key for many publications. Many ads aren't trying to sell you anything directly. They're trying to tell you stories, shape your thinking, advocate positions. Political ads are like this. But they're mass market since obviously everyone can vote - at least in states without Republican governors and Secretaries of State. But where the money is is with people who are considered influential in various communities, so-called "opinion-leaders".
Here's an example. Go to the subways in New York you'll see ads for storage rentals, lawyers, grocery deliveries, breast augmentations, ESL courses. Go to Washington DC and you'll see ads for ... Kazakhstan or Northrup Grumman or PhRMA or well ... you get the idea. There are lots of people who care a lot about what people in the nation's capital think. And yes, TPM very much plays in that ad space. TPM and similar sites lose big on #1 and #2. But #3 is where there's a business that can drive ad sales.
As a marketing statistician, I'd like to emphasize the point about "reasons, some good and evidence based, others silly." Most of the people buying these ads, including high-level executives at Fortune 500 companies, have a very weak grasp of how targeted advertising works.
As of today, the venerable comedy concern CollegeHumor Media is mostly dead. In the words of Sam Reich, its chief commercial officer, IAC “has made the difficult decision to no longer finance us,” he wrote in a Twitter thread this afternoon. “Today, 100+ brilliant people lost their jobs, some of whom are my dear, dear friends.” That means the cuts hit every vertical: CollegeHumor, Dorkly, Drawfee, and Dropout — only five to 10 people are left, according to Bloomberg.
The news, however, wasn’t all bad: IAC agreed to let Reich become the humor company’s majority owner. “Of course, I can’t keep it going like you’re used to,” Reich wrote further down in the thread. “While we were on the way to becoming profitable, we were nonetheless losing money — and I myself have no money to be able to lose.”
Until then, here's CH taking on the sacred cows of technology.
Just had one of these the other day. It was good (though I'll probably stick with the Envy) and the story of the science and economics behind its development is really interestion.
Upon first glance, the Cosmic Crisp apple doesn't appear particularly unique nor inspiring. It is larger than the average apple, certainly, but its mottled exterior could be confused for many other reddish varietals. In other words, one would not know immediately that this humble fruit is the pinnacle of industrial agriculture — encompassing hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, two decades of planning, and hundreds of trees bred, tasted, and culled.
The phrase “apple farmer” inspires images of pastoral orchards, straw hats and wooden buckets full of fruit; yet modern agriculture practices fall far from that imagined tree. A Darwinian tasting process brought the Cosmic Crisp into being: in the late 1990s, Bruce Barrett, an apple researcher at Washington State University, picked the Cosmic Crisp out of 10,000 crossbreeds. The Cosmic Crisp, then known as WA 38, ticked all the boxes: its ability to survive in different Washington state climates, its taste and texture, and how long it lasted without decaying. (Supposedly the Cosmic Crisp can last around a year in cold storage.) A consulting firm tested the apple with focus groups, where one participant commented on the apple’s appearance as star-like, which led to the name. As with many modern seeds, Washington State owns the rights, and thus growers must pay royalties in exchange for growing the apple. The apple was so widely believed to be "the apple of the future" (as the New York Times put it) that 13 million trees were grown at a cost of $500 million. To extend the selling season, producers store the apple in a refrigerated, controlled atmosphere of 1% carbon dioxide and 2% oxygen after treating it with fungicides. Instagram influencers were hired to help hype its release, including a retired astronaut.
(Thread) Impeachment Law
101 Instead of answering the individual questions
I'm getting about this post about John Bolton⤵️ (some
doubtful, along the lines of "so what?") .
. . it's time for Impeachment Law 101: Review the rules and
facts. Take out your notebooks.🤓Here we go. https://t.co/xYy6oOgmV3
One of the most
popular claims was that the problem of liability would block innovation
since the moment an AV was involved in an accident, even if it was at no
way at fault, all the companies involved would be sued into
oblivion.
If there's a strategy, then the TV
"analyst" can break it down. If there's
none, then it's the analyst's role itself that breaks
down. https://t.co/yDqSQiyyRw
"The
practices common to political journalism have premises to them. When the
premises shatter, the practices make less sense. This has been the
central problem of covering the Trump movement since 2015."
https://t.co/64nLjKiXqr
This is
unacceptable: "Relative to entirely white neighborhoods,
residents of entirely black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer to
vote and were 74 percent more likely to spend more than 30 minutes at
their polling place." Someone needs to sue.
🤔https://t.co/44Yr2fmqHd
When you see
someone conflating Dollar Tree and Dollar General (radically different
retail models serving largely distinct markets), you should probably
stop reading immediately and go looking for a more credible
source.
The @nytimes
21st Nov 1922: “Reliable, well-informed sources
confirmed the idea that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was not so genuine or
violent as it sounded ...he was merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as a
bait to catch masses of followers and keep them aroused,
enthusiastic...” https://t.co/nU9MI4tmuv
On the reactions of
various GOP officials to and increasingly erratic Trump administration, here is a quick outline of the
assumptions I’ve been using. So far they’ve done a pretty good job
explaining the situation and they are reasonably consistent with the takes of people like Josh Marshall (which always makes me feel
better).
Much of the GOP and most of its base must now
be treated as a cult of personality.
As of 2019, GOP elected officials
can be broken down almost entirely into two groups: believers and
nonbelievers trying to pass themselves off as believers.
Nonbelievers make constant displays of loyalty to trump out of both personal interest and concern for a party.
Trump
demands constant praise and lashes out at even mild criticism. Given
his control over primary voters, he is in a position to destroy the
political careers of any party member coming up for election in the next
2 to 4 years, possibly even longer.
In addition to
fear of political suicide, Nonbelievers also have to contend with the
two existential threats that Trump represents to the Republican party.
In
the short term, Trump could have a massive public breakdown, or act
out in such an extreme way that a solid majority of the country (more
than 60%) insists on his removal. As previously discussed, that makes it almost impossible for a party to be nationally competitive.
The long-term threat
is that the party continues to double down on policies that cost them
support from every major demographic group except for rural white men
born before 1960.
The first order of business for the
nonbelievers is to keep Trump calm at all cost. This is why so many
senators and congressmen who had seemed reasonably sane in the past now
talk like characters from that Billy Mumy Twilight Zone episode.
The
long-term, on the other hand, explains why those who aren’t singing
praises are so reluctant to say anything at all, why the desire to spend
time with one’s family has reached such unprecedented levels, and why
we are starting to see surprisingly regular trial balloons about an
anonymous Senate vote.
On January 1, 2020, works from 1924 will enter the US public domain,1 where they will be free for all to use and build upon, without permission or fee. These works include George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, silent films by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and books such as Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, and A. A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young.
These works were supposed to go into the public domain in 2000, after
being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress
hit a 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95
years.2
Now the wait is over. How will people celebrate this trove of cultural material? The Internet Archive will add books, movies, music, and more to its online library. HathiTrust will make tens of thousands of titles from 1924 available in its digital library. Google Books
will offer the full text of books from that year, instead of showing
only snippet views or authorized previews. Community theaters can screen
the films. Youth orchestras can afford to publicly perform the music.
Educators and historians can share the full cultural record. Creators
can legally build on the past—reimagining the books, making them into
films, adapting the songs.
A New Year's tweet got me poking Audrey Watters blog and finding all sorts of good things (more on that coming soon). One post I'll definitely be putting away for reference is this list quotes on the potential of educational technology.
I've been arguing for a while that the broad outlines of our concept of the future were mostly established in the late 19th/early 20th Centuries and put in its current form in the Postwar Period. Here are a few more data points for the file.
“Books will soon be obsolete in schools” — Thomas Edison (1913)
“If, by a miracle of mechanical ingenuity, a book could be so arranged that only to him who had done what was directed on page one would page two become visible, and so on, much that now requires personal instruction could be managed by print.” — Edward Thorndike (1912)
“The central and dominant aim of education by radio is to bring the world to the classroom, to make universally available the services of the finest teachers, the inspiration of the greatest leaders … and unfolding events which through the radio may come as a vibrant and challenging textbook of the air.” — Benjamin Darrow (1932)
“Will machines replace teachers? On the contrary, they are capital equipment to be used by teachers to save time and labor. In assigning certain mechanizable functions to machines, the teacher emerges in his proper role as an indispensable human being. He may teach more students than heretofore—this is probably inevitable if the world-wide demand for education is to be satisfied—but he will do so in fewer hours and with fewer burdensome chores. In return for his greater productivity he can ask society to improve his economic condition.” — B. F. Skinner (1958)
“I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks. …I should say that on the average we get about two percent efficiency out of schoolbooks as they are written today. The education of the future, as I see it, will be conducted through the medium of the motion picture… where it should be possible to obtain one hundred percent efficiency.” — Thomas Edison (1922)
“At our universities we will take the people who are the faculty leaders in research or in teaching. We are not going to ask them to give the same lectures over and over each year from their curriculum cards, finding themselves confronted with another roomful of people and asking themselves, ‘What was it I said last year?’ This is a routine which deadens the faculty member. We are going to select instead the people who are authorities on various subjects — the people who are most respected within their respective departments and fields. They will give their basic lecture course just once to a group of human beings, including both the experts of their own subject and bright children and adults without special training in their field. These lectures will be recorded as Southern Illinois University did my last lecture series of fifty-two hours in October 1960. They will make moving-picture footage of the lectures as well as hi-fi tape recording. Then the professors and and their faculty associates will listen to the recordings time and again” — R. Buckminster Fuller (1962)
“The machine itself, of course, does not teach. It simply brings the student into contact with the person who composed the material it presents. It is a laborsaving device because it can bring one programmer into contact with an indefinite number of students. This may suggest mass production, but the effect upon each student is surprisingly like that of a private tutor.” — B. F. Skinner (1958)
In September, a cryptic update to cartoonist Gary Larson’s The Far Sidewebsite
hinted that something new might be in store for fans of the popular
single-panel comic strip. This week, Larson and his syndicate, Andrews
McMeel Universal, made it official. The irreverent cartoon,
which originally ran from 1980 to 1995 and explored the perils of
anthropomorphic cows and science run amok, will now be available online
for the first time. But it won’t be strictly archival material: Larson
plans to periodically revisit his bizarre world with new art.
"Little Haiti’s elevation is 7 feet above sea level with pockets in the neighborhood that go as high as 14 feet above sea level. By comparison, Miami Beach is about 4 feet above sea level."
In many parts of
the US black communities were pushed to low-lying flood prone
areas. In Miami, the opposite is true. Black
communities were built on high elevation away from the coast. Now
because of sea level rise that high land is in demand. (THREAD)https://t.co/3nFgtjzR7v
Which Democratic
voters are potentially the most disloyal? Here's the percentage
of each candidate's base who say they'll vote Dem in the
2020 general: Warren: 97 Steyer:
96 Biden: 94 Klobuchar: 93 Buttigieg:
92 Sanders: 87 Bloomberg: 82 Booker:
80 Yang: 73 ... Gabbard:
15
Klein is making a tremendously important point here
The media thinks
the power it has is covering things positively or negatively. If that
was ever true, it's not now. The media is an
amplification machine. Our biggest impact is in choosing what to cover.
If we amplify lies — even to fact check them — they often gain power.
https://t.co/jHVKycMV3r
The Infinite Gift
🎁 This is an interesting object where the side of
the nth box is 1/√n. As n→+∞, the gift has infinite surface area and
length but finite volume! Learn more about this
interesting paradox here: https://t.co/jbWbg6iqFZpic.twitter.com/kxO20PTGti
"Journalist Napp Nazworth, who has worked for the
Christian Post website since 2011, said he quit his job Monday because
the website was planning to publish a pro-Trump editorial that would
slam Christianity Today." https://t.co/N3TmhL7WHp
Kanefield has become the essential legal commentator for the Trump years. For those who lack the patience for really long threads, she also has blog versions.
(thread) How
California Turned Blue Alternate title: California
shows the way California used to be Republican. We
gave the nation Nixon and Reagan. Republican
candidates won CA in every presidential election between 1952 and 1988
except one⤵️ pic.twitter.com/d6YvnCrMsr
This remains one of the best indications of real expertise in all fields.
My year as an MIT
fellow taught me that truly smart people, real experts, can make
complicated concepts understandable to non-experts, in tight simple
language. Poseurs have a problem with that. https://t.co/054pq6DSTu
I've never been a beach person. There are (or at least used to be) some
exceptions but most of these towns are for me nice places to visit but a
little too bland and way too pricey to want to live there.
I know people, however, who have trouble imagining living anywhere else.
One of them, a long time Venice resident, described it like this. He
had lived in other parts of the city when he first came here but said he
never felt he was truly in LA until he made it all the way west. He
compared the feeling to that of a pioneer crossing the continent in a
covered wagon only to die of thirst in the desert just short of
California.
Venice Beach used to have a seedy, bohemian reputation, just the sort of
place you'd expect Jim Morrison to hang out. These days, the feel is
definitely upscale, the rough edges have largely been worn away, and the
crime you encounter is less likely to involve gangs and drugs and more
likely to involve Silicon Beach Ponzi schemes.
One of the last holdouts of old Venice was Abbott's Habit, a decidedly
non-corporate coffeehouse that long held a corner of Abbott Kinney, the
street now known for pop-up shops, trendy restaurants, and places where
you can get bone marrow ice cream (no, really).
I happened to be in Venice the day that Abbott's Habit closed. It was
packed with regulars as a long list of local musicians played short sets
to say goodbye. One song in particular captured the mood of the event
(I'm sure it's out there somewhere on the Internet but I haven't been
able to find it). The chorus went something like this, "when I get east
of Lincoln, my heart starts sinkin'."
The Lincoln in question is the stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway that
runs north and south through that part of town and informally divides
the "beach" community from the "non-beach" areas. To live west of
Lincoln means to have cool ocean breezes throughout the summer, to be
able to walk down to the boardwalk, and generally to feel yourself part
of the vibe.
Every time the singer got the chorus, the crowd nodded in melancholy
appreciation. This was a big part of how they had defined their
community and, to a degree, themselves. Now, many were being priced out
of the area and, more importantly, those who stayed or returned for a
visit knew that their Venice was gone regardless.
While it certainly lacks the emotional resonance for the new residents,
"west of Lincoln" has never had more economic importance and perhaps
never more social value. Venice Beach has become one of those places
where well-off people want to live and, more to the point, one of those
places where well-off people want to brag about living. There's nothing
especially objectionable about this (most non-native born Angelenos have
at least occasionally taken a certain pleasure in telling friends back
east stories of beautiful weather and celebrity encounters), but it can
have important implications for our urban planning discussion.
Many of the arguments we hear about density and transportation are
strongly dependent on some rather simplistic assumptions about linear
relationships and fixed demand. Why people live where they live is
almost always complicated and seldom monocausal. If the discussion
doesn't start reflecting some of that complexity, we are in danger of
making some very big mistakes.
(And, yes, the bone marrow ice cream wasn't that bad.)
