This should literally be a textbook example of how phrasing and context affect polling

Talking Points Memo discusses how two polls given in the same week can get starkly different results:

Last week, a Gallup poll showed that 60% of Americans would rather see a budget compromise than see members of Congress who represent their interests hold out for their ideal budget, if it means the government would shut down. That phrases the current debate in Washington fairly concisely.

Compare that to Rasmussen, which framed the question much differently:

5* Would you rather have Congress avoid a government shutdown by authorizing spending at the same levels as last year or would you rather have a partial government shutdown until Democrats and Republicans can agree on what spending to cut?

That frames the budget showdown as an either or: either the government continues spending at current levels, or it shuts down until cuts are made. In response to that, 58% of likely voters said they preferred a government shutdown.

Rasmussen is, of course, something of a special case. To understand just how special, take a look at Nate Silver's excellent analysis,"When ‘House Effects’ Become ‘Bias.’"

More big burdens, more small shoulders

From Jonathan Cohn:

Please indulge me while I share some local news: Rick Snyder, newly elected governor in my home state of Michigan, announced this week that he will call for massive cuts in state spending on education.* (*Note: My [Cohn's] wife is a professor at a public university that would lose some funding under Snyder’s plan. I doubt she'll feel much impact from these cuts. But, as you can guess from this item, I think my kids will.) Very roughly, it will result in a reduction of about $470 per student.

I know enough about public education, and public education bureaucracies, to believe that school districts could find ways to reduce spending without hurting the quality of education. And, yes, it would probably mean teachers and staff making more concessions on salaries or, more likely, benefits.

But could they find $470 per student that way? I don't think so. On the contrary, I expect that schools--including the ones that my sons attend--would end up with fewer teachers, fewer courses, and fewer extracurricular offerings if the legislature approves Snyder's plan. And my kids would be among the lucky ones. It would be much worse in places like Detroit, where an ongoing funding crisis is about to swell some classes to 60 students. (No, that’s not a misprint.)

Health Insurance

Discussion of individual health insurance (with or wihtout pre-existing medical conditions) often overlooks the point that a pay as you go system is inherently expensive here in the United States. Consider:

Why did we even need insurance? First, we wanted to know that, if we had a medical catastrophe, we would not exhaust our savings. Second, uninsured patients are billed more than the rates that insurers negotiate with doctors and hospitals, and we wanted to pay those lower rates. The difference is significant: my recent M.R.I. cost $1,300 at the “retail” rate, while the rate negotiated by the insurance company was $700.

Obviously standard market mechanisms are not going to be able to kick in when the only way to get affordable care is to be part of a pooled insurance plan. And, with rate differentials this high, no sane person will exit the health insurance market. So the whole idea of free market heakth care is a bit of a distraction: our system is designed for people who have insurance.

[Not to mention the impact of policies that can be rescinded for good faith errors; these factors make the market opaque and resistant to market forces]

The biggest burdens go on the smallest shoulders

In today's New York Times, Paul Krugman reminds us just how hypocritical all the talk we hear about "putting children first" really is:

And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average.

But wait — how can graduation rates be so low when Texas had that education miracle back when former President Bush was governor? Well, a couple of years into his presidency the truth about that miracle came out: Texas school administrators achieved low reported dropout rates the old-fashioned way — they, ahem, got the numbers wrong.

It’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education.

But things are about to get much worse.

A few months ago another Texas miracle went the way of that education miracle of the 1990s. For months, Gov. Rick Perry had boasted that his “tough conservative decisions” had kept the budget in surplus while allowing the state to weather the recession unscathed. But after Mr. Perry’s re-election, reality intruded — funny how that happens — and the state is now scrambling to close a huge budget gap. (By the way, given the current efforts to blame public-sector unions for state fiscal problems, it’s worth noting that the mess in Texas was achieved with an overwhelmingly nonunion work force.)

So how will that gap be closed? Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state’s leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden.

But you’d be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts. Medicaid, a program that is crucial to many of the state’s children, will take the biggest hit, with the Legislature proposing a funding cut of no less than 29 percent, including a reduction in the state’s already low payments to providers — raising fears that doctors will start refusing to see Medicaid patients. And education will also face steep cuts, with school administrators talking about as many as 100,000 layoffs.

Castles and Crusades

Mark has been doing a games section on the blog (it's cool and you should check out some of his posts). If we are lucky, he might do a post on Kruzno, eventually.

The Castle Keepers Guide has now been released for Castles and Crusades making the base game system complete. For fans of older style role playing games this is a major milestone, admittedly one that comes late in the day. But it's a good book and has a lot of the "look and feel" of Gary Gygax's classic writing. It's well worth a look.

Some Thoughts on Personal Finance

It was unfortunate that Mark decided not to write about personal finance as I think that there is a lot to say about this topic. In particular, I agree that it was odd that this article was treated as a revelation. Consider this comment:

I won’t bore you with the math, but this meal plan cuts out all the extras. No snacks, no OJ, no organic milk at $5.99 per gallon, no Parmesan cheese sprinkled on top of that pasta, no frozen yogurt at night in front of DWTS. The husband brown bags it to the office. I’ll admit I included my coffee, at $2.15 per week, because I consider it essential, along with milk for the kids at every meal.

I have actually been extremely poor and I begin to think that most financial journalists have never been in that state. I remember saving up to buy powdered skim milk (as the only possible option) and would never have dreamed of affording organic milk. Some of the cheap food options that are listed are good but I remember buying huge bags of rice (10 kg, if I remember correctly) so I could stretch a tiny food budget out over a month. I notice this level of extreme economy is absent from the discussion.


In a lot of ways this is a good thing. The United States is wealthy country and it is good that inexpensive food is an feature of our society. But one should not mistake this advice as being how one would actually deal with dire poverty.

A Miscellany of Topics That Will Not Appear in My Next Blog Post

I've recently gotten in the habit of using the "save and quit" option on my browser when I shut down my laptop. The driver of this odd behavior is the ever-growing pile of posts I'm meaning to write.

I've decided to stop telling myself that I'll eventually get around to them (if you're going to tell yourself lies, you should really save them for the big stuff). Instead, I'm going to use this post as a data dump with links and brief descriptions of the articles. I'll probably get around to some of them eventually, but if something sounds interesting, don't wait for me. If any of these seem to merit more attention, let me know and I'll put it on the top of the pile:

Education researchers need to worry more about the Hawthorne effect;

And the Halo effect;

Why are financial advice columnists so clueless about living on a budget?;

On a related note, how to get concert tickets for just $350 isn't really the kind of financial advice we really need at the moment;

The Collegiate Learning Assessment sounds promising but I'm not sure sure it supports the coverage it's gotten, let alone a book;

Not to be cynical, but has any educational study not shown promising results? (see Hawthorne effect);

On a related topic, when we hear about a new study discrediting an old technique, how can we be sure they didn't just use the technique badly? (not sayin', just wonderin');

Whenever an economist talks about how regular people just aren't as clear-headed and rational as economists are, it makes baby Jesus cry;

Michael Hiltzik is really sharp;

Felix Salmon thinks so too;

Paul Krugman also has something to say on the topic;

"[H]e suddenly declared that we needed to cut taxes to prevent too rapid a reduction in US debt." (comment is superfluous);

I really need to write something about this;

And this;

I wonder what Daniel Little would say about social norming in the classroom?

This round just might go to Eminem

Edward L. Glaeser has been tough on Detroit and the auto industry. Here's how he opened a column last week:

During the Super Bowl, Chrysler and Eminem gave us a chest-thumping, soul-lifting vision of Detroit as a city of character, competence and style. But the Census tells us that per-capita incomes in Detroit are barely half the national average and that one-third of the city lives in poverty.

Michigan was the only state that lost people from 2000 to 2010, and the state’s unemployment rate remains near 12 percent. Is it possible that Detroit will turn the corner despite decades of decline?

It's safe to assume that the answer Glaeser had in mind for his rhetorical question didn't rely too much on the Big Three. Back in June, 2009, here's what he had to say about the bailouts:

Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the public sector has spent billions saving the banks. While these decisions are certainly debatable, they are understandable. The US financial industry misbehaved badly,... but it is still a sector with a future. ... After all, every other sector in the economy depends on banks for their financing.

But what about cars? ... Does anyone, other than GM's management, believe that this company can come back? The current treatment, cash infusion and a reduction in corporate liabilities, provides a solution for a company that is broke, not for one that is broken.

Given that analysis, it might be interesting to get his take on this item from the New York Times:

General Motors, which nearly collapsed from the weight of its debts two years ago before reorganizing in a government-sponsored bankruptcy, said Thursday that it earned $4.7 billion in 2010, the most in more than a decade.

It was the first profitable year since 2004 for G.M., which became publicly traded in November, ending a streak of losses totaling about $90 billion.

In addition, G.M. said 45,000 union workers would receive profit-sharing checks averaging $4,300, the most in the company’s history. ...

Globally, G.M.’s sales rose 12.2 percent in 2010, to 8.39 million, coming within about 30,000 vehicles of retaking the title of world’s largest automaker from Toyota. For the first time, it sold more cars and trucks in China, where its sales rose 28.8 percent from 2009, than in the United States, where sales were up 6.3 percent.

Or to see what he had to say about Jonathan Cohn's reaction to the news:

Seriously, though, this is another important milestone for GM. Profits for the final quarter were actually lower than initial expectations. But the company attributed that, in part, to heavy investment in the development of new products, which is a sign of company health. “Their recovery has been fueled by significant cost-cutting, arrival of new products that consumers were seeking along with better management of incentives and supply,” Jesse Toprak, vice president of industry trends and insight at TrueCar.com, told the Times. “The sky is the limit for G.M. after becoming profitable at this low of a sales pace.”

Of course, the usual caveats apply: The two companies could still stumble and Chrysler, in particular, still needs to prove they can cars as good as their television commercials. And it's not as if workers in the auto industry didn't take a huge hit anyway: Many did lose their jobs and new employees are making a lot less money than old ones do.

Still, it looks increasingly like the rescue of the auto industry was an overall success, saving hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of jobs and bolstering the country's manufacturing base for years (if not decades) to come. Maybe it's time to start giving President Obama some credit for it--and recognizing that, when properly managed, the federal government can do a lot of good.

Weekend Gaming -- Piet Hein's TacTix

A Grook by Piet Hein:

ARS BREVIS

There is
one art,
no more,
no less:
to do
all things
with art-
lessness.


Piet Hein was, among many other things, an inventor of remarkably clever games. After Hex,* his most famous is probably his two-dimensional variant on nim, TacTix.



As with most of Hein's recreations (even those dealing with sophisticated mathematical concepts), the rules of TacTix are wonderfully simple. The players take turns picking up pieces from the board (shown above) until the losing player is forced to pick up the last piece. The players can pick up as many pieces at a time as they choose with the only constraint being that the pieces have to be in the same row or column and have to be contiguous.

Here's what what a game might look like after a couple of moves (taken from this sample game):

TacTix doesn't quite meet Othello's "a minute to learn a lifetime to master" standard, it yields fairly easily to analysis (or to practice if you're paying attention), but while this keeps it out of competition with chess and Go and less well-known games like agon, Hein's invention still has a lot to offer:

The rules are almost as simple as TicTacToe, making it an ideal game for very young players;

Like TicTacToe, TacTix can easily be played as a pencil-and-paper game. Just mark off a grid then cross out squares instead of removing pieces;

Unlike more complicated games, the underlying concepts of TacTix are easy to grasp and to teach (Martin Gardner had a good summary in one of his Scientific American columns though I'm not sure where it's collected);

TacTix also makes an excellent programming exercise;

Finally, there's no rule that says you have to follow the rules. Try adding a few of your own. Play around with the board configuration or try flipping a coin to determine whether you can pick up an odd or even number of pieces. Get creative. It's what Hein would have wanted.






* Also independently invented by John Nash a few years later.

Interesting paper on peer effects

I'm not sure this is the ideal methodology to approach this problem (I'd like to see this combined with something that captures the actual interactions in the classroom), but, based on what I've seen, this is a definite improvement.

From VoxEU (via Thoma)

Our recent research uncovers peer effects in education as distinct from the contextual and other correlated influences. Our econometric strategy uses the topological structure of social networks as well as network fixed effects to identify each of these effects separately.

Our analysis is made possible by the use of a unique database on friendship networks from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (AddHealth). The AddHealth database has been designed to study the impact of the social environment (i.e. friends, family, neighbourhood and school) on adolescents' behaviour in the US by collecting data on students in grades 7-12 from a nationally representative sample of roughly 130 private and public schools in years 1994-95 (wave I). A subset of adolescents selected from the rosters of the sampled schools, was then interviewed again in 1995-96 (wave II), in 2001-2 (wave III), and again in 2007-2008 (wave IV). For our purposes, the most interesting aspect of the AddHealth data is the friendship information, which is based upon actual friend nominations. It is collected at wave I, i.e. when individuals were at school. Indeed, pupils were asked to identify their best friends from a school roster (up to five males and five females). As a result, we can reconstruct the whole geometric structure of the friendship networks.

In Calvó-Armengol et al. (2008), we exploit such information to test a peer-effect model which relates analytically equilibrium behaviour to network location. This analysis shows that the structure of friendships ties is an important, and so far unnoticed, determinant of a pupil performance at school. In Patacchini et al. (2011), we follow this line of research by exploiting the other AddHealth waves in order to investigate whether such effect is carried over time. Indeed, the longitudinal structure of the survey provides information on both respondents and friends during the adulthood. In particular, the questionnaire of wave IV contains detailed information on the highest education qualification achieved.

We analyse the impact of the friends' educational attainment on an individual's educational attainment where they are identified as friends during school and in to adulthood. We find that peer effects in education are not only strong but also persistent over time. We find that the most relevant peers are the friends people make in grade 10-12, from when they are around 15 years old. This suggests that individuals are more likely to work towards and apply to college if this choice is popular among their peers, especially in the last years at school. This could represent the effect of contagion and collective socialisation and mean that any education policy targeting specific individuals will have multiplier effects.

So many problems for such a little state

As if this weren't enough.

From TPM:

According to The Providence Journal, "[s]chool and city leaders said they were forced to issue the mass dismissal notices because of a state law that says teachers must be notified about possible layoffs or terminations by March 1." In a statement, Mayor Angel Taveras said that because the deadline for informing teachers about employment changes came before the budget for next year could be determined, the move was necessary.

"Providence faces significant challenges in getting its financial house in order," Taveras said in the statement. "Spending reductions are inevitable. It is also inevitable that some portion of cuts will come from the school budget. This is why we faced the difficult decision of sending letters to all teachers: we do not yet know what actions will be required and believe it was only fair to let all teachers know about the severity of the situation."

Taveras told the Journal that there would be fewer schools open, and fewer teachers teaching, in Providence next year -- he just couldn't yet say how many.

I hope to have a post up later today on the economics and logistics of hiring and firing of teachers. One of the relevant sub-topics here is the highly compressed hiring season. It is difficult and terribly disruptive (particularly for the students) to make staffing changes during the school year. Unlike most fields where employer and/or employee has the option of deciding that a position isn't a good fit, a teaching assignment represents a decision that all parties will have to live with for the next year.

The result? Take a year's worth of staffing for a labor-intensive industry, up the stakes, then squeeze the whole thing into eight or ten weeks. That's the reality of managing the education workforce. Any viable reform proposal based on changing the way we hire and fire teachers has got to either work under those constraints or fix the system.

Evidence

John D Cook has a very nice post up about evidence in science:

Though it is not proof, absence of evidence is unusually strong evidence due to subtle statistical result. Compare the following two scenarios.

Scenario 1: You’ve sequenced the DNA of a large number prostate tumors and found that not one had a particular genetic mutation. How confident can you be that prostate tumors never have this mutation?

Scenario 2: You’ve found that 40% of prostate tumors in your sample have a particular mutation. How confident can you be that 40% of all prostate tumors have this mutation?

It turns out you can have more confidence in the first scenario than the second. If you’ve tested N subjects and not found the mutation, the length of your confidence interval around zero is proportional to N. But if you’ve tested N subjects and found the mutation in 40% of subjects, the length of your confidence interval around 0.40 is proportional to √N. So, for example, if N = 10,000 then the former interval has length on the order of 1/10,000 while the latter interval has length on the order of 1/100. This is known as the rule of three. You can find both a frequentist and a Bayesian justification of the rule here.

Absence of evidence is unusually strong evidence that something is at least rare, though it’s not proof. Sometimes you catch a coelacanth.

Now it is true that this approach can be carried too far. The comments section has a really good discussion of the limitations of this type of reasoning (it doesn't handle sudden change points well, for example).

But it is worth noting that a failure to find evidence (despite one's best attempts) does tell you something about the distribution. So, for example, the failure to find a strong benefit for users of Vitamin C on mortality, despite a number of large randomized trials, makes the idea that this drug is actually helpful somewhat less likely. It is true we could look in just one more population and find an important effect. Or that it is only useful in certain physiological states (like the process of getting a cold) which are hard to capture in a population based study.

But failing to find evidence of the association isn't bad evidence, in and of itself that the association is unlikely.

P.S. For those who can't read the journal article, the association between Vitamin C and mortality is Relative Risk 0.97 (95% Confidence Interval:0.88-1.06), N=70 456 participants (this includes all of the trials).

You'll notice they said nothing about the op-eds being fit to print

An unnamed friend of Jonathan Chait had some fun re-editing a recent Tom Friedman column:

A wake-up call’s mother is unfolding. At the other end is a bell, which is telling us we have built a house at the foot of a volcano. The volcano is spewing lava, which says move your house. The road will be long and rocky, but it will trigger a shift before it kicks. We can capture some of it. IF the Middle East was a collection of gas stations, Saudi Arabia would be a station. Iran, Kuwait , Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and the United Arab Emirates would all be stations. Guys, here’s the deal. Don’t hassle the Jews. You are insulated from history. History is back. Fasten your seat belts. Don’t expect a joy ride because the lid is blowing off. The west turned a blind eye, but the report was prophetic, with key evidence. Societies are frozen in time. No one should have any illusions. Root for the return to history, but not in the middle.*

Which brought to mind this memorably representative passage from Maureen Dowd:

Mr. Obama called W. on Friday to give him a heads-up about the repudiation on Iraq. Robert Gibbs said the call was not at all contentious. But in the Lehrer interview, the president compared America to a big tanker that needed to "start moving in a better trajectory so that five years, 10 years down the road you can say, you know what, because of good decisions now our kids are safer, more secure, more prosperous, more unified than they were before." This analogy turns W. into the Exxon Valdez.

Dowd's attempts at analogies often go something like that, a collection of elements vaguely related to the topic at hand but without analogous relationships (like when she called Joe Biden a human lie detector because he compulsively told the truth). You could make an analogy where Bush was Captain Hazelwood or the U.S. under Bush was the Valdez, but what you have here isn't an analogy; it's just word association.

The sad part is that Dowd's plum position is based on her writing and analytic abilities. Unlike Friedman, and, for that matter, Brooks and Krugman (both of whom can actually write), Dowd brings no special expertise to her columns. All she offers are her prose and her insights, both of which are terrible. And yet the halo effect of the New York Times was strong enough to pull in a Pulitzer.

And the really sad part is that both Friedman and Dowd are better than John Tierney.

* To be fair, Friedman's main points are quite a bit better than his prose.

"Just around the corner" for about a century

The rate of technological progress is an incredibly complex subject and is open to interpretation depending on how you define your terms and weight your metrics. I see a huge surge starting around the 1870s and running more or less uninterrupted* through the 1960s followed by a perhaps inevitable leveling off to a more sustainable rate in the past few decades but I've heard well-reasoned arguments that paint a completely different picture.

Having acknowledged this diversity of opinion, there's still a wonderful irony to using a video phones to counter the argument that technology isn't delivering what was promised because we were promised video phones for an awfully long time. As early as 1891, Alexander Graham Bell was thinking seriously about the subject:

"Should it be found... [that the image sensor] is illuminated, then an apparatus might be constructed in which each piece of selenium is a mere speck, like the head of a small pin, the smaller the better. The darkened selenium should be placed in a cup-like receiver which can fit over the eye… Then, when the first selenium speck is presented to an illuminated object, it may be possible that the eye in the darkened receiver, should perceive, not merely light, but an image of the object… "

By 1930, AT&T was testing prototypes. By 1936, the German postal service had a public video phone service available. Research into wireless systems was going on at the same time.

And through all this, for about a hundred years, there was a constant stream of stories in newspapers and magazines like Popular Science announcing that it wouldn't be long before every home had a video phone. Young boys and girls who grew up reading these stories died of old age reading the same headlines. Given this history, it's difficult to be that impressed by the rate of innovation.

I would argue that for the past few decades, most areas of technology have advanced at about the rate we expected with more areas under-performing than exceeding expectations. There are any number good arguments to the contrary, but none of them use the video phone as an example.

p.s. I don't think great-granddad would be all that dazzled by texting either.



* I'm not sure about the Thirties. Does anyone have any thoughts on the effects of the Great Depression on technology?

"Don't worry, honey, the other children won't judge you on your looks."

Joseph recently brought up the subject of separated-twin studies. Let's take things to the next level with a thought experiment using clones. We'll have to go full-bore mad scientist mode here and assume we have exclusive access not only to an unlimited supply of clones but to undetectable plastic surgery techniques that can be performed without the subject's knowledge.

From early childhood, we assign different treatment combinations to different groups of our genetically identical subjects. We adjust features to match those that tend to elicit strong responses in terms of attractiveness, intelligence, likeability, and other traits. We modify height and body type, again making sure to cover the extremes. We even determine vocal characteristics.

After about thirty years of this, we assess the subjects using a variety of personal, professional, and academic metrics, the same sort of metrics often used in twin studies.

Now we come to the big question, are you willing bet a sizeable amount of money that none of these treatments are significant? If the answer is no, you shouldn't put a lot of faith in twin studies that measure these same factors because these studies never control for appearance.

How we look does not determine who we are but it does have a big impact on the life that we lead. It makes people more or less likely to want to hang out with us (particularly if those people see us as potential mates). Through the halo effect it affects people's opinion of us (including opinions in the form of grades and professional evaluations). Perhaps most importantly, it changes the way we see ourselves.

Separated twin studies have often been held up as a gold standard. Pyrite might be a more apt description. The data are invariably confounded in numerous ways that are difficult to correct for. In addition to the factors mentioned above, twins (barring surrogacy) share a prenatal background, the same relative age compared to their classmates and the same absolute age. You could easily find yourself comparing a pair of twins who suffered from mild FAS, were the youngest students in their classes, and were born in 1960 against a pair of twins who had excellent prenatal care, were the oldest in their classes and who were born in 1950.

Twins can be incredibly useful as test subjects, but the popular notion that these separated twin studies provide clean, unambiguous findings is simply wrong. Every one of them has serious problems with confounded data and these problems hold even for perfect studies with twins separated at birth, randomly assigned to adoptive parents and kept isolated from each other (conditions that aren't met that often). Personally, I have trouble overlooking all these concerns and putting a lot of weight into these findings, but, of course, I didn't inherit a trusting nature.