Statistics

I'm taking an night class on Statistics at the UC Berkeley Extension, as part of my general "Preparation For A Degree That, For Some Reason, I Believe I Need To Get Before I'll Be Offered The Exact Job I Already Have" program. Below, for your amusement, an excerpt from last week's class. All you need to know in advance is that, when you're dealing with probability, you refer figuratively to whatever population you're picking from as the "box."

Prof. Jurkat: So, the first step is to draw the box with the different results. Then, second, we need to determine the proportion of those results in the box...like so. Does anybody know the third step?

Alek: [raising hand] Step Three...um, make her open the box?

The Middlebury Affair

Lots of press flurries around the decision by the Middlebury College history department to ban Wikipedia citations in history papers. The most sensible response appears to come from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who simply says: "For God's sake, you're in college. Don't cite the encyclopedia."

Wikivangelists see this as the beginnings of censorship, which just proves that they need to spend more time on Wikipedia learning about what censorship actually is. That said, the Middlebury history department's response to Wikipedia use strikes me as both reactionary and narrow-minded. Don't get me wrong. The preponderance of inaccuracies (which the professors ascribe to Wikipedia, not to the students) is in fact a big deal, and requires an aggressive response. As with, say, large military conflicts, lots of people getting bad information from unreliable sources is a serious problem. But, in banning Wikipedia citations, Middlebury profs missed addressing that problem altogether.

Here are, I think, the putative reasons for the ban: 1) due to convenience, students are relying on a source of information that may expose them to historical inaccuracies, which they in turn embrace because (I guess) they're too dumb or lazy to know better; 2) relying on Wikipedia prevents students from distinguishing the difference between credible and non-credible sources, from developing a critical approach to historical information, etc. -- i.e. they fail to learn proper research methodology.

So what's the solution? Hold students accountable for incorrect information, as you would with any other statement, sourced or not? Actually teach research methodology, so students can independently evaluate sources and the information they provide?

Nope. They just banned Wikipedia citations. They don't, as far as I know, have a public ban on citing The Onion or attributing words spoken by Dana Carvey on SNL to George Bush Sr. But they single out Wikipedia almost, I think, out of spite for the damage they believe it causes to traditional scholarship. Now, despite the histrionics of campus free speech advocates, this citation ban does not constitute censorship in any substantive sense. But how does it help, exactly?

What Middlebury professors (and all professors) should be doing is teaching students how to evaluate information and build a supported argument, then holding those students accountable for what they write. I think they've chosen citation ban either to avoid doing those things, which is sad, or to send a figurative shot over the open-source bow, which is petty. I read the ban, in part, as a sign of how threatened the academic elite feel by Wikipedia and the like. In my view, the limitless benefits of community-created information repositories far outweigh the potential for inaccuracy, especially since rigorous editorial and peer review don't root out inaccuracies or bias by any stretch. But Wikipedia damn sure scares people who control knowledge production, and the anti-Wiki backlash (of which this citation ban is, I think, a part) reveals just how much.

One last thing. In some parts of the academy, Wikipedia is actually offering teachers a way to teach students about research methods (as noted in the linked NYT article). Assigning students to edit or create a Wikipedia pages seems like such a better solution to both of the problems discussed above. Lame.

Matthew LaClair = Badass!

This is the 16-year old New Jersey high school student who recorded his history teacher telling the class, among other things, that they belong in Hell if they don't accept Jesus Christ as their savior. So, we knew he was badass from the earlier coverage, and just by definition, but I didn't realize until I looked into it further this morning the degree to which he's exposed himself by taking on this fight. And I hadn't listened to the recordings, so I didn't realize how fearlessly he confronted his teacher on the hypocrisy of a loving, merciful God that cannot tolerate dissent. "Why would a loving God give up on someone after just one lifetime?...As a parent, if your child did something wrong, would you throw them in an oven and leave them there forever?" BADASS. He should join Carlton Pearson's church.

To me, the fact that LaClair's classmates and community don't support him strengthens his claim that without the recordings he would never have persuaded the school, district, and community that Paszkiewicz was doing something wrong. I mean, the man is teaching an 11th-grade history course about the US Constitution, and he says the following:

[God] did everything in his power to make sure that you could go to heaven, so much so that he took your sins on his own body, suffered your pains for you, and he's saying, 'Please, accept me, believe.' If you reject that, you belong in hell....If you reject his gift of salvation, then you're going where you belong.''

Yeah. People are defending that. Now, to be fair, Paszkiewiscz makes one (1) feeble attempt (on the NYT recordings at least) to say that this is his belief, and he makes a couple of references to interpretation of scripture being "your prerogative," which is good. But he still presents salvation, the sacrifice of Jesus, and the condemnation of the unsaved to hell as incontrovertible facts. Not so good.

Other highlights include the penetrating distinction that "Scriptures aren't religion," by way of arguing that all Christian religions believe in one book, "The Bible -- you should be able to bring that into the classroom and read it."

Another hilarious moment: Paszkiewicz asks the class, sarcastically, if "anyone ever observed" the evolution of simple life forms to complex life forms, like it's a ridiculous notion. Then he goes on to say, sarcastically again, "You can collect some data...like the fossil record." ....hmm. Yeah, that pesky fossil record, with its overwhelming mountain of observed data supporting evolution. Oh, also comparative anatomy, molecular genetics, geographical distribution...there's some observation going on. But, damn, scientists can't prove that life spontaneously generates, and they can't repeat it in experimental conditions, so it can't be a scientific fact! Wait, whoops, that's completely wrong because they can and have. It's one thing to present the scientific argument for evolution in an unbiased manner, then express your belief in another explanation of life, but lying about what's out there is just a shameful, criminal action from any teacher, especially a public school teacher.

Also good: Paskiewicz distinguishes faith from blind belief, saying that his faith is "rooted and grounded in Scripture" because of "Prophecy," which came true. What's his example? Moses says in Genesis (right) that Israel would endure 400 years of slavery, and, lo and behold, it happened!...When? In the next book of the Bible. Not really a prophecy so much as a clunky piece of foreshadowing.

I was disappointed to see that the most aggressive response from the school district was to ban unauthorized recording in class...which, okay, that's fine, but isn't there a larger problem here? If students have to surreptitiously record their teachers in order to fix drastic Constitutional problems with the curriculum, maybe the district can do better than a memo and some teacher education. Here's some evidence that they're on the wrong track. Paszkiewicz recently compared global warming scientists to Hitler repeating a lie often enough that people believe it. The school board's lawyer reported that the board didn't investigate the report (???) because the comment wasn't religious and didn't break any kind of law.

Um. I don't know where to start with that. He didn't break a law (assuming New Jersey doesn't have a statute requiring public school teachers to represent scientific and historical truth to the best of their ability). But come on, you've got recordings of this guy endangering your school district by violating the Constitution in a class about the Constitution, and you didn't feel the need to investigate an incident wherein that same teacher discredits science some more?

Leaving aside the wildly inappropriate nature of the Hitler analogy, global warming isn't a lie -- calling it one is. Also, much as we might like to believe it, Hitler's use of the "big lie" theory is widely misinterpreted. In Mein Kampf, Hitler attributed the "big lie" strategy to a conspiracy of Jews in media, bent on convincing the German people that they lost World War I (they did). Goebbels later appropriated it for his attacks on Churchill's "Lie Factory." So, Nazi leaders obviously believed in the effectiveness of the "Big Lie," and it may seem like the "Big Lie" concept played an obvious role in Hitler's propoganda strategy, but that latter point hasn't been substantiated. So, giving Paszkiewiscz the benefit of the doubt, we'll assume that he's not implicitly associating global warming scientists with an evil conspiracy of "Big Lie"-telling Jews. Instead, we'll just assume that he's adopting the common "Big Lie" myth that surrounds Hitler, and he's ignorant of WWII/Holocaust history.

That's cool, though, it's not like he's a history teacher or anything.

Don't be a (TARGET)

So, I was having a terrific morning. Sitting at the iMac, multigrain flakes before me, last night's episode of Friday Night Lights playing to psych me up for work. Then I get on BART, to find yet another thinly-veiled abstinence poster. It's the usual stuff: "Defend your future...stay away from drinking, drugs, teen sex...only YOU can decide that you matter." The best part? "Don't be a (TARGET)," with a little bullseye. I assume the end of that sentence is "...for Satan's crossbow."

I see this stuff around all the time, and it's definitely part of our national culture now, thanks to Bush, Tommy Thompson, and the Christian right. What bugged me so much this morning, apart from the fact that abstinence-only doesn't work, and that it promotes rampant misinformation, and that it definitely doesn't work unless you at least mention the concept of not having sex, is that I've always been proud of California for being the only state never to take federal funding for abstinence-only education programs. As Planned Parenthood's Mary Jane Wagle wrote in her op-ed to the LA Times a while back, abstinence-only education is like a driver's ed class where the teachers show students scary photos of accidents but never tell them to how to buckle a seatbelt.

But it kind of defeats the purpose if HHS and regressive school districts can take the back door and contract directly with all these unctuously named groups like Teen Esteem and FirstResort. Despite a 2004 California law that mandates comprehensive sex education (including birth control & abortion), the abstinence-only movement is still making gains in places like Fremont, Concord, Mt. Diablo, and Newark (not to mention all over central and southern CA). Hence the poster on BART. It was produced by a non-profit CBO called Await and Find, for which a more appropriate title would be "Await (Three Weeks) and Find (Out if You Got Pregnant)."

On a related topic: did anyone else feel mildly jealous of other teenagers pledging abstinence, like their opportunities for casual sex were so myriad that they had to make a formal, public vow in order to avoid it? When I was sixteen years old I didn't need Teen Esteem to make sure I remained abstinent: I worked on the literary magazine, had a job at the Mall, and played clarinet in a youth orchestra. The whole "not having sex" thing was pretty well taken care of.

That would have been a good slogan for the orchestra, by the way:

"El Camino Youth Symphony: It'll take your kid at least two extra years to get laid."

Badass

It occured to me that I'm always noting things to post about, but they never seem substantive enough to merit the time it takes to even log into the Blogger website and think of something to say about them.

Yeah, I know, most of the things I do post fit that description pretty well, too.

These are usually items of interest which would, for one reason or another, cause me to say: "oh, that's badass." In fact, if I was using a different blogging program I could just tag them "badass" and be done with it.

Instead, I'm going to use them as filler to keep fresh posts up here. So, without further ado, here's two things that struck me as badass in the last 24 hours or so:

1) Last night Camille told her students that if they needed to vote in the evening on Tuesday, they could come to class late...provided they bring their voting stub. Badass because a) she's letting students out of class to make sure they have no excuse not to vote, and b) she's making them bring their stub. I'm surprised she's not having them defend how they voted on Prop 85.

2) The Why? song "Dumb Hummer" has a line about "walking right out of the bike gate at the MacArthur BART," which is badass enough, but the song actually argues that this activity should be regarded as cool. Even better, when I heard the line I realized that their description is accurate. I've never taken a bike on BART, but the people who do have an unmissable aura of cool, and when they blast through that bike gate I always think to myself "God, I'm such a lazy bastard." Also badass: the video for "Dumb Hummer" is no more than a cute, slightly nerdy chick doing a completely shameless mirror-dance in front of her garage.

why Prop 82 went down.

The failure of Prop 82 to pass in California this past Tuesday was the result of a set of suckily converging factors. Had it passed, Prop 82 would have funded universal pre-school for every four-year-old in California through an income tax increase on the state’s wealthiest one percent.

It got creamed, though. Here are a few of the reasons why:

1. Following years of questionable ballot initiatives, and a completely unnecessary and costly special election last November, Californians have developed a deep, lovingly nurtured grudge against the propositions in general. More and more voters simply vote no on every proposition in an effort to discourage people from bringing them to the ballot. I don't agree entirely with that philosophy, but there's no doubt that it's an inherently flawed system that's getting worse as more people with money and agendas enter the fray. Prop 82 was one of the genuinely good laws that, unfortunately, became a casualty of that legitimate resentment.
2. Rob Reiner has a reputation as a politically unsophisticated Hollywood liberal meddler. I’m not convinced that reputation is really deserved. He’s got a niche, just like Harry Belafonte and Charlton Heston. But the opposition used every opportunity it could to refer to Prop 82 as " the Reiner Act," until it started to seem like he was hijacking the legislature.
3. Prop 82 was billed not as an increased funding initiative for preschool programs, but as a “universal” preschool program. That opened it up to the same familiar barrage of attacks that greets all proposals dealing with universal coverage of any kind: handouts to the middle class, failing to focus resources on the most needy, threatening private providers, etc.
4. This proposition involved taxing rich people, for no reason save their income. Good night.

This all sucks, because like I said it was a good law. It would have affected less than 1% of California taxpayers. It addressed the critical issues in the preschool crisis (teacher training, school construction, underserved areas). And it is a crisis, which our electeds, unlike in other states around the country, were completely dragging their feet on -- so it's actually a fairly legitimate use of the ballot initiative. I'm sure it'll be pursued in Sacramento now.

One last (obvious) thing: Voters seem to feel that pre-school, unlike kindergarten, is not worthy of public funding to make it universal – despite the fairly indisputable evidence that pre-school leads to better reading skills, lower dropout rates, higher incidence of matriculation, decreased crime, etc. It matters, and like kindergarten, pre-school represents a critical social investment that affects every member of any community. That’s why most industrialized countries have universal public preschools as well as universal public K-12 (or equivalent).

But not the U.S. Instead, preschool, like health insurance, college education, and affordable housing, has become a luxury item reserved for folks with money.

I have confidence that eventually, California will follow Illinois, Florida, Oklahoma, and Georgia in providing universal preschool. And I hope it'll be through legislation, so the Gap CEO Don Fisher and his crony all-star team can spend more energy finding tax loopholes and less hiring actors to play gentle, pragmatic, authoritative school principles (ethnic minorities preferred).

wow, mom!

(that's what i wrote on the top of my high-school graduation cap)

My mother has submitted her two cents on the old Summers issue.
Here it is:

This here is "hi mom," one of those most
likely to disagree with Alek on this subject. But I find
Alek's reasoning quite reasonable, and I too found the
transcript enlightening. It struck me that Summers was
right on the money when he talked about childcare and
discrimination.

But I would add 2 things to Alek's argument. As president
of a coeducational university, his first thought, even in
a private conference, should be his effect on his students.
His comments can not be anything but chilling to ambivalent
or self-doubtful women thinking about the sciences.
For that alone, he should be tossed out. Second, he should
have made the point about biology in exactly the opposite way.
He should have said: IF research shows any biological
differences, then the only question is how can we make use
of those differences to expand science and bring particular
creative contributions of women into it. But IF research shows
those biological differences to be minimal, then the only
question is how we can provide reasonable accommodation to
overcome whatever obstacles they present and put everyone
on a level playing field. Making biological statements with
no sense of history is, to me, a history teacher, offensive.
The relevant history here is, for example, Title IX. Women can
not play sports like men for biological reasons. But when you
give them equal resources for developing athletics, they
improve exponentially and also create a new genre of sports
which becomes in many cases much more interesting to audiences
and which develops the sport itself. Enough said!

Word.

"smoke on your pipe and put that in"

My organizing colleagues at Yale saw some substantial movement on financial aid reform following their sit-in last week.

Starting next year, Yale will eliminate the parental contribution for families making less than 45,000, increase funding for international students, and improve their recruitment effort in low-income areas.

As usual, Yale administrators denied any connection between the last few months of intensive campus pressure and the recent changes. But I'd invite you to compare the announced changes with the platform ratified by the Yale Undergraduate Organizing Committee and backed up by over 1,000 students. You may see some similarities.

Obviously, the pressure created by reforms at Harvard and Princeton also contributed to the move, but no-one should ever dismiss the power of Yale exceptionalism, even within the Ivy League. As in the past, Yale could have made a half-hearted effort at closing the gap so as to not appear completely inactive. But the changes proposed today, though still incomplete, are more comprehensive than any others in recent memory.

We can thank the bravery and disciplined organizing of Yale students for that. As my good friend Abbey would say, those little guys are on fire with passionate love. We'll see more from them on this and other issues, I'm sure.

(by the way, the title of this post is directed at all you West Side Story fans out there -- my feelings on musicals range from vague disgust to outright horror, but WSS is an exception)

storming the (ivory) tower

As I write this, 15 of my friends and colleagues are sitting-in indefinitely at the Yale Admissions Office for financial aid reform. No need to go over the details here, but they're blogging live from inside. Here's wishing them the best of luck - I'm certainly with them in spirit.

Some coverage from AP already, and more likely on the way from television and national press.

For more info on the issues, check out the Yale Undergraduate Organizing Committee online, where you can read the platform, check statistics, and browse press coverage.

If Yale doesn't arrest them at the end of the day and take them out, I'll post more details and news as I get it. So far, everyone seems to be fine and happy.

this is gonna hurt pt 2

needless to say, somewhat defending larry summers has stirred up some waves amongst my immediate friends and family. in the interest of, y'know, intellectual honesty, i'll admit that other folks' comments have shed new light on a few points definitely worth considering. See Phoebe's analysis at Illimitably Fiddlistic for an excellent argument of the contrary view -- which I still disagree with, but which is quite well argued. You can find more reasoned and subtle (I hope) commentary from me as well over at her place, where we're likely to be killing this horse for a few more days at least. But as far as New Plastic's concerned, Larry Summers is tabled indefinitely, unless he shows up for some hearings dressed as David Lee Roth. Then I'll probably jump in again.

this is gonna hurt

I hate having to admit this, but I'm about to defend Larry Summers. Harvard's President consented yesterday to release the transcript containing his allegedly inflammatory remarks re: women in science and engineering. Upon consideration, they're actually not particularly inflammatory at all, nor do they actually suggest that "innate ability" accounts for the disproportionate representation of women in the engineering and science sections of the Academy.

Let me be clear: I do not like this man. He is without a doubt arrogant, self-aggrandizing, and tactless. That doesn't distinguish him from most Ivy League University presidents, but either way I still find him fairly unpleasant in most respects. Also, I think that there are probably many reasons why the faculty have cause to hold a vote of no-confidence in Summers, and they're obviously entitled to do so regardless of what he said at this conference.

But this uproar over his comments is ridiculous, and in my opinion actually distracts people from the seriousness of the real issues at hand. The main story now is whether Summers is a misogynist pig, and not the groundbreaking research presented at the conference. Before the transcript was released I never expected to come down on Summers' side of this fracas, since I both sympathize with and trust his accusers on the faculty much more than I do him. Not only that, they're probably aware of the Ivy League's complicity in the creation of a glass ceiling for women and minorities in the Academy, so their ire towards Summers et al is certainly justified.

The thing is, the professors are way, and I mean WAY, over-reacting to Summers' remarks. Nowhere in the transcript does he claim that his expertise outweighs theirs, or contradict the findings presented at the conference. In fact, he constantly reiterates that he's not qualified to judge the statistical evidence, and that his observations arise primarily from some familiarity with the relevant studies and conversations with various folks in the Academy. He posited three contributing factors to the under-representation (four, really), explained his reasoning, and called for more research. No doubt he did all this in a really pompous manner, but if these professors are trying to eradicate that from Harvard's hallowed corridors, I think the ship's already sailed.

Okay, I know that if Larry Summers isn't qualified to analyze this issue, god knows I'm not. But here's the gist of Summers' remarks. Three of his four contributing factors were completely legitimate, in my view: socialization, discrimination, and gendered career choices. The fourth was the main bone of contention. Summers suggested that studies of standardized testing showed a variance between males and females, and that the standardized test results (and their consequences in terms of progress through the Academy) may contribute to the filtering process that results in under-representation of women. In a nutshell, he argued that since more men than women test into the highest portion of the bell curve, and that prominent research scientists presumably fall into that same degree of standard deviation. He also acknowledged that studies of gender-corrected standardized tests do not exhibit this variance, and made an argument for why that did not resolve the problem. I didn't agree with it, and I'd imagine that many in the room didn't either, but he offered a lay interpretation of the existing research and acknowledged it as such. He didn't even overtly subscribe to or support that interpretation, though he may have communicated as much through his demeanor -- I don't know. He did, however, display some pretty crappy mathematical and scientific aptitude, and I'm sure that offended the audience. His logic was muddled, and sometimes it seems like he was trying to use deliberately oblique wording to cover his ass on controversial territory. If you're interested in a more detailed assessment of the remarks, check out William Saletan's original analysis of the whole mess over at Slate, as well as his breakdown of flaws in the accusations and in Summers' argument upon release of the transcript. The latter, I think, makes my point far better than I will.

What's missing from all these shrill accusations (and I hate to use that adjective since it's so frequently employed by sexist assholes to discredit legitimate feminist protest, but the shoe fits here) is any consideration of the substantive content offered by Summers during the rest of his remarks. He considered the problems behind discrimination and calls for full measures to combat it. He also exposed the inherent problems involved in reforming hiring searches, without using them as an excuse for the slow progress (as the president of my illustrious alma mater surely would). Finally he argued, from a lay position again, that genetics research often exposes phenomena previously attributed to socialization to be biological in origin. Then, he specifically calls for more research on these topics to get closer to the truth. Of course I would have preferred that Summers call for more research so we'd have the truth and could actually fix the problem, but like I said, that would be expecting a lot from a guy like him. And the conference was focused on social science research anyway, not on the uphill fight for gender equality.

No doubt, some of my seven readers out there will be surprised to see me defending Larry Summers (hi mom). Let me say once more that I have no problem with him being kicked out the door, and I have no problem with Harvard professors calling him out in public. After all, whether or not Harvard discriminates towards women, we can all agree that it discriminates towards its faculty, tenured and not. They have all the reason in the world to knock him around the Op-Ed page if they want to. But the rest of the country needs to read this transcript and figure out if there's really any reason to be so angry about it. Then, even if they decide there is, I humbly suggest that they spend their time and energy pursuing solutions to the problem rather than spending time on vitriol. Okay, that's hypocritical, even for me. But I still strongly recommend that people read this transcript instead of simply taking the professors' word.

By the way, wouldn't it be great if Cornell West decided to speak up on this topic and denounce Summers? Then we could have another Ivy Tower Celebrity Death Match.

LOWER THE STEEL CAGE!!!!