Average is so over

People, I once had a department chair who denied that, if we had a policy of giving above average (in percentage terms) raises to the lower paid faculty, in the long run everyone would be paid the same. Just flat out denied the math.

This same chair, upon the occasion of me complaining that my evaluation was above the departmental average while my raise was below, told me not to worry, that everyone had gotten a below average raise.

I am not making this up.

But I guess you can see where all this is leading.

Yes HRH HRC has proclaimed that she would close any school that was below average. Like it was obvious and I guess just be a few. Sadly, no one asked her how, in the long run, we were gonna fit all the kids in the US into one school (barring ties of course).

Mrs. Angus has suggested to me that maybe HRC was thinking globally, closing any US school below the global average.

I think Mrs. Angus has a bright future in politics.

ps. this same chair, in a public seminar, vehemently denied that (PQ)/Q = P. Vehemently.

Embrace those B's, Ladies

I was visiting one of my favorite colleges (Davidson) the other night. Had given a talk, and was having dinner afterwards with some students and faculty.

One young woman mentioned that she done very well in math in high school, and that she wished she had been able to take some math in college.  She was an Econ major, but had taken zero calculus and then took just the one required baby-stats-by-cookbook course.  (UPDATE:  Why so few women economists?)

I asked why she had not "been able" to take any math in college.  I knew for a fact Davidson offered math courses. (In fact, they do stuff like this, there). The young lady, obviously shocked, said, "I might have made a B!  Those are hard courses!"

I couldn't let that go.  I may have pointed out that she had just said that she was "really good" at math, and most people don't say that.  For a woman to say she's really good at math, she must in fact be really good at math.  And I may have said something like this was her only chance at an education, and the ridiculous courses (I may have said "underwater basket-weaving for beginners") she took instead were a giant waste of time.  Who cares if you get an "A" in that crap?  For my big finish, I said "Nobody cares about your G.P.A.  You have wasted more than $150,000 here, avoiding an education."  I may have been a jerk, in other words.


It was quiet for quite a while after that.  It's possible I was out of line.  But it's also possible I was COMPLETELY RIGHT.

Excerpt:

“Maybe women just don’t want to get things wrong,” Goldin hypothesized. “They don’t want to walk around being a B-minus student in something. They want to find something they can be an A student in. They want something where the professor will pat them on the back and say ‘You’re doing so well!’ ” 

“Guys,” she added, “don’t seem to give two damns.” 

So maybe the better question is: Why aren’t men scared off by rigid grading curves? Male students could be more overconfident — effectively, college bros shrug off gentleman’s C’s (or, more often today, gentleman’s B’s) as unrepresentative of their true brilliance.

Please spread the word.  The "game" in college is NOT to maximize GPA.  It's to maximize education, subject to the constraint of maintaining a decent GPA.

My own rule in graduate admissions:  never accept anyone with a 4.0.  And it's better if the person has gotten at least one "C."  If there is no C in the record, it means the person is going to be just another loser who is really good at taking courses.  If you could get a job taking courses, that would be the sort of person you want.  But we want people who will take risks, and learn new things that are too hard to master on the first go.

(If it matters, this is self-serving, yes.  I made two C's:  one in an intermediate Art History class that was completely over my head, and one in Real Analysis.  Finally, I made a "B" in my Intro Econ class.  Nobody told me I was doing well.  Because I wasn't.)

An extended discussion of the problem can be found in Megan McArdle's terrific new book, THE UP SIDE OF DOWN.  It's really great, and it argues that students need to be encouraged to fail.

Or at least get a "B," fercrissakes.

(UPDATE:  Claudia S. points out, on twitter [ @Claudia_Sahm ], that my "lecture" was almost certainly completely ineffective, and even counterproductive.  And Claudia is right, of course.  If someone is unsure of themselves then being yelled at in public by a creepy old guy like me is not really helpful. Another reader pointed out that this scene from Big Lebowski is apropos...   Further, if the young woman had taken a course in math and gotten a "B," then she would no longer have thought she was "really good" at math.  My point is that you should not just take courses in things in which you are already "really good", and courses in high school don't count!  You need to try to get better at OTHER things.  Staying inside your comfort zone is the whole problem!  Figure out what you are "really bad" at, and then go take THOSE courses, to get better.  So, either the young lady was "really good," and would make a good grade, or she would find out it was hard, and she wasn't really good, and so she needed to work hard to make a decent, maybe not even good, grade.  That's why I look for a "C" in the transcript, as long as the course is a difficult one.  Take something you are not "really good" at.)

Just can't do math!

It's plausible to think that some people are better at math than others (though if you speculate about why, you may be fired, like Larry Summers) (though this is interesting).

But no one of normal intelligence "can't do math."

Marc Bellemare's story.

Of course, this is how Marc dressed up his dog for Halloween.  So, even though he's good at MATH now, he has two "pupkins" in his house. (He'll probably try to blame Janet).

UPDATE:  If facebook doesn't put out....the pupkin pic:

 

Larry Summers Could be Fired Just for READING This!

Studying Intellectual Outliers: Are There Sex Differences, and Are the Smart Getting Smarter?

Jonathan Wai, Martha Putallaz & Matthew Makel
Current Directions in Psychological Science, December 2012, Pages 382-390

Abstract:
By studying samples of intellectual outliers across 30 years, researchers can leverage right-tail data (i.e., samples at or above the 95th percentile on tests of ability) to uncover missing pieces to two psychological puzzles: whether there are sex differences in cognitive abilities among smart people, and whether test scores are rising (a phenomenon known as the Flynn effect) among smart people. For the first puzzle, data indicate that the high male-to-female ratio among extremely high scorers on measures of math ability has decreased dramatically, but is still likely one factor among many explaining female underrepresentation in some professions. For the second puzzle, data indicate that the right tail has risen at a similar rate as the general (or middle portion of the) distribution; it is thus likely that the entire curve is rising at a relatively constant rate, consistent with the Flynn effect, which may explain why a greater number of gifted students have been identified in recent years. However, the causes for these gains and whether they reflect real gains in intelligence continue to remain a mystery. We show how these two puzzles are linked and stress the importance of paying attention to the entire distribution when attempting to address some scientific questions.

Several interesting things here.
1.  Jonathan Wai is from Duke's TIP program.  The EYM profited from that program, in my opinion.
2.  "Searching for the Right Tail" sounds like a book about singles bars.  Sequel to "Looking for Mr. Goodbar."  But from the male perspective.
3.   Instead of studying intellectual outliers, how about studying intellectual out-and-out liars, like P-Kroog?  I bet those are FAR more likely to be men.  Women have scruples.

The nonsense math effect

The nonsense math effect

Kimmo Eriksson, Judgment and Decision Making, November 2012, Pages 746–749

Abstract:  Mathematics is a fundamental tool of research. Although potentially applicable in every discipline, the amount of training in mathematics that students typically receive varies greatly between different disciplines. In those disciplines where most researchers do not master mathematics, the use of mathematics may be held in too much awe. To demonstrate this I conducted an online experiment with 200 participants, all of which had experience of reading research reports and a postgraduate degree (in any subject). Participants were presented with the abstracts from two published papers (one in evolutionary anthropology and one in sociology). Based on these abstracts, participants were asked to judge the quality of the research. Either one or the other of the two abstracts was manipulated through the inclusion of an extra sentence taken from a completely unrelated paper and presenting an equation that made no sense in the context. The abstract that
included the meaningless mathematics tended to be judged of higher quality. However, this "nonsense math effect" was not found among participants with degrees in mathematics, science, technology or medicine.

Interesting.  Reminds me of this famous wannabe incident... Though from the other side, in a way.  Sokal was using fake words to fool lit people.  Eriksson is using fake math to fool social scientologists.

Nod to Kevin Lewis

Torn from the headlines

People, you wonder why folks in Washington have trouble with getting the math right? Well the town's paper of record, the senescent WAPO, is not helping.

In the print edition this morning, Preston Williams' column on the Yankees - Os series reads in part, "Sabathia hurled a commanding four hit shutout for a 3-1 win at Yankee Stadium....."

This fabulous example of DC math is viewable in the online edition for now (2nd graf of story), but who knows, maybe someone will wake up and fix it.

Ezra?

Swap meet

Ah, Italy. When it rains, it pours. The Italian government recently paid a few billion euros to Morgan Stanley to unwind some interest rate swap positions it took in an ill-fated attempt to hedge its borrowing costs.

The excellent SoberLook has the full story, including the kicker that Italy still has over 150 billion Euros in open positions that are undoubtably "underwater" for them.

As SoberLook pointed out in a much earlier post about Harvard's swap woes, there are cheaper ways to buy insurance against increased funding costs.