mathbabe

I’m visiting my good friend Aaron in Atlanta, Georgia, this week, with my youngest son. So far we’ve gone swimming twice in an incredibly large pool (100 meter lanes), had ridiculously delicious barbeque (Daddy D’z), and checked out the local “growler shop” to prepare for last night’s NBA finals game.

Don’t know what a growler shop is? Neither did I, but if you like beer, you’re going to want to learn. It’s basically a take-away bar, with an enormous number of beers that you can sample and of course purchase, at great prices. The growler shop we went to is called My Friend’s Growler Shop, and two very adorable and friendly sommeliers named Camric and John:

Can you see all those beers in the background? Yum. Camric is wearing the light blue shirt.

We ended up tasting a bunch of beers but taking home Eventide Kölsh, which comes from a local brewery and is a variation of Grolsh, and Left Hand Milk Stout, which is as close to a meal in a drink as you can get if you’ve been weaned.

Why doesn’t New York have growler shops? As Camric and John explained to me, each state has different interpretations of a federal law that prohibits reselling of beers in anything other than their original containers. Law is weird, but what it means is that New York State laws would only allow a shop to sell beer from a single brewery, which is super disappointing.

Also, if you don’t love beer, there are also such things as growler wine shops, but also in Georgia and not New York.

J Doe is a [something ranked] Professor in STEM. S/he chooses to write this post anonymously, in part to make a point about the value of tenure and the protection it affords faculty from becoming political targets.  

Many of us in Madison are getting questions about what is happening with tenure, and the national media hasn’t adequately captured the reasons why there is a controversy. Cathy asked me if I could provide some insight, which I will do sort of “politifact” style. I choose to do so anonymously, in part to make a point about the value of tenure and the protection it affords faculty from becoming political targets.

——

CLAIM: What is happening in Wisconsin is the end of tenure as we know it.

RATING: Maybe

FACT: The authority to define the terms of tenure is being moved from state law to the Board of Regents. Depending on how this authority is applied, tenure could change dramatically or not at all.  The worst case scenario (see below) would indeed end tenure as we know it on campus.

——

CLAIM: The tenure protections given to the Board of Regents are the same as what is in state law. The change merely moves tenure from state law to the Regents.

RATING: Mostly false

FACT: The terms of tenure as they relate to dismissal for cause remain exactly the same. However, some care was taken to define the difference between dismissal, termination and indefinite layoff. Other than dismissal for cause, most schools only allow for termination of tenured faculty for reasons of financial exigency. The proposed new tenure guidelines for Wisconsin include language such as “program redirection” and other vague terminology, and this is what has people up in arms.

——

CLAIM: This is a dangerous situation

RATING: True

FACT: The addition of language related to program redirection is not the only change happening. Other language weakening shared governance makes faculty “subordinate to” the Chancellor on matters of programs and curricula.  The faculty will also now have weakened influence in selecting new Chancellors. The Regents are appointed by the Governor, with the most recent appointee being the son of a Bradley Foundation member.  In most states, the Regents set the terms of tenure, but they are not effectively political appointees.

Add these things up, and the Regents could appoint a Chancellor with the authority to unilaterally make program changes and terminate tenured faculty.  That is a worst-case scenario.

——

CLAIM: This is a great time to raid the UW for faculty

RATING: True, if you are an asshole

FACT: Some faculty will be looking to move on as the result of this situation. If you have previously talked about hiring a UW faculty member or are approached by UW faculty interested to make a change, by all means continue the discussion.

On the other hand, if you are suddenly strategizing on how to poach UW faculty, this makes you an opportunistic asshole. Rubbing your hands together with glee as we fight to ensure our ability to maintain a world class university is a nasty way to be. If someone’s house was on fire, would you grab a bucket of water, or would you think about stealing their TV?  Make no mistake that your university could be next, so do onto others as you would have them do onto you.

This week I’m fascinated by the issue of where student loans live on the spectrum of moral outrage versus sympathy, which I’ve been discussing with my friend Martha Poon recently. It’s also a very timely issue.

Let’s start on the sympathy side of things. The Corinthian 100 students, who were largely sympathetic figures organized by the group Strike Debt, decided to refuse to pay back student debt they accrued from going to Corinthian College, which was charged with all kinds of false advertising and fraud by, among others, the California Attorney General. I wrote about these protesters back when the group was only 15 large.

Just yesterday Education Secretary Arne Duncan announced that their debt would be forgiven, with certain caveats, that the organizers complained about. Indeed the forgiveness is not automatic, and the paperwork looks to be onerous, or even undoable, for the ex-Corinthian students. Even so, what’s interesting to me is Arne Duncan’s comments to the New York Times:

“You’d have to be made of stone not to feel for these students,” he said. “Some of these schools have brought the ethics of payday lending into higher education.”

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Lee Siegel’s recent New York Times opinion piece, where he explains his decision to default on his student debts. My Slate Money co-host Jordan Weissmann called him an “unrepentant leech” on his Slate response piece, noting that Siegel got a B.A., an M.A., and a masters of philosophy from Columbia University before deciding that his goal of being a writer didn’t jibe with his student debt, so why not just default.

This is a general trend when you talk to most people about student debt: the moral obligation is generally there, you need to pay it back or be considered a bad person, unless the circumstances are extreme, which means you can give evidence that the debt itself is fraudulent.

But there’s a third way of thinking about these things, which I picked up from finance (where, I like to say, you “learn to think like an asshole”). Namely, that there’s no morality attached to debt at all. I saw bankers and hedge funders defaulting and “renegotiating” debt contracts – especially things like long-term rental agreements – when things changed. It wouldn’t even be fair to say that they did it when they “couldn’t” pay the money they owed, because the accounting is so slippery in large companies. It was more like, they knew their lawyers were good, and they knew the other side knew that, and therefore they simply wouldn’t pay more than a certain amount that the other side would get in a dirty lawsuit that everyone wanted to avoid.

In other words, debt contracts, in the context of high finance, have been entirely removed from their moral roots. By contrast, the moral weight that individual consumers attach to what are tiny little contracts in comparison seem kind of random and quaint. Or are they?

It makes me want to conduct a thought experiment. Namely, what would it look like if we consumers thought of our debt in non-moralistic terms, like they do in finance? Would we even be able to do that? A test case is this guy, a failed condo developer profiled by the New York Times. Here are a couple of critical details:

The lender, Bank of America, had tried to foreclose after Mr. Rath stopped paying, but amid the craziness of the mortgage meltdown, it could not prove it was entitled to the property. Despite the bank’s pleas that Mr. Rath was seeking a “windfall,” a judge nullified the debt last year.

Mr. Rath has been renting out the condo for $10,000 a month since moving his family in 2010 to Connecticut, where they have taken up sailing full time. After spending this past winter in the Caribbean, the family is planning to sail to Europe this summer on a 55-foot Hanse 545 racing cruiser, before circumnavigating the globe.

Yeah, so, in other words, I’m not sure we can do it.

Even so, I’m interested in pushing ourselves to take a few steps towards it. I think it would be interesting to consider the effects of a widespread student debt strike, even if a bunch of those who would be involved are less than perfectly sympathetic. As Lee suggested, such a movement could result in more affordable college tuitions, a much more skeptical Department of Education, and a less commodified concept of social mobility.

Moreover, I think burdening young people with extreme debt is bad for the country, and especially bad for their ability to make good decisions about what to do with their lives. I’m all for a national discussion on this with the debt morality taken out.

Lately, as background research for my book, I’ve been looking into the 2008 cheating scandal associated with Michelle Rhee’s high stakes Value-Added Model regime in the D.C. area,

Specifically, I’m talking about the high erasure rates associated to certain standardized tests that had cash bonuses attached to large improvements, and the consequential investigation that was smothered.

Let me break it down. Certain high poverty schools weren’t doing so well. Michelle Rhee came in as chancellor and suggested that the teachers and principals simply needed some more incentives to achieve better student learning. Her theories got boosted by various academics. Teachers would get $8,000 for really great scores, and principals $10,000.

In addition to Rhee giving certain teachers bonuses, she fired hundreds of others, sometimes for bad scores, sometimes without explaining why.

Against this backdrop, you might not be surprised to hear, there was widespread cheating, or at least suspiciously high scores and suspiciously high erasure marks on student tests (12.7 erasures on average, compared to the average of less than 1).

An investigation followed but came up pretty empty. Compare that to the Atlanta cheating scandal, where a bunch of teachers were sent to jail for cheating. They were also working under a high-stakes testing regime of bonuses and firings.

I’m not suggesting we want more jailings, by the way. I’m suggesting that the original high-stakes regime was fundamentally flawed and naturally gave rise to the cheating in the first place.

Moreover, I’m suggesting that Michelle Rhee’s legacy was one were she was very happy to fire people but very reluctant to admit that her educational reform successes were based on lies.

Readers!

Due to a long bike ride complete with a flat tire, a surprise rain shower, and a pit stop at a diner, things have been rather slow this morning. But Aunt Pythia has been called to duty, finally! She’s so very glad to be here.

Let’s get started! And before you leave,

ask Aunt Pythia any question at all at the bottom of the page!

By the way, if you don’t know what the hell Aunt Pythia is talking about, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia.

——

Hi Aunt Pythia,

I’ve got this hopeless problem. I’ve developed an on-line crush.

Here’s the thing. I’m a well-to-do, middle-aged quant. I’m of the generation where people thought math & mathy things were totally uncool. But I love em. And I love those who love em. Stuff that norms love (e.g., sports, TV) I care nothing about. But talk about QE, I’m in rapture. “Kleptocracy” is part of my vocabulary. NC is a must-read morning website. But. I’ve been widowed for several years (yes, yes, insert appropriate maunderings here). And I miss … wimmen. I miss the pairing of stochastic systems and, well, … boobies. I miss intellectual debate combined with olive oil, al dente pasta, and a cold glass of Fresca.

Anyway, I’ve developed this crush on an on-line persona. She seems to like math. She shares my socioeconomic outlook and, inferentially, status. IDGAF about looks, etc. (fwiw, I’m an exemplar of “successfully-middle-aged-prosperous”). And I’d like to learn more.

How do I do this? Any suggestions? Any help? Any clue?

Hopeless Or Randomly Nascent Yob

Dear HORNY,

First of all, I love Fresca, and I am so glad you mentioned it. An entirely underappreciated soft drink. Second, I’d never heard of the word “maunderings” before but it’s a great word. And also, great sign-off.

I prefer the classic look.

So, what’s the problem here? You’re saying she’s awesome and (inferred to be) single? Have you also inferred that’s she’s horny? Are you asking me how to ask out a woman?

Here’s what you do, assuming you are in consistent and direct contact with her. You tell her you’ve developed a wonderful and delightful crush on her and you think she’s smart, funny, and wonderful in many ways. You say you don’t want to be at all pushy, but you’re wondering if she’s free for a light-hearted meal, at a location of her choice. It doesn’t have to be a date if she doesn’t wish it to be, but it could be if she wants.

There’s really nothing objectionable about flattery combined with a unimposing dinner invitation. You’ve got nothing to lose. Even if she says no she will be charmed.

If you’re still worried, write back with the proposed email invitation and I’ll take a look.

Aunt Pythia

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

I’m going back to school to improve on my quantitative skills. Since learning advanced Maths requires a solid foundation in the basics, I am finding it very difficult to appreciate the long-term process, when in the short-term I have tests to pass. I’m afraid that I am just passing the tests, without gaining deeper knowledge. Perhaps this feeling of existential dread will pass and everything will become more clear down the road, but what advice do you have for remaining more “present” and not too outcome oriented?

As a side note, I had a similar conversation with a professor of chemistry during my undergraduate education and he had this shocking advice for minorities (I am hispanic, btw): “don’t go into science.” His argument was that a career in math/science is lonely and costly in the short-term, compared to careers in law/business. As John Maynard Keynes says: “In the long run we are all dead.”

Impatiently Waiting

Dear IW,

Wow, what terrible advice. Did he really say that was his advice “for minorities”? Crazy racist.

Here’s my advice. When you get your problem sets, read them right away. Think about why the professor asked them. Ask yourself what you’re learning from them. Start working on them right away. In a word, stay a few steps away from panic in the local sense.

In a more global sense, have a plan for which classes you’re taking, what you’ll need to know them, and how you’re going to feel comfortable with the prerequisites. Be flexible if things don’t work out longer term, but take on challenges and be a bulldog in the short term. Keep your options open and grow them at every turn.

Good luck!

Aunt Pythia

——

Aunt Pythia,

Do you hear the lyrics to “Uptown Funk” as “straight masturbate” like I do, or “straight masterpiece” as written?

I’m using you in a test: if you hear it correctly, then I have to conclude that I’m sex-obsessed. If you hear it like I do, can’t draw a conclusion.

What are your favorite lyrics to mishear or intentionally mis-sing, especially with a sexy twist?

Thanks!

Like I Might Sometimes Understand Poorly

Dear LIMSUP,

OK here’s the song, so other readers can weigh in:

Yeah, I get you. I mean, I hear “masterpiece,” so yes you’re sex-obsessed, but I see why you get that wrong. They totally emphasize the “MAStur” part of the word, so it gets one kind of excited.

Also, speaking of excited, your sign-off made me excited, because it totally seemed planned, but I don’t get why it means anything. To be clear, limsup is a mathematical concept, but I’m not sure how it fits in with your question. But then again it’s not a criticism because sometimes I seem planned but I don’t end up meaning anything.

Aunt Pythia

p.s. I had to pause my Star Trek viewing with my teenagers in order to do this important investigative work. My 13-year-old says he hears “masterbeast.” Just wanted to thank you for that special moment with them.

——

Aunt Pythia,

Is there a term for sex that is intended to lead to pregnancy? I was talking with one of my friends and she just called it unprotected sex. That jarred, maybe because too many public health warnings make me equate unprotected sex with unsafe sex. Even putting that aside, unprotected sex misses the sense of work and obligation that seems to accompany intentionally trying to get pregnant.

Baby Making Welcome

Dear BMW,

What?! Work and obligation?! I always thought it should be called “the most excellent sex”. Because it was so excellent. It was so real, stakes were high. Loved that sex. A personal opinion.

But enough about Aunt Pythia, what do other people call it?

I’ve heard “raw sex,” “raw dog,” and of course “bareback.” I prefer raw dog, obviously. I’m a dog person.

Aunt Pythia

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

I am a gay man in my mid-thirties. Recently I entered a relationship with a man, “Tim”. To my delight, things are going well with Tim. I’m writing you because there is some potential friction between us: my past.

Tim and I have both been what you would call promiscuous, with many dozens of sexual partners for each of us. But Pythia, did you know there are different kinds of promiscuity? Outside of his past relationships, which were monogamous, Tim has only had brief affairs and one-night stands with strangers. My past relationships were also monogamous, but while single, I tend to sleep with my friends (some of whom are themselves coupled). In fact I’ve been single for some years now, and during that time I’ve built up a loving network of friends that borders on polyamory.

Tim doesn’t pass moral judgments on my behavior, nor would he ever forbid me from seeing my friends. And we agree that we will be a monogamous couple. The only problem is, Tim really doesn’t want to meet my “close” friends. He is not interested in being reassured that I won’t sleep with them anymore — in his view they are my exes. But you see, Pythia, those friends are really important to me, whether or not sex is involved. To me, friendship is one of life’s principal blessings, and I have been extraordinarily blessed. Sex seems so petty in comparison!

So we agree to disagree, right? No double dates with the couple I used to three-way with. This might be fine in the short term, but I find it hard to imagine integrating Tim into my life without disintegrating my friend network in equal measure. Besides, in our little gay universe, we will inevitably run into people in social events that I have a history with. I’m not going to want to give them the cold shoulder.

Does Tim need to open his mind and be more sex-positive? Or do I need to set some boundaries with my friends in order to build a serious relationship of my own?

Love,

Ready to Settle

Dear Ready,

I don’t think it’s OK for Tim to separate you from your community because of a bizarre principle of “no seeing any exes.” That it too bullying, especially since you are ready to be trustworthy about not sleeping with them.

If I were you I’d talk to Tim about this abstractly, when there are no exes in the vicinity making him feel jealous. Tell him how important your community is to you, and how much you care for him, but how it’s not fair to have to choose between the two.

Having reread your question, though, it seems like maybe Tim is comfortable with you hanging out with your friends but doesn’t want to join in on the social stuff. If that’s the case, I’d say that’s possibly workable, as long as he doesn’t give you guilt trips when you do regularly go out with them. After all, nobody can be everything to someone. Plenty of happy couples I know don’t socialize in the same circles.

Aunt Pythia

——

People, people! Aunt Pythia loves you so much. And she knows that you love her. She feels the love. She really really does.

Well, here’s your chance to spread your Aunt Pythia love to the world! Please ask her a question. She will take it seriously and answer it if she can.

Click here for a form or just do it now:

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that the sharing economy is actually sharing something, namely insurance costs. In particular, I was concerned about the gaps in insurance coverage represented by Uber drivers and AirBnB hosts at certain times. Here’s a cheat sheet:

1. Personal insurance covers Uber drivers when their Uber app is off, so they are simply driving around.
2. Uber covers them when they have passengers, although their deductibles are sometimes high.
3. But what about when they have their app on, so are looking for customers, but those customers are not in the car? There’s apparently no coverage for this.
4. This actually matters; a child got killed by an Uber driver in exactly this situation. Actually more than one child.
5. Also, there are chat boards of Uber drivers suggesting how to hide the fact that their app was on in case of an accident; clearly this only applies to minor accidents, not major ones, but it supports my original theory that all of our car insurance policies will be going up because of Uber drivers.

Well the news this week is that Allstate has created a new insurance policy for Uber drivers which will cover them when their app is on, so they’re “commercial,” but before a customer has been picked up. This leaves me with a few questions.

1. They said it will cost $15 to $20 on average, per year, which seems very very small. Does that include the asston of registered Uber drivers that don’t drive very much at all? Will it cost an arm and a leg to cover a heavy user of Uber?
2. Who pays for this, Uber or the drivers? According to reports, Uber was working very very hard to avoid this insurance from existing, or rather they were pushing very very hard against regulations in California that would insist on separate insurance coverage to fill the gap.
3. That makes me think this is a big deal for Uber, and it’s way more expensive than it sounds, and that Uber doesn’t want to pay for it.
4. If the drivers are expected to pay for it, and if it’s more expensive like I suspect it is, then their hourly wages are going down, maybe to shitty levels.
5. That’s kind of what happens when you create a business models that make money in part by bypassing regulations, and then the regulations catch up with you: your profit margins fall.

Crossposted on nakedcapitalism.com.

There is a study out, entitled The Best and The Rest: Revisiting the Norm of Normality of Individual Performance, written by two business school professors, that has been bothering me recently. I’ll explain why soon, but first a thought experiment.

——

Imagine a group of people competing for something. They’re all driven, talented people, who have put serious resources into getting good at this particular thing. They’ve also all had help of some form, and encouragement from their community to compete in this arena. At the very least they have to have deep confidence in their own abilities to even compete in this particular area.

At the end of the competition, that particular one, these people are ranked according to how they’ve done. By luck, by skill, depending on previous practice, resources, or direct support from external advisors, some of them have achieved impressively high rankings, while others, in spite of their hard work and efforts, are falling behind.

Next, there’s a community feedback element. This group of people are not done – they’re hoping to become famous worldwide, or at least in this arena, for being highly ranked, maybe even the best. And the community has direct influence on what happens next, in future rounds of competition. So, individuals can vote for certain people to win, or directly give them more time or resources to do so, or even help them in their next round.

In subsequent rounds, the ranking gets more defined and the community becomes increasingly certain that the winners deserve to be there and that they are truly fabulous at this particular skill, even though the original native differences in talent are not enormous. Luck, resources, and self-confidence were all important indicators of success in that first round, some just as important as native skill.

This continues for years. At retirement, the highly ranked individuals have produced a massive amount compared to the ones that did poorly in the early rounds. In fact, the distribution is highly skewed, and seems to serve as proof that the original ranking was warranted.

——

I didn’t specify what field the above story took place in, so let me suggest a few that might work. First, there’s the music industry. Lots of would-be rock stars vie to be the next Taylor Swift. Heck, even Taylor Swift vied, once upon a time, to become herself. Of course, it helped that she was able to persuade her wealthy parents to move to Nashville when she was 14 to pursue her career. And – not to say she isn’t talented, because she most definitely is – we all know that once you have a hit, your career is much more likely to go well after that, with contracts, money, support, and great musicians flocking to you.

Or, it could be academics. If you stand out as an undergrad, especially at the right college, you get into a good grad school, and if you have enough confidence, determination, and the good luck to get a nice thesis problem, you might have a thesis that stands out, which leads to NSF grants, reduced teaching loads, opportunities to speak at conferences, semesters off of teaching to pursue research, and a host of co-authors who are increasingly willing to do the work to write up joint results. Again, none of this happens without determination, drive, and talent, but it definitely happens more and faster with the help of a supportive community. It’s all about the feedback loop of success.

Or, here’s another arena: sales. If you are known as a successful salesman, if you have a slightly better reputation than the next salesperson, then you’ll get the dibs on the jobs in a typical organization. That means you can be choosy, and take the easy pickings, and pass over the harder jobs. Over time your likability and personal network grows, and you become the go-to person in the organization for success, partly because of your hard work ethic, but partly because of the way success breeds success.

Or how about basketball? All professional basketball players are amazingly good at what they do. How much better does one have to be to get more playing time? Which leads, of course, to more points, more double doubles, or what have you.

——

Now to the paper. It talks about the distribution of performance, and notes that in arenas above, performance, which they equate with output of songs for musicians, or papers for academics, or sales figures for salesmen, are distributed more as a power law probability distribution than as a bell curve. Of course, that is true, and I think we know why, from above. It even has a name: the Matthew Effect, which is even referred to in the paper, on page 112.

The primary goal of the paper is to make the case that “performance” is not normally distributed. It is distributed with a much fatter tail. They suggest using the Pareto distribution:

Before I go on, let me mention that their examples are restricted to researchers, entertainers, politicians, and amateur and professional athletes. They never mention secretaries, computer programmers, marketers, cashiers, or data analysts. In fact most of the people who work at regular jobs are completely excluded from this study.

So it’s really more accurate to say that the primary goal of the paper is to redefine the word “performance”. They switch from one definition to the other without explanation, so their studies on pro athletes somehow magically refer to average workers.

That brings us to the second goal of this paper. Namely, the conclusion that we should use this “performance isn’t normally distributed” rule to focus even more on elite actors.

Here’s one version of the elitism argument (page 108):

Leadership theories that avoid how best to manage elite workers will likely fail to influence the total productivity of the followers in a meaningful way. Thus, greater attention should be paid to the tremendous impact of the few vital individuals. Despite their small numbers, slight percentage increases in the output of top performers far outweigh moderate increases of the many. New theory is needed to address the identification and motivation of elite performers.

What’s particularly irksome is this kind of logic (page 112):

For selection, this means that there are real and important differences between the best candidate and the second best candidate. Superstars make or break an organization, and the ability to identify these elite performers will become even more of a necessity as the nature of work changes in the 21st century (Cascio & Aguinis, 2008b)

If you think back to our original thought experiment, there is actually very little difference between good candidates at the beginning. Second, this “we absolutely need to keep our talent” mentality is exactly the argument we see time and time again excusing pay raises for CEO’s. And now there’s a “mathematical” reason for it.

That brings us to the third and final goal of the paper, the “CEO pay is not exorbitant” argument, (page 112):

Likewise, compensation systems such as pay for performance and CEO compensation are an especially divisive issue, with many claiming that disproportionate pay is an indicator of unfair practices (Walsh, 2008). Such differences are seen as unfair because if performance is normally distributed then pay should be normally distributed as well.

Let me rephrase: since “performance” isn’t normally distributed, there’s no way pay should be either, when we define it for everyone. So let’s just go ahead and overpay CEO’s.

It might be a good moment to remind people that even in academics, the top performers don’t make 100 times what the lower performers get. Compare that to McDonalds, where the burger flippers would have to work 1 million hours to get one year of CEO pay.

In pop music and pro sports, there is a crazy pay differential, but that’s not something to be proud of or something we want to replicate.

I’ve been invited to give a short presentation at the Personal Democracy Forum, which will be held next Thursday and Friday at NYU Skirball Center, 566 LaGuardia Place.

The bad news is my talk is 12 minutes. That’s super short. The good news is I’m speaking in the big room, along with other interesting speakers including Cory Doctorow.

The theme of this year’s PDF is “civic tech.” And since I really don’t know what that term means, I’m looking forward to learning. For my part, I’m interpreting it to mean “how technology and data usage affects the public.” I have a lot to say about that subject, and it’s mostly skeptical.

The title of my talk, like my book, is Weapons of Math Destruction, and they did a little interview of me in advance of the conference, which you can read here.

Tickets to the Personal Democracy Forum are still available but are expensive. If they do what they did last year, they will eventually have the talks available on video.

Do you know about ravelry? If you’re a knitter or crocheter (or weaver or spinner) you probably do.

It’s kind of like a Facebook for knitters, but much less creepy, because it’s the exact kind of information you want to be sharing, and the exact kind of showcasing of others that you want to be peering at.

It’s an amazing success story. Started in 2007 by a husband and wife team, it now boasts more than 4 million users worldwide, representing 5 billion kilometers of yarn. Each person who is registered gets to create a profile consisting of their projects, complete with notes or even a blog about their trials and tribulations making it, and of course lots of fantastic pictures of their work in progress.

A user can also show off their “stash,” which is to say their backup yarn, which they can trade with others, and they can have a list of favorite projects or designs of others, and even a library list of books and patterns that they have. There’s ample opportunity to comment on how beautiful other people’s projects are – and knitters are very generous with praise – and there are forums for general discussions.

One last thing. There are group projects, where knitters do projects together, often led by a designer who “surprises” them with little pieces of the pattern at a time. It’s a fun idea called a “knit-along.”

OK, so here’s the idea. Why doesn’t someone start a ravelry for people who work out?

I’m convinced that people who work out are almost like knitters. They have little projects that they like to obsess over, they plan them extensively, they like to keep track of progress, they love talking to other worker-outers about their plans, and they like to do stuff in groups led by a master worker-outer.

I’m sure there currently are discussion forums for people who love keeping track of their miles or whatever, but I’m pretty sure nothing as extensive and as thoughtful as ravelry exists. I’m talking about a place where you create a “workout profile” and upload your fitbit data if you want, to create graphs of your cumulative miles, and your friends who are also training for that triathlon can also put their graphs up, and you can discuss workout clothes and which weighted vests are the best.

I know a little bit about this world because once I competed in a sprint triathlon and it was definitely as obsessive as my lifelong knitting hobby. Plus, now a good friend of mine works out a lot and constantly wants to talk to me about weighted vests, and I’m always thinking to myself, “there must be a community somewhere for this guy to talk about weighted vests!? Why not a ravelry for workouters?”.

Just think: instead of knit-alongs, you’d have surprise workout regiments (that sounds kind of fun!). Instead of pictures of half-done works in progress, you’d have graphs and pictures of sweaty t-shirts (that sounds kind of gross, but I still think people would dig it). And instead of completed projects where the knitted sweater is showcased on the cute kid, you’d have a little electronic badge saying, “Amy completed the New York City Triathlon!”

In terms of business model, it would be a lot like ravelry: free for users, funded by incredible ad opportunities for things that obsessive people actually really want, when they want them. Although it’s fair to say that the ads I see for silk/cashmere blend yarns that appear on ravelry are kind of predatory. But they definitely work.

Free business idea for y’all, I hope you like it.

The annual Left Forum conference is this weekend, Friday to Sunday, at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, located on 59th at 10th. Formerly the Socialist Scholars Conference, the Left Forum brings together lefty scholars like Noam Chomsky and Cornel West as well as organizers and activists.

The theme for this year’s conference is “No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism and Democracy.” There’s also an emphasis on the #BlackLivesMatter movement and understanding what happened in Ferguson, as well as stuff going on in Greece.

I’ll be participating in two panels. First, a Saturday panel (3:15pm-5:00pm) called What is Occupy Up To?, to be held in room1.100, with the following description:

The occupation is over but groups with roots in Zuccotti Park are working actively in many ways. Representatives of some of these groups will discuss their current efforts and we will look for a participatory discussion of how the movement can be effective. Committed at this time: OccuEvolve – Sumumba Sobukwe, Occupy the SEC – Neil Taylor, OWS Alternative Banking – Cathy O’Neil, Debt Collective / Strike Debt — Luke Herrine Copies of the book Occupy Finance will be available free to attendees while supplies last.

Second, a regular Alt Banking meeting on Sunday from 10am-noon, to be held in room 1.119, which has the following description:

Occupy Alternative Banking proposes to run one of its typical weekly Sunday meetings as a Left Forum workshop, as it did the last two years. You can learn about us at http://altbanking.net/. But in brief, we grew out of Open University sessions at the Occupy protests, and have been meeting ever since. We are open to all comers, and meet every Sunday afternoon at Columbia University to discuss current events and theory related to the dysfunction of the financial system, develop strategies, and endeavor to implement them. Our meeting-structure involves listing some topics for possible discussion, allowing attendees to add others, and then voting on two or three to discuss (in assembly-style format) during the meeting. We believe our two previous appearances at the Left Forum were very successful, both in terms of how they were received, and in their bringing some wonderful new consistent members to our weekly meetings and community. We propose to run a similar workshop this year. Other presenters will include Natasha Blakely and Thessy Mehrain, both of Occupy Alternative Banking.

Slate recently published a piece entitled You Can’t Handle the (Algorithmic) Truth, written by Adam Elkus, a Ph.D. student in computational social science at George Mason University (hat tip Chris Wiggins).

In it, Elkus criticizes those who criticize unaccountable algorithms. He suggests that algorithms are simply the natural placeholders of bureaucracy, and we should aim our hatred at bureaucracy instead of algorithms. In his conclusion he goes further in defending the machines:

If computers implementing some larger social value, preference, or structure we take for granted offends us, perhaps we should do something about the value, preference, or structure that motivates the algorithm. After all, algorithms can be reprogrammed. It is much harder—but not impossible—to recode social systems and institutions than computers. Perhaps the humans who refuse to act for what they believe in while raising fear about computers are the real ones responsible for the decline of our agency, choice, and control—not the machines. They just can’t handle the (algorithmic) truth.

I’ve read this paragraph a few times and it’s still baffling to me. I think he’s suggesting that people complaining about the use of unaccountable algorithms are causing a problem by “refusing to act.” And since I count myself as one of the people in question, I’m having difficulty understanding what it is exactly that I’m refusing to do.

I’ve never met anyone in this field who imagines that algorithms sprung up out of the computers themselves, ready to act in an unaccountable way. No: it is well understood that algorithms were designed, implemented, and deployed by human beings. The unaccountability of algorithms is moreover a feature, not a bug, for such people, and is often entirely deliberate – the algos represent new ways of punishing and rewarding people without having to do it in person and without taking responsibility.

For example, think about the Value-Added Model for teachers, which I have written about extensively, or evidence-based sentencing and paroling. In the first case, the algorithms conveniently, if randomly, assesses teachers with an “objective” tool that the teachers do not understand and cannot question, in the ironic name of teacher accountability. In the case of evidence-based sentencing, the judges can use and then point to the models without fear of being held personally responsible for decisions.

Now, here’s where I’ll agree with Elkus. We can’t pretend that it’s the “algorithm’s fault.” it is most definitely the fault of the people who decide to trust the algorithm and act automatically on the basis of the algorithm’s output [1].

Where I disagree with Elkus is the idea that there’s nothing new here. Algorithms have given bureaucrats a new set of tools for their arsenals, ones that are naturally intimidating, opaque, and which carry a false sense of objectivity. We should absolutely question their use and, to be sure, the underlying goals and assumptions of the people in power who deploy them.

1. So, if we found that the Google search algorithm were racist, it would not be the algorithm’s fault. It would instead be the fault of Google employees to continue to deploy its flawed algorithm. I would add that, given the various ways that Google algorithms can go wrong, and their widespread use and impact, it is the responsibility of Google to monitor its algorithms for such flaws.

Take a look at this article (hat tip Felix Salmon), which has me absolutely raging this morning, about new legislation in Kansas that prevents poor people on welfare from taking out more than $25 per day using their state-issued debit cards.

To be clear, you have to round up to the nearest $20 if you want to take out money from an ATM, so that’s really the limit.

And to be clear, there’s a $1 fee to take out money, and then typically an extra $2.50 fee if you don’t have a bank account, which many of the affected people do not.

So altogether, they’re giving $3.50 for every $20 of their welfare benefits, which I’d characterize as a bank tax of 17.5%. Because poor people don’t need that money, never mind the convenience of paying their actual bills.

For fuck’s sake, Kansas.

Yesterday and today I’m in Camden, New Jersey, working on a data task force for the Camden County Police Department. Yesterday we learned about how they currently run their systems and today we are hopefully going to address how they will do so in the future.

I got to see President Obama when he came here yesterday and talked about the Camden Police as a role model for the nation. The New York Times covered his visit as well and wasn’t so sure, given its record of accusations of excessive force by the police.

The way they collect those records and, to some extent, the way they respond to complaints are part of what I’m helping them think about, so I’ll know more soon, and I will be sure to write about it.

The Chief of Police, Scott Thomson, certainly says the right things. You can get to know him a bit through this interview, but I was struck yesterday by his emphasis on morality and community trust over the culture of an occupying force. Even so, Camden is a tough place, and not everything suddenly gets better even with a police force doing their best.

Another way of saying that is that, if we take the problems with the police away from a troubled city, you expose a whole pile of other problems.

I’m excited as always to see my buddy Jordan Ellenberg, who’s in town accepting a Guggenheim Fellowship.

You might have thought that Guggenheims were awarded to starving artists, and you would be mostly right, but they also give them out to a couple of math people each year as well.

Since Jordan has kids and I have kids, we got to talking about how fantastic our kids are, which led Jordan to show me this adorable video involving him and his son C.J.:

It’s in reference to the National Math Festival, which was held in April in D.C.. Jordan spoke there about his book How Not To Be Wrong, which I reviewed a while ago. A couple of comments:

• If you look carefully, you will also see my buddy Rebecca Goldin with one of her (many) adorable kids in the video,
• My favorite part (and Jordan’s) is where he puts his head inside a Fibonacci sequence, even though that makes no sense,
• My sons would never be this math positive. They enjoy talking about how much they hate school in general and math in particular.
• I’m kind of proud of how I’m raising them to be “independent thinkers,” though, which is what I call that.

Sometimes your conspiracy theory turns out to be absolutely true.

Over the past few years, primarily due to conversations I’ve had at my weekly Alt Banking meetings, I’ve become increasingly concerned about the crazy real estate industry in New York City and New York State. A few pertinent facts:

• There’s been a crazy luxury housing boom. Specifically, more luxury housing is being built than there are people who could reasonably afford them.
• Except perhaps the way to look at such apartments is that they are not apartments at all but financial instruments for rich people.
• Specifically, rich people who want to hide or launder their money. The disclosure laws are suspiciously lax.
• On the side of “affordable housing,” which the Alt Banking group wrote about here in our Huffington Post blog, there are ridiculous tax abatement laws that benefit builders. Specifically, the “421a” law, which Dean Skelos, Republican majority leader in the State Senate, is somehow involved with.
• Specifically, it seems that Skelos demanded money for his son in return for playing nice with developers.
• The ironic thing is how small the pay-offs are: on the level of $200K. Compare that to the $1.2 billion of taxes that have gone uncollected by the 421a law.
• In the meantime, the construction unions are being decimated by the real estate industry, even in this outrageously flush time. They are trying to organize around repealing the 421a law.

I am really hoping we can clear up this mess and end the corruption in the New York real estate market soon. Housing is a big deal.

People! PEOPLE! Aunt Pythia needs your help!!

Here’s the thing, dear readers. Aunt Pythia screwed up royally. She told you a couple of weeks back that she had plenty of questions, and in a sense she did, but that was misleading, and moreover it has backfired tremendously.

You see, Aunt Pythia finally read all those questions, and for some reason they were almost entirely spammy, nonsense questions, and moreover none of them were at all about sex, so that’s also a terrible fact. Don’t do this to me, it’s uncalled for.

But the worst part is that, since Aunt Pythia (wrongly) declared her mailbox full, she’s not receiving new letters! In fact, it’s a dire situation, and Aunt Pythia might be shutting down the advice bus and selling it off for spare parts before the week’s end unless something is done.

Is this not the saddest sight in the whole wide world? And it’s made even sadder because it’s in black and white.

We’re talking urgent sex questions, down below, stick ’em in, and pronto. Aunt Pythia desperately loves her job and doesn’t want to stop. Her standards are low but please make it coherent and sex-related.

That request once again:

ask Aunt Pythia a made-up sex question at the bottom of the page!

By the way, if you don’t know what the hell Aunt Pythia is talking about, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia.

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

Super Pi day = “Once in a century”?
Really?

What about in Europe where dates are written:
dd/mm/yy??

So April 31, 2015 is:
31/4/15

Dated in Europe

Dear DiE,

First, condolences for your unfortunate sign-off.

Second: hey, I was thinking the same thing – what if you write it in some other base? Like, using this online calculator, you can convert any base 10 number into whatever (integral) base you’d like. They even have the option to use “pi” or “e” or “sqrt,” because they are good nerds! That gives you a ton more “Super Pi Days,” if you’re creative enough.

And if you do it more generally, you could even choose a non-integral base! Hey, it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that, allowing the base to be arbitrary, and allowing dates to be written European or American style would mean that most dates qualify as “Super Pi Days.”

To be clear, it doesn’t mean those days becomes less super, just that almost every day is super. Or maybe pi is always super. In any case, it would be an awesome excuse to party every day whilst feasting on pie.

Love,

Aunt Pythia

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

When I grade, I spend about 10 minutes grading. Then I spend 5 minutes thinking the world is doomed. Then I calm down a bit, and spend 5 more minutes thinking that just my students are doomed. Then I spend 5 minutes thinking about how it’s all my fault because I’m an incompetent teacher. Then I spend 5 minutes thinking about how little anything I could have done differently would have made a difference. Then I spend 5 minutes thinking about how I’m wasting my time with these idle thoughts, and 5 more minutes considering that not having these idle thoughts would be intellectually dishonest. Around this time, I’m ready to go back to grading, at which point the cycle repeats itself.

Obviously, I can’t really afford to always spend 4 hours doing grading that should really take 1 hour.

Any advice for dealing with this?

Feeling Absolutely Incompetent Looking Upon Results on Exams

Dear FAILURE,

Here’s the thing. Your expectations are all wrong. Instead of being disappointed when not everyone understands everything, you have to be overjoyed when someone understands something. Also, you need to learn how to trick yourself into a success story. Let me tell you how it’s done.

What I do when I grade is create an internal environment inside my head, kind of a suspension of disbelief zone, where I lower my expectations to to the point where I’m like, man I hope someone passed this test.

Then I charge ahead with grading like a steamroller, practically holding my breath the entire time, and I don’t let myself breath until all the grades are added up and plotted in a histogram. At that point I’m like, ok here’s the distribution of scores, I will define the grades so that, by construction, a good portion of people have passed. That way my fantasies always come true, even if the scores are crowded down around 17.

Good luck!

Aunt Pythia

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

What is your take on what is happening in Seattle with restaurants? To me, it was predictable that restaurants would not be financially viable with $15 an hour wait staff. We apparently assumed that it would work and so forced the issue on that basis. Was this another case where our left-wing activist buddies ignored science and economics, or am I just too much in the hip pocket of rapacious big business?

Between Planets

Dear Between,

Wait are you talking about recent closures of Seattle restaurants blamed on the minimum wage hike? Well, I google “Seattle restaurants minimum wage” and immediately came upon this article arguing that it is a bogus claim.

In any case restaurants go out of business all the time, it’s a crazy industry. Anybody looking for evidence that they are going out of business for a given reason would have plenty of statistical noise ready and willing to distract them. I’d have to look at many years of data to be convinced.

Aunt Pythia

——

Dear Aunt Pythia,

I try not to pay attention to politics, but I have become increasingly worried as I can’t help but hear about things that seem threatening. I want to live in the same country that I grew up in, where we were free to think what we wanted, and if we dared, to speak about it. I also liked the fact that we voted for representatives who served in Washington, making votes for us. I don’t want to live in a new Venezuela with a new supreme leader. I hope that I am panicking needlessly. Sorry for a political topic. I am generally an insurgent, in that my first vote for president was for Eldridge Cleaver. In 1980, I voted for John Anderson. I am sorry that I voted for Ron Paul in 1988, but that is water over the dam. I would like to vote for Elizabeth Warren, if she would dare to run. What can we do?

Sonoma Soul

Sonoma,

Good news, Bernie Sanders is running. Bad news, money in politics paired with the new micro-targeting strategies probably mean that no insurgent will ever win again. This is ironic considering that Obama was an insurgent and won but also built the modern micro-targeting machine. He closed the door behind him.

Aunt Pythia

——

Congratulations, you’ve wasted yet another Saturday morning with Aunt Pythia! I hope you’re satisfied, you could have lazed about in your pajamas for longer. Oh wait, you’re still in your pajamas, I take it all back. Well done.

But as long as you’re already here, please ask me a question. And don’t forget to make an amazing sign-off, they make me very very happy.

Click here for a form or just do it now:

I’ve been thinking recently about the definition of “civilization.” What makes a society civilized? I have some guesses, here are a few guesses, kind of in order of obviousness:

• A place where grown men don’t get harassed when they walk around minding their own business. I’m looking at you, broken windows policies.
• A place where young girls don’t get sexually harassed when they walk around minding their own business. I’m looking at you, India rape culture.
• A place where young girls and grown women aren’t constantly bombarded by messages that they are expected to conform to a male fantasy definition of beauty. I’m looking at you, almost everywhere. But specifically Brazil.

Here’s what I’d like to see: a series of articles in places like NY Magazine, that directly contrast to articles about how French women use makeup – but spend only 15 minutes on it per day – and still look amazingly sexy, or don’t diet and still look amazingly sexy, and so on.

I’d like instead an article specifically written for the woman who wants to know where they can walk around minding their own business and being utterly indifferent to their appearance, and they won’t be bothered. Let’s defend our right to be dowdy as shit.

Special kudos to places where young women can walk around dressed in anything they want and still be left alone.

So tell me, do you know of any places like that?

I’ve been skeptical of Uber and other so-called “sharing economy” companies for a while. It seems like they are making money by skirting regulation and pretending not to have employees; they are a “platform” for matching people who want services with people willing to provide them, and as such they don’t have the legal responsibility of a traditional company. Or at least that’s the idea. Plus it is offensive to think of the word “share” in this context.

But my complaints have remained relatively vague, until this morning, when I read two articles about the issue.

First, Sharing and Caring by Tom Slee, published by Jacobin. He nailed it:

Meanwhile delivery giant DHL has launched its MyWays delivery service, powered by “people who want to deliver parcels and earn some extra money.” TaskRabbit and others call their workers “micro-entrepreneurs,” but that is a poor description of precarious piecework. The preferred phrasing of “extra money” harks back to women’s jobs of forty years ago. And like those jobs, they don’t come with things like insurance protection, job security, benefits — none of that old economy stuff.

Next, The Class-Action Lawyer Shaking Up the Share Economy, published in The Recorder (hat tip Nathalie Molina). It profiles a lawyer named Shannon Liss-Riordan who is going after the sharing economy companies to first acknowledge, then pay their employees better wages and benefits. From the article:

“Uber is what, the most highly valued startup in the world right now?” she asked. “Valued at over $40 billion? I think they can afford to pay for workers’ comp and unemployment.”

Last Friday I was honored to be part of a super interesting and provocative conference at UC Berkeley’s Law School called Open Data: Addressing Privacy, Security, and Civil Rights Challenges.

What I loved about this conference is that it explicitly set out to talk across boundaries of the data world. That’s unusual.

Broadly speaking, there are four camps in the “big data” world:

1. The corporate big data camp. This involves the perspective that we use data to know our customers, make our products tailored to their wants and needs, generally speaking keep our data secret so as to maximize profits. The other side of this camp is the public, seen as consumers.
2. The security crowd. These are people like Bruce Schneier, whose book I recently read. They worry about individual freedom and liberty, and how mass surveillance and dragnets are degrading our existence. I have a lot of sympathy for their view, although their focus is not mine. The other side of this camp is the NSA, on the one hand, and hackers, on the other, who exploit weak data and privacy protections.
3. The open data crowd. The people involved with this movement are split into two groups. The first consists of activists like Aaron Swartz and Carl Malamud, whose basic goal is to make publicly available things that theoretically, and often by law, should be publicly available, like court proceedings and scientific research, and the Sunlight Foundation, which focuses on data about politics. The second group of “open data” folks come from government itself, and are constantly espousing the win-win-win aspects of opening up data: win for companies, who make more profit, win for citizens, who have access to more and better information, and win for government, which benefits from more informed citizenry and civic apps. The other side of this camp is often security folks, who point out how much personal information often leaks through the cracks of open data.
4. Finally, the camp I’m in, which is either the “big data and civil rights” crowd, or more broadly the people who worry about how this avalanche of big data is affecting the daily lives of citizens, not only when we are targeted by the NSA or by someone stealing our credit cards, but when we are born poor versus rich, and so on. The other side of this camp is represented by the big data brokers who sell information and profiles about everyone in the country, and sometimes the open data folks who give out data about citizens that can be used against them.

The thing is, all of these camps have their various interests, and can make good arguments for them. Even more importantly, they each have their own definition of the risks, as well as the probability of those risks.

For example, I care about hackers and people unreasonably tracked and targeted by the NSA, but I don’t think about that nearly as much as I think about how easy it is for poor people to be targeted by scam operations when they google for “how do I get food stamps”. As another example, when I saw Carl Malamud talk the other day, he obviously puts some attention into having social security numbers of individuals protected when he opens up court records, but it’s not obvious that he cares as much about that issue as someone who is a real privacy advocate would.

Anyway, we didn’t come to many conclusions in one day, but it was great for us all to be in one room and start the difficult conversation. To be fair, the “corporate big data camp” was not represented in that room as far as I know, but that’s because they’re too busy lobbying for a continuation of little to no regulation in Washington.

And given that we all have different worries, we also have different suggestions for how to address those worries; there is no one ideal regulation that will fix everything, and for that matter some people involved don’t believe that government regulations can ever work, and that we need citizen involvement above all, especially when it comes to big data in politics. A mishmash, in other words, but still an important conversation to begin.

I’d like it to continue! I’d like to see some public debates between different representatives of these groups.

I just got back from Berkeley, California, which was amazing.

Listening to the radio out there, I was pleased to hear all about the growing standardized testing protest movement going on here in New York City. And although I see lots of reasons to discuss Common Core issues separately from the over-reliance on testing, I can understand why parents are wrapping all of that stuff up together.

There’s just too much time spent in our schools on testing, so pulling our kids out of that complete waste is an obvious step in the right direction. And New York parents are not the only ones complaining. In Florida, of all places, they recently limited the number of hours kids can be made to take standardized tests.

There will be a rally today at 4pm at the Prospect Park bandshell in Brooklyn for parents who are joining the New York state opt-out movement. I wish I could go.

Another huge story out there in the Bay Area, which I’ll come back to on some other day, is the racist texting and email scandal among the San Francisco police.