mathbabe

I meet a lot of people, at airports and music festivals. I’m a friendly, talkative kind of person (at least when I haven’t slept in a wet tent for two nights straight). When they ask me what I do for a living, I often say I’m a mathematician. Then they pretty much always tell me how much they hate math. When I ask why, they often suggest it was trigonometry that killed any interest they might have had for the subject.

I agree, trigonometry sucks. Fuck trigonometry. It’s a terribly unmotivated subject, and as a student you are expected to memorize double angle formulas with no proofs. It’s never clear why you’re learning it, except for the possibility of later memorizing the integrals and derivatives of said functions. It’s almost a case study in how to make someone feel like math is meant to be mysterious. A few comments before you decide I’m being unfair.

First, yes, trigonometric functions are needed in Fourier Analysis, which is hugely important nowadays for the sake of music files and information compression. But by the time you’re working with Fourier Analysis, you have more mathematical technology, and in particular you know the magic formula which makes all mysterious double and half angle formulas super easy, namely Euler’s Formula:

Understanding this formula, the Fourier Analyst is equipped to work with trig functions without all the mystery, and absolutely no memorization. In fact my mom did me the favor of explaining the above formula to me when I was in high school so I could avoid all the memorization. It helped, but even then I had memorized it, and it wasn’t until college that I understood it.

Next, this isn’t the first time I have pooped on trig. I wrote a post about statistics and algebra teaching in high schools a while ago, and in that post I suggested chucking trig from the curriculum. A few people stood up for trig in the comments. Here’s what they said.

• Someone mentioned it’s needed in “shop class.” But then they went on to explain the shop classes no longer exist.
• Someone mentioned that trig functions are great examples of periodic functions. While that’s true, we don’t need to go deeply into the subject – never mind double angle formulas – to explain that. Even just talking about an ant walking around the unit circle would be sufficient, especially if we asked for the x- and y- coordinates of the ant at a given time. Enough said. We could end the lesson with a historical remark along the lines of, by the way these functions have names, they’re called the sine and cosine functions, and you’ll learn more about them when you learn about the complex plane and Fourier Analysis.
• Someone mentioned that they use trig functions every day at work in the physical sciences. Again, I’m willing to bet they also know about the complex plane.
• Nobody mentioned that ship captains needed trig, but again we have GPS now.

When I mentioned my hatred of trigonometry to my husband, he countered with an argument that wasn’t mentioned so far. Namely, that we have really no reason to teach high school kids any given thing, so we just choose a bunch of things kind of at random. Moreover, he suggested, if we remove trig, then meeting people at an airport would just elicit some other reason for hating math. We’d be simply replacing trig with some other crappy topic choice.

I disagree. Although it’s not obvious that everyone needs higher level algebra in their daily lives (although they most definitely do need to solve systems of linear equations), it’s still more defensible to teach them to factor quadratic polynomials than it is to introduce arctan. And even though most people end up memorizing the quadratic formula, it is at least derivable using a simple completion of the square. In other words, it’s at least clear that there is an explanation, even if you don’t have it at your fingertips.

There’s a really interesting article over at the Wall Street Journal today, written by Andrea Fuller and entitled The Watchdogs of College Education Rarely Bite. The article discusses the accreditation system for colleges, and how it is more or less dysfunctional. Here’s an example from the article of how they are failing to do a good job:

At Bluefield State College in West Virginia, accreditors from the Higher Learning Commission suggested in 2011 that new electronic signs on campus might be difficult for students to read while driving, according to a copy of the report. The report didn’t mention the college’s graduation rate of 25% or less since 2006.

There is troubling evidence presented in the article that we should definitely pay attention to. It’s quite possible that the accreditors are being paid off, or at least have insufficient reason to come down hard on terribly performing schools. I hope we spend time rethinking the whole system.

However, I think it’s interesting to think about the metrics of success that were used in the article. It’s also an important step towards designing a more “data-driven” accreditation approach.

So, for the most part, the article described things in terms of graduation rates and student loan defaults. Not a bad start if you wanted to measure a school: you want high graduate rates, and you want low student loan default rates. Also, they did a good thing, namely compared these numbers to a baseline. In this case their baseline was the average for the schools that have lost accreditation since 2000. Here’s their plot:

Again, these are important metrics, but the logic of the above chart seems to be, if there is a school with a lower graduation rate or a higher default rate than these baseline numbers, or both, then you should also lose your accreditation.

And by the way, I’m not really disagreeing – there are too many bad schools out there, and this seems like a pretty good way of finding truly terrible outliers. Even so, as a data nerd, I need to make the argument that these statistics are highly misleading, or can be.

Say you are trying to compare two school, and one has a higher graduation rate than the other. Do you conclude that the one with a higher graduation rate is better? Well, no. It could just graduate people because it pushes people through the classes without really teaching them anything. Or, the other one could be lower because it takes a chance on more students. In other words, a graduation rate can be lower or higher for good or bad reasons, and taken alone is not a great indicator. Lots of community colleges, moreover, are set up to be transfer schools, and the students deliberately start at that school, then transfer to 4-year colleges, thus lowering the overall graduation rate. It’s a good thing that such schools exist, and we wouldn’t want to close them all down.

Similarly, higher default rates on student loans could be an artifact of a school taking chances on students that otherwise have fewer options, or a bad economy, or even just the type of education that is offered. Engineering schools tend to graduate students who find jobs quickly and easily, but that doesn’t mean every school should become an engineering school. So I wouldn’t compare default rates of two colleges and conclude that the college with a low default rate is necessarily better.

What I’m coming to is that deciding whether a given college has become a failure is actually pretty tricky, and we can complain – and should complain, apparently – about the current system of accreditation, but we can’t claim that it’s as simple as looking at two metrics and deciding what the cut-off is. Choosing a perfect threshold would be tricky.

Or rather, we could do something like that, but then it might have weird effects. If we closed all the schools that don’t keep graduation rates high and default rates low, we might see non-engineering students pushed out of the system, or we might see schools create partnerships with corporations and become federal aid-funded corporate training centers, we might just see (even more) widespread fraud in terms of reporting such things.

There’s a game of chicken going on in Europe, whereby the moneylenders (the European Central Bank, the IMF, and the European Commission) are trying to get Greece to pay back money they previously borrowed, but Greece doesn’t have any extra cash to do it. Clive Crook gave a good summary of the situation at Bloomberg View yesterday.

I sometimes like to imagine that Europe is a family, and Greece is a member of that family who really isn’t doing well. Greece owes the other family members money, but is also really ill and spends most of its time on the couch, coughing and feverish. The other family members want their money back, of course, but seeing how sick Greece is, are reluctant to actually kick a family member out on the street.

It’s not a perfect metaphor, since Greece is actually a country, and the people making big decisions about how debt payments will work in Greece are not the same people that suffer when they run out of jobs, medicine, and pension payments. But it’s gotten a bit more like that recently with the actual election of its Prime Minister, whereas before it was being run by an appointed technocrat from the central bank.

On the other hand, it is a pretty good metaphor, mostly because the grand European vision is very much one of a family, and pushing Greece out because of failure to pay money it doesn’t really have would be shameful to many who still believe in that vision.

So, going with the metaphor for the moment, I’d like to suggest an idea that came up in my Occupy meeting last Sunday when we were talking about how actual families would solve this problem. Namely, they wouldn’t. The sick person would be allowed to stay, even though they didn’t pay back the money. And everyone would be annoyed, but family is family.

It strikes me that the concept of “opting in” to some service or society has become strained, even more than usual.

We have become more or less used to the idea that we’ll check on agreement boxes, written in inscrutable legalese, in order to get free stuff. We will do that without ever reading the box or understanding what we’ve gotten ourselves into. That’s a form of passive opting in, which depends on us barely noticing things.

But there’s a new, even more ridiculous usage of the term “opt in” that has been popping up. It’s gone beyond passive action to what you could only describe as inaction. Two examples.

The first one comes from Belgium, where they’ve decided that people have not, in fact, opted in to Facebook’s tracking and surveillance mechanism by clicking on a link that brings them to Facebook. They want people to actually click the legalese box before being tracked. Of course, their concepts of privacy are much stronger than ours, but they have an important point: opting in requires doing something, and it doesn’t count if the “doing something,” which is in this case clicking on an innocuous link, has nothing to do with terms of service.

Second example. When I was getting prepared to give my Personal Democracy Forum talk the other day (the link for the talk is here), the speaker before me, who was talking about microtargeting in politics, mentioned to me that what they do isn’t so bad. She suggested that, when they send specific political messages to certain people and not others, they only even have that information about those voters because, after all, they provided it.

I was confused, so I asked her, “Are you saying that you only send messages to people that have somehow opted in to political messaging?”

“Yes,” she responded, “they opted in by registering to vote.”

Again, that’s a severe misuse of the term “opting in.” Registering to vote is simply a part of being a citizen, and does not even indirectly imply a willingness to be tracked. We should all be automatically registered anyway, although now I’m worried about what that might mean we’re signing up for.

I know it’s almost summer, not because of the sticky heat but because it’s almost time to go to Clearwater, the music festival started by Pete Seeger in 1969 to organize around cleaning up the Hudson River. It takes place in the beautiful Croton Point Park, outside the town of Croton-on-Hudson.

I’m going to be a volunteer this weekend, along with three other members of my band, and my first shift is serving dinner in the volunteers’ kitchen on Friday from 5 to 9pm. That means I have to pitch my tent in the volunteer’s camping area before I start, because it will be dark and confusing after that. But that means I have to get there super early, and I’m likely traveling on the train with my tent, sleeping bag, sleeping roll, pillow, clothes, bathroom bag, and of course my fiddle. That a lot of stuff to haul so I’m hoping it’s not 90 degrees or something on Friday.

But of course the really exciting thing, besides jamming with my bandmates in the evenings, is the music itself. The performers are listed here, and I’m super excited about The Lone Bellow and The Felice Brothers, but of course learning about new talent is what summer music festivals is all about.

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.