Forty Seven Million?

In response to an article in the NY Times by N. Gregory Mankiw that was published on November 4, 2007.

A key issue in this blog is the deceit of numbers foisted on the public as facts, especially numbers that have been ensconced in the public conscience as 'truth.' One of these figures is '47 million Americans are not insured.' Gregory Mankiw, a highly respected economist, weighs in on this issue - and once again it is clear that the numbers dumped on the public are not 'truth,' and in many cases are outright falsehoods.

How can we cope with this lack of facts? Perseverance is the only answer. Very few people have the time or the training to pursue each and every truism that crosses their doorstep. That is why the public votes based on their worldview - picking which party, not which candidate, best reflects their worldview. Lack of time drives simplification. The only way to get to the truth behind these numbers is to honestly doubt them and track them consistently over time until the truth is outed. This is one of the main benefits of being a reader of the NY Times, or other respected papers. It may take years and consistent readership, but the truth is out there.

Anyway, to Mr. Mankiw's article ---

"With the health care system at the center of the political debate, a lot of scary claims are being thrown around. The dangerous ones are not those that are false; watchdogs in the news media are quick to debunk them. Rather, the dangerous ones are those that are true but don’t mean what people think they mean. Here is an example (ed).

Some 47 million Americans do not have health insurance.....

To start with, the 47 million includes about 10 million residents who are not American citizens. Many are illegal immigrants. Even if we had national health insurance, they would probably not be covered.

The number also fails to take full account of Medicaid, the government’s health program for the poor. For instance, it counts millions of the poor who are eligible for Medicaid but have not yet applied. These individuals, who are healthier, on average, than those who are enrolled, could always apply if they ever needed significant medical care. They are uninsured in name only.

The 47 million also includes many who could buy insurance but haven’t. The Census Bureau reports that 18 million of the uninsured have annual household income of more than $50,000, which puts them in the top half of the income distribution. About a quarter of the uninsured have been offered employer-provided insurance but declined coverage.

Of course, millions of Americans have trouble getting health insurance. But they number far less than 47 million, and they make up only a few percent of the population of 300 million."

Unbelievable. The truth.... it is out there.

Normal caveat. Does this mean we should NOT have universal health insurance? Of course not. Should we do something to make sure as many as possible are insured? Of course. A mean-spirited debate about health care is not helpful. True facts, a spirited debate based on facts, and the result will be forthcoming.

Thank you Mr. Mankiw.

Deceit in Darfur

In response to an article in the NYT entitled "An Atrocity That Needs No Exaggeration" by Sam Dealy and published on August 12, 2007.

This posting is a continuing one - focused on the easy deceit of numbers posted in public places. The old saw is certainly true on the Internet or in the media - the first victim of war is truth. The essence of this aphorism is simple - people lie to get their way. Outraged moralists will inflate the number of dead in Darfur to stick another knife into the Bush aristocracy. Evil dictators will deflate the number of dead in Darfur to deflect the inevitable comeuppance as long as possible.

Neither is right, of course, and that is the lesson. ANY time a political statement is being made (and powerful people are prone to political pandering) that involves a number - the number dead - the number lost - the cost of repair - you can bet your bottom dollar the truth has not been told. More important, however, is your responsibility as a reader of this rubbish. You must make a mental note to follow this argument to its conclusion - and in many cases the truth will not out for years. Darfur is a good example.

Let me introduce Mr. Dealy's subject matter:

Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority has just ruled against the Save Darfur Coalition stating that the high death tolls Save Darfur cites in its advertisements breached standards of truthfulness.

Mr. Dealy continues:

While the coalition has done an admirable job of raising awareness, it has also hampered aid-delivery groups, discredited American policy makers and diplomats and harmed efforts to respond to future humanitarian crises...The trouble began last fall when, in ads placed throughout the United States and Britain, Save Darfur denounced the Sudanese government’s scorched-earth campaign against insurgents. After three years, 400,000 innocent men, women and children have been killed, the ads said.

Serious estimates of the number of dead in Darfur are far lower than 400,000. Last November, the American Government Accountability Office convened a panel of 12 experts to assess the credibility of six prominent mortality estimates for Darfur. Three of these came from the American State Department, the World Health Organization and the W.H.O.-affiliated Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. The other three were independent efforts by activists — including one by John Hagan, a sociologist at Northwestern University, for the defunct Coalition for International Justice. Dr. Hagan’s was the highest estimate and the one on which Save Darfur based its claim. In category after category, the experts overwhelmingly found Dr. Hagan’s estimate of 400,000 deficient. Nine of the experts said that his source data was unsound and that he failed to disclose his study’s limitations. Ten found his assumptions unreasonable, and 11 called his extrapolations inappropriate. In all, 11 experts held low or very low confidence in the study.

Did you know about this? The 400,000 figure is now part of the collective being, I am afraid. Touted by every college sophomore in the U.S. and passed on as absolute truth by thousands of politicians, bloggers, journalists, and talking heads. The figure, however, is just not correct.

Mr. Dealy answers:
So how many are dead in Darfur? As the G.A.O. study notes, reliable numbers are hard to come by. But the estimate that garnered the highest confidence was the one from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. From September 2003 until June 2005, the center estimated, there were 158,000 deaths in Darfur. Of those, 131,000 were deemed “excess” — more than normally would occur.

So, where is the harm? Doesn't Darfur deserve intervention whether 200,000 or 400,000 are dead? Of course. But the consequences go deeper - into the social network we all live in - based on trust. Trust of fair dealing and fair accounting of monies used and allocated. It is a hard truth, but money is finite and disasters are infinite. Politicians and bureaucrats must allocate resources, and they must do it responsibly. Concerned citizens must allocate their funds and their other finite resources (caring, time, donations) based on actual facts. Concerned citizens, finding themselves deceived, will be a little less concerned next time there is a tragedy where they can make a difference.

Here is Mr. Dealy's take:

Inaccurate data can also lead to prescriptive blunders. During the worst period of violence, for example, the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disaster estimated that nearly 70 percent of Darfur’s excess deaths were due not to violence but to disease and malnutrition. This suggests that policy makers should look for ways to bolster and protect relief groups by continuing to demand that the Sudanese government not hamper the delivery of aid, to be sure, but also by putting vigorous public pressure, so far lacking, on the dozen rebel groups that routinely raid convoys.

Exaggerated death tolls also make it difficult for relief organizations to deliver their services. Khartoum considers the inflated numbers to be evidence that all groups that deliver aid to Darfur are actually adjuncts of the activist groups that the regime considers its enemies, and thus finds justification for delaying visas, refusing to allow shipments of supplies and otherwise putting obstacles in the way of aid delivery.

Lastly, mortality one-upmanship by advocacy groups threatens to inure the public to both current and future catastrophes. If 400,000 becomes the de facto benchmark for action, other bloody conflicts around the globe in Sri Lanka, Colombia, Somalia seem to pale in comparison. Ultimately, the inflated claims fuel a death race in which aid and action are based not on facts but on which advocacy group yells the loudest.

What is our responsibility as citizens? Should we sit on the sidelines wringing our collective fingers until the truth is known? No, we must be diligent. As painful and prissy as it sounds, we must understand the truism quoted above about war. We must doubt our providers of information, and we must track the truth until it becomes apparent - though it take five years.

Then we decide, as thinking and compassionate beings - What can I do to help Darfur? I know the numbers quoted are wrong - from whatever political spectrum you read from - but there is a number. Caring does not require a number, just an event. Protect your caring psyche from burdens by qualifying to the best of your ability actual needs - and then do something.

On my honor

In response to "Honor: A History" by James Bowman.

Mr. Bowman brings a stunning hypothesis to the war on terror. In my view, it explodes many of the other so-called theories on why terrorists kill innocents - they are poor...Israel is the cause....America is the cause... It has been one of my main quests in this blog to properly explain this horrific phenomenon. If you read below you will see that I ascribe to a few different contributing factors - the culture of blame-making and the leaders that take advantage - and the group dynamics and the corrupt leaders that foment it as proposed by Freud. Mr. Bowman fills in the gaps.

As the title of his book intimates - honor is a powerful explanatory device for the terrorist actions in Iraq and around the world. Mr. Bowman tracks honor and its many iterations around the globe and shows that it is a far better explanation of terror than Islam all by itself. A key point - honor societies - and we ALL were honor societies in our past - predate Islam and even Christianity. Its warped sense of shame and 'face' can easily be seen in the publications of terrorist leaders like Osama Bin Laden and Hassan Nasrallah. Their diatribes are full of words like 'pride,' 'manhood,' and 'shame.' All point clearly to a non-Islamic explanation. Their public posturings are much more easily and simply explained by their followers being duped by an honor society code that is millenniums old - and violent and retrograde. Here are some quotes from his book:

""in the cultures where honor killings are common, the point is not that the killers think the victim consented, ….. the idea of "consent" or lack of it is to them an irrelevance. The taint upon the woman's honor remains the same either way. Our individualistic, post-honor sensibility reaches out to the notion of "consent" in order to explain what otherwise seems incomprehensible. But in honor cultures, a woman's honor normally belongs to her husband or father, and the dishonor of any sexual contact outside marriage, whether consensual or otherwise, falls upon him exactly alike, since it shows him up before the world as a man incapable of either controlling or protecting her. Dishonor is more like a fatal disease than a moral failing. It requires constant vigilance and even then can strike anyone at any time. And its only end can be death."

"we … readily believe the Islamic honor culture to have been produced by religion. But this is not the case. The honor culture of the Islamic world predates its conversion to Islam in the seventh century. Throughout the Islamic world, the local honor cultures tend to resemble those of non-Islamic and non-Christian cultures nearby, as the Pakistani one does that of its subcontinental neighbors in India - where honor killings are also frequent, if not common."

"It is natural enough in a culture like ours, informed by the psychotherapeutic revolution, to think even of geopolitics in terms of psychology and emotions, but these are irrelevant in an honor culture. Not that the terrorists don't feel hatred or anger. Some of them probably do. With or without emotion, however, the aggressive acts of the terrorists arise from the demands of a traditional honor culture to strike at those whom they see, often for reasons invisible to those outside that culture, as having humiliated them. The disappearance of the Western honor culture for reasons that I shall explain in subsequent chapters has left us ill prepared to understand those different "value systems" we tend to attribute to poverty, ignorance, colonial oppression or some combination of the three."

"Even after the terrorist attacks, many in the West still clung desperately, as if for reassurance, to the idea that they had been caused either by ourselves for having offended the attackers in some way - or in some way other than by our mere existence as liberally minded Westerners-or because the perpetrators were poor and they hated the rich West. Or, since they themselves were mostly college-educated from middle-class backgrounds, and not the product of religious indoctrination, the cause was sometimes said to lie in the poverty of the people on whose behalf the terrorists claimed to fight......Yet if you look very closely into what the jihadists, or the various radical groups who support them, have to say about what they do, you will rarely see any reference to poverty. Even religion as such seems of less interest to them than the idea of Arab or Islamic "honor" and "manhood," with which honor is always intimately related. Honor may seek a religious validation, whether Islamic or Christian - the ideal of Christian chivalry in Western history is an example of its receiving one - but its exaggerated demands for respect and a strict code of vengeance for the slightest insults or injuries remain its own and are not founded in the scriptures or the customs and practices of either religion. That is why the most belligerent statements of the terrorists mention "honor" or "manhood" much more often than they do any distinctively religious concept. "We believe that we are men, Muslim men who must have the honor of defending Mecca" says Osama bin Laden, contrasting his own forces with "the weakness, feebleness, and cowardliness of the US soldier" as demonstrated to his satisfaction by the Clinton administration's withdrawal from Somalia."

"This is a culture in which shame and honor closely define the roles of men and women and all transactions between them, validating and dramatizing them unforgettably - and at all times. Honor for the male lies in fulfilling traditional masculine virtues, from being a "warrior" to fathering children, sons above all. Honor for the female consists in modesty and faithfulness, the bearing of children, sons once again above all. Immodesty or unfaithfulness forfeits her honor and shames the men in the family in whose keeping this honor is vested, Men must put the lapse right at all costs, if need be killing the dishonored woman."

"Such obligations of honor may vary somewhat within the Islamosphere because they are not religiously derived, but everywhere they include the obligation to maintain the appearance, at least, of power and control. "An Arab considers it an affront to his honor to suffer loss of face," writes time Egyptian scholar Mansour Khalid. This 'tyranny of 'the face' leads an Arab to do everything possible not to show his troubles to those close to him, let alone his enemies." In the same vein, David Pryce-Jones writes that "lying and cheating in the Arab world is not really a moral matter but a method of safe-guarding honor and status, avoiding shame, and at all times exploiting possibilities, for those with the wits for it, deftly amid expeditiously to convert shame into honor on their own account, and vice versa for their opponents. It honor so demands, lies and cheating may become absolute imperatives.""

"Honour and shame are the constant preoccupation of individuals in small scale, exclusive societies where face to face personal, as opposed to anonymous, relations are of paramount importance…"

"...those outside the honor group will be treated as putting us under few or no prima facie obligations - or even as being, in extreme cases, not quite human. It was in such an honor culture that someone excluded from the honor group like Mukhtaran Bibi could be sentenced to be raped. It is also in such an honor culture that Muslim young men seek distinction within their honor group by daring each other to commit atrocities…"

"… think it more honourable to revenge, than to forgive an injury; who make no scruple of telling a lie, but would put any man to death that accuses them of it...""

Wait for it..

In response to a fine report by Dawn Kopecki titled "When Outsourcing Turns Outrageous” in Business Week online.

This article helps to settle in two very important points in this blog. One - proper analysis of news takes time. Sometimes years. Pontificating over 'breaking' news is usually just that. Real truth takes time. Two - it is hard for humans to measure something that does not happen. Like the fraud account below...KBR committed fraud, no doubt. But what about all the other times KBR was not in the picture - in other words - what if the Pentagon took over that role. Turns out there is MORE corruption, historically, in Pentagon contracts than in KBR contracts. If the Pentagon took on the role that KBR did when the fraud was committed, it would have probably lost more money to fraud! Humans do not easily glom to this kind of statistic though - because it is hard to measure against something that did not happen, even if it is statistically relevant. Read on:

"The U.S. Military has lost billions to fraud and mismanagement by private contractors in Iraq who do everything from cooking soldiers' meals to building hospitals to providing security. That raises a question: Does Pentagon outsourcing make sense?...... "The presumption is that it is cheaper," says Jerrold T. Lundquist, director of the defense and aerospace practice at the consulting firm McKinsey & Co......A recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that in 2004 the U.S. reduced its costs by one-third for feeding and housing troops by paying one contractor to do the work -- a savings of nearly $3 billion. Such findings point to the conclusion that even with a lot of fraud and waste, outsourcing may still pay off.....some experts on the topic aren't convinced. Because no one has an authoritative overall estimate of how much has been lost in Iraq to contractor deceit and incompetence, and many investigations are just getting under way, the financial harm could in the end outstrip any savings."

"The Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, reported earlier this month that the Defense Dept. has recovered about $2 billion since 2001 from all outside contractors and government procurement officials accused of dishonesty or mismanagement, but the GAO didn't isolate those working in Iraq."

"All told, the Defense Dept. has spent more than $365 billion on the Iraq war and the global fight against terror since late 2002. Roughly $60 billion, or 16%, of the total has been paid to contractors for services, according to the Congressional Research Service."

"The Pentagon, which has paid KBR $15 billion since 2001, plans to divide the work among four contractors, with KBR permitted to bid for a portion of it. Earlier, Defense Dept. auditors had labeled $1.2 billion in KBR charges as "excessive," "duplicative," or otherwise questionable. KBR officials say its costs were reasonable considering that the work was done under "extraordinarily hostile conditions." KBR also says it has resolved most of the audit disputes with the Army. KBR's contentions received implicit support from a CBO study issued in October, 2005. The Capitol Hill budget agency examined KBR's work in Iraq during a 12-month period ending in mid-2004. To perform the tasks KBR completed, the U.S. Army would have had to recruit 41,000 additional troops and spend $8.2 billion, or $2.8 billion more than KBR's costs, the CBO found. Over time, the Pentagon would save billions more by employing KBR, the study projected."

Accusations of fraud sell newspapers, gets people to watch Fox, and gives congressmen something to talk about. The full story, however, takes time. Turns out maybe KBR did not do as badly as it seemed. Probably still wasted and misused money, but at least not at the same rate as good-ole Pentagon bureaucrats - who waste and misuse money the old fashion way - without getting caught.

Fresh statistics are bad for you

In response to an article in the NYT titled "Left Behind Economics" by Paul Krugman that was published on July 14, 2006.

One of the staples of the talking heads on television and talking typists in the blogsphere is reporting on so-called facts. The problem... many of these so-called facts are nothing of the sort... they are the first shot at measuring a very complex problem. That does not stop these guys and gals, however. They launch off half-cocked at any so-called factoid. One of the chief misusers of these factoids is the New York Times. They are proud of their columnists and their usage of statistics, but they continually use statistics that are neither mature nor proven over time. This usage sells papers and puts blood in the water for the true believers on both sides, but does not further the fact gathering process. In fact it inhibits it.

I have written a few other blog entries on this issue - mostly titled under the misuse of statistics. Here, however, is a take on it by Paul Krugman - one of the worst abusers. He should know better.

"Many observers, even if they acknowledge the growing concentration of income in the hands of the few, find it hard to believe that this concentration could be proceeding so rapidly as to deny most Americans any gains from economic growth. Yet newly available data show that that’s exactly what happened in 2004. (Here is the key part - ed) Why talk about 2004, rather than more recent experience? Unfortunately, data on the distribution of income arrive with a substantial lag; the full story of what happened in 2004 has only just become available, and we won’t be able to tell the full story of what’s happening right now until the last year of the Bush administration."

This observation does not seem to stop Mr. Krugman or the thousands of others that grab on factoids as a reason to blather on about their pet topic. This type of caveat should be placed prominently in just about any column or opinion piece that uses (mis-uses) statistics. This same assertion about distribution of income also applies to many complex economic measurements that people use as blunt objects.

The key - blatant attacks on whichever side based on the statistic of the moment are untenable. You must use judgment, and in most cases judgment takes time. This obviates the talking heads and the righteous indignation on both sides of the American political spectrum - thus it will not happen. Still a good goal, however.

It's all about the Washington's

In response to an article in the NYT titled "Even in Iraq, All Politics Is Local" by Rory Stewart that was published on July 13, 2006.

Mr. Stewart highlights a very key item in governance - poor choices. As a matter of fact, in many cases there is not a set of poor choices, there are only two choices....one unrealistic and one poor. This IS governance in a very hostile world full of very bad people. I explain this poor choice conundrum to my children by invoking George Washington. My story line is this - when making deals with hostile, corrupt, and venal countries (portions of Iraq, Syria, Iran) you must treat them as neighbors. In other words, you cannot get rid of them. You must live with them. They are a fact of life, as is their bad behavior. Further, you cannot control their personal behavior. If they leave garbage piled up on the street (or in Beirut) there is little you can do but gnash your teeth and complain. The only real choice you have is supporting one government or leader or trying to usurp that same government or leader hoping for a better one.

An adjunct to this little story is where the founder of our country comes up. Do we support this leader (garbage strewn streets), or try to usurp him, to replace him with another, maybe more promising leader (less garbage on the streets)? The problem? There are no George Washington’s out there sitting around cooling their heels in these poor excuses for a country. He does not exist. The alternative to the current leadership is almost always just as venal, almost as corrupt, and almost as hostile to the US. So what do we do as a nation?

Well, Mr. Stewart helps out a bit here. Here is some text from the article: "A great many of the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq arise from a single problem: the American-led coalitions’ lack of trust in local politicians. Repeatedly the Western powers, irritated by a lack of progress, have overruled local leaders, rejected compromises and tried to force through their own strategies. But the Westerners’ capacity is limited: they have little understanding of Afghan or Iraqi politics and rely too heavily on troops and money to solve what are fundamentally political and religious problems......Iraqi and Afghan national and regional leaders have a far better understanding of the limits and possibilities of the local political scenes; they are more flexible and creative in finding compromises; and unlike the coalition officials, they are elected. They must be given real power and authority. This may seem an obvious prescription — but in fact the coalitions are not allowing it to happen....

National leaders in Iraq and Afghanistan have moved toward accommodating local power-holders and finding compromises. President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, unable to defeat former Taliban guerrilla leaders intent on re-starting civil war, appointed some 50 regional strongmen as police chiefs last month. Likewise, leaders in Iraq have tolerated the Shiite militias in the south for years, and President Nuri al-Maliki is now pressing for negotiations with the insurgents and amnesty for many of them....

Here is the key point - "But the American, British and other coalition officials have a barely concealed distaste for such local political forces, and view any accommodation with them as weakness and appeasement. ..... But the Westerners’ political strategies are too often based more on moral ideals than real information....Many have too much faith in their ability to create a society in their own image and a mistaken belief that they can find clean, technocratic, powerful and liberal alternatives to these local leaders. They prefer to rely on constitutions and abstract economic theories than to engage with local personalities. As a result, their actions create powerful enemies whom they fail to either defeat or replace, leaving power vacuums and provoking further insurgency. For example, Mr. Sadr’s group took three times as many votes as the next party in the 2005 provincial elections in Maysan, runs the provincial government and unsurprisingly refuses to cooperate with the coalition. In Afghanistan, no adequate replacement has been found for Ismail Khan in Herat, and the city is now less secure and prosperous than it was under his rule."

He continues - "Yet, rather than adopting the Machiavellian compromises suggested by the national leaders, the coalitions continue to pour more resources into the old confrontational strategy....these actions are far more likely to fracture existing power structures, further weaken state authority and provoke more insurgency.""

In most cases the President of the United States is faced with a bi-polar decision - either support venal leader number one or support his replacement - venal leader number two. No George Washington’s hanging out in the bush.

Mr. Stewart is on very comfortable ground with his analysis. Look at Haiti... numerous leaders trumpeted as being less corrupt, more democratic, and better able to govern. None were true. Hope lies eternal with those with a world view that excoriates the President's attempts at governance in a hostile world, but reality is far different. The President has poor choices, two actually. Both have remarkable downsides. Who do YOU pick?

It is SO easy to criticize these "Machiavellian compromises" in print, from a podium, or around the dinner table. But could you do better? Remember - only two choices and neither is George Washington.

Freud explains Iraq v2

In response to an article in the NYT entitled "When the Personality Disorder Wears Camouflage" by Benedict Carey that was published on July 9, 2006.

Mr. Carey's intent, no doubt, was not to add to my explanation of terrorism in Iraq and of terrorism generally, but he clarified a key point with a totally different viewpoint and goal in mind. In my mind that validates this particular point I am trying to make. Notice how cleanly Mr. Carey's observations of psychopaths aligns with Freud's analysis of a leadership style that empowers terrorism by offering "individuals .. a new, psychological dispensation?" Here is some of the text of the article:

"These are hallmark traits of what some experts call psychopathy, a potent blend of antisocial instincts and grandiosity....

"...when you have a psychopathic offender, quite often he will manipulate others, he can be a puppet-master type," he said. "Others are attracted to his sense of certainty, his sense of power, to the fact that he can do things others have trouble doing." A person with psychopathic tendencies may appear to others as clearheaded as an elite soldier when under fire, or when on the attack. But the internal psychological reality is much different, research suggests."

This so closely aligns with the earlier Freud article, it could not go un-announced.

Lastly, a very pithy quote that applies to this same issue from David Brooks, a columnist for the NYT - "(These) assaults ... are ginned up by ideological masseurs who salve their followers' psychic wounds by arousing their rage at objects of mutual hate."

Doesn't Mr. Brooks' statement go right to the point of the Freud article and the article on psychopaths in the military? It helps to clearly identify the motivations and methodology of the leaders of the terrorism movement and all their ilk.

Statistical ignorance are statistical stubbornness?

In response to an article in the NYT entitled "Impressive Science Meets Unimpressed Patient (Hi, Mom!)" by Dr. Abigail Zuger that was published on February 21, 2006.

This blog is intended to expose human foibles that impact decision-making. This article humanizes the issue a bit, and also exposes another side of the argument... the provider of the statistics. Is the provider too stubborn in his adherence to arcane statistics to actually make sure the recipient understands the issue - the whole point of any communication? It may be helpful to read a prior entry in this blog on the 'roulette wheel' diagram, and how it provides a breakthrough in understanding arcane statistics. Here is some of the text of the article:

"It is medicine's eternal quest, these days, to sell impressive science to unimpressed patients, and it is hard to think of a group less equipped to do it than doctors. Doctors are specifically trained not to think like normal people, not to see what others see or to reason as others reason. They — er, we — come to operate in an atmosphere so thin, so heady and attenuated with the power of statistical analysis, that one might wonder whether we are really on the same planet as the patients we try to convince of our truths.

"Exercise helps the elderly." The doctor sees, from a perch suspended somewhere up in the sky, a large football field filled with the elderly. There are thousands of them down there, all dressed in sweats and sneakers, dumbbells at their feet. Half of them are using the dumbbells, or are down on their backs, doing leg lifts. The others just stand around.

Over the years, of course, the ranks thin. The doctor watches, counts. It begins to look as if there are more exercisers left. After decades, there are definitely more exercisers. Of course, there are still a few sloths standing around (and one of them looks suspiciously like my mother). But by and large, the exercisers come to rule the field.

That is the view from on high. Down on the field, of course, the view is quite different. You are standing in a thick crowd, minding your own business, living your life, but you cannot help noting that the man over there threw his back out with all that exercise, and the woman next to you, grunting to lift her dumbbell, had a heart attack. You cannot see to the other end of the field and have no idea what is happening there. But watching all the sweating and grunting and seeing some of those exercisers disappear anyway, you decide to opt out....

Up in the sky, it is impossible to distinguish one individual from another. The subjects are identified by sex, race, age, weight, coexisting illnesses, but of course, those variables have little to do with who these people are and what they value, how they prefer to spend their time, what they know about their own bodies.

Down on the field, no one sees anything but the people who happen to be nearby. No big picture there: you know what's going on around you, and nothing else. And if you happen to be in a crowd of exercisers who happen to get no benefit from it, then that is your reality."

Dr. Zuger gets right to it, doesn't she?

1. "Up in the sky (statistically - ed), it is impossible to distinguish one individual from another."

2. 'Down on the field (statistically - or in this case - anecdotally - ed), no one sees anything but the people who happen to be nearby."

Could it be any clearer? The truth is in the statistics, with the VERY important caveat (also mentioned in this article) that it a statistical truth...there are exceptions. However, in a world view where personal experience dominates, those exceptions become the truth. The anecdote is wrong (statistically), but correct in one VERY PARTICULAR incident.

Bridging that gap is key. And, thus the purpose of this blog.

Group Polarization Bias

In response to an article in the NYT entitled "Why Righties Can't Teach" by John Tierney published on October 15, 2005.

Mr. Tierney is trying to explain why college professorships for conservatives are so hard to come by. He dismisses outright bias in the article, but continues to explain why colleges are dominated by liberals:

"One reason is the structure of academia, where decisions about hiring are made by small independent groups of scholars. They're subject to the law of group polarization, derived from studies of juries and other groups.

"If people are engaged in deliberation with like-minded others, they end up more confident, more homogenous and more extreme in their beliefs," said Cass Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago. "If you have an English or history department that leans left, their interactions will push them further left."

Once liberals dominate a department, they can increase their majority by voting to award tenure to like-minded scholars. As liberals dominate a field, conservatives' work comes to be seen as fringe scholarship. "The filtering out of conservatives in the job pipeline rarely works by outright blackballing," said Mark Bauerlein, a conservative who is an English professor at Emory. "It doesn't have to. The intellectual focus of the disciplines does that by itself.""

Again, the purpose of this blog is to identify and root out human foibles that keep us from the truth, within ourselves and without. Only when an event is seen in its proper context can a positive and productive decision be made on it.

Survivorship Bias

In response to an article in the NYT titled "Worried About Noisy Children, and Hedge Funds, Too" by Ben Stein, published on April 23, 2006.

Mr. Stein, who I respect very much, makes mention of a key to understanding statistics, especially as they appear in the mass media. In short - only the winners that survive are able to report their results. If you are a losing fund - you quietly disappear into the sunset and your losing statistics are not reported generally nor specifically. An example: The average of all funds return in the last ten years was (x)%. These types of figures - no doubt - do not include funds which no longer exist due to failure. Thus, the average quoted is not the true average. If your fund has a positive result, the results are plastered everywhere. And which do we, as non-quantitative, non-rational consumers mis-remember? The positive results, of course. Here is a portion of Mr. Stein's column:

"...commentators, including my pal and colleague, Phil DeMuth, say that even these results overstate hedge fund results. For one thing, there is survivorship bias — always a problem in the back alleys of finance — because only the hedge funds that survive report at all. If you take into account the ones that fail, the results would be worse."

This blurb is not about hedge funds, but I cannot resist this paragraph from the same article. It shows us a bit more about the shady world of investing:

"Dr. Malkiel and Dr. Saha calculated that even if hedge funds earned almost 50 percent more than market returns, the higher taxes and fees that hedge funds pay would whittle away their net return to investors to 20 percent less than index funds." The focus of the original article by Mr. Stein was on the lack of performance of hedge funds.

To take full advantage of the human condition, we must acknowledge our foibles. Then, and only then, can we overcome them and maybe even profit from them. Either way, we can certainly see and understand the world much more clearly.

Why? Because God says so.

One of the biggest frustrations in my life was my religious upbringing. Lots of positives - do not get me wrong. Five hundred good things, thirty bad things. The conservative end of Christianity that I grew up in quoted the bible a lot, and they quoted its many aphorisms many times over. God says do not hate. Why? Because God says so. God says pray for your enemies. Why? Because God says so. Although this is good toddler theology, eventually you need more. Which brings me to this blog.

You see, I am trying to teach my children what I never learned until very late in life. I have learned, very painfully, that knowledge is always good, but if you can master certain concepts early in life BEFORE they do damage to you (by omission or commission) it is definitely a better thing.

So, back to toddler Christianity. I feel that young people will be more drawn to Christianity if they understood why God, the ultimate rational being, created His set of rules. Like you are not supposed to hate and you are supposed to love your enemy.

One of the reasons I write in this blog is to expose human fallibility. Like storytelling, and decision-making flaws. All point to a very un-rational human experience, where rationality must be forced on an individual, by that individual, unwillingly. That is where hate comes in. God says do not hate others, even your enemies, because the hating process is never-ending. With the human default of story-telling and excuse-making, there is ALWAYS a never-ending wave of excuses to hate, and to act on that hate. The default behavior in humans is to excuse our foibles, and to make ourselves look good by putting various facts together into a comprehensive story that puts us in a good light. A terrible skill for a person who is not honest with himself and especially for one who is susceptible to hatred or being prompted to hatred by corrupt leaders. Thus, the aphorism about knowing thyself.

You see, the hateful ALWAYS have a reason to hate. It takes zero effort to hate the other - it is a human default to be suspicious of others. Take the mid-east terrorist bunch. Ten years ago their excuse for hatred and killing was Palestine. The next year it is the Caliphate. The year later it is the Gaza incursion (how come the Gaza excursion did not produce the opposite?) There is ALWAYS a reason to hate. ALWAYS. Take a long look - and by that I mean research historically - the reasons Osama touts for why he murders innocents. They are drastically different over time. They constantly build, morph and change due to trends, world activities, and a robust and sick imagination.

THAT is why God says not to hate. It is never-ending. You can always find a reason to be unhappy, to hate the other, or to punish someone else for your lot in life. It takes ZERO effort. It is the default. God knew this, as did the ancients. That is why they always exhorted us to examine OURSELVES. They understood the default... and if hate is added to the mix - the killing will be endless.

Freud explains Iraq

In response to an article in the NYT Magazine titled Freud and the Fundamentalist Urge by Mark Edmundson. It was published on April 30, 2006.

Mr. Edmundson has helped us to explain the why and wherefore in Iraq. My take on his article is that Sigmund Freud helps us to understand ANY totalitarian regime, whether in the former Soviet Union, in Iraq, or in Somalia. The dynamics of a corrupt and manipulative leader is the same. For those new to this blog... the premise is simple. The people are not all to blame for the violence. Although they perpetrate the violence and support the violence, both which are unacceptable, they perform these acts because of long-term manipulation of their world view by corrupt leaders. These leaders know (viscerally - they are NOT scholars) what 'the people' need and want.. and give it to them in spades. In return for this 'favor' they extract a horrific penalty - a broken society. Think Iraq. Think Somalia. Think Zimbabwe. What changed? Are the people suddenly more violent and depraved.. or have their leaders corrupted their very world-view to maximize the leader's benefits?

Here is what the article says - "Freud brought forward striking ideas about the inner dynamics of political life in general and of tyranny in particular.....In books like "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego" and "Totem and Taboo," Freud predicted Hitler and his descendants almost perfectly. Now, in an age threatened by fundamentalisms of many sorts, Freud's thinking may be more usefully illuminating than ever before."

"At the center of Freud's work lies a fundamental perception: human beings are not generally unified creatures. Our psyches are not whole, but divided into parts, and those parts are usually in conflict with one another....Humanity, Freud says, has come up with many different solutions to the problem of internal conflict and the pain it inevitably brings. Most of these solutions, Freud thinks, are best described as forms of intoxication. What the intoxicants in question generally do is to revise the superego to make it more bearable. We like to have one glass of wine, then two, Freud suggests, because for some reason - he's not quite sure what it is in scientific terms - alcohol relaxes the demands of the over-I. Falling in love, Freud (and a thousand or so years of Western poetry) attests, has a similar effect. Love - romantic love, the full-out passionate variety - allows the ego to be dominated by the wishes and judgment of the beloved, not by the wishes of the demanding over-I. The beloved supplants the over-I, at least for a while, and, if all is going well, sheds glorious approval on the beloved and so creates a feeling of almost magical well-being. Take a drink (or two), take a lover, and suddenly the internal conflict in the psyche calms down. A divided being becomes a whole, united and (temporarily) happier one."

"Freud had no compunction in calling the relationship that crowds forge with an absolute leader an erotic one.....What he offers to individuals is a new, psychological dispensation. Where the individual superego is inconsistent and often inaccessible because it is unconscious, the collective superego, the leader, is clear and absolute in his values. By promulgating one code - one fundamental way of being - he wipes away the differences between different people, with different codes and different values, which are a source of anxiety to the psyche. Now we all love the fatherland, believe in the folk, blame the Jews, have a grand imperial destiny."

"To Freud, crowds on their own can be dangerous, but they only constitute a long-term brutal threat when a certain sort of figure takes over the superego slot in ways that are both prohibitive and permissive."

Did you catch that? Think Osama. Think Hitler. Think any puny warlord in that desolate country called Somalia. Doesn't Freud explain this well?

The article continues - and clarifies the point - "In his last days, Freud became increasingly concerned about our longing for inner peace - our longing, in particular, to replace our old, inconsistent and often inscrutable over-I with something clearer, simpler and ultimately more permissive. We want a strong man with a simple doctrine that accounts for our sufferings, identifies our enemies, focuses our energies and gives us, more enduringly than wine or even love, a sense of being whole. This man, as Freud says in his great book on politics, "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego," must appear completely masterful. He must seem to have perfect confidence, to need no one and to be entirely sufficient unto himself. Sometimes this man will evoke a god as his source of authority, sometimes not. But in whatever form he comes - whether he is called Hitler, Stalin, Mao - he will promise to deliver people from their confusion and to dispense unity and purpose where before there were only fracture and incessant anxiety. But, of course, the price is likely to be high, because the simplifications the great man offers will almost inevitably involve hatred and violence."

An amazing article. Thank you Mr. Edmundson.

You can ALWAYS find someone or something to blame

As intellectuals and journalists try to explain the WHY of Iraq, a singular issue continually comes up. The theory states that Iraqi youth are disaffected and the solution to keep them from killing Americans and hating America is to somehow help them...bring their standard of living up, give them a job.. something. It is not proven. Further, the evidence that I observe proves it is wrong.

Why? Human beings can ALWAYS find someone or something to blame (besides themselves). Always. Ever had a teenager living in your house? Than you know of what I speak. YOU are to blame...no matter what. Are they unhappy? Somehow, you are to blame. You are not loving enough. You did not supply ample monetary resources. You had a bad streak where you cracked down hard on his or hers misdeeds. It really does not matter. They will think of something... somewhere... somehow... to blame their unhappiness on.

Remember a previous post about how the brain is the ultimate explanatory machine? Here is some text from that post -

"Humans are hard-wired to see order, pattern, and meaning in the world, and we find randomness, chaos, and meaninglessness less than satisfying. As a consequence, we tend to see order where there is none and we can spot meaningful patterns of order only when the vagaries of chance are operating in our favor (Gilovich). One of the tools in this mis-perception is ad-hoc reasoning. Humans have this awesome power to put two and two together, even when they do not belong together. We are hard wired to do so. A dramatic illustration of this comes from research on split-brain patients. In essence, the patients are shown two different pictures, then directed to explain them. When the subjects are forced to explain pictures in a way that requires communication between the two hemispheres of the brain, they make things up. In spades. The subject examines the relevant facts (as she is capable of seeing them) and invents a story to account for it. This 'explanation' module can quickly and easily make sense of even the most bizarre patterns of information (Gilovich). Clearly, people cling to their beliefs very tenaciously even in the face of hostile evidence."

Even when faced with an ultimate reality the brain will come up with some explanation, now matter how far-fetched. Even if the facts fly in the actual face of reality, it makes no difference. The brain is looking for a salve.... and you are it. Who else could be to blame?

I am not through with this point, however. Why? It is very difficult to convince the American public of a negative premise (that disaffected youth DO NOT cause terror). The premise spoken of above... disaffected youth...caused by poverty and horrible US foreign policy somehow makes Iraqi's terrorists? Except for:

The negative part of this equation. Again... disaffected youth..not fully though out US foreign policy... Iraqi terrorism. What is missing? The REMAINDER of the experimental results. What about those who ARE NOT IRAQI who suffer from disaffected youth..horrible US foreign policy..etc. How come they are not terrorists? How come they are not actively fighting and killing Americans? There are a multitude of countries with poorer youth, unhappier youth, disenchanted youth. How come they are not bombing civilians? Because there is much more to the cause of terrorism than just disaffected youth.

Here is some text from the previous post - "There is a very strong tendency in humans to filter out bad or failed outcomes and to focus on the good and successful. Some of this lack of probity is caused by a 'lack' of negative information to balance out the 'positive' information. Like in investment scams. All you hear about is the successes. The losers tend to be quiet and are certainly not trumpeted by the seller of the scam. The winners, of course, are touted by the seller as examples of the acuity of the program. The missing data - the losers. It is practically impossible to capture that data - and even harder to explain it to an unschooled populace used to easy to grasp factoids and one-liners. The 'other' facts slowly fade away and only the 'winners' are counted."

This must be answered. The premise put forth by the talking heads of Fox and MSNBC is unproven anectdotal story-telling portrayed as analysis. A real, defensible proposition on the Iraqi quagmire MUST involve a scientific experiment that attempts to compare a wide variety of disaffected youth and countries that suffer from a horrible US foreign policy. Then, and only then, will this be a defensible premise.

Until then, it is pseudo analysis. Many factors are at work, including horrifically corrupt leaders (morally and financially), a two-generation old worldview (fostered by these same corrupt leaders) that blames the US for their lot in life.

Another thought to help seal this point... viewing this 'experiment' over time. Ever take the time to read Osama's tired litany of excuses on why he kills innocents? It is a good read. It changes. It morphs. He is not above using the incident of the day, or the issue of the day to justify his worldview and to motivate his minions. One day it is the Russians and communism with nary a mention of Palestine. Two years later it is the Arab nation and the Caliphate. Next year it is Palestine. Did he hold these opinions already? Maybe, but a more accurate portrayal would brand him what he is - an opportunist. Find someone to blame.. he needs the money.. he needs to the followers. A messiah without a cause or without notoriety or without followers is NOT a messiah.

Osama is a teenager. No more. No less.

Roulette diagram enables better decision-making

In response to NYT article titled In Medicine, Acceptable Risk Is in the Eye of the Beholder by Nicholas Bakalar Published: June 20, 2006

This demonstration, although ponderous, is vital to understanding this issue. Please play it through the end. It is worth it.

"Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles have developed a tool that they hope will help ease the burden of making difficult treatment decisions. It's a roulette wheel that allows patients to visualize the probable outcomes associated with different treatment options for different diseases. The roulette wheel can be adapted to represent any current clinical question and is based on "best current evidence," according to its developers, Dr. Jerome R. Hoffman and colleagues.

For illustration purposes, Hoffman and colleagues describe in the journal PLoS Medicine how a healthy 65-year-old man might use the roulette wheel to decide whether or not to be screened for prostate cancer with a standard PSA blood test. By spinning the roulette wheel, the man sees that his chances of developing symptoms of prostate cancer in his lifetime are very small, regardless of whether he has the PSA test or not.

But he also learns that if he undergoes the PSA test and cancer is found, treating the cancer results in a 50-percent reduction in the chances of dying from prostate cancer. However, the roulette wheel also shows him that he has a 58 percent chance of developing erectile dysfunction or incontinence because of treatment for prostate cancer."

Dr. Hoffman states - Many of us have trouble understanding numbers, particularly in the context of risk and probability," write Hoffman and colleagues. "It is hard for anyone to comprehend the difference between a 7 percent chance and an 8 percent chance - is there a meaningful difference? - and this is exacerbated when we try to deal in more extreme probabilities, such as 3 in 10,000."

I can see endless possibilities here, because the challenge here is human, not medical. How can we help the recipient of information we are providing visualize the information so that its impact is the most powerful it can be. This visualization technique is powerful across the board, in business, in health, and even in the family. It deserves to be used widely.

Choices made by how you present them

In response to Free and Easy Riders by John Tierney - Published: June 17, 2006 in NYT.

Mr. Tierney is discussing Ben Roethlisberger's choice of whether to wear a helmet or not. He extrapolates to make his point - humans are capable of making rational decisions, but usually do not. He proposes helping humans make the proper choices by alternating presentation of choices. A consistent theme in this blog. Enjoy.

".... If Roethlisberger had done a sober cost-benefit analysis, he never would have gotten on a motorcycle. Even a minor accident — a spill that shattered his elbow — could have ended his career and cost him tens of millions of dollars...... Because they're making decisions the way most humans do — haphazardly. We're guided more by one recent horror story than by reams of statistics. Unless pressed, we tend to avoid thinking about unlikely events, like traffic accidents, or problems in the distant future, like how we'll finance our retirement. We'll choose something simply because we think it's what most other people would do. Our decision often hinges not on the facts but on how the facts are presented: if told there's a 10 percent chance of dying from a medical procedure, we're less likely to go ahead with it than if we're told there's a 90 percent chance of living.

Given all these foibles, Sunstein and Thaler argue, it's naïve to assume that people are making fully informed choices. Since people's choices often depend on how the options are presented, authorities should practice a mild form of paternalism: point people toward what experts think is best for them, but don't force them to go there. This might mean simply providing the public with information and advice. Or it could mean changing the options available, as was done in experiments with 401(k) plans. Instead of giving workers the traditional option to enroll in the plans, employers automatically enrolled everyone and gave them the option to withdraw. As a result, far more workers set aside money for retirement.

Sunstein and Thaler like the idea of encouraging cyclists to wear helmets by changing the options they face. Instead of telling them that a helmet is optional — the default situation in most states — tell them a standard license comes with the requirement to wear a helmet. If a libertarian cyclist objected, he could apply for a special license to ride without a helmet (along with a decal for the motorcycle so the police wouldn't stop him). He'd have to provide proof that he carried enough insurance to cover the costs of an accident so that taxpayers wouldn't get stuck with the bill. And he'd have to learn about the risks, perhaps by attending a short class or watching a video of it on his home computer."

Stunning. Unlike other fear-mongering and hate mongering columnists - this guy targets a problem and proposes a fair-minded solution. Wish there were more of him.

Video Games are Life Lesson

In response to an article in Play Magazine (NYT) titled The Home Screen Advantage.

It has been a given for a while that video games are a vigorous means to visualizing reality, especially for the younger generations. I thought this particular mention in this article was extremely powerful. The story is where a coach for Penn State uses Madden N.F.L. to train his players. He programs his plays into Madden N.F.L. and then turns them loose to his players. Here is the quote...

Jay Paterno, the quarterbacks coach at Penn State, uses the game to train his new players. He records virtual versions of his plays onto a memory card and has his guys rehearse them over and over again on their own PlayStations back at the dorm. "The kids are so much more visual now," Paterno says. "You hand them a playbook with a bunch of X's and O's, and they might stare at it. But if you do it on Madden, it clicks. They go, 'Oh yeah, I've done this before.'" In essence, the visual vocabulary of games — with their zooming, "Matrix"-like graphics — is the language of a new generation of sportsmen. John Madden once told me that he often encounters N.F.L. rookies who say their first experience of football wasn't on TV but in a video game.

The results, I will bet, are stunning. The players get to visualize the plays - what older people like me used to do only in our imaginations - and also get to run them over and over again, reaping the benefit of seeing the realistic responses of opponents and teammates.

There is more! Some NASCAR drivers are using the game NASCAR Thunder to familiarize themselves with certain tracks. "

Many NASCAR drivers in particular have been won over. They've discovered that one way to prepare for an unfamiliar track is to race it virtually, committing each curve and angle to memory before they drive them physically. Because the tracks are static and unchanging, today's video games — Electronic Arts' NASCAR Thunder, for example — can reproduce them with photorealistic precision. The driver Carl Edwards, who racked up four Nextel Cup victories last year, is a video-game fiend who swears by games as a training tool. "Racing is probably 80 percent mental, or more," Edwards told me, and a video game "helps you get the rhythm down — helps you find a place where speed is made up and speed is lost." Whenever he has to drive a track he regularly has trouble with — like Martinsville in Virginia or Bristol in Tennessee — he'll spend a couple hours in his trailer with the game. "It's the same motor inputs going in and the same timing.""

What could be more powerful?

Statistics are generalized, little specific help

Prompted by column in the NYT by Daniel Gross on June 4, 2006 titled When Sweet Statistics Clash With a Sour Mood.

Another in my series on statistics. One of my favorite authors, Daniel Gross expands on the premise that statistics are - in most part - deceptive and general. When it comes to how you are going to do against a specific pitcher on a specific day - they count for little. The key.. time.

Here are some quotes:

"Aggregates — big-picture figures like the unemployment rate, productivity and growth in the gross domestic product — are highly useful to economists. But to most people, they're abstractions. You can't use a low unemployment rate to pay a mortgage. As a result, large aggregates "are something that people may hear about in the news, but don't have a direct impact on how people feel," said Lynn Franco, director of the Consumer Research. Aside from being abstract, many of the most popular aggregates are simply misleading. Dean Baker, a director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, puts the Consumer Price Index — the main gauge of inflation — at the top of the list.

"It has no direct relationship to what people perceive as inflation," he said. Mr. Baker notes that the index doesn't take account of rapidly rising co-payments and higher insurance deductibles when it calculates health and medical costs. And to gauge inflation in housing, the index approximates a measure of rent instead of looking at home purchase prices. "We've had a huge run-up in the price of housing, and that doesn't show up in the C.P.I.," he said. So while the index shows that inflation is elevated but still under control — up 3.5 percent from April 2005 to April 2006 — many Americans find themselves paying sharply higher prices for essential goods and services.""

" The data ... cited were averages, or means, and that can be misleading. "The average wage is a useful indicator if you want to know what's happening to the tax base, but it might not tell you what's going on for the individual worker," said Alan B. Krueger, an economics professor at Princeton and a former chief economist at the Labor Department. Consider a hypothetical country with 300 million workers. Say the chief executive of an investment bank gets a $300 million raise this year, while the other 299,999,999 workers don't get a raise. In the aggregate, the average per-capita salary has risen by $1, but only one person has more money in his pocket. To see how typical workers are doing, it's better to look at median wages and incomes — the midpoint that separates the top 50 percent from the lower 50 percent. And median income, which was stagnant during President Bush's first term, is struggling to keep pace with inflation. "Median household income has gone nowhere since the turn of the decade," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's.com. Mr. Zandi puts the problem with averages another way. "If you put one foot in a tub of hot water and the other in a tub of cold water and take the average, everything is fine.""

""THIS dichotomy accurately describes the economy. From 2001 to 2004, the average net worth of an American family rose 6.3 percent, according to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances. But not everybody grew richer. For the bottom 40 percent of families by income, the median net worth fell. "It just doesn't resonate with people when the Treasury secretary says everything is fine," Mr. Zandi said. "It's fine for half the population, and it's clearly not for the other half." There's a final reason that the aggregates may not accurately capture the public mood. Aggregates shed light on the performance of the economy in the last month, or in the last quarter. By contrast, measures of sentiments and polls gauge feelings about the present and expectations for the future."

In my words.. statistics provide a vision of impressive intelligence.. but you MUST look beyond. Reread the last paragraph again... two different messages usually lumped together. Further, the statistics quoted are incomplete.. they do not include some health care costs? What is that all about? How many other examples can you come up with that show this dichotomy?

Statistics are not definitive, no matter what Fox says

In response to The Cost of Invading Iraq: Imponderables Meet Uncertainties - by Alan Krueger; Published: March 30, 2006 in the NY Times.

This article is why I love to read the NYT. It is the best newspaper in the US if you have a desire to learn the basics of what our leaders must deal with when they make decisions. The short answer - it is hard. My thoughts go back to the biblical imperative - pray for your leaders.

Take the cost of the war in Iraq. Think you know how much it costs? Think again. And, by the way, neither do the talking heads at Fox or MSNBC, and certainly not the 'entertainers' like Rush or Lou. The point of this article is straightforward - you can measure the MANY factors involved in accounting for the cost of a war - in many different ways. Honest people (economists in this case) can disagree - but they cannot dismiss their colleagues - they too have a case.

Once again - another reason for tolerance and kindness in the political debate - and why I love this article. I will bet large amounts of money (if I had any) that you DID NOT know all the factors mentioned in this article. I certainly did not. Things like opportunity costs - or how to measure success - or how to measure ancillary benefits like keeping Iran in your gun sights from a short distance away. All are legitimate discussion points and lend themselves to only one conclusion - you and I know little of the truth and are struggling to understand a very complex situation, as is the President of the United States. This complexity obviates histrionics, name-calling, and expletives. Instead, it calls for honest people making decisions without resorting to name-calling. The President deserves better.

Disagree all you want, but what our fathers told us years ago is true - the more you know the more you realize what you don't know. Point fingers with care - there are three others pointing back at you. Do you REALLY understand the situation you are pontificating about?

Here are a couple of excerpts to get the point across:

"cost-benefit comparisons of such weighty issues are more art than science. One problem is that the counterfactual situation — meaning the outcomes that would have occurred had another policy been pursued — cannot be known for sure. In addition, it is often unclear how to value the outcomes of the policy that is pursued."

"Consider what the cost of containment would have been had the United States not gone to war. The University of Chicago study now says it is in "the range of $350 billion to $700 billion." ....While containing Iraq was a central focus, these troops also served many other purposes. They conducted rescue operations in Somalia; performed humanitarian missions in Nigeria, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Jordan; responded to terrorist bombings in Nairobi and Tanzania; and were responsible for military activities in the five Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union."

"the number of Iraqi fatalities since the invasion is probably no greater than would have been the case under Mr. Hussein."

"When it comes to judging whether war is worth it, however, cost-benefit analysis is little more than educated guessing by other means. But at least it provides a framework for where to put the guesses."

Hypocrisy in Arabia

In reference to the current outrage on the political cartoons published in a Danish newspaper.....

The hypocrisy of Arab secular and religious despots knows no bounds.... really. It is time for the American public to fully understand the political dynamic that has driven very similar acts by despots in countries as varied as Yemen and ancient Rome.

The issue - these despots (I refuse to call them leaders) cannot provide for their followers. In the modern case (ancient Rome had a slightly different dynamic, but not by much) the global media has presented to even backward Arabia and Africa a very pleasant image - lots of big cars, lots of food, big houses, and pretty wives - to a populace that has NOT EVEN THE HOPE of achieving such riches. And their favorite local despot knows it. Why? Because he sees the same TV broadcasts and browses the same internet sites. The difference between despot and despised? The despot can dig deep into the pockets of the despised to achieve these riches - for himself and his tribe. The despised cannot.

Is this situation not BOUND to cause unrest? Of course. And to keep that unrest targeted at its 'proper' area (in no case whatsoever is it to be aimed at the despot) the despot MUST come up with distractions. Like the gladiator circus of ancient Rome. Or the public chest-beating (literally) over the Danish cartoons. Hundreds more examples are available, but will only lengthen a very depressing list.

These distractions are nothing more than diversionary tactics. Despised people (despised by their despots) must be kept occupied. Small wars. Tribal conflicts. Religious outrage. Nationalism. Anti-semitism. Whatever it takes - just keep them occupied on SOMETHING besides the fact that the despot has created such a backward country that it cannot even hope to catch up with the rest of the civilized world for generations. A truly sad state of affairs.

I have a negative example that may help to bring this issue into focus. No negative proof can ever prove a point, but it can certainly open up the thought passages. Here goes...

Why - with an outright civil war on its hands - has the Shiite majority in Iraq not risen up to defend itself and condemn the slaughter of its priests and people? Compare the outrage and violence and hyperbole created by a little newspaper in a little fly spot of a country thousands of miles away with the amount of outrage and violence targeted at the Sunni insurgency. Why the disparity? Hundreds of Shiites, including priests, have died. Heck, they even blow up mosques... Yet, no violence. Why? Where is the proportionate response compared to the Danish protests? The answer is simple. Ayatollah Sistani. Ayatollah Sistani alone holds the line against violence. He is a forward thinking man (at least by Arab standards) who understands that a violent uprising will not engender a peaceful and profitable modern state. So his statements encourage moderation and peaceful outlets of energy - like voting. He is truly an unbelievable leader in today's Iraq. America could not do ANYTHING without his moderating force for good and peace.

See the point? Leaders can lead and drive behaviors toward ill or towards good. It is too bad that Arab leaders are too busy distracting their disposessed people to govern them well.

Sistani deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

Time waits for no man

Boy, is THIS a problem in my life. Although Dr. Zauberman leaves out procrastinators, it seems to me that this is the key to this new study. I have a VERY organized list of things that I must accomplish. I also have a mental image of how important each is, and a boss that keeps me focused on the items that are most important to him. Yet..... inevitably...... the list sits.... unacted upon. Why? I certainly do not like to do some of the tasks. They are repetitious and boring. This article helps explain it a bit more. Seems, if I can possibly put it off - mentally and physically - I can justify it in my brain. Why? Because I think I will have more time next week or next month. Will I? Of course not. Yet I continue.

Once again - human beings do their level best at creating, establishing, and vocalizing their competency - facts be damned. Many lessons here for managers - of others and themselves.

"Dr. Gal Zauberman of the University of North Carolina and Dr. John Lynch of Duke, professors of marketing, have found that future expenditures of time are always psychologically discounted - that is, a future disbursement of time seems to be worth less than an outlay of time in the present. This makes it easier for people to volunteer for time-consuming tasks if they are told they do not have to do it right away. Even though they know, rationally, that an hour today is just as long as an hour a month from today, and even though there is no reason to believe that they will have any more spare time next month, time discounting makes taking on the new task easier. And when, as inevitably happens, that future day turns out to be just as busy as today, people seem to learn little from the experience.....People concentrate on different aspects of a task when it is far away in time, Dr. Lynch said. "When we think about a task in the distant future," he said, "we focus on the benefits - the good stuff. When we think about doing a task today, we think about the mundane and less interesting details.""

This article was prompted by: Future Shock Concept Gets a Personal Twist; By Nicholas Bakalar - NY Times - February 22, 2005

Lies and damned lies

Statistics are becoming more and more the staple of our scientifically based modern society. It is clear, however, that statistics can both illuminate and darken a particular point. This happens for three very separate reasons.

Number one - the user of the statistic quotes only certain points within the argument, and almost always these statistical points favor the author's particular viewpoint. This can be called lying - and it is wrong on its face.

Number two - the user of the statistic does not take into account other levers that may also impact his interpretation of this particular statistic - including updates of the statistics you are currently looking at. In almost every single case - a single statistic, or even a small set of statistics does a great disservice to the reader. By only quoting one or very few statistics, the picture painted is incomplete, at best, and wrong on its face, at worst. I cannot bring myself to call this lying, but if I truly understood the intent of the user, it may be clearly so. In my view - this usage is the vast majority of misuse of statistics.

My favorite example of number two? Baseball statistics. Can you really capture the greatness of Alex Rodriguez with a batting average? Most would say no. You need to know where he bats in the lineup (that impacts his RBI totals). You need to know his on base percentage (does he walk a lot)? There are hundreds more examples in baseball - and these types of discussions are the basis for the so-called 'Money Ball." Money Ball is nothing more than a sophisticated use of statistics to gain a competitive advantage over your opponent (the other team) by searching out the important performance parameters that most impact winning. Knowledge of this allows the users to obtain these players for less money. At least until the rest of the league catches on - which it has.

Number three is a bit more interesting. It is the public's misunderstanding of statistics. The reason I drew out Mr. Krugman's statistical quote below is because it illuminates a very common misunderstanding of life expectancy. A good example - life expectancy a hundred years ago in the United States - where the 'average' life was about twenty years shorter than today. But, is that a complete picture? Hardly. A proper understanding of the statistical quote about life expectancy (see number two above) would aid this understanding. Turns out, if the average 19th century man made it past his teen years, he had a pretty good chance to make it to seventy or so. Not the bleak picture usually painted, but still pretty grim. But here is the key - no one is proffering this understanding to the common man - and the common man is not asking. Thus - great misunderstanding of an incredibly precise tool. Here is the blurb from Mr. Krugman's column:

"...Mr. Bush's remarks on African-Americans perpetuate a crude misunderstanding about what life expectancy means. It's true that the current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years -- but that doesn't mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die after collecting only a few years' worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks' low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years -- not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men."

Here is some text from an article by Anna Bernasek that may add a little clarity to my item number two:

"Remember the economy's so-called soft patch? That's a term that Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve chairman, used earlier this year (2005) to describe unexpected weakness in the economy..... At that time, the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that the economy grew in the first quarter at an annual rate of 3.1 percent, much lower than many economists had forecast. But two months later, the G.D.P. number was revised substantially higher. It was recalculated to be 3.8 percent, annualized, greater than the growth rate in the previous quarter and 22 percent higher than initially thought. So the evidence that the economy was in a soft patch has pretty much disappeared. In fact, Mr. Greenspan made it clear in Congressional testimony this month that he no longer described the economy in those terms.

....The problem isn't that the data is shifting; it's that it is often treated as solid fact.....As J. Steven Landefeld, the director of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, put it: ''Our job is to get the general snapshot of the economy about right. .... He maintains that, on average, the revision for quarterly G.D.P. is typically of the magnitude of one percentage point, up or down. In other words, if G.D.P. is first reported as 3.1 percent, it probably will turn out to be somewhere in the band from 2.1 percent to 4.1 percent....Mr. Landefeld says that one-third of the 1,500 or so data points used to construct the quarterly advance number are estimates -- in essence, place holders -- that will have to do until the actual numbers come in, sometimes months or years later."

Notice the text? 1500 data points? Place holders? This is not to infer any lack of responsibility, just to foment the proper conclusion that ANY data should impose. These types of statistics MUST be followed up on - they are projections. There are new data points, better data points, updated data points, and changing and improving measurements. All must be taken into consideration before the 'truth' is known. Math is a dull sword unless wielded by knowledgeable users and enjoyed by those with a true understanding of its intricacies.

In response to: Little Black Lies; Paul Krugman; Published: January 28, 2005 and A Number That's Meant to Be Second-Guessed; Anna Bernasek; NY Times July 31, 2005

Bird flu or Bird doo doo?

One of the main premises of this blog is to uncover human frailties that allow us to believe things that are wrong. We remember wrong things, we prioritize the least likely things, and we mis-remember our history to maximize our competency. This is another entry in that very long list.

It seems that humans have this very fascinating ability to worry about things that matter little (statistically) and ignore those more messy and more likely problems (like diabetes - a scourge on US society for many years to come). This issue is especially important in this time of information overload. If you want to read about the bird flu 24/7 - there are places where you can. That, however, does not make it a very likely event in your life. Get the point? With the preponderance of publishing opportunities - large, gaudy, newsmaking events take FAR MORE than their share of an average reader's mindshare. This contributes greatly to very poor political decisions based on the over-sensitivity of our politicians to public panic (bird flu; assault weapons)

Here is the text:

"A disease like diabetes gallops practically out of control, with estimates that 21 million Americans have it and 45 million more could develop it. Yet relatively few people worry about it or alter their behavior to postpone or possibly prevent its onset. On the other hand, just the mention of flesh-eating disease, a staph infection that affects maybe 1,500 Americans each year, is enough to make many people anxious. And a news report on avian flu, which has yet to affect anyone in the United States, generates calls to personal physicians from patients eager to stock up on anti-flu drugs.

Americans, it seems, are always worrying about the wrong illnesses. "The risks that hurt people and the risks that upset people are almost completely unconnected," said Peter M. Sandman, a risk-communications consultant based in Princeton, N.J. The likelihood of being affected by a disease is not the major factor influencing whether a person feels "outrage," as Dr. Sandman calls it. Instead, factors like control and familiarity (or lack of both) and whether the disease invokes dread or disgust are much stronger influences. Flesh-eating disease, for example, is an exotic illness that can quickly kill. News reports tend to focus on its gruesome aspects. And it often occurs in hospitals. "You're never less in control of your own life than when you're in the hospital," Dr. Sandman said. "You're wearing PJ's open at the back. You're at the beck and call of orderlies and other people who in your regular life you wouldn't take orders from."......

A chronic illness like diabetes, on the other hand, which may be dealt with in part through diet and exercise, offers people some sense of being in control. "It's not whether I actually bother to control it," Dr. Sandman said. "It's whether I feel I can." .... Familiarity can also moderate the sense of dread, said Paul Slovic, a psychologist with Decision Research, a nonprofit research institution in Eugene, Ore. Car accidents, he noted, are as horrific as cancer, yet "we don't have the same sense of dread around cars that we do around carcinogens" because we drive all the time.

Another important factor is prevalence. "Prevalent events are seen as less serious than rare events," Dr. Leventhal said in an e-mail message. The logic is simple, he said: if lots of people have a disease but are not hospitalized or dying, it must be relatively benign; if it is rare, it might have serious, unknown consequences. For example, Dr. Leventhal said, bird flu is so far known in the United States only through news reports. This allows the threat to loom larger and more menacingly than it should at this point. Unfamiliarity makes the mind wander, and perhaps imagine the worst.... "We respond at an emotional level and at a more cerebral or cognitive level," said George Loewenstein, a professor in the department of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon University."

My approach and my answer - information. We may not be able to prevent this, but by wide dissemination of these failings we will make a dent. At least that is what I hope.

In response to: On Not Wanting to Know What Hurts You; By Henry Fountain; NY Times January 15, 2006

There but by the grace of God

I endeavor every single day to become a better leader, a better human, and a better friend. To do this requires self examination, a painful but very useful process. One thing I have learned (or - to be more exact - am in the process of learning and executing in my life - I am NOT there yet) is that when I see aberrations - poor results, boorish actions, hubris - I think to myself - there but by the grace of God go I. Why? Because I have the exact same weakness, and if I was put in that situation, I would - no doubt - react exactly the same.

That is why this excerpt from a column by David Brooks caught my eye. It showed, a little more clearly, what it is like to be a leader. This is also a very prominent theme in Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a favorite bedside book of mine. Marcus, a Caesar, understood the hubris that goes along with his job and actively fought it. I will bet US Senators do the same. Here is some of the text from the article:

"There is no environment more perilous for that genuine self than the United States Senate. Consider how senators live every day. They are surrounded by clouds of deferential, ear-whispering aides whose own attitudes towards their bosses are a mixture of fervent love and Oedipal contempt. They are buffeted by swarms of reporters who are obsequious in person and then condescending in print.

They are puffed by endless praise and bruised by endless criticism. They begin their day before dawn, with every minute scheduled by their worker bee helpers. They go to offices with power walls adorned with plaques, prizes, football helmets and other offerings that have been left to them in the way ritual sacrifices were once left on the altar of a tribal god or chieftain.

Wide-eyed home state folks click their pictures with disposable cameras. Lobbyists stop by with their superior suits and their beneficent causes. At midmorning the senator will be driven to a think tank to address an audience of wonks who know his subject a hundred times better than he does. Then he will drop by a committee hearing where photographers will take pictures of him listening portentously. Then he will be whisked to the floor to make a statement, pausing only to share flattery with an esteemed colleague. It's no wonder some senators turn into bloated Hindenburg versions of themselves."

In response to: In Praise of Joe Biden by David Brook; NY Times January 15, 2006

Selective Perception

From Dr. Scott Plous' "The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making"

There is no such thing as context-free decision making....

In a famous experiment Bruner and Postman presented people with a series of five playing cards, varying the exposure time from ten milliseconds to one second. One of the series of cards was not a 'real' card; it was a black three of hearts. Bruner and Postman found that it took people more than four times as long to recognize the trick card as it did to recognize a 'normal' card. Even those that recognized the trick card, however, reacted to the 'trick' card in differing manners.

The first was a dominance reaction. Faced with a black three of hearts, the subjects in this case were very sure that the card was a 'normal' three of hearts or a 'normal' three of spades. 96% of the subjects showed dominance reactions at some point.

Others used a compromised reaction. For instance, some of the subjects reported the black three of hearts was a 'grayish' three of spades. When a red 'trick' card was used (a red six of spades) the subjects reported it as a purple six of spades or a purple six of hearts. Half of the subjects showed these compromised reactions.

A third way subjects reacted to the incongruity of a trick card was a disruptive reaction. In one case the subject denied the trick card was even a playing card. In another, the subject doubted he even knew what a spade looked like any more!! This type of reaction was rare, however.

Bruner and Postman state that perceptions are powerfully determined by expectations. "When people have enough experience with a particular situation, they often see what they expect to see."

There are other examples...

In another well-known study, based on a very competitive football game between Princeton and Dartmouth, researchers concluded that "the game actually was many different games...It is inaccurate and misleading to say that different people have different attitudes concerning the same things. For the 'thing' is NOT the same for different people, whether the 'thing' is a football game, communism, or spinach.

Here is the rundown of the experiment. After this particularly violent game, Social Psychology Professor Albert Hastorfwere was inspired to quiz the students at both colleges about their perceptions of the game. He asked 163 Dartmouth students and 161 Princeton students the following question, among others: "From what you saw in the game or in the movie (those who were not present at the game were shown a movie of the game), or from what you have read, which team do you feel started the rough play?" Dartmouth students were evenly divided on who started the rough play, but the Princeton students were definitive; 86 percent thought Dartmouth started it. In the case of the students who were not at the game, but watched it afterwards in the Social Psychology Department, the professor asked them to record the number of infractions initiated by both teams. Again, the Dartmouth students split the results evenly (4.3 incidents by Dartmouth vs. 4.4 incidents by Princeton). The Princeton students were not as kind. Again, even after the fact, the Princeton team recorded 9.8 incidents initiated by Dartmouth vs. only 4.4 for Princeton. Interesting.

My last example of selective perception is known as the hostile media effect. Here, three professors speculated that selective perception would also slant political partisans' views of how the media depicts their side of the political playground. In one study the professors asked voters, three days before a presidential election, to indicate whether the media coverage of their candidate had been biased, and if so, in what direction. In roughly 90% of the cases respondents felt that the media had been biased against the candidate that they supported in the actual election.

In another, similar case, the professors asked 68 pro-Israeli students, 27 pro-Arab students, and 49 neutral students to evaluate the news coverage surrounding the Beirut massacre (1982). The news segments were drawn from six different US news programs over a ten day period. In support of the hostile media effect, each side saw the news coverage as biased in favor of those on the other side of this particular disagreement.

Perceptions are selective. We live in our own self-created world where how we address an issue or a conflict has been proven to be based a great deal on many other cognitive factors besides the facts of the matter. If we are to succeed in life, we must understand this weakness, and adapt to it.