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Guess that whole "created or saved" thing is out the window now. Funny how people thought it was important to save car companies that A) make crap and B) couldn't survive without taxpayer subsidies yet manned spaceflight which has a wealth of benefits isn't worth it. http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/01/11/is-space-exploration-worth-the-cost-a-freakonomics-quorum/

The Mr Hackett was destined to become a hacker...

....researchers have found that people named Dennis are more likely to become dentists. An article, “Why Susie Sells Seashells by the Seashore,” finds that in the U.S. population the names Jerry, Dennis, and Walter rank 39th, 40th, and 41st among male first names. But in the national directory of the American Dental Association there are close to twice as many Dennises (482) as Walters (252) and Jerrys (270). “Similarly, people whose names begin with ‘Geo’ (e.g., George, Geoffrey) are disproportionately likely to do research in the geosciences (e.g., geology).”

http://www.freakonomics.com/2009/04/24/yes-part-ii/

From http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/05/17/the-neuroscience-behind-sexual-desire-authors-of-a-billion-wicked-thoughts-answer-your-questions/:

Some comments contend that our alma mater Boston University disclaimed us, revoked our websites, and rescinded our emails. This is just plain silly. Though we’re now alumni, we still maintain the same BU web addresses we’ve always had, and still have access to our same BU email accounts, though we now rely on non-university accounts.

Neither the Boston University IRB nor our former department (nor any other BU entity) ever issued any reprimand because we did not violate any university policy or regulation. Though it’s true that many colleagues in our former department were uncomfortable with our choice of research subject—some explicitly tried to dissuade us from studying sexual desire—there’s an enormous gap between disliking our research and disclaiming it.

So, well done spreading that particular line of FUD.

I’m not saying that these researchers did everything right (they almost certainly did not), but really, what sort of methodology *would* these people like to see? It is basically impossible to do *any* research in this area, as has been stated repeatedly both in the book and in the discussions online, due to how politically and emotionally charged these issues are. It’s like complaining that scientists using telescopes to find planets with habitable atmospheres are doing bad science because they aren’t there scooping up samples of the atmosphere to check its actual composition.

It’s also totally unclear to me as to what these people are complaining about since there is absolutely no mention of what the problem is in either of the two journals you linked to. As far as I can tell, it seems some people believe the entire book is based on a single survey posted to LiveJournal, which is great for their egos but entirely non-factual.

Atrocious, indeed.

FWIW, pre-1998 Pyrex is used by people making crack cocaine because of the quality. Not sure if making meth is similar.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/28/did-the-sale-of-pyrex-hurt-the-crack-cocaine-industry/

Here:

http://www.chrisbrunner.com/2006/09/21/banned-the-golden-book-of-chemistry-experiments/

Also be sure to get your kids a copy of:

http://www.amazon.com/Do---Yourself-Gunpowder-Cookbook/dp/0873646754/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304105028&sr=8-1

and perhaps a book on glass-blowing or get the good / original Pyrex from yardsales:

http://www.freakonomics.com/2011/04/28/did-the-sale-of-pyrex-hurt-the-crack-cocaine-industry/

William

http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/whatmakesfoodfatte ning.pdf

The Dietary and Nutritional Survey of British Adults, Gibson (1996, p. 405) concluded that "sugars
appear to have a weak negative [italics added] association with BMI that is not totally explained
by confounders such as dieting, under-reporting or the inverse correlation between energy from
sugars and fat."

"[I asked my tech people, and they said that] theoretically those analog outputs could be disabled, forcing consumers to use a secure digital connection to watch HD content. [Then they tried to convince me that such measures were mostly token measures, but I ignored them.] A lack of copy protection is holding HBO back from making its own content available in high-definition through its popular HBO On Demand platform, [because I didn't take the time to listen to my technologists. I decided that the real problem was the name, not that the technology was backed by poor use of legal constructs.]"

I enjoyed the first freakanomics, but they guy does seem to have a big head... each chapter starts with some quote by somebody else about how great the author is.

it does? In my "Revised and Expanded Edition" there's nothing of the sort.

Also, their blog (which was linked in TFA, but who reads TFA) is well worth a read if you enjoyed the book (or even if you haven't read it).

Mod parent up. Not only does Levitt make a strong case for demographic change (albeit induced by legislative change) as the fundamental driver of declining crime in NYC, but he explicitly counters other mythicised causes, such as the roles of Guiliani and Clinton.

(Website: http://www.freakonomics.com/thebook.php)

With a free capital market, such a player can be assembled with little difficulty.

You're telling me the SEC is the main barrier to setting up a new business in an existing market? Incumbency, first mover advantage, economies of scale, brand, negotiating power... these are all relatively minor obstacles? It's classic to set one conception of the free market on one side and the government (which is hardly a blameless regardless of your perspective) on the other as if there's a simple binary choice between them. It fits neatly into an ideology, but in reality the market doesn't work so smoothly. Take this article about prices for prescription generics:

Walgreens charges $117 for a bottle of the same pills for which Costco charges $12.

Why on earth, I asked . . ., would anyone in his right mind fill his generic prescription at Walgreen's instead of Costco?

His answer: if a retiree is used to filling his prescriptions at Walgreens, that's where he fills his prescriptions -- and he assumes that the price of a generic drug (or, perhaps, any drug) is pretty much the same at any pharmacy. Talk about information asymmetry; talk about price discrimination.

Sure, in a theoretical perfect free market there wouldn't be information asymmentry. But there is - and there always will be (because companies know and use this fact, because gathering information is expensive, because individuals and smaller organizations suffer from greater coordination and collective action problems than big organizations, because they have fewer resources, because information is both a precondition for the market and a product sold in that market). So assuming you can "assemble" your "player" with little difficulty, how do you intend to compete with Walgreens? Because apparently they can still compete with a price 10 times yours for an identical product.

As for the telecoms, when governments allowed competition they also (at least where I live) forced the owner of the wires to allow for competition on those wires. Otherwise we wouldn't have competition there either. I say the market is more free because they regulated, not less.

It says she bought the prescription at Walgreens, it would have been much cheaper if she had bought them elsewhere. She got caught, and she didn't get the best deal, what a fool.

http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice (PsychologicalReview).pdf

Most homework is probably ineffective. The mere act of doing something produces no learning unless there is a feedback mechanism and the learner is actually trying to improve. I'm guessing that 99% of the time the transfer function for the feedback path approaches an open circuit as far as homework is concerned.

If the homework does get marked, there is usually no mechanism for the student to learn and improve the mark. The bad students get beaten down and lose all confidence that they can learn. Bad, clueless teachers will achieve this result no matter whether or not they assign homework. They might as well save themselves the effort of whatever marking they do. They should quit giving homework to the early grade students. It wouldn't hurt the students.

What do I think works? http://www.reason.com/news/show/28479.html http://www.jumpmath.org/ http://www.spiritofmath.com/about3a.html There are lots of amazing teachers out there who produce amazing results. The ones I link to are math teachers because math is the one subject where excellent teaching produces uncontrovertable, measurable results. What these teachers have in common is apathy or even outright hostility from school administration. The problem starts at the top folks.

I liked the freakonmics book quite a bit - so I was interested on their take of the elections. Today's blog is interesting, as well as a post from last year.

In a nutshell, voting is an irrational act in the strict economic sense. The twist is that a large group of people acting irrationally have a rational and useful output. Cool stuff.

I liked the freakonmics book quite a bit - so I was interested on their take of the elections. Today's blog is interesting, as well as a post from last year.

In a nutshell, voting is an irrational act in the strict economic sense. The twist is that a large group of people acting irrationally have a rational and useful output. Cool stuff.

Before anyone recommends it, surprisingly, in Switzerland at least, going to all mail-in ballots reduced voter turnout.

TV causes autism? I doubt it.

An article in Slate yesterday argued that TV watching causes autism. The Slate article is based on research done by Cornell economists Michael Waldman, Sean Nicholson, and Nodir Adilov. You can download the academic working paper here.

The paper gives some theories why TV and autism might be linked, but the more interesting part of the paper is the data analysis. The researchers are trying to find a "natural experiment" that shifts around TV watching, but otherwise has no impact on whether a child is diagnosed as autistic. Rainfall is one of the things they use. In places where it rains a lot, kids watch more TV. Maybe rainfall doesn't affect autism in any other way. This is a creative approach, although it suffers from the weakness (which they acknowledge in the paper), that rainfall changes other things, like how much time you spend indoors doing other things besides watching TV. They also use the arrival of cable TV in an area. This approach is potentially stronger, although it would be better if they used availability of cable TV, rather than the number of people who actually subscribe.

These are intriguing approaches, but personally I did not find the empirical evidence in the paper very compelling.

The rainfall evidence is based off of three states: Washington, Oregon, and California. It rains a lot in some parts of these states, but not others. There is more autism in the parts of the states where it rains more. The problem is that it rains on the coast of Oregon and Washington, and in Northern California. But there are a million other differences between the coast of Washington and the Eastern part of the state, and between Northern and Southern California. The researchers also look at how much rain there was when you were between the ages of 0-2, controlling for your county. This is more promising. The impact of rain gets smaller, but it is the most convincing evidence in the paper.

The data analysis of cable TV is limited to California and Pennsylvania and also finds positive results. The difficulty with the cable TV analsyis is that there is an incredibly strong positive trend in autism. The cable TV data are basically on an upward trend. The regression analysis is going to have a very hard time sorting out between a steady rise in cable TV penetration and the time trend. In the current version they only include a linear time trend, which is an extrememly powerful predictor. My guess is that if they generalize their specification to allow for non-linear time trends, the cable TV result will disappear.

The authors have done some interesting work, but the nature of the problem makes it a really hard one to answer convincingly. For instance, you might think that Oregon and California should have similar autism rates. Nope, Oregon's rate is four times higher. That sort of gap is almost certainly due to differences in what is called autism in the official data in one state versus the other. The increasing time trend is also heavily influenced by what is labeled autism. When the outcome of interest is measured so poorly, it is hard to know what the analysis is really picking up--differences in the underlying symptoms or just in the reporting of them.

The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that there might be a causal link between rainfall, TV, and autism, but not the one suggested by the paper.

My theory: when it rains a lot, parents watch more TV, see more shows about autism, and this leads them to seek out a diagnosis of autism for their kids. They have the same kids, it is just that TV makes them believe that their kids are autistic.

I don't mean to sound overly negative on this research. I applaud the authors for asking a daring hypothesis and gathering data to try to test it. My gut, though, tells me that this is a result which will not stand up to scrutiny.

from http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/

My theory: when it rains a lot, parents watch more TV, see more shows about autism, and this leads them to seek out a diagnosis of autism for their kids. They have the same kids, it is just that TV makes them believe that their kids are autistic.

How about learning some science. Much of what we call intelligence is highly malleable. There is a growing body of research that shows that talent doesn't really exist. Smart, talented people are made, not born. Even athletic prowess has been shown to be environmentally determined.

Here's a paper that shows that musical talent is mostly a matter of practice. http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice (PsychologicalReview).pdf

Here's link to some papers that show that athletic prowess is mostly determined by the month you were born. http://www.socialproblemindex.ualberta.ca/relage.h tm

Here's a link to Lauren Resnick. http://www.lrdc.pitt.edu/media.htm She points out that iq can be changed.

Beauty? Check this out. http://www.campaignforrealbeauty.com/home_films_ev olution_v2.swf

What you are spouting is popular prejudice not science.

The amount of math that you learn and the level you attain are proportional to the work you do. There is no royal road to learning. If you're not learning math, it's not because you lack talent. What you lack is probably confidence. It has been noted that most people discover that they have no talent for math the same year they have a bad math teacher. If you doubt the relationship between expertise and work, check out http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/DeliberatePractice (PsychologicalReview).pdf.

The most amazing math teacher I ever saw was Charles Ledger. The back wall of his classroom was lined with trophies. He taught in a pretty regular public school (ie. mixed population). He didn't have elite students and yet his students seemed to own the national math competitions they entered. I've seen those competitions. They require quite high levels of problem solving. Most university freshmen wouldn't do very well on even the grade 7 and 8 competitions.

Charles started every class with ten minutes of drill. Those kids really knew their number facts. At the end of the class, he posed a problem with an obvious, but wrong, answer. The idea was to make the students quit jumping to conclusions and start thinking analytically. Charles made two main points: 1. Students who are expert at arithmetic have an easy time with algebra. Students who are expert at algebra have an easy time with calculus. Forget the calculator. Fluency in the basics does matter. 2. Confidence is really important. If students don't believe that their hard work will result in success, then they won't work hard. It is really important to demonstrate to the students that they can succeed. http://www.spiritofmath.com/t_train.html Click on the 'Summary of Drill System' link. It really is worth you while to get good at the basics.

Another success is the Jump Math program started by John Mighton. http://www.jumpmath.org/ John has also written a book: "The Myth of Ability" http://www.anansi.ca/titles.cfm?pub_id=206 Where Charles Ledger works hard on the basics, John Mighton's technique is to take beaten-up students and convince them they can succeed. He teaches them something slightly above their grade level. When they succeed at that they are willing to continue working. If they don't know the seven times table, he gives them problems that don't need the seven times table. He breaks each technique into such simple steps that the students can't fail to do them right. Usually within a year or so, his students are working at grade level or above. Based on this success, Mighton can honestly assert that anyone can learn math.

I once watched one of my buddies learn some math that he wasn't supposed to be able to learn. He was a mere engineer working on his master's. He found himself in a math class full of math students (not at all like engineers). The prof made a gentle joke of his lack of background. He should have been out of his depth. On the other hand, engineers know how to work if nothing else. His technique was to read an example, close the book and attempt to solve it, open the book and see if he was right. He would repeat this until he got it. He did this for every example in the book and for every problem for which the answer was given. He made a point of skipping nothing. He totally nailed the class.

The bottom line is that you can learn math. All it takes is work. Depending on your background, it could take a thousand hours of serious effort. That's three hours a day for a year. You'll be ready for engineering math and you'll fly throgh it with ease.

Well all the experts who predicted 'a bloodbath of crime' before the crime rate dropped in the mid 90s, sought many reasons why the crime rate dropped so no one would point out they were wrong. But from reading 'Freakonomics' it would seem that the three reasons the authors could actually support with statistical evidence were abortion, stronger jail sentencing and more police officers, many other reasons given simply have no numbers to back them up.
What is also interesting is that it gave evdence to show that what one's parents did to/for their child had no impact on the childs life. What did have an effect was who the parents were (how successful they were) and the child's peers.

And yes they did say abortion. An excerpt from the chapter is here- http://www.freakonomics.com/ch4.php

Never before has something so human and primitive as dating been reducible to such discrete values.

This is worth reading. As the discussion here shows, it is a fascinating topic. The authors of the article actually describe it as a statistical analysis of "white collar crime". I agree. None of this nonsense about them being so rich that they don't know the value of a bagel.

What the Bagel Man Saw

TFA is very similar to an article in the New York Times by Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame. In his article he cites the work of Anders Ericsson. If you follow the links provided you can find his paper. What he points out is that humans are very plastic both physically and mentally. Given the motivation to practice in a certain manner, almost anyone can become an expert at anything. There are some physical limits of course. If you're five feet zero, you're not making it as a professional basketball player.

If the work cited by Levitt is true, and I believe it is, this has tremendous implications for public policy.

If we think that people's ability to learn is genetically determined, then we will think that poor people became that way because their ability is limited. In that case, there is no point in spending a lot of money educating them. On the other hand, if we believe that almost anyone can excel with the right amount of work then it is worthwhile to make the effort to try to educate them. We see the problem as one of motivation and not ability. So, there's the problem. Are inner city kids defective or is it worthwhile to provide them with the programs and education to raise them into mainstream society. There is very strong evidence that we should spend the money and insist on a better education for them.

http://www.freakonomics.com/times0507.html

I suggest you go read Freakonomics, where they tackle the myth of crack-dealers earning lots and lots of cash. Those who peddle the stuff on the street are actually low-income earners. Non-comission Amazon link here.

You might want to check out Freakanomics by the renowned economist Steven Levitt, http://www.freakonomics.com/. He argues that the decrease in crime was caused by the legalization of abortion. Since fewer unwanted babies were born, there were fewer fucked up kids growing up to become criminals.

A burger flipper in McDonalds may well earn more than a street level crack dealer, but McDonalds will sack you if they find out you are on drugs. You won't be sacked as a dealer for being on drugs.

For people on drugs, the only option they really have is a job sucking other people into it.

I wouldn't bet on that - Levitt's paper notes that drug use is acitvely discouraged and estimates about 1/3 of the drugs skimmed by dealers is for their own consumption. From a gang's perspective, junky dealers are bad employyees, no different than McD's viewpoint. Getting fired, however, probably means something else to a gang member.

The paper is online at: http://www.freakonomics.com/pdf/DrugGangFinances.p df

Violent crime is down in the United States for primarily one reason. Abortion. Since Roe, there have been approximately 38 million abortions in the United States. That's 38 million people who would have probably had less than ideal circumstances in which to grow up, and as a result - crime is down.

There is no correlation with watching the act of violence and being violent. Interactivity in video games has not been studied closely enough to see if it somehow drops the inhibitions to commit real violence, a much better predictor of that is violence against animals.

And before I get flamed, let me provide my evidence. Steven Levitt's work at the University of Chicago showing the DIRECT causality of abortion rates and drops in crime.

http://www.freakonomics.com/

Dammit, I forgot the part about monkeys paying for sex!!!!! That's definately going to be part of the design for my next computer!

Admittedly, libraries do charge fines sometimes, but in most ways they are set up to be perceived as a social/community institution rather than economic ones. The anonymous cash card system would have to be implemented very carefully to avoid tipping the balance.

No, not everyone believes that unborn children have a soul or is human, but denying it won't change the reality that they do.

honestly- why should i believe that they do? why should i believe that anyone has a soul? because the bible says so?

from what i understand, good science now indicates that most life, including human behavior, can be measured and described as the result of a highly complex but clearly logical organic computational phenomenon occurring in not only the human mind, which is clearly its most sophisticated manifestation to date, but in all animal minds. It is this phenomenon which we are only now beginning to comprehend the possibility of understanding.

There is much evidence which suggests there is little of this computational activity for much of the first half of the pregnancy, and that termination at this point would result in very little suffering. The costs to society of having what are clearly malformed and evolutionarily nonviable and non-reproductive candidates -and I'm not talking ethnic cleansing here, silly. there are some things that are clearly debatable about what constitutes a "nonviable" candidate, and this certainly excludes cosmetic issues, gender, and other obviouly racist or sexist strawman you may put up, but do not honestly tell me that those with Down's Syndrome are seriously evolutionarily viable? That our gene pool would seriously benefit from the presence of this anomaly? If it can be detected and eliminated early on, it would greatly benefit society as a whole with no suffering or coersion.

Some may even agree that this could be extended to pregnancies which are unwanted. There is significant evidence which suggests a direct link between unwanted pregnancies and many social ills. If they can be stopped at a point where it is clear that a significant manifestation of this computational phenomenon we call "consciousness" forms, I don't see anything wrong with it, and what your church says shouldn't affect the laws, as nothing to suggests it's true beyond "faith".

Sorry ...guess I'm in one of my more atheistic moods today :)