Archive for September, 2015
September 30, 2015
I’ve been reading a book called How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking by Jordan Ellenberg
The author recounts a classic stock advisor scam that goes like this …
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One day, you receive an unsolicited newsletter from an investment advisor, containing a tip that a certain stock is due for a big rise.
A week passes, and just as the Investment advisor predicted, the stock goes up.
The next week, you get a new edition of the newsletter, and this time, the tip is about a stock whose price the adviser thinks is going to fall.
And indeed, the stock craters.
That’s good, but it gets even better …
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Posted in Math & arithmetic, Math & Quant Skills, Statistics - Probabilities | 1 Comment »
September 29, 2015
Talk about a potential license to kill …
That was my first thought, but the article reporting a study by a Johns Hopkins prof turned out to be more nuanced than the headline … and, in my opinion, very misleading.
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The summary conclusion: some students who misbehave in school learn less (as measured by conventional scoring) but end up earning more over their lifetime.
Here are the details and my take …
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Posted in Behavior - misbehavior, Education - Academics, Non-cognitive skills, Schools | Leave a Comment »
September 28, 2015
With the Boehner resignation, I started to wonder (again): why do these guys work so hard to get elected? Is it worth it?
Since Congress is gridlocked … and, since the President is end-running Congress on most matters … the fulfillment can’t be “having an impact”.
So, it must be something else.
Money, maybe?
Raises the question: how much dough gets thrown into the pot?
Here’s the scoop…
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Posted in Congress - Senate | Leave a Comment »
September 25, 2015
Everybody must have their favorite moments from the Pope’s visit.
Here are my top 2 in reverse order:
#2 Obama was late getting to Andrew’s Air Force Base, so the Pope’s plane was put in a holding pattern over North Carolina to blow some time and arrive concurrently with the President. Source
I got a kick out of this one since the men — who were totally in sympatico re: climate change change — didn’t flinch at the notion of burning a couple of hundred gallons of jet fuel.
The symbolism was awesome..
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What could possibly beat that ?
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Posted in Bullies - Bullying, ObamaCare, Religion | 1 Comment »
September 24, 2015
Two coinciding events this week: I’m prepping my fall course in business analytics — with some emphasis on decision biases — and, AGT is over (finally) and The Voice’s new season started.
So, it’s time to dust off one of my favorite posts …
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I’ll explain the picture later, but first, the back story.
A couple of interesting dots got connected last week.
First, I started watching The Voice.
I liked the talent and the bantering among the coaches, but wondered why they used the turning chairs gimmick. You know, judges can’t see the the performers, they can just hear them.
Became apparent when Usher turned his chair and was surprised to see that the high-pitched soul singer was a big white guy.
Hmmm.
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Second, for the course I’m currently teaching, I’ve been reading a book called The Art of Thinking Clearly — a series of short essays on cognitive biases – those sneaky psychological effects that impair our decision-making.
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Posted in Biases, Cognitive biases, Decision-making, Psychology | 1 Comment »
September 23, 2015
Great piece in the Washington Post by Barton Swaim author of “The Speechwriter: A Brief Education in Politics.”
His basic conclusion: “The most distinctive about Trump … is the structure of his language.”
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Swain says that Trump — nnlike most politicians –doesn’t speak in political rhetoric; he speaks in punchlines – short jabs, not convoluted passages.
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Posted in Language, Public speaking, Trump, Donald | 1 Comment »
September 23, 2015
The Organization for Economic Co-operation Development (OECD) recently issued a report on the impact of technology – think, of computers in the classroom -– on fundamental learning.
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The bottom line:
“Students who use computers very frequently at school do much worse [in reading, science and math], even after accounting for social background and student demographics.”
More specifically …
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Posted in Common Core, Computers & PCs, Education - Academics, Technology | Leave a Comment »
September 22, 2015
Last week’s Federal Reserve action (err, make that inaction) caused a stir in the financial markets.
Common view was: ” geez, is the economy so bad that it can’t absorb a measly 25 bps increase in interest rates?”
Source
In yesterday’s post, I put the number in context, illustrating that the economic cost of a measly .25% just on servicing the national debt is about $45 billion ( .25% times $18 trillion) …. equivalent to roughly half of the Federal government’s annual cost for ObamaCare.
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Today, let’s take a couple of more views of the 1/4 of 1 % …. the impact on household incomes.
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Posted in Credit Cards, Debt - Deficit, Federal Reserve, Interest rates, Mortgages | Leave a Comment »
September 21, 2015
Last week’s Federal Reserve action (err, make that inaction) caused a stir in the financial markets.
Common view was: ” geez, is the economy so bad that it can’t absorb a measly 25 bps increase in interest rates?”
Obviously, .25% isn’t enough to sway many corporate investment decisions … most corporate investments are projected to return mucho above the firm’s cost of capital … not mere quarters of a point. Reality is that firms have hurdle rates way above their cost of capital, reflecting implicit risk and organizations’ limited implementation capacity.
So, what’s going on with the Fed’s decision?
Some pundits are arguing that the Fed is just trying to prop up the stock market with low rates that force investment into higher risk intruments (i.e. stocks)..
That may be true, but it doesn’t seem to have done the trick last week.
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I think that there’s something else going on … something that I haven’t heard from any on-air pundits …
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Posted in Federal Reserve, Interest rates, Law of big numbers, Numbers - big & small | Leave a Comment »
September 17, 2015
I’m really conflicted in the debate re: the Common Core and its higher standards of learning.
As I argued in a prior post, I’m all for giving students a more rigorous education, but wonder if the emphasis on standards is just a diversion from fixing fundamental problems.
See Common Core: Is the problem really standards?
Said differently, it’s really easy to print & mail higher standards, but … what good are they if students aren’t achieving lower standards because of their capabilities, their environment or the educational delivery system.
Case in point: U.S. literacy rates.
My hunch: all states have standards that say, at a minimum, “students should be able to read”.
Still, Google “U.S. Literacy Rates” and you get linked to articles with titles like:
The U.S. Illiteracy Rate Hasn’t Changed In 10 Years
Broad-scale studies indicate that less than 15% of the U.S. population reads proficiently.
Ouch.
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Think about those findings for a moment …
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Posted in Common Core, Education - Academics, Literacy, STEM | Leave a Comment »
September 16, 2015
Since the 2nd GOP presidential debate is tonite, I thought it would be timely to reprise a post from a couple of weeks ago.
Read it, … and keep it in mind when the contenders spar tonite.
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Many of you may be too young to have witnessed and remember, but…
In the 1972 Olympics, the polished U.S. boxing team was predicted to sweep the competition.
But, something happened on the way to the medals’ platform that shocked the sporting world.
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Here’s the story and why Trump jogged my memory of the 1972 Olympics …
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Posted in Boxing, Cuba - Cuban, Olympics, Sports - Games - Recreation, Trump, Donald | Leave a Comment »
September 15, 2015
Heard a story recently about a 3rd grader who was failing math.
Her state had signed up to the Common Core Standards (and testing) … and her school district had embraced the the Common Core curriculum.
Her math grades in 1st and 2nd grade were just fine.
When the Fs started coming home, her father – a college-educated engineer – jumped into the fray to tutor her.
The Fs kept coming.
The Fs kept coming even though her answers were right … her process of arriving at the right answer was wrong.
Before you say, “well, certainly she needs to do the problem the right way”, take this simple test.
Question: Little Joey has a jar with 35 jelly beans. He gives away 17 of the jelly beans to his friends. How many jelly beans does Joey have left in the jar. Show each step of your calculation and label all numbers.
Do it ! Should only take a few seconds ….
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Posted in Common Core, Education - Academics, Eureka Math, Math & arithmetic, Schools | Leave a Comment »
September 14, 2015
Back in my consulting days, I logged a lot of work hours. Par for the course.
And, the prevailing wisdom was: “Not to worry about spouses and kids … it’s the quality of time spent, not the quantity”.
I never bought in to the notion.
There were too many 2nd and 3rd marriages … and too many phoned-in happy birthday wishes to sons & daughters.
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I even remember the story of a son who was was asked to eulogize his father who was struck down early with a fatal heart attack.
The kids reply: “why don’t you do it, I barely knew the guy”
True story, except for the cause of death …
Eventually, I concluded that you have to throw a lot of quantity against the wall and hope that some of it sticks as quality time.
You can’t just pick your shots and expect nothing-but-net every time.
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All of the above was brought to mind by a NY Times op-ed that struck a confirmatory chord ….
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Posted in Family & Friends, Wor, Work, Work-Life Balance | Leave a Comment »
September 11, 2015
What’s up with America’s Got Talent?
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For years, I’ve been ridiculed by my family for loyally watching America’s Got Talent.
This is the 10th anniversary of the show – and though Howard Stern repeatedly hypes the talent as “the best ever, the best in America … acts you won’t see anywhere else”, even I am starting to have my doubts.
Maybe my family has been right all along.
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The AGT “finals” are next week.
To make my point, let’s look at some of the 10 finalists ….
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Posted in AGT, Entertainment | 1 Comment »
September 10, 2015
A recent study, published in The American Journal of Family Therapy concludes:
“Students in the early elementary school years are getting nearly three times as much homework than is recommended by education leaders”
According to CNN, parents reported first-graders were spending 28 minutes on homework each night versus the recommended 10 minutes.
What are the potential consequences of this gross overload?
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Posted in Common, Common Core, Education - Academics, Schools | Leave a Comment »
September 9, 2015
Just in case you missed it …
The City of Baltimore has negotiated a $6.4 “wrongful death” settlement with Freddie Gray’s family.
You remember Freddie, right?
He was the 25 year old drug dealer with a long rap sheet who died of a broken neck in police custody. He was arrested for fleeing police and died while being transported from his place of business (a drug distribution corner in rough-and-tumble Baltimore City) to the police lock-up.
Six Baltimore cops (black & white, male & female, young & old) are charged in connection with the death but haven’t been tried yet.
According to Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake:”This settlement is being made solely because it is in the best interest of the city, and avoids costly and protracted litigation that would only make it more difficult for our city to heal and potentially cost taxpayers many millions more in damages.”
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This settlement is preposterous on several levels …
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Posted in Baltimore, Economic damages, Justice in America, Lifetime earnings | Leave a Comment »
September 8, 2015
Will the aged 3-to-a-room dormitory go the way of of the dinosaur?
A growing trend is local privatization of student housing.
And, I’m not talking about the pest-infested, party-trashed places that populate most college towns.
Nope, we’re talking serious upscale residences …
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Posted in College economics, College life, Real Estate | 1 Comment »
September 4, 2015
In a prior post, we reported that Dr. John Ioannidis, a director of Stanford University’s Meta-Research Innovation Center, estimated that about half of published results across medicine were inflated or wrong
For details, see Uh-oh: Most published research findings are false…
Now, the NY Times is reporting findings published in the Journal of Science which concludes that more than half of all studies published in the 3 most prominent psychology journals are seriously flawed and that their results can’t be replicated.
The Times says:
The report appears at a time when the number of retractions of published papers is rising sharply in a wide variety of disciplines.
Scientists have pointed to a hypercompetitive culture across science that favors novel, sexy results and provides little incentive for researchers to replicate the findings of others, or for journals to publish studies that fail to find a splashy result.
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Here’s the basis for the conclusion that the majority of the studies reported flawed conclusions …
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Posted in Academics - Research, Research, Scientific Method | 1 Comment »
September 3, 2015
I’ve been wrestling with a conundrum ..…
Mainstream media continues to tout the success of ObamaCare … always focusing on the number of previously uninsured folks who now have insurance.
Most recent CBO numbers say that about 19 million previously uninsureds now have insurance – mostly from Medicaid and subsidized ACA Exchange policies.
Now, about 80% of the non-elderly population is covered … but, about 36 million are still uninsured.
Said differently, over half of the previously uninsureds are still uninsured.
Huh?
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Let’s look at the cost …
ObamaCare added about $100 billion in annual government spending .
So, the cost per newly insured person is roughly $5,000 per newly insured person per year.
That sounds about right since an average individual health insurance policy is about $5,000 per year.
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OK, so what’s the rub?
Some simple arithmetic suggests that the aggregate monetary amount of insurance provided to the full population of non-elderly citizens has actually declined.
Here’s my logic …
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Posted in Health Care / Medical Insurance, Healthcare Economics, ObamACA, ObamaCare | Leave a Comment »
September 2, 2015
Chatting with a doctor-friend recently.
His is a very specialized 1-doctor practice (supported by a handful of well-trained techs).
Patients who are referred to him usually have a very serious condition needing sophisticated diagnostics.
My friend casually mentioned to me that – in the past couple of years — he has had to write-off more than $2 million in bad debts.
Way more than in prior years.
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Here’s what’s going on …
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Posted in Health Care / Medical Insurance, Medical Economics, ObamaCare | Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2015
Everybody knows that Trump can’t win because he alienated Hispanics by saying that he’d build the wall and send illegals back to their home countries … where they can queue up to enter the U.S. legally.
For a typical pindit argument, see Business Insider “Donald Trump may be dooming the GOP with a 10% chunk of the electorate”
Need data?
A recent Gallup poll has Trump’s favorability with Hispanics “underwater” by a whooping 51 points … that is, the spread between Hispanics viewing him favorably and those viewing him unfavorably is 51 points.
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Pundits assert confidently that Trump can’t win because a candidate unless he is competitive with Hispanics … and Trump isn’t close to being competitive.
Not so fast, pundits …
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Posted in 2016 Campaign, 2016 Presidential Election, Hispanics, Trump, Donald | 1 Comment »
The Homa Files 
