New York Times: Skeptical!

The New York Times magazine has an article today entitled "Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy? (read it here)"

I'm impressed. Lots of great information on why we should be skeptical of epidemiological studies (you know, the ones that result in headlines like "Trans Fats Linked To Higher Risk of Irritable Bowel Syndrome"). I'll have to add to my list of statistics to beware of:

7. Be very skeptical of epidemiological studies that show a correlation between a certain behavior and a certain disease. Until there are an overwhelming number of them all showing a strong correlation, or until a double-blind, placebo controlled clinical study is done, they should be treated as an interesting hypothesis that needs more research.

All the Cool Kids Have One

I spent $5 on this PayPal Security doo-hickey.

Now, whenever I want to login to my PayPal account, I enter my username and password and the six-digit number that the thingamajig generates when I poke it's button.

I wouldn't have bothered spending the $5 if it was only good for logging into PayPal-- the last thing I need is 7 different dongles hanging off my keychain for securely logging into different web sites. I did bother because the same device works for any web site that supports the OpenID standard. Not many do today, but I predict that over the next couple of years OpenID will become widely supported. If you're a geeky early adopter like me, check out https://pip.verisignlabs.com/ for details.

If you're not a geeky early-adopter, but you use PayPal more than twice a month or keep more than $1,000 in your PayPal account (the cash in my PayPal account is earning 5.2% interest right now, which is darn hard to beat), you should pay the $5 for the extra security.

The Skeptical Approach to Statistics

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
-- Benjamin Disraeli

Sometimes when I use statistical arguments the person I'm talking with will say something along the lines of "you can prove anything by choosing the right statistics." Yeah, but...

My rules of thumb for which statistics to believe are:

1. Never believe statistics you read in a newspaper or popular magazines or blogs. 87.5% of reporters have liberal arts backgrounds, and they're just not particularly good at math/science/statistics. Track down the original source, and see what the researchers actually say. If you can, run the paper through Google Scholar then find later papers that cite the study/paper, and see if all the citations support the same conclusions.

2. Never believe statistics that come from non-peer-reviewed sources. A statistic from the Quarterly Journal of Economics is 99.98% more trustworthy than a statistic from me.

3. Look closely at how close the statistic is to being "signficant." If the statistic is given without any measure of statistical significance, then it's almost certainly bogus.

4. Be very wary of statistics generated from "meta analyses" of a bunch of other studies. I'm told it's much harder (2.6 times harder) to get the math right for a meta-analysis.

5. Beware of statistics that give you differences in risk-- e.g. "doing XYZ decreases your risk of dying by 10%." These kinds of statistics sound impressive until you look at the absolute risk of doing XYZ-- very often, the risk is insanely tiny to begin with. Who cares if you decrease your risk of dying by a shark attack by 99% if you only swim in fresh water, if your chances of dying from a shark attack are essentially zero to begin with?

6. Beware of data mining effects. If you generate enough statistics about ANYTHING, some of them (1 in 20) will be outside the "95% confidence level." Pick and choose the ones that support your point of view and you can pretend that the randomness in the data is ironclad proof that you're right.

In an ideal world of infinite time and resources, I'd sit down with somebody I disagree with and together we'd decide on a statistic that we both agreed would be an unbiased way of measuring whatever we're arguing about (does the minimum wage cause unemployment, is more immigration good or bad for the economy, does capital punishment prevent crime...).

Then we'd go look up the relevant data and generate the statistic, and see who's right. With the astounding quantity of data and research available on the Internet we're getting closer to this ideal.

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DISCLAIMER: All of the statistics in this blog post are 100% made up.

Government as Mommy or Daddy?

After getting elected to Amherst Town Meeting, I felt it was my duty to keep an open mind and try to see issues from all sides. So I'm trying to get a handle on exactly what it means to be "progressive," because I bet that's the label that most Town Meeting members would give themselves, if they were forced to choose a label.

Rob Kusner (bicycle riding Select Board guy, and arch-nemesis of bicycle riding Golf Course Crusader Larry Kelley) pointed me to George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute.

I've read "On Freedom" and "Thinking Points," but found it really hard not to tear their pages up into tiny little pieces as I read, for two reasons:

1. I was looking for utilitarian arguments for the progressive agenda, and instead I found advice on making the progressive agenda palatable to The Masses.

2. I don't fit into either of the two fundamental political "frames." I felt like a Buddhist listening in on an argument between Muslims and Christians; I believe in a Middle Way that makes all their arguments about whether or not Christ was the Son of God or just a prophet irrelevant to me.

According to Mr. Lakoff, progressives argue using the "Nurturant Parent" frame. Conservatives, the "Strict Father" frame. That's true, but there's a third frame-- the "Government is Not My Parent" frame of libertarians. There's a comment on the Thinking Points discussion page that sums it up nicely:

The problem with both the "Strict Father" and "Nurturant Parent" models is that both assume We the People are mere children to be guided to and fro, by either a strict father or a "nurturant parent" (whatever that verbal gobbledygook means).

We're not. We the People ARE the government. You will not find the word "leader" anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. There's a reason for that. We don't elect our "leaders." We elect our "representatives." They are our deputies. They hold those positions by our consent, and are sworn to act on our behalf.

We the People are the source of civil legitimacy, and thus We the People are morally responsible for what our representatives, our deputies do.
-- crissieb

I'm proud to represent part of my neighborhood in Town Meeting. But I'll never forget that everybody who voted for me is a grown-up, capable of deciding for themselves what's best for them.

Australian Humor

One of the benefits of having Australian relatives (Uncle, Aunt, and cousins) is that the kids regularly get Australian picture books.

The latest is "In the Bush: Our Holiday at Wombat Flat." It's kind of an Australian version of "Where's Waldo", only instead of geeky looking people in stripey hats, it's full of beer-drinking people doing all sorts of dangerous and politically incorrect things.

The Andresen household gives it four thumbs up, even though it has words we don't understand (what the heck is a "hoon"?), and even though we're probably missing half the jokes.

Just give them the money?

How much does the Federal government spend on programs to help poor people every year?

According to the National Priorities Project, 14% on "income security" and 4% on "education, training, employment and social services."

18% of 2 trillion dollars (the total Federal budget) is 360 billion dollars.

That's a darn convenient number-- the total number of people below the poverty line is about 36 million (according to the census bureau). Divide dollars by people and you get a nice, even $10,000 spent for every man, woman, and child under the poverty line. $40,000 for a family of 4, $30,000 for a family of 3, $20,000 for a family of 2.

Which is pretty astounding, considering:

the weighted average poverty threshold for a family of four in 2006 was $20,614; for a family of three, $16,079; for a family of two, $13,167; and for unrelated individuals, $10,294.

Why isn't it as simple as:
1. Everybody fills out an income tax form.
2. If your income is below the poverty line, then the IRS sends you a check to make up the difference, including any taxes you had to pay.

Then we can argue about where the poverty line should be drawn, and whether it's moral to increase the poverty line for people lucky enough to be born US Citizens (or lucky enough to manage to immigrate here) from $10,000 to $12,000 when most of the world's population survives on less than $1,000 per year.

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UPDATE: I asked the National Priorities Project what "Income Security" means, and it is NOT all for helping poor people. It's:

Income security is a 'function area' defined by the federal government that includes general retirement and disability insurance (excluding social security); federal employee retirement and disability; unemployment compensation; housing assistance; food and nutrition assistance; and some other stuff (e.g. TANF, child care, foster and adoption services, supplemental security income).

Why don't caregivers get Social Security?

I'm reading Riane Eisler's "The Real Wealth of Nations"; the idea of "Creating a Caring Economics" caught my eye when I saw it in the new books section of the Jones Library.

So far, I'm underwhelmed. She seems to cite all the same doom-and-gloom statistics I've seen other liberal-leaning people cite, like:

+ US lags in child mortality. But that's probably because of the way child mortality is measured (stillborn and premature babies are counted in the US stats, I've seen claims that other countries do not count those in their child mortality stats), not because our pediatricians suck.

+ Wages for working-class people have been going down. True, but total compensation (wages+benefits) have been going up. Health care costs are skyrocketing, mainly because the market for health care is screwed up (most people don't pay directly for their health care, so most people overconsume health care).

... and so forth.

She does ask a very good question, though: if you spend your whole life homeschooling your kids or (maybe) taking care of a sick/elderly relative, why isn't all that hard work valued when it comes to Social Security? You don't get any Social Security benefits unless you've had a traditional job with a paycheck.

Why doesn't our social safety net value the work caregivers do?

I haven't yet read how she thinks we could fix this problem. People who homeschool their kids save the rest of us a bunch of money; giving them Social Security credits makes sense to me. Ditto for people who take care of old/sick relatives who would otherwise cost the Medicare/Medicaid programs lots of money.

Maybe we should give tax credits to encourage these kinds of caregiving. A $5,000 per year tax credit, along with Social Security benefits, for homeschooling your kids would probably encourage lots more homeschooling, with corresponding savings in public school budgets.