Marojejian

Where are education $$$ going wrong?

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 12:17:09 -0400

Ok, We’re always hearing about how we are cutting eduction spending, and how bad the US education system is…

And yeah, education is so important, that it’s one area I’m happy to see the gov’t overspend a little on…just to be safe. And I just voted in that vein.

But then I see charts like the below (thanks, Mish), and I get really confused:

This appears to show a very constant increase in real spending per pupil since 1950! Must be false, was my thought. Yet I looked back at the data, but I couldn’t find a hole in them…

So what’s going on here? I’d love you to tell me.

Here are some theses:

Our education system is actually great! ( really?)
This aggregate increase is misleading. Since we fund most education through a property tax system, rich districts are doing great, while poor districts are in trouble.
Most of the extra spending is being wasted (administrative overhead, pensions, overpayment for stuff, consultants, extracurriculars etc….)
Extra spending is being wasted due to poor incentives in the school system.
Education is just way more complex now…and we need to pay more for it.

My favorite of these is #2. It seems crazy that we seek to give equality of opportunity, but then fund schools based on how rich your district is…

But I would bet on #3 & #4 being right enough that they merit attention. Especially the pensions.

#5 just doesn’t ring true - previous generations did just fine inventing & producing without the added $$. And at this level… we could buy kids a few new computers each year!

From looking at where all our gov’t spending goes, I remember that state & local education spending is one of the biggest areas. So if it’s being wasted… this is a big deal.

Either way, next time we are told we don’t spend enough on education, maybe we should bring this chart up and figure it out before we drop some more money bombs on the problem?

What Motivates us to Work?

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:39:03 -0400

Great video on the research of Dan Ariely. The Cliff Notes? We are motivated to work by:

1) Purpose: when the fruits of our labor persist and are useful

2) Recognition: When others see and value our work.

3) Ownership: When we have built a whole ‘thing’ we value it more than others do. the harder it was, the more we value it.

(This last one is the great Ikea Effect - we value the furniture we assembled more than than others do, because our sweat went into it).

How banks (don't) work

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 12:47:57 -0400

Another great podcast from Russ Roberts of EconTalk. If you want to understand how our banks work (and why they don’t work well), then take a listen.

Also some pretty simple solutions:

Require dramatically more equity in banks (the money the owners put up)
Break up the biggest banks
Make sure the banks are not too connected to each other

No one is doing any of this yet…so you should be upset.

Great data on some game theory experiments. Good stuff to know...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 21:49:00 -0400

Great TED video on some data on game theory experiments. Good to know if you ever plan on competing with other humans:

Great data on some game theory experiments. Good stuff to know if you ever plan on competing against anyone for something, you know.

A Real Bubble

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 12:41:16 -0400

How much of the housing bubble was due to poor incentives? That is, did people involved with securitization know the system was going to collapse, but not believe it would affect them?

An ingenious paper provides some evidence.

This suggests that mid-level securitization managers believed in housing. This was a real bubble, and even the pro’s didn’t see that the music was about to stop. Very consistent with what I’ve seen. Though I don’t think we should discount the impact that better incentives could have… they may not have known the market was turning because their jobs gave them no real reason to look for that…

Parent Hacking: Eat your Vegetables

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 16:31:00 -0500

New research cited in this podcast suggests that the best way to get your kids to like eating their vegetables is: spraying them with sugar!

This is less of a cop out than it sounds. The amount needed is so tiny it doesn’t change the calorie profile. But it does make the tast great.

Anyone want to go in with me on a sugar spray biz?

Who controls the world?

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 14:09:00 -0500

The answer from analyzing corporate networks: too few entities. And they are too interconnected. Forget social justice, ecosystems like this are not healthy. They are prone to huge shocks, because if one entity fails, all fail. Nice to see complexity research applied in this interesting way.

Sound familiar?

So let’s transalate this back into something you’ve heard before:

Break Up The Banks.

Watch the Vid from TED:

Why foxes are bad at math...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 19:47:00 -0500

In this post, Cathy O’Neil does a great job highlighting what’s wrong in our: a) capitalism, b) healthcare, and c) politics. And at the same time she take Nate Silver down a notch. He’s no doubt a smart guy, but I agree with her that his celebrity has gone a bit far.

Anyhoo, the issue is that it seems like the ultra-smart foxes running our henhouse have made some mistakes. Their financial models are wrong, their drug trials ignore negative results, and (shocker) their fiscal management of our budget ends up leaving us with huge debts!

We clearly need some smarter foxes, right?

Wrong. The (larger) problem is that these foxes are incentivized to help themselves to the henhouse, and the side effect is they don’t care about ‘carrying the one’ or ‘managing the rail risk.’

On Nate Silver:

He spends very little time on the question of how people act inside larger systems, where a given modeler might be more interested in keeping their job or getting a big bonus than in making their model as accurate as possible.

In other words, Silver crafts an argument which ignores politics. This is Silver’s blind spot: in the real world politics often trump accuracy, and accurate mathematical models don’t matter as much as he hopes they would.

So yeah, let’s think less about getting smarter foxes, or having the larger fox of the government watch them. Let’s work on the rules of the game so that the incentives are better. Let’s take responsibility for hashing out the truth ourselves - and most importantly let’s distrust the foxes when they have their eye on a chicken.

How Children Learn To Succeed

Fri, 25 Jan 2013 00:51:59 -0500

Good podcast from the Economist covering the book How Children Succeed. In a few minutes they’ve sold me that our educational system is focused on the wrong stuff. Much more important than learning math is developing confidence, optimism, grit, and entrepreneurship.

We shouldn’t just put kids through a gauntlet and see who makes it… we should make sure they have the mentors & experiences to learn how to succeed despite adversity.

Building the Tree of Life

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:56:19 -0500

Just nice to know that it’s (slowly) happening.

Gene therapy increases lifespan in mice

Sure there’s lots of hype, setbacks, and dead ends (sirtuins?). But…

Our current lifespan is probably set by our genes far more than by the power of entropy.
And there are probably some some simple ways to tune that set point ( telomeres?).
And we’re going to get the hang of gene therapy eventually.
But overall, the human body is not getting any more complex, but we are learning more, and become more powerful.

But oh, so slowly. I wish I could help more.

And of course extending lifespan may not be the best gift to humanity… but I’ll challenge you to be the one to return that gift.

The Too Big to Fail Whale

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 17:21:47 -0500

We have a lot to learn from Nature. One of the biggest structural problems in the economy today is that we have many institutions that we think are too big to fail, whether they be banks (Citi), companies (AIG, GM) or governments (Spain, California).

Too many people think the answer is to make sure these institutions never fail. Big Mistake - that’s impossible. A King has his reign, and then he dies. How does Nature solve this problem? Watch the video below of what happens to a real whale when it fails.

A huge part of the ecosystem is occupied with breaking down failing orgnanisms: Scavengers. Decomposers. They do it quickly. they make sure nothing goes to waste. That energy is pumped back into something living. And healthy.

We need the same thing. Let’s think ahead about how we can quickly decompose the next whale to fail, not prop it up on life support and as a consequence gumming up the whole system. Maybe special bankruptcy provisions, in which state resources go towards facilitating a very swift resolution process, not to “saving” the company.

And let’s not deride the decomposers in our ecosystem. There’s nothing wrong with being a “vulture capitalist”, just like there’s nothing wrong with being a vulture. We need more of these, not less.

Evidence that our society is indeed learning something…

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 21:52:23 -0500

Evidence that our society is indeed learning something…

Treat Yourself this holiday season -

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 14:03:34 -0500

The research is clear - You can buy happiness by giving to others (below).

So this holiday season treat yourself!

Join Courtney and I (it was her idea) in fulfilling the wish-list of a family. Click below to join us and get others involved!

https://www.crowdtilt.com/campaigns/adopt-a-family-for-the-holidays-with-compass

The Sheeple's Brain

Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:34:23 -0500

Interesting research suggests that our brains process information about social rank in a different place/way than other information. Basically, we add in the ‘old’, ‘fear’ area of the brain:

Their findings reveal a striking dissociation between the neural circuits used to learn social and non-social hierarchies. They observed increased neural activity in both the amygdala and the hippocampus when participants were learning about the hierarchy of executives within the fictitious space mining company. In contrast, when learning about the non-social hierarchy, relating to which galaxies had more mineral, only the hippocampus was recruited.

OK here’s my speculative take on this speculative study: We process information about Dominance (read also: Social Class, Popularity, etc.), by including a different, older cognitive system… that probably also includes a heavy dose of emotion.

While there are good reasons this happened (evolutionary-wise), I bet this is one reason our social relations are often less than logical. When it comes to people who may be though cool, classy or just intimidating, we pay attention to what others think… and our emotional, reptilian brain is forcing us to.

Humans probably make worse decisions as a result. Following Fads and cults? Not questioning authority? Taking part in financial bubbles? Who knows. I’m listening to the history of the Roman Empire now, and I keep thinking, why do people submit to being led by all these assholes?

This is of course utter speculation… but that’s where a good theory can be born.

The devil in the details is robbing you right now.

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 19:46:42 -0500

Great podcast here from C-span with David Cay Johnston, author of: “The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use ‘Plain English’ to Rob You Blind.”

He reveals the surprisingly numerous ways in which corporations exploit us by creating complexity in regulations, and legalese.

The Cliff Notes for you:

This is a great example of kleptoplexity & why we need The Razors. Our world is only going to get more complex. If we don’t reduce un-needed complexity, and get a better hold on it, then these oragnizations will steal our money from us, and literally inslave us through corporate plutocracy. This will take a while… but take a listen, it’s already worse than you’d think.

This is something libertarians and liberals can both get behind…. but that both political parties (and corporations) will fight bitterly against.

Please help me get the word out.

When sitting....really Sit

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 13:55:02 -0500

One of the best speeches I’ve even heard was given by my old chaplain in high school, and was profoundly buddhist. He encourages us to really exist in the moment of our lives, even, especially, when we are doing somehting boring. like sitting.

Now, research is showing this to be more true. Watch this TED talk . When our mind wanders around vs. being in the moment, we are more unhappy. Even when we are doing something as unpalatable as commuting.

I certainly find this true in my life. An Idle mind is truly the devil’s plaything.

So when you are sitting (as you most likely are now), really Sit.

Genetically Modified Tomatoes Counteract Heart Disease

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 18:20:09 -0500

I would want a label on these… to I could be sure to eat them :).

Link

Researchers have developed a genetically modified tomato that produces a certain peptide which will lower the plaque buildup in the arteries of mice. This could also work in humans.

The researchers presented their findings at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2012. The GM tomato produces 6F, a small peptide that mimics the action of ApoA-1, the chief protein in high density lipoprotein (HDL). They used this in mice that that were unable to remove low density lipoprotein and fed them a high-fat diet.

With 2.2% of the rodent’s diet comprised of the GM tomato, the researchers found that the mice had lower levels of blood inflammation, higher activity of the anti-oxidant enzyme paraoxonase, boosted levels of high density lipoproteins, decreased lysophosphatidic acid and less atherosclerotic plaque.

“To our knowledge this is the first example of a drug with these properties that has been produced in an edible plant and is biologically active when fed without any isolation or purification of the drug,” said senior study author Dr. Alan M. Fogelman.

Sending a kid to pre-school could save your life

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 19:05:34 -0400

Why on earth don’t we invest more public money in pre-school for lower income children?

This podcast from planet money (I love these guys) summarizes some of the strong data showing how preschool benefits kids. Everyone in our society will benefit from an investment in this - whether it’s from the increased earnings we can tax on these smart kids, or the reduced crime from them…The data suggest a massive decrease in crime from these kids.

Who knows, sending a kid to pre-school could save your life one day…

I think even libertarians could support this - they should support equality of opportunity - and the present situation is exactly the opposite. Upper income kids (like myself) start off miles ahead of lower income ones. And the data show that head start lasts for ever.

Science is broken

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 18:44:52 -0400

Publication bias is really undermining the value of our science, and then by extension all our medicine. Why? Well, to find out:

1)watch this great TED talk, or

2) Read this sadly accurate XKCD cartoon:

Why are you giving this guy your taxes?

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 18:31:00 -0400

This podcast from NPR is starts out about the poor state of the US Internet network, but it moves to a much more accurate critique in the second half. The author being interviewed narrates how most big businesses use their clout to get tax breaks from local governments.

This is simple game theory: they have more options than the localities they might locate in (or move out of) and so can negotiate a better deal on taxes than a small, inherently local, business might. As a result, these large businesses have a natural advantage vs. the small ones.

But the outcome of this is something conservatives and liberals can both hate - we all have a bias towards small businesses, and these large ones are providing no net value - they are only increasing the tax burden on small business, and stealing from one locality to benefit another.

So why does neither party seek to curb such tax-breaks? Probably because the conservatives are supported by the big businesses, and the liberals see themselves as “creating jobs” for their people. and because these localities will always do what is in their self interest, ideoogy aside.

So once again, it’s up to YOU the voter to demand that both parties take up this cause. What could we do to stop this problem? Well the only way I see to fix it, is to disallow tax breaks that benefit one company in an industry over another. This will be HARD. Probably needs to be done at a federal level. The solution will need to be really creative, since states can generally do what they like. Or a Constitutional Amendment. But it’s also really important (unless you favor living in an oligarchy run by multi-national businesses).

So let’s get started talking about it… here we’ve got one issue we should ALL be able to agree on.