Broback’s Blog

This time from the Economist:

On a related note, this little blast from the past.

The quote below was published on July 1 on ZDNet. The TouchPad was killed on August 18. I guess “a long time” means seven weeks. I feel very bad for the HP product manager who was led to believe the upper brass was committed to his team’s success. (emphasis mine).

I think a lot of business professionals will find the TouchPad to be exactly what they were hoping for in a tablet because it will allow them to work the way they’re used to working, but do it in the convenient form factor of a multi-touch tablet. I would fully recommend the TouchPad to professionals if it weren’t for the performance issues and the fact that HP needs to add editing capability for Microsoft Word and Excel files (something HP says is coming ‘this summer’). With those two things in mind, I would recommend holding out until HP addresses those issues and adds more productivity apps to the catalog. I expect HP to keep pushing forward. Jeffery Ben, a Senior Product Manager on the TouchPad team, told me: “HP is committed to being on this journey for a long time”.

Couldn’t resist.

The Wall Street Journal reports on a study that validates what all good redistributionists know about social injustice: “Mean People Earn More.” More proof that the spoils go to the non-deserve-ing.

The researchers examined “agreeableness” using self-reported survey data and found that men who measured below average on agreeableness earned about 18% more—or $9,772 more annually in their sample—than nicer guys. Ruder women, meanwhile, earned about 5% or $1,828 more than their agreeable counterparts.

Another prime example of market failure. My perception is that Michael Dell is a much nicer guy than Steve Jobs. I hope the people who care about social justice will buy a Dell Streak instead of that iPad they have their eye on. Hmmm… what if the government mandated we buy some Dell tablets along with that health insurance!

As I recall, Buchanan weighed in on this a long time ago…

Update: Love Carpe Diem Blog. You can catch Perry’s retake on this 2 days after I posted it. Remember, you heard it here first. : )

Latest odds here:

Of that infinite list of things that drive me nuts, many fall under the heading of “please, please, I beg you — just answer this simple question!!”

While I understand that everyone’s brains are wired differently, why is it so hard for many (most?) people experienced with an issue to give even the most basic of predictions? I see this with doctors, lawyers, accountants, restaurants hostesses, etc. etc. Here is the typical scenario:

Doctor: You have a common virus, I’ve seen a lot of people with this. It should clear up on it’s own.

Me: I was planning to visit an elderly relative next tuesday, given your experience what do you think the odds are that I will be symptom free?

Doctor: I have no idea, everyone is different.

Me: Yes, I understand that but given what you’ve seen from others, what is the average time you’ve seen for them to feel pretty much back to normal?

Doctor: There is no average, everyone is different.

Me: I understand there is variance, that would have been my next question — what is the standard deviation? Average and standard deviation pretty much cover any universe we can come up with.

Doctor: There is no average, everyone is different.

Me: There always is an average!!

Doctor: This is really as much an art as it is a science, so I can’t make predictions.

Me: Would you be surprised if I was over this tomorrow?

Doctor: yes.

Me: Aha! Would you be surprised if I was not over this in two weeks?

Doctor: yes.

Then I proceed with the questioning and narrow the ranges until I get something akin to what I was after all along.

Seriously — is it that hard to say average is one week with a standard deviation of 3 days? Really? If you’re that uncertain say a deviation of 6 days!

Those of you who watch The Mclaughlin Group will know what I mean. John M. usually asks every week for the panel members to make a prediction on a scale from one to ten the probability of something happening, and they often refuse to do it. They can say they are “very sure” that something will happen, but they refuse to say “seven”. WTF?

What spurred my rant? The following passage from Aaron Haspel (@ahaspel) at godofthemachine.com. Classic.

If you want to know when you can expect to be released, consult the Wiki, not your doctor. The average stay for acute appendicitis is about a week. Your doctor will never tell you this, lest he sound too much like an algorithm in an expert system, which can probably outdiagnose him anyway. Best to keep your mouth shut, particularly if you are inclined to ask questions like, “Can you give me a range of dates within which you expect, with 0.9 probability, to release me?” Complaining to my doctor about her vagueness provoked a stern and rather terrifying lecture about how medicine is both an art and a science and each individual case is different. As it turned out, because of her art and my individuality, I spent thirteen more hours in the hospital than the average.

Just can’t resist. I read this from Krugman and now I can’t get the “Brave Sir Robin” tune out of my head.

Update: Sigh, nothing original here. An old meme. So much for my cleverness.

It’s pretty clear that the primary job of the government is now to distribute treats. As members of both parties know, it’s a great way to get votes. Sure beats building infrastructure and protecting property rights. Hard to believe after seeing this that some people are trying to call what ails us a “revenue problem.” Source here.

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic. Sell not liberty to purchase power.”
- Benjamin Franklin

Oh, and this just in from Mankiw’s blog — Federal Nondefense Spending (% of GDP):

This one goes back to 2009. No matter what you think of the Tea Party, I think it’s safe to say the professor provides us with a complete and total misreading of the political landscape.

Emphasis mine:

Last but not least: it turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. In particular, a key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.

While I’m at it, this from Nancy Pelosi (also from 2009):

…This [tea party] initiative is funded by the high end — we call call it astroturf, it’s not really a grassroots movement. It’s astroturf by some of the wealthiest people in America to keep the focus on tax cuts for the rich instead of for the great middle class…

Contrast these dismissive remarks to the headlines of the moment:

UPDATE 8/8/2011: Craig Newmark ran all 50 states and was kind enough to send me the results. Bottom line is a flimsy correlation 0.211, which is short of statistical significance. We also get an R-squared figure of .045 which is “not too impressive.” While it ‘aint zero, I gotta come up with something better than this really make my case…

One of my favorite topical pinatas is the romantic notion that if we just put the “smart” people in charge, they can solve our problems (FYI, romantics usually say “smart” when they mean educated). My feeling is more aligned with William F. Buckley, who said: “I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.”

While finding super-geniuses with passionate yet non-sensical beliefs is like shooting fish in a barrel, (a favorite bit of nonsense here) it’s always nice to run across some data that appears to confirm what Buckley knew.

Economist Craig Newmark’s post Sometimes, formal education just doesn’t seem to pay discusses a Chronicle of Higher Education study that tracked the level of education of state legislators. Newmark referenced a Cal Watchdog post that indicated a negative correlation between education and economic freedom:

When comparing the top and bottom 15 states to the Mercatus Center’s Freedom in the 50 States Economic and Fiscal Freedom Indicators, the statistics show that the bottom 15 educated states have a higher economic freedom and fiscal freedom score than the 15 most educated states.

Given this, I decided to run the numbers to see if there was a correlation between “smartness” and state deficits (gap as % of 2010 general fund), as I found with “blueness” and fiscal irresponsibility.

Because the folks at Chronicle.com absolutely refuse to provide us with raw data — just a “cool” (NOT!) Flash interactive map — I decided not to spend a ton of time trying to key in information they MUST only present as pixels. Instead, I took the top and bottom five states (listed but can’t be easily copied/pasted grrr.) These ten states were aligned with 2010 state deficit data. Thankfully, the two biggest states are included (NY and CA alone capture 20% of the entire population of the USA).

The result? A small yet “statistically significant” positive correlation coefficient of .25. The smarter the legislators, the bigger the deficits.

Is this predictive? Who knows? Is it surprising? Not at all.

While I have the most polar data and a very large population sample represented, If anyone wants to grab the information for the other states and send me the data, I’ll be happy to run it.

If someone wants to rebut this post please, please, PLEASE have a better argument than “other things correlate too! — look!” I already know my correlation here is not 1.0…