Good Day Sunshine

January 28, 2007
Posted by Jay Livingston

An extended family in the Southwest, hard pressed by economic and personal problems, gets in their ramshackle old vehicle and sets off for California, where they hope for some kind of success. Along the way, their vehicle breaks down, the grandfather dies, and they suffer other setbacks. But most of the people they meet along the way are eventually sympathetic and helpful, though the agents of the business world are not so kind. In the end, when they do get to California, they discover that it’s not the answer to all their dreams.

All of which is to say that I rented “Little Miss Sunshine” this weekend.

I don’t think the writer and directors of “Little Miss Sunshine” had “The Grapes of Wrath” in mind when they made the movie. Or maybe they did. After all, the family in “Little Miss Sunshine” is named Hoover, with its echoes of the depression and the Hoovervilles the Joads pass through. In any case, the parallels are there to be seen, even though the two films are very different in tone.

Like “The Grapes of Wrath” made 65 years earlier, “Little Miss Sunshine” takes a critical look at America. But while to many Americans “Grapes of Wrath” was a revelation in its depiction of the realities of economic hardship and the mistreatment of farm workers, “Little Miss Sunshine” takes on aspects of the culture that we already know about. It’s poking fun at— and poking holes in— some of our most cherished ideas, particularly those embodied in the father’s nine-step motivational program for success. The movie is an antidote to all those films and real life programs that preach the American gospel of optimism, hard work, and success. It’s a comedy, but there are few jokes or wisecracks. It’s a satire.

We can’t really dislike the father, but the movie makes us root for him to give up his view of the world, a view that sees everything in terms of winners and losers. We’re almost happy when he fails to sell his “Refuse to Lose” idea. In fact, the losers in the family are the people we are drawn to — the teenager who hasn’t spoken in months; the suicidal uncle who has lost out in (gay) love and in academics to another Proust scholar; the lecherous grandfather banished from a retirement community because he was caught snorting heroin; and the slightly chubby little girl who will never achieve her dream of winning a beauty pageant.

In the formula Hollywood film, the little girl would practice hard. The other girls in the pageant would be experienced, with the advantages of wealthier parents, fancier costumes, and professional coaches. Maybe one of them would even cheat. But our little girl would outshine them all, just like Rocky, The Karate Kid, or any of a host of others. And the success in the contest would then flow into all other aspects of her life.

But imagine Rocky or Karate Kid making a mockery of the match itself, then turning his back on it and saying, “You know, a contest like that— winning or losing it — is a pretty stupid thing to base yourself and your world on.”

Which is what “Little Miss Sunshine” does. When the silent teen finally does speak, he speaks for the film, and this is what he says: “Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work . . . .”

The Visualization of Probability

January 26, 2007

Posted by Jay Livingston

I used to play New York Lotto. I knew it was like throwing my money away. You pick 6 numbers out of 59. Let’s see: 59 C6. That’s 59! / 6! * (59 - 6)!. If you can’t do the math in your head, the Lotto ticket provides the answer on the back.

For a dollar, your chance of hitting it big is one in 22 million.

As my brother put it, quoting a statistician friend of his, “Your chances of winning the lottery are not substantially increased by entering it.”
“What do you mean?” I answered at the time. “They’re increased infinitely.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “but not substantially.”
All of which says more about the concept of infinity than about the Lotto. If you buy a second ticket, your chances have gone from 1 in 22 million to 2 in 22 million, a multiple of two. But what multiple takes you from 0 in 22 million to 1 in 22 million? None, the answer is not finite.

What puzzles me is that even though I knew the odds, I continued to buy a ticket each week. I think it was a matter of visualization. When you fill out the ticket, you pick six numbers out of 59 on a simple 6 x 10 grid, and for your dollar, you get two plays. Here’s a lottery ticket I filled out for Wednesday’s drawing. I selected my numbers by going to an online random-number generator. After all, if the New York Lotto selects its numbers randomly, a random number generator should come up with the right answer. I have also circled the winning numbers.

The results don’t look too bad. I had three direct hits, and several of the other winning numbers are pretty close to one or another of my choices. The trouble is that with only fifty-nine places to put six numbers, they’re bound to be close. The little grid doesn’t convey the concept that there are 45 million different combinations of fifty-nine numbers taken six at a time.

Then one day I was looking up a number in the phone book (only a few years from now, kids hearing that phrase will ask what a phone book is. Or was.) It took me some flipping of pages and running my finger over the columns before I came to the name I wanted. But what would have been the chances of hitting it randomly, of opening the phone book, pointing to a name, and having it be exactly the one I was thinking of? Or what would be the chances of someone picking my name at random out of the phone book?

It turns out that the Manhattan phone book has about 1.2 million names (or it would if there were one name for every line). In other words, my chances of winning the lottery were about the same as someone picking my name at random from a phone book eighteen times as thick.


This photo is only eight phone books thick. Picture a book twice this size. And then imagine someone randomly turning to your page, and then from all the names on that page, picking yours.

So now when I go past the newsstand with its Lotto sign, I think of that gigantic phone book and not the little pink-and-white grid. And ever since, I haven’t bought a lottery ticket.

Now all I have to do is figure out what to do with that dollar a week I’m saving.

I Can See Clearly Now . . .

January 24, 2007

Posted by Jay Livingston

As someone with the visual intelligence of ketchup (as Dave Barry might put it), I have great admiration and envy for people who can think in pictures – graphic designers, architects, basically anybody who can draw at a level above stick figures.

In the social sciences it’s especially useful to be able to put ideas and data in visual form. In that arena, Edward Tufte is The Man, and his 1983 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, is probably the seminal work in the field. I can't remember who turned me on to it, but when I started leafing through it, I was amazed.

Tufte now has a sort of blog with an “Ask ET” forum, which has, among other things a link to a flash version of Genealogy of Pop/Rock Music: The Classic Graphic by Reebee Garofalo. It ends about 1980, but you still might want to check it out to see if Garofalo's view of, say, Meatloaf's ancestors agrees with your own.

My latest find is this periodic table (pictured below) which groups the different visualizations into families. The original site (though not the copy on this page) has a flash function so that when you drag your pointer over an “element,” it pops up an example of that type of visualization. Check it out.

Tagged

January 22, 2007

Posted by Jay Livingston

The Montclair SocioBlog has been “tagged.” If you don’t know what that is — as I didn’t— it’s just like playground tag, except that when someone tags your blog, you have to post five odd or obscure facts about yourself and then tag other bloggers.

I always hated tag when I was a kid. I was no good at it. I was slow. I was one of those kids who wore “Huskies.” Funny how feelings don’t change all that much from age nine to what now passes as maturity if not dotage.

But this is a collective blog, in principle at least, and that raises questions about the ground rules. Do we put facts about our department? About its members? I figure that some combination is probably the quickest way to get to five. So here goes.

1. I already mentioned it — the Huskies thing.

2. As a department of ten, we are fluent in Spanish, Mandarin, and Turkish, can get by in French, German, Italian, Russian, and Czech, and can toss off the odd phrase in Japanese and Yiddish. Some of us also speak English.

3. One of us shares a name with the musical brains behind the Beatles and a defensive lineman for the Giants when they won the Superbowl. Another of us shares a name with successful songwriter, and every December when he walks into stores and hears “Silver Bells,” he wishes that once, just once is that asking too much, ASCAP would send the check to his address instead.

4. None of us, as far as I know, has ever been in a rock band. Or wanted to be. Sad commentary.

5. When most of us came to Montclair, the social sciences were housed in what had been a girls’ dorm. Our offices had closets. With towel racks, even though the showers in the bathrooms and been disconnected.

I'm tagging These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty, the blog of Montclair grad Trish Pottersmith.