August 6, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
(Cross-posted at Sociological Images)
I bought a used book on Amazon, and when I opened it, I felt as though I were an unintentional eavesdropper. I had stumbled into a triangle of information asymmetry.
Examples of asymmetry and other information distributions usually come from games or economics. There’s “perfect information” (chess) and “imperfect information” (card games). The best known example of “information asymmetry” is still Akerlof’s “The Market for Lemons” (cars, not fruit).
In all these examples, the information is about objects. But in everyday life, information is often about people, not chess pieces or cards or Camaros. Perfect information is rare. I know more about myself than you do, and vice versa. Usually. But what if you know something about me that I don’t know? What if you have seen my hole cards, and I haven’t?*
Last week’s “This American Life” started with a story about that unusual arrangement. But the information wasn’t about a man’s cards, it was about his life (or more precisely, his wife).
The man discovers that his wife is seeing another man. Even though the couple were in the process of separating, he is devastated. He turns, as Ira Glass says, “to someone he knows will be on his side, will help him make sense of this, tell him what to do – his lawyer.” For a tear-filled hour, he talks to his lawyer. Only later does he discover that the lawyer is the man his wife has been having the affair with.
The information – who knows what about who – badly lacks symmetry. The man, talking to his lawyer, lacks a crucial piece of information, information that the lawyer could provide. Instead, the lawyer pretends to be ignorant and lets the man go on for an hour talking and weeping.
(This three-person asymmetric structure, save for the lawyer-client angle, is identical to that of the Salinger story, “Pretty Mouth and Green My Eyes.”)
My own used-book story is a less dramatic version of this same asymmetry.
The book was listed as “used – like new, signed by the author.” I considered getting a clean copy for the same price from a different seller but went with this one. It arrived – gift wrapped, for some reason – and indeed, the book was like new. Unread. And it was not just signed. There was a personal message: “For Gerry,** since you’re so much a part of this.”
I was sure I knew who Gerry was – the name (the actual name, not this nom-de-blog) is not a common one. I remembered that Gerry, now a professor at a major university, was a student of the author’s long ago.
They live in the same area, and I assume they have a closer relationship to one
another than I have to either of them. (I know the author slightly,
Gerry not at all.) After all, there’s that inscription in the book. But I now have a piece of information that says something about their relationship, a fact known to only one of them – Gerry. And neither of them knows that I am now in on this bit of information.
I could let the author in on this information. “Hey, did you know that copy of your book you inscribed so nicely? Gerry didn’t even read it and then went and sold it to some resale shop.” But of course I won’t. Still, this little incident gives me some sympathy with that lawyer.
The “This American Life” story made him out as the bad guy, and in fact, he was charged with professional misconduct. At the disciplinary hearing, when asked why he didn’t just tell his client to find another lawyer, he says, “Well, to be honest, it was very awkward. It was one of those things I just wasn't sure how to bring up or when to bring up.”
Neither am I. And I’ll never have to.
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* A symmetrical version of this self-ignorance is the basis for a card game that I know as One-Card Schmuck but which I can find on the Internet only as Indian Poker or Blind Man’s Bluff (here, for instance). The Indian Poker is definitely un-PC, Blind Man’s Bluff more accurate. But One-Card Schmuck captures the essence of the game.
** Not the real name, and deliberately gender-ambiguous.
Plagiarism? Bah, Humbug
August 2, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
The section on plagiarism in my syllabus is fairly short. It lists the possible penalties, and it has a link to the University page on plagiarism – what it is and how to avoid it. But I’ve seen some syllabi whose plagiarism sections seemed to me like a big production. I was wrong. If you want to see a big production, try this. (And don’t forget to click on the CC for subtitles.)
HT: Andrew Gelman
Posted by Jay Livingston
The section on plagiarism in my syllabus is fairly short. It lists the possible penalties, and it has a link to the University page on plagiarism – what it is and how to avoid it. But I’ve seen some syllabi whose plagiarism sections seemed to me like a big production. I was wrong. If you want to see a big production, try this. (And don’t forget to click on the CC for subtitles.)
HT: Andrew Gelman
Beyond the Gee Whiz Graph – the OMG Graph
August 1, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
How to make a 13% increase (4.6 percentage points) look like a quintupling.
I’ve blogged before about “gee-whiz graphs” (here and here ). And I’ve blogged about the inventive graphing techniques of the folks at Fox (here). But this example may be in a class by itself.
In case the numbers are not clear: Now = 35%, Jan. 1. 2013 = 39.6%. The heights of the bars make a 13% increase appear as a 400% increase.
HT: I’m not sure who posted this first. I got it thanks to Sangeeta Parashar.
Posted by Jay Livingston
How to make a 13% increase (4.6 percentage points) look like a quintupling.
I’ve blogged before about “gee-whiz graphs” (here and here ). And I’ve blogged about the inventive graphing techniques of the folks at Fox (here). But this example may be in a class by itself.
HT: I’m not sure who posted this first. I got it thanks to Sangeeta Parashar.
School Culture and Charter Schools
August 1, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
An episode in the first season of the “The Wire” opens with Wallace, a teenage boy who works for drug dealers, getting grade school kids ready for school. Parentless, they all live in a boarded-up building, electricity tapped from elsewhere by a long extension cord. Wallace gets the kids up, drops a juice box into each kid’s bag, and pushes them out the door. Then he too goes outside and sees the brutally murdered body of another young man involved in the drug trade.
I thought about that moment when I read Joel Klein’s op-ed (here) in the Wall Street journal crowing about recent test scores in New York City’s charter schools. Klein is the former head of New York’s public schools and a big supporter of charters.
Those kids on “The Wire” will not be applying to the Success Network.
Charter test averages also benefit from the lower proportion of special-ed pupils and pupils who are not fluent in English. Perhaps most important, charter schools can and do get rid of “difficult” children – those who are discipline problems and those who do not perform well academically. And when such a child leaves the school, the charter can just leave the seat empty rather than putting in another student. The regular public schools do not have the luxury of these options.
But let’s suppose that even controlling for these factors NYC’s charter school kids did outperform the traditional schools. The obvious question is why. Klein’s answer is all about the “culture” among the teachers. Charter teachers “thrive in a culture of excellence, rather than wallow in a culture of excuse.”
Maybe so, but kids themselves, who far outnumber the staff, play a large part in a school’s culture. Every school, including universities, has a “student culture” that differs from the culture the staff would prefer. The question is in what ways does it differ, and why.
The day after the Journal ran Klein’s op-ed, the Times columnist Joe Nocera also wrote (here) about schools in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty. He quotes Dr. Pamela Cantor, a psychiatrist, who found that many of these kids showed symptoms we usually associate with trauma and high stress.
Klein attributes the success of charters – their “culture of excellence” – to the absence of “oppressive union contracts.” But that success may have more to do with the absence of those most disruptive students – the kids whose parents are unable or unwilling to be involved in their child’s education, the kids who, if they do get into charters, are forced out. The real importance of charter selectivity is not that getting rid of some low scorers raises the average. It’s that even a small number of difficult, thuggish children can change the learning environment for all. If all those children are removed from charters and put in traditional schools, the effects can be profound.
What if this were like a football match where the teams switch sides at the half? What if the regular public schools could recruit and select students and get rid of their most disruptive admissions mistakes, and the Success Network charters had kids like the drug-dealing Wallace and the abandoned kids living with him in the abandoned building?
-----------------------------
* * When I said that Klein was a “big supporter” of charters, I did not mean only that he liked the idea of charters. His support was much more material. He helped Eve Moskowitz, head of Success Network, get financial help for her schools. And he pushed traditional public schools out of buildings in order to give the space to Success charters. As the Daily News story headline put it, “Eva Moskowitz has special access to Schools Chancellor Klein - and support others can only dream of.”
Posted by Jay Livingston
An episode in the first season of the “The Wire” opens with Wallace, a teenage boy who works for drug dealers, getting grade school kids ready for school. Parentless, they all live in a boarded-up building, electricity tapped from elsewhere by a long extension cord. Wallace gets the kids up, drops a juice box into each kid’s bag, and pushes them out the door. Then he too goes outside and sees the brutally murdered body of another young man involved in the drug trade.
I thought about that moment when I read Joel Klein’s op-ed (here) in the Wall Street journal crowing about recent test scores in New York City’s charter schools. Klein is the former head of New York’s public schools and a big supporter of charters.
Although the traditional public schools in the city have about the same ratio of poor children—and a significantly smaller ratio of black and Latino children—the charter schools outperformed the traditional schools by 12 points in math and five points in reading. Those are substantial differences.Klein is overstating the case. Not all poor, minority children are alike, and there’s good reason to believe that the charter school population and the regular public school population differ in some important ways. For one thing, the charter kids all have parents who are involved in these new schools. Some charters make a considerable effort to reach these parents. The Success Network charters – the ones that Klein mentions specifically – spent $880,000 recruiting students to its four schools and another $1.3 million on “network events and community outreach." [source]
Those kids on “The Wire” will not be applying to the Success Network.
Charter test averages also benefit from the lower proportion of special-ed pupils and pupils who are not fluent in English. Perhaps most important, charter schools can and do get rid of “difficult” children – those who are discipline problems and those who do not perform well academically. And when such a child leaves the school, the charter can just leave the seat empty rather than putting in another student. The regular public schools do not have the luxury of these options.
But let’s suppose that even controlling for these factors NYC’s charter school kids did outperform the traditional schools. The obvious question is why. Klein’s answer is all about the “culture” among the teachers. Charter teachers “thrive in a culture of excellence, rather than wallow in a culture of excuse.”
Maybe so, but kids themselves, who far outnumber the staff, play a large part in a school’s culture. Every school, including universities, has a “student culture” that differs from the culture the staff would prefer. The question is in what ways does it differ, and why.
The day after the Journal ran Klein’s op-ed, the Times columnist Joe Nocera also wrote (here) about schools in neighborhoods with high levels of poverty. He quotes Dr. Pamela Cantor, a psychiatrist, who found that many of these kids showed symptoms we usually associate with trauma and high stress.
If children are under stress, the ways they respond are remarkably similar. They get sad, distracted, aggressive, and tune out.Nocera summarizes what she found in high-poverty schools.
Chaos reigned. The most disruptive children dominated the schools. Teachers didn’t have control of their classrooms — in part because nothing in their training had taught them how to deal with traumatized children. Too many students had no model of what school was supposed to mean. “These were schools that were not ready to be schools.”In a school where chaos reigns, even the good kids – the ones who entered the charter lottery but lost – will not learn as much.
Klein attributes the success of charters – their “culture of excellence” – to the absence of “oppressive union contracts.” But that success may have more to do with the absence of those most disruptive students – the kids whose parents are unable or unwilling to be involved in their child’s education, the kids who, if they do get into charters, are forced out. The real importance of charter selectivity is not that getting rid of some low scorers raises the average. It’s that even a small number of difficult, thuggish children can change the learning environment for all. If all those children are removed from charters and put in traditional schools, the effects can be profound.
What if this were like a football match where the teams switch sides at the half? What if the regular public schools could recruit and select students and get rid of their most disruptive admissions mistakes, and the Success Network charters had kids like the drug-dealing Wallace and the abandoned kids living with him in the abandoned building?
-----------------------------
* * When I said that Klein was a “big supporter” of charters, I did not mean only that he liked the idea of charters. His support was much more material. He helped Eve Moskowitz, head of Success Network, get financial help for her schools. And he pushed traditional public schools out of buildings in order to give the space to Success charters. As the Daily News story headline put it, “Eva Moskowitz has special access to Schools Chancellor Klein - and support others can only dream of.”
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