Prediction Methodology - Not Too Swift

November 6, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

One of the first things I try to get students to understand is the difference between systematic evidence and anecdotal and impressionistic evidence.  Or no evidence, which usually takes the form of “We don’t need studies to know that . . . .” or “Common sense tells us . . . .”

So in one corner we have Nate Silver (known in some circles as Nate the Great at Five Three Eight), systematically weighing the data from polls and other sources.  He sees Obama as the likely winner.

And then there’s Peggy Noonan at The Wall Street Journal.

Is it possible this whole thing is playing out before our eyes and we’re not really noticing because we’re too busy looking at data on paper instead of what’s in front of us?

In front of her eyes is victory for Romney.  Here are some more excerpts that show the evidence she uses as the basis for her prediction.

Among the wisest words spoken this cycle were by John Dickerson of CBS News and Slate, who said, in a conversation the night before the last presidential debate, that he thought maybe the American people were quietly cooking something up, something we don’t know about.

I think they are and I think it’s this: a Romney win.

There is no denying the Republicans have the passion now, the enthusiasm.
it feels like a lot of Republicans have gone from anti-Obama to pro-Romney.
And there is Obama, out there seeming tired and wan, showing up through sheer self discipline.

All the vibrations are right. A person who is helping him who is not a longtime Romneyite told me, yesterday: “I joined because I was anti Obama—I’m a patriot, I’ll join up But now I am pro-Romney.”

And there’s the thing about the yard signs. In Florida a few weeks ago I saw Romney signs, not Obama ones. From Ohio I hear the same. From tony Northwest Washington, D.C., I hear the same.

I imagine going to the World Series.  The guy at the hot dog stand says he thinks the Tigers are about to make a move.  I see Detroit players’ faces, full of passion and enthusiasm; the Giants look tired and wan. The Tigers are getting hits.  They even had a home run.  Their pitchers are tall and strong.  And then there’s the thing about caps – all those Detroit caps with the old English D.  I see them everywhere.

It all points to a big win by the Tigers. Clearly, the Giants are toast.

And then some nerd – “a man of very small stature, a thin and effeminate man with a soft-sounding voice, a poster child for the New Castrati”* – taps me on the arm and points to the scoreboard which posts the number of runs that each team has actually scored and the number of games that they have won.

Yes, Romney could win.  But remember Damon Runyon’s riff on Ecclesiastes: “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets.”

And they’re betting Obama.  At In-trade, a $100 bet would bring Ms. Noonan $300, and somewhat more if she bet in the UK.  My own hunch is that betting a bundle on Romney right now is not too swift.

UPDATE:  Another Republican speechwriter-turned-columnist, Michael Gerson, is yapping at Nate Silver.  John Sides at The Monkey Cage offers an excellent critique of Gerson and a defense of data- based social science.  (It is kind of depressing – Gerson and Noonan and the rest are intelligent people, and yet they force you to defend the radical idea of using systematic evidence.  But then again, their party is the standard-bearer for people who think that global warming is a myth and that earth is only 7000 years old.)

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 * Yes, this is what someone at the right-wing examiner.com actually wrote about Nate Silver.  I am not making this up.

Climate Denial and American Voluntarism

November 4, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Cross posted at Sociological Images

At the GOP convention in August, Mitt Romney’s cavalier dismissal of global warming got the intended laughs. Today, it seems less funny.

Here’s the transcript:

President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the
oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.

In two short sentences, Romney gives us the broader context for the denial of global warming: the denial of society itself.  He echoes Margaret Thatcher’s famous dictum

There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families.

This doesn’t mean that there are no groups beyond the family.  But those larger groups are valid only because individuals, consciously and voluntarily, chose to create them. This way of thinking about the relation between individuals and groups has long been an underlying principle of American thought. Claude Fischer, in Made in America calls it “voluntarism” – the idea that the only legitimate groups are the ones that people voluntarily form or join.*  The individual has a strong obligation to those groups and their members, but he has little or no obligation towards groups and people he did not choose. 

That is a moral position. It tells us what is morally O.K., and what is not.  If I did not choose to join a group, I make no claims on the people in that group, and it is wrong for them – whether as individuals or as an organized group, even a government – to make any claim upon me.

That moral position also shapes the conservative view of reality, particularly about our connectedness to other people and to the environment. Ideas about what is right determine ideas about what is true.  The conservative rejects non-voluntary connections as illegitimate, but he also denies that these connections exist. If what I do affects someone else, that person has some claim upon me; but unless I voluntarily enter into that relationship, that claim is morally wrong. So in order to remain free of that claim, I must believe that what I do does not affect others, at least not in any harmful way.

It’s easy to maintain that belief when the thing being affected is not an individual or family but a large and vague entity like “society” or “the environment.” My single action could not possibly make a difference to something so large. To make a difference, I must willingly join with many other people. Then I will acknowledge how our small individual acts – one vote, one small donation, one act of charity, etc. – add up to a large effect. That effect is what we intended. But if we separately, individually, drive a lot in our SUVs, use mega-amounts of electricity, and so on, we deny that these acts can add up to any unintended effect on the planet. 

As Fischer says, voluntarism is characteristically American. So is the denial of global warming.  The incident at a recent Romney rally illustrates both (a video is here). 

When a protester yells out the question, “What about climate?” Romney stands there, grinning but silent, and the crowd starts chanting, “USA, USA.” The message is clear: we don’t talk about climate change; we’re Americans.
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*Two earlier Socioblog posts on voluntarism are here and here.

Brooklyn – Gas and Hoodies

November 3, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

This was the page one photo in the Times yesterday.

(Click on the picture for a larger view.)

I love the “only in New York” aspect.  A gas station in Williamsburg.* An orthodox Jew arguing with a White dude, each with a backup guy.  A Hasid taking a cell-phone photo of a cop.   Black guys in hoodies, beefy White guys in hoodies, Jews in hoodies. Cars jammed in at every angle. And the cops patiently trying to cool things down.** (It’s Williamsburg, but there are no hipsters.  They don’t own cars.)

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* The $4.19.9 a gallon is not price gouging.  That’s what gas costs in Brooklyn even when there’s no hurricane.  In New Jersey, it’s fifty cents cheaper, but they don’t have any right now.)

** That’s probably a large part of what cops do.  Maybe Peter Moskos will comment.

Halloween Follow-up

November 1, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston

(This is an update to yesterday’s post about Halloween greed.) 

It turns out, there’s a nice Halloween field experiment I was unaware of (Diener, et. al, JPSP, 1976).  Here’s the setup.  On Halloween, a woman answers the door and invites the trick-or-treaters in.  She tells them to “take one,” and then leaves the room leaving the bowl of candy and a bowl of nickels and pennies.*  Overall (27 houses, 1300 kids) most kids (69%) took one.   But conditions mattered.

In one experimental manipulation, the woman either asked the kids who they were and where they lived or she allowed them to be anonymous.  Experimenters also noted whether the kids were trick-or-treating alone or in groups.  For some groups, the woman designated the smallest kid in the group as being in charge of making sure that kids took only one.   All these variables made a difference.  

The greatest rate of cheating (80%) occurred when the smallest child was designated as responsible but everyone was anonymous.  Diener reasoned that with responsibility shifted to the smallest link, the other kids would feel freer to break the rule. 

Those who did cheat usually took only an additional one to three candies.  But of those who did grab more than what was offered, 20% took both candy and coins.   Unfortunately, the Snickers study is not like the marshmallow study, so we don’t know where those greediest kids are now.
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* Adjusting for inflation that would be closer to dimes and quarters, maybe even half-dollars.

HT: PsyBlog