January 8, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston
Why should the economists have all the good music videos?
Sociologists do have a sense of humor, don’t they? At least some do. But it’s the economists who dominate the supply side of social science music videos. The Keynes-Hayek rap https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk goes back a few years and now has sequels. And for an academic video, it has impressive production values.
Eventhe Harvard Econ department went public with their version of “Call Me Maybe” (do they really want you to call even if you’re not offering them a consulting job?). Greg Mankiw looks like he’s never heard the song before (is that even possible?) and is having trouble reading the words off the cue card. Which is pretty funny if unintentionally so.
The Stand-up Economist has no counterparts from sociology. I guess we’re taking this one sitting down.
And now the Akon - Lonely Island parody (Mankiw has makes a cameo appearance).
(If you are not familiar with the template, it’s here.)
A couple of weeks before Christmas, an economist sent me this, a seasonally adjusted economic video. He added, “When I posted it on Facebook, an economics researcher wrote “how can something so clever be so wrong.”
We sociologists may not make videos, but when we’re clever, we also get it right.
Good News, Bad News, Same News
January 5, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston
The headlines in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have the same fact – the first Friday jobs report and the unemployment rate. They both mention “worry.”
The WSJ headline frames the story as bad news. We should be worried about worry. The Times is more “don’t worry, be happy.” The WSJ’s subhead “unemployment rate hits 7.8%” makes it sound as though the rate is going up. The Times (second graf, not shown here) notes that this rate was “steady.”
After the headlines and ledes, the two stories are similarly pessimistic.
Posted by Jay Livingston
The headlines in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have the same fact – the first Friday jobs report and the unemployment rate. They both mention “worry.”
The WSJ headline frames the story as bad news. We should be worried about worry. The Times is more “don’t worry, be happy.” The WSJ’s subhead “unemployment rate hits 7.8%” makes it sound as though the rate is going up. The Times (second graf, not shown here) notes that this rate was “steady.”
After the headlines and ledes, the two stories are similarly pessimistic.
Prerequisites
January 4, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston
What kind of prerequisites do we need for sociology courses?
I’ve been wondering about that because the administration here has told us to stick prerequisites on all our courses except entry-level courses. Students who want to take a sociology course numbered in the 400s must have taken a 300-level course – the department gets to specify which courses will serve. Similarly, 200-level courses must have 100-level prerequisites.
This makes sense for sequential courses. If you haven’t mastered basic Spanish grammar and vocabulary of Spanish I, you shouldn’t take Spanish II. In some math and science courses too, students may need specific knowledge from other courses. But in sociology, we have very few sequential courses. Even with more technical courses like Statistics and Methods, some departments sequence them with Methods first, other schools put Statistics first. But for topic courses, will students do better in Mass Media (SOCI 407) if they have had Urban (SOCI 311)?
We have a 200-level course called Sociology of Rich and Poor Nations (SOCI 220). It fulfills a General Education requirement, and we’ve always let in students regardless of what other courses they have or haven’t taken. Under the new rules, we’re supposed to add a prerequisite – some 100-level sociology course.
I wondered whether prior sociology courses actually make a difference so I looked at the grades of the 300 or so students who took the course in the eight sections we offered in two semesters last year. If prerequisites make sense, then students with no prior sociology courses should get lower grades. Students with more sociology courses should do better – the more prior sociology, higher the grade in 220. Here are the results.
The groups are all the same except for the two-prior group (there were only 11 of them, so a couple of high scorers could skew the average). The average grade for the others - no priors, one prior, three or more priors – was the same: B-minus.
Prior courses or prerequisites are not a good predictor of performance in the course. They make no difference.
What does make a difference? Being a good student. Overall GPA was the best predictor of the grade in SOCI 220 (r = .3). The correlation with prior sociology courses was effectively zero.
This is just one course in one department. Does anyone have other data on the efficacy of prerequisites?
Posted by Jay Livingston
What kind of prerequisites do we need for sociology courses?
I’ve been wondering about that because the administration here has told us to stick prerequisites on all our courses except entry-level courses. Students who want to take a sociology course numbered in the 400s must have taken a 300-level course – the department gets to specify which courses will serve. Similarly, 200-level courses must have 100-level prerequisites.
This makes sense for sequential courses. If you haven’t mastered basic Spanish grammar and vocabulary of Spanish I, you shouldn’t take Spanish II. In some math and science courses too, students may need specific knowledge from other courses. But in sociology, we have very few sequential courses. Even with more technical courses like Statistics and Methods, some departments sequence them with Methods first, other schools put Statistics first. But for topic courses, will students do better in Mass Media (SOCI 407) if they have had Urban (SOCI 311)?
I wondered whether prior sociology courses actually make a difference so I looked at the grades of the 300 or so students who took the course in the eight sections we offered in two semesters last year. If prerequisites make sense, then students with no prior sociology courses should get lower grades. Students with more sociology courses should do better – the more prior sociology, higher the grade in 220. Here are the results.
The groups are all the same except for the two-prior group (there were only 11 of them, so a couple of high scorers could skew the average). The average grade for the others - no priors, one prior, three or more priors – was the same: B-minus.
Prior courses or prerequisites are not a good predictor of performance in the course. They make no difference.
What does make a difference? Being a good student. Overall GPA was the best predictor of the grade in SOCI 220 (r = .3). The correlation with prior sociology courses was effectively zero.
This is just one course in one department. Does anyone have other data on the efficacy of prerequisites?
Chillin’ With Lenny, Yo
December 31, 2012
Posted by Jay Livingston
Tonight the Cathedral of St. John the Divine will offer its annual New Year’s Eve Peace Concert. The announcement notes that “The late Maestro [Leonard] Bernstein inaugurated the annual New Year's Eve Concert for Peace more than a quarter century ago.” More precisely, it was in 1983. I was there. [Not quite. It was the Dec. 31 1986 concert that I attended. See the update below.]
Bernstein’s performance that evening combined two elements that had earned him some disdain: liberal politics and popular music. Conservative commentators and serious music critics had scoffed at his enthusiasm for leftist causes and youth culture. “Radical chic,”Tom Wolfe called it, implying that what motivated Bernstein was not the desire for justice or equality but the personal desire for the approval of the hip and the young. To those critics, Bernstein’s political activity was all about style, not substance. So were the rock-music examples in his lectures.
Bernstein was undeterred. Hence, the Peace Concert (among many other efforts). He also remained open to the music of the young, the gifted, and the Black; he refused to dismiss it out of hand as inferior or as unworthy of the attention of serious people.
Here is my memory of what Bernstein said that evening, New Year’s Eve, 1983.
Bernstein said that he one day when was working in the studio in his apartment, he went to get something from another room. As he was passing the kitchen, he heard the radio that his housekeeper was listening to. It was a loud and rhythmic but without much actual singing.
“What is that?” he asked. The housekeeper offered to turn the radio off. “No, no,” Bernstein said, “don’t turn it off. But what’s that you’re listening to?”
“Oh, Mr. Bernstein,” she said, “that’s hip-hop.”
It was 1983, and Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC had crossed over into the general culture. Still, I suspect that for most of the audience in St. John the Divine that evening – over thirty and overwhelmingly white – hip-hop was not exactly familiar territory.
But Lenny had listened and learned, and he delivered a speech in rap – a Jeremiad against Reagan, the arms race, the Pentagon budget, SDI (Star Wars), etc. I think Lenny may have even had a recurring tag line or refrain, something with the word “hip-hop” in it. Unfortunately, though I have searched the Internet, I have been unable to find a transcription or even any reference to Lenny rapping that night. Still, I’m sure I did not imagine it. *
Peace Out.
UPDATE: Jenn Lena called out the troops to help where memory failed. Jonathan Neufeld found the references. Bernstein’s hip-hop speech did happen on New Year’s Eve, but the year was 1986, not 1983.
-----------------------
* It’s the timing of this incident that I’m unsure of. I’m sure I heard Bernstein tell this anecdote in St. John the Divine and continue with his sermon in rap. I remember it as a chilly winter evening. But was it New Year’s Eve? The few references to Bernstein’s speech that night say nothing about hip-hop. The closest thing I can find is the title of a lecture, “How Leonard Bernstein Invented Hip-Hop” given by Joseph Schloss at Middle Tennessee State University. But I cannot find an e-mail, phone number, or Facebook page for Schloss, and besides, his take on the Bernstein/hip-hop connection is different. In my anecdote, Bernstein does not invent hip-hop but rather discovers it years after its creation.
Posted by Jay Livingston
Tonight the Cathedral of St. John the Divine will offer its annual New Year’s Eve Peace Concert. The announcement notes that “The late Maestro [Leonard] Bernstein inaugurated the annual New Year's Eve Concert for Peace more than a quarter century ago.” More precisely, it was in 1983. I was there. [Not quite. It was the Dec. 31 1986 concert that I attended. See the update below.]
Bernstein’s performance that evening combined two elements that had earned him some disdain: liberal politics and popular music. Conservative commentators and serious music critics had scoffed at his enthusiasm for leftist causes and youth culture. “Radical chic,”Tom Wolfe called it, implying that what motivated Bernstein was not the desire for justice or equality but the personal desire for the approval of the hip and the young. To those critics, Bernstein’s political activity was all about style, not substance. So were the rock-music examples in his lectures.
Bernstein was undeterred. Hence, the Peace Concert (among many other efforts). He also remained open to the music of the young, the gifted, and the Black; he refused to dismiss it out of hand as inferior or as unworthy of the attention of serious people.
Here is my memory of what Bernstein said that evening, New Year’s Eve, 1983.
Bernstein said that he one day when was working in the studio in his apartment, he went to get something from another room. As he was passing the kitchen, he heard the radio that his housekeeper was listening to. It was a loud and rhythmic but without much actual singing.
“What is that?” he asked. The housekeeper offered to turn the radio off. “No, no,” Bernstein said, “don’t turn it off. But what’s that you’re listening to?”
“Oh, Mr. Bernstein,” she said, “that’s hip-hop.”
It was 1983, and Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC had crossed over into the general culture. Still, I suspect that for most of the audience in St. John the Divine that evening – over thirty and overwhelmingly white – hip-hop was not exactly familiar territory.
But Lenny had listened and learned, and he delivered a speech in rap – a Jeremiad against Reagan, the arms race, the Pentagon budget, SDI (Star Wars), etc. I think Lenny may have even had a recurring tag line or refrain, something with the word “hip-hop” in it. Unfortunately, though I have searched the Internet, I have been unable to find a transcription or even any reference to Lenny rapping that night. Still, I’m sure I did not imagine it. *
Peace Out.
-----------------------
* It’s the timing of this incident that I’m unsure of. I’m sure I heard Bernstein tell this anecdote in St. John the Divine and continue with his sermon in rap. I remember it as a chilly winter evening. But was it New Year’s Eve? The few references to Bernstein’s speech that night say nothing about hip-hop. The closest thing I can find is the title of a lecture, “How Leonard Bernstein Invented Hip-Hop” given by Joseph Schloss at Middle Tennessee State University. But I cannot find an e-mail, phone number, or Facebook page for Schloss, and besides, his take on the Bernstein/hip-hop connection is different. In my anecdote, Bernstein does not invent hip-hop but rather discovers it years after its creation.
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