How to Misread a Graph (It’s Not Easy, but The Heritage Foundation Finds a Way)

September 20, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

My post of a few days ago (here) showed The Heritage Foundation presenting a graph and deliberately drawing a conclusion that the graph clearly showed to be wrong.  Apparently, that’s something of a specialty at The Heritage Foundation.

Here’s their graphic purporting to show that preschool programs don’t work. (The original is here.)

The problem in the Oklahoma graph is the lag time between cause and effect.  For example, the baby boom began in 1947, but we would not look for its effects on healthcare and Social Security costs until much, much later.

Most people know this, but  Heritage seems to be lagging behind. “Fourth grade reading achievement scores in Oklahoma have actually declined.” True, they are lower now than in 1998, when universal preschool started. But is that the year should we use for a starting point for data on fourth grade reading scores?

Pre-school kids are three or four years old.  They don’t take the fourth-grade reading test until six or seven years later – in Oklahoma, that would be 2005 for the first cohort.  Amazingly (amazing to Heritage, I guess), that was the year reading scores began to increase, and despite a slight dip last year, they are still above that level.

As for the Georgia graph, anyone glancing at it (anyone except for people at The Heritage Foundation) would see this: reading scores in Georgia began increasing in 1995, two years after universal preschool began, and continued to rise when the first preschoolers reached fourth grade; scores have continued to rise faster than the national average.  Georgia was behind, now it’s ahead. Something good has been happening.

Heritage, however, manages not to see this and instead complains about how long it took Georgia to reach that point. (“Georgia’s program was in place for 13 years before scores caught up to the U.S. average.”)

A simple graph of scores is not really an adequate assessment of universal preschool. Those assessments, which include many other relevant variables,* have been done, and they generally conclude that the programs do work.  But that’s not the point.  The point is that Heritage is again misreading its own graph. So again I repeat, “Who you gonna believe, the Heritage Foundation or your lyin’ eyes?”

HT: Philip Cohen, who apparently thinks the Heritage deliberate obtuseness is so obvious as to be unworthy of elaboration.

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* These include the usual demographics, especially to see if preschool effects are different for different groups. But there’s also the problem of post-preschool education. A state might have great preschools, but if it also has lousy primary schools, the benefits of preschool will be eroded away by the time the kids are in fourth grade.

Another Year

September 20, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

“No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.”  Dr. Johnson might just have easily said “blogger.”* 

This week marks my seventh year as a blockhead, and as has become my custom, I’m selecting a few of the posts from the last twelve months that I’ve liked.

Climate Denial and American Voluntarism
           
 “This is 40” –  Guilty Pleasures

Upwardly Mobile Beer  (Rolling Rock)

Compete Your Way to Mental Health  (“Silver Linings Playbook”)

Abortion and Infanticide

Gun Laws and Crime in Other English-Speaking Countries (it seems relevant again this week)

No Satisfaction  (why liberal women want more sex – or why conservative women don’t)


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* I used this quote three yearas ago in a post criticising (or as I like to think of it, skewering) Greg Mankiw for something he had written in the Times. (That post is here.)

If You Can’t Beat ’Em

September 17, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

(I already used the title “Game Over, Guns Win” in a post after Sandy Hook back in December. Otherwise I might have used it here.)

Aaron Alexis had been receiving VA help for paranoia and 'hearing voices.'

Alexis had also had run-ins with police over two shootings incidents -- one in Fort Worth and one in Seattle-- but was never charged. He had also been discharged as an active-duty Navy reservist for misconduct, perhaps related to the gun incidents . . . .
A federal law enforcement official told USA TODAY that Alexis was armed with an AR-15, which is a light-weight semi-automatic rifle, as well as a shotgun and a handgun . . . .           

The official said Monday that Alexis . . . legally purchased at least some of the weapons used in the assault very recently in Virginia. (from USA Today)

I can hear it already – the whining from liberals wanting stricter gun laws. They’re going to be complaining that someone with a history of “shooting incidents,” whatever that means, and hearing voices shouldn’t be allowed to buy those guns.  What nonsense. The Second Amendment guarantees everyone the right to bear arms.  It doesn’t say anything about paranoid schizophrenia, and it doesn’t say anything about what kinds of arms. Handguns, assault rifles, shoulder-fired missiles – it’s all good.

Thank God we live in a country with freedom-loving states like Virginia – places where a guy like Aaron Alexis can go into a friendly gun shop or gun show, plunk down his money, and walk out with an AR-15, a shotgun, and a handgun.  That kind of weaponry is the best way to protect yourself and your family from evildoers, and it’s the best way to protect yourself from the government. And make no mistake, this Obama government and its liberal allies want to send their jackbooted thugs into your house and walk out with all your guns. So-called background checks are just the wedge, the ruse that allows them to put their jackbooted foot inside the door.

The truth is that the only thing that will to stop a paranoid schizophrenic with an AR-15 is a non-paranoid-schizophrenic with an AR-15 or some other suitable firearm. If everyone in the Navy Yard had been carrying a gun, maybe Alexis would have killed only a half dozen or so people (those AR-15s can fire off a lot of bullets in a few seconds) before someone picked him off. I hope the NRA comes out with another sensible and well-reasoned proposal like the one they had for schools. Every workplace – every factory, every office, every restaurant, etc. – will have a designated and well-armed shooter. 

This will be far more effective than statist gun-control laws. In the Navy Yard shootings, just like the Newtown school shootings and many others, the killers got their guns legally, which shows that gun laws don’t protect you or reduce mass shootings.

Besides, as the reaction to Newtown, Aurora, and other massacres shows, stricter gun laws ain’t gonna happen. So why don’t you liberals just stop your elitist sniveling and start arming yourselves with some serious firepower?  Remember, when guns are made criminal, only people will kill people, with their cold, dead hands.

UPDATE, September 18, 8 a.m.:
1.    Earlier reports that Alexis used an AR-15 may be incorrect.
2.    CBS reports that “Alexis tried to buy an AR-15 assault rifle at a Virginia gun store last week after test firing one, but the story wouldn't sell it to him. The reason for the refusal isn't clear.” That’s encouraging on the one hand. It also means that the decision whether to sell massacre-ready weapon to a paranoid schizophrenic is at the discretion of a gun-store clerk.
3.    A lawyer for the place where Alexis bought the shotgun says, “In accordance with Federal law, Mr. Alexis' name and other applicable information, including his state of residency, was provided to the Federal NICS system and he was approved by that system.”  That supports the NRA’s claim that background checks don’t work. Of course, the NRA has vigorously opposed legislation aimed at strengthening that system.
4.    Alexis used that shotgun on his first victim, a guard. He then took the guard’s semi-automatic handgun. So much for my NRA-inspired proposal to have an armed guard in every workplace. 

Racist Memorabilia

September 16, 2013
Posted by Jay Livingston

Memory – for individuals and groups – is selective.  But what happens when we come face to face with memories that we would rather not select?

At a local flea market yesterday, one of the sellers market had this page displayed on his table along with a three-fingered fielder’s mitt from the 1940s, a safety razor with blade sharpener from the 20s or 30s, and much other Americana. The seller said that the page is from an 1880s book, probably a children’s book, though it could be even earlier.

(Click on the picture for a larger view. 

I added contrast to improve the visibility. The colors of actual page were considerably faded.)

The word racism often evokes images of vicious attitudes and behavior – the pictures from Little Rock 1954, white adults spewing hatred at seven-year-old children for doing nothing more than going to school.

What this page documents is not hatred but instead a set of taken-for-granted assumptions and ideas. Today, the racism of Ten Little Niggers is so obvious that I felt uncomfortable just looking at it. I would much have preferred it if this bit of memorabilia were forgetabilia. But I doubt that people a century ago – good people, people like you and me – would have seen it as marker of anything unusual or wrong. To them it was probably just an amusement of no significance.

Here is the flea-market seller displaying the cover page.

He told this story:  He said that he used to sell his wares out of a shop in the Bronx. One day Bill Cosby came into the store and bought just about all the items like this, memorabilia from America’s racist past.  The tab came to $7000 dollars. Cosby then left the store and dumped all the stuff he’d just bought into the garbage.

I was a bit skeptical, but I said nothing. Checking the Internet later, I found this:

About seventy per cent of the collectors are black and they include Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey, Whoopi Goldberg, whose mantel is lined with Mammy figurines, and other entertainment celebrities.  (more here)

Why would a collector throw away the memorabilia he collects?  Still, maybe the story is true. Or maybe he is doing what most people and nations do: constructing the past to make it more palatable, more consistent with the way we see ourselves now.