More physics…Einstein and teaching

/ bs king / 4 Comments

With all the Higgs Boson excitement, I have had  physics on the brain lately.  Thus when Instapundit linked to this article from NPR, regarding how Einstein would not have been qualified to teach high school physics, I was intrigued.

The article is a rant against (some) licensing standards.  Licensing standards are really just performance metrics, which does make them an interesting study in data and outcomes.  Teaching is a particularly tricky profession to measure outcomes in, as every attempt to standardize (SATs, MCAS, etc) is typically met with objections about what real learning is.

I was fascinated by the Einstein question though.  While I certainly like Einstein, I was wondering if I’d really have wanted him as a physics teacher.  When I took psych stats in grad school, I averaged 107% in the class (there was lots of extra credit), but I was probably the worst resource there.  I can’t explain basic stats worth anything to people, because it comes naturally.  That’s why I like critiquing news stories….it’s much easier to explain what’s wrong with something when you have an example in front of you.  Explaining a t-test from scratch though?  I’ll leave that to the professionals.

Aside from that, the study the NPR post points to is pretty interesting.  It compares licensed, unlicensed and alternatively credentialed teachers from NYC.  Interestingly, the most significant factor in teacher effectiveness tended to be years of experience (in the first few years) instead of credentialing.  All the differences however, were evaluated based on standardized testing scores, which may or may not be something you agree with as a metric.  Still, a fairly interesting and comprehensive look at the issue, if your interested in education metrics.

Update:  The purpose of education and outcome metrics are going to become increasingly important if this catches on (and I hope it does).

Higgs Boson…comic edition

/ bs king / 1 Comment

It has nothing to do with statistics, but the Higgs Boson story has been the most exciting news I’ve heard in a while.  Physics was always my favorite of the sciences, and it’s nice to see hard science reporting make major headlines.

Thanks to my science/math geek cred, I’ve gotten asked by a few people to break down what the big deal is, so I’ve been looking for a good, simple, comprehensive resource to point people to.  PhD comics apparently was all over this back in April, and I’m posting it here because I like it.  Yay for science!

4th of July, Census Bureau style

/ bs king / 3 Comments

Here’s hoping everyone had a relaxing 4th of July!

Today I learned that the White House sponsors two official Independence Day parties at the White House. One of them is for service men and women and their families, the other is for a broader group of friends of the White House.  I bring this up because apparently my younger brother finagled a ticket to the second one. Kind of makes my day feel a little lame, but hey, at least the house is coming along, and I’m the most relaxed I have been in a while.

I was looking for some good stats about the White House, but then I found this which I thought was equally interesting.  It’s no West Lawn Party….but we here at Bad Data Bad do what we can with what we have.

Without further ado, here’s some (year old) fun facts, courtesy of our Census Bureau:

The Fourth of July 2011


On this day in 1776, the Declaration of Independence was approved by the Continental Congress, setting the 13 colonies on the road to freedom as a sovereign nation. As always, this most American of holidays will be marked by parades, fireworks and backyard barbecues across the country.

2.5 million

In July 1776, the estimated number of people living in the newly independent nation.
Source: Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970
<http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/statab.html>

311.7 million

The nation’s estimated population on this July Fourth.
Source: Population clock <http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html>

Flags

$3.2 million

In 2010, the dollar value of U.S. imports of American flags. The vast majority of this amount ($2.8 million) was for U.S. flags made in China.
Source: Foreign Trade Statistics <http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/>
<http://www.usatradeonline.gov>

$486,026

Dollar value of U.S. flags exported in 2010. Mexico was the leading customer, purchasing $256,407 worth.
Source: Foreign Trade Statistics <http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www/>
<http://www.usatradeonline.gov>

$302.7 million

Annual dollar value of shipments of fabricated flags, banners and similar emblems by the nation’s manufacturers, according to the latest published economic census data.
Source: 2007 Economic Census, Series EC0731SP1, Products and Services Code 3149998231
<http://www.census.gov/econ/census07/>

Fireworks

$190.7 million

The value of fireworks imported from China in 2010, representing the bulk of all U.S. fireworks imported ($197.3 million). U.S. exports of fireworks, by comparison, came to just $37.0 million in 2010, with Japan purchasing more than any other country ($6.3 million).
Source: Foreign Trade Statistics <http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/www>
<http://www.usatradeonline.gov>

$231.8 million

The value of U.S. manufacturers’ shipments of fireworks and pyrotechnics (including flares, igniters, etc.) in 2007.
Source: 2007 Economic Census, Series EC0731SP1, Products and Services Code 325998J108
<http://www.census.gov/econ/census07/>

Patriotic-Sounding Place Names

Thirty-one places have “liberty” in their names. The most populous one as of April 1, 2010, is Liberty, Mo. (29,149) Iowa, with four, has more of these places than any other state: Libertyville, New Liberty, North Liberty and West Liberty.
Thirty-five places have “eagle” in their names. The most populous one is Eagle Pass, Texas (26,248).
Eleven places have “independence” in their names. The most populous one is Independence, Mo. (116,830).
Nine places have “freedom” in their names. The most populous one is New Freedom, Pa. (4,464).
One place with “patriot” in the name. Patriot, Ind. (209).
Five places have “America” in their names. The most populous is American Fork, Utah (26,263).
Source: American FactFinder <www.census.gov>

Early Presidential Last Names

138

Ranking of the frequency of the surname of our first president, George Washington, among all last names tabulated in the 2000 Census. Other early presidential names that appear on the list, along with their ranking, were Adams (39), Jefferson (594), Madison (1,209) and Monroe (567).
Source: Census 2000 Genealogy <http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/freqnames2k.html>

The British are Coming!

$98.3 billion

Dollar value of trade last year between the United States and the United Kingdom, making the British, our adversary in 1776, our sixth-leading trading partner today.
Source: Foreign Trade Statistics <http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/top/top1012yr.html#total>
<http://www.usatradeonline.gov>

Fourth of July Cookouts

More than 1 in 4

The chance that the hot dogs and pork sausages consumed on the Fourth of July originated in Iowa. The Hawkeye State was home to 19.0 million hogs and pigs on March 1, 2011. This estimate represents more than one-fourth of the nation’s estimated total. North Carolina (8.6 million) and Minnesota (7.6 million) were also homes to large numbers of pigs.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/HogsPigs/HogsPigs-03-25-2011.pdf>

6.8 billion pounds

Total production of cattle and calves in Texas in 2010. Chances are good that the beef hot dogs, steaks and burgers on your backyard grill came from the Lone Star State, which accounted for about one-sixth of the nation’s total production. And if the beef did not come from Texas, it very well may have come from Nebraska (4.6 billion pounds) or Kansas (4.1 billion pounds).
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/MeatAnimPr/MeatAnimPr-04-28-2011.pdf>

6

Number of states in which the value of broiler chicken production was $1 billion or greater between December 2009 and November 2010. There is a good chance that one of these states — Georgia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi or Texas — is the source of your barbecued chicken.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/PoulProdVa/PoulProdVa-04-28-2011.pdf>

Over 1 in 3

The odds that your side dish of baked beans originated from North Dakota, which produced 36 percent of the nation’s dry, edible beans in 2010. Another popular Fourth of July side dish is corn on the cob. Florida, California, Georgia, Washington and New York together accounted for 68 percent of the fresh market sweet corn produced nationally in 2010.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProdSu/CropProdSu-01-12-2011_new_format.pdf> and
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/VegeSumm/VegeSumm-01-27-2011.pdf>

Please Pass the Potato

Potato salad and potato chips are popular food items at Fourth of July barbecues. Approximately half of the nation’s spuds were produced in Idaho or Washington state in 2010.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProdSu/CropProdSu-01-12-2011_new_format.pdf>

More than three-fourths

Amount of the nation’s head lettuce production in 2010 that came from California. This lettuce may end up in your salad or on your burger.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/VegeSumm/VegeSumm-01-27-2011.pdf>

7 in 10

The chances that the fresh tomatoes in your salad came from Florida or California, which combined accounted for 71 percent of U.S. fresh market tomato production last year.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/VegeSumm/VegeSumm-01-27-2011.pdf>

Florida

The state that led the nation in watermelon production last year (750 million pounds). Other leading producers of this popular fruit included California, Georgia and Texas, each had an estimate of more than 600 million pounds.
Source: USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
<http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/VegeSumm/VegeSumm-01-27-2011_new_format.pdf>

81 million

Number of Americans who said they have taken part in a barbecue during the previous year. It’s probably safe to assume a lot of these events took place on Independence Day.
Source: Mediamark Research & Intelligence, as cited in the Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2011
<http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/>, Table 1239

Useful knowledge for a day in the sun

/ bs king / 4 Comments

A midweek day off during a heat wave?  Time to go outside!

While I hate most infographics, I can’t hate David McCandless.  Here’s all you need to know about the sunshine vitamin:
Happy 4th of July!

Spanking and Mental Trauma

/ bs king / 4 Comments

The headline reads “Spanking Linked to Mental Illness“, and I was immediately intrigued.  Spanking, generally, is a very hard thing to study, as it is so often correlated with other things.  Physical punishment of children is often linked to frustrated and under resourced parents, cultural norms that can be positive or negative, and even immigration status.

Curious how the study authors controlled for such things, but assured by the article that they had, I flipped over to the study itself.  It didn’t take long for me to realize this was yet another example of bad journalism mucking about with a half decent study.

The article starts like this:

Although the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) strongly discourages spanking, at leasthalf of parents admit to physically punishing their children. Some research suggests that as many as 70-90 percent of mothers have resorted to spanking at one time or another. Anew study published in the journal Pediatrics may cause parents to think more carefully before laying a hand on their little ones.

However, the study states:

Physical punishment was assessed with the question, “As a child how often were you ever pushed, grabbed, shoved, slapped or hit by your parents or any adult living in your house?” Respondents who reported an answer of“sometimes” or greater to this event were considered as having experienced harsh physical punishment. The term harsh physicalpunishment was used for this study because the measure includes acts of physical force beyond slapping, which some may consider more severe than “customary” physical punishment (ie, spanking).

 So the study specifically excluded “customary” physical punishment when it assessed the effects on future mental illness….which pretty much completely contradicts the headline.   I also doubt this is what 70-90% of mother’s are admitting to when they spank “at one time or another”.  

Irresponsible.

The SCOTUS and perception of statistics

/ bs king / 4 Comments

Finally got internet in the new house.  Can’t complain too much….the guy finished running the wire to our house even though a thunderstorm started.  Clearly that man was getting paid by the job, not the hour.

Anyway, had an interesting chat with my father (a lawyer) after our closing on Thursday about the Supreme Court ruling on health care.  He mentioned that a coworker was griping that the Supreme Court meant nothing any more because they only voted on party lines.  My father, being the good data accuracy man that he is, quickly dissented.

He looked it up, and asserted that nearly half of the decisions last year were unanimous.  For this year, 7-2 votes were the least common (8%), then 8-1 (11%), 6-3 (17%) and then 5-4 (20%).  So overall,  they agree nearly as much as they disagree, and they are only completely divided on about 1 in 5 cases.  Kennedy and Roberts voted with the majority over 90% of the time.  Ginsburg was the least likely to vote in the majority.  Lots of interesting stats to be run on this, another good breakdown of some of the data is here.

It seems the perception that every vote is political is heavily skewed by the very few court cases most of us hear about every year.  I would wager even highly political citizens probably couldn’t rattle off more than a handful.  When you break down the 5-4 decisions exclusively, about 2/3rds of them vote down ideological lines…..which totals to about 10 cases for 2011.

This kind of skewing of perception is common when a few high profile events dramatically overshadow regular operations.  Thanks Dad, for pointing that out.

Big day

/ bs king / 2 Comments

To be honest, my day was dominated by big news that had nothing to do with healthcare…..we closed on our house today (the one we were buying….we closed our sale yesterday).  

I was fairly glad, as I got sick of the coverage of the decision by noon.  
I thought the coverage itself had some interesting things to say about how we process data however.  When it comes to science, so often people are just skimming over things, trying to get out a good headline.  Watching the blogs and other websites today, I saw a different angle….people trying to dissect legal jargon quickly to get to the sound bite….which of course led to this:
It was almost nice watching this happen in a different field….though I felt incredibly bad for the pundits trying to put together commentary while still trying to read the decision.
Not much with statistics to comment on, though Nate Silver has some good preliminary stats on how this will go for the election.  

Conspiracy theories and replicatability

/ bs king / 1 Comment

I’m working on a theory around how many conspiracy theories a reasonable person is allowed to buy in to in their lifetime while still being completely normal.  My current thought is you’re allowed at least 3 during your teenage years, and then one every 5 – 10 years after.

When I say conspiracy theories, I will mention that I’m only including ones that do not actually change your daily life in a significant way.  

Conspiracy theories in general are a fantastic study of selective data interpretation.  All of them do it in different ways, but there are some general themes.  One of them was illustrated quite entertainingly by xkcd.com this morning:

To note: I never disbelieved the moon landing, but my (normally rational) little brother did for about 3 weeks one summer after watching a documentary on TV.  He’s now a high school science teacher, for what it’s worth.

Causes of death and perception skewing

/ bs king / 1 Comment

My first job out of college was working in one of the busiest Emergency Departments in the country.  I learned a lot of interesting things about human behavior there, and some random facts about the way the ED interacts with the government as far as reporting goes.  

One of the smaller parts of my job was making sure the proper reports got filed at the appropriate times, and this included death certificates.  Contrary to what you might think, not many people actually die in the Emergency Department.  Trauma victims almost always have enough time to get to the operating room before they die, and people with more chronic illnesses tend to die in the intensive care units.  Thus, when death certificates come up, most residents have no idea how to fill them out.  I don’t remember much about them, but I will always remember one thing: heart failure is NOT a valid cause of death in Massachusetts.  You can put unknown, or heart disease or many many other things, but you can’t put heart failure.  The reason?  Everyone dies of heart failure.  If your heart is still beating, you’re not getting a death certificate.  
I’m thinking of all this because of a very cool new interactive graph put out by the New England Journal of Medicine about causes of death over the years.  I can only post the static graph, but I suggest you check out the interactive one:
Another list here, comparing 1900 and 2010 directly:
It’s interesting to see causes that have dropped due to actual dips (tuberculosis) and those that are not there any more due to medical reclassification (senility).
It’s a good study in how medical reporting can change over time for various reasons, and why changes should always viewed from both a broad view as well as up close.

Arizona Immigration and fake statistics

/ bs king / 11 Comments

In case you haven’t heard, the Supreme Court ruled on Arizona’s immigration law today.

I was not surprised to see this show up on some of the feminist blogs I read, as they generally have a pro-immigration slant, but I was more than a little surprised to see that Amanda Marcotte considers this a women’s issue.

In a blog post for the XX blog on Slate.com, she argues that the laws surrounding checking IDs will likely result in racial profiling (certainly) and probably target the young (highly likely) but that this will also target women more than men (wait, huh?).

Her reasoning:

…..women, especially in poor or rural communities, are also much more likely to be out and about without legal identification than men, especially if they don’t drive or drive often. Women that are poor or undereducated are much more likely to be stay-at-home mothers with few resources, which makes it very easy to let concerns about up-to-date licenses or ID slip, especially if you don’t drive a car much because someone else in the household is using it for work. If your daily life is dedicated to running errands for your family, you may not have much cause to worry about keeping all your papers in order generally, until it’s too late and you’re finding yourself in jail for not being able to prove citizenship on the spot.

A few comments:

  1. I have searched for 20 minutes for any study or proof that women leave the house without their ID more often than men.  I can’t find it.  Maybe the idea is that women walk around more than men?
  2. Women that are poor and undereducated are not more likely to be stay at home mothers.  56% of SAHM have at least some college education or more.
  3. I can’t find any hard data on which gender lets their license expire more often, but I also can’t find proof that it’s women.
I hate statistics based on bad data, but I really hate statistics just pulled from thin air.  Some assertions are self evident for sure….I don’t know that many people would argue that a group of teenage boys out on a corner is more likely to be stopped by the police than a group of 70 year old men….but the paragraph above states quite definitively several things that don’t seem at all definitive.  I could be wrong, but there weren’t any sources attached to check with.  When you factor in the idea that men are probably more likely to be stopped than women, it’s hard to figure out where this particular point is coming from.
If you disagree with Arizona’s law, that’s fine….but don’t make up statistics about it’s impact on women to justify that.  If it’s wrong, it’s wrong because it impacts people in general, not women in particular.