Deductibles

If you ever mention how many people don't apply for college financial aid because the forms are too complicated you'll inevitable get a response like "if it's too hard to fill out a form, you probably shouldn't be going to college."

The thing is, filling out financial aid forms and understanding health insurance really is difficult. One of my friends just graduated from MIT and he health insurance expires at the end of the month. She e-mailed me asking for help understanding how to get a plan and how they work, and when I helped her out she wrote this back:

I actually saw the MIT webpage link about what to do after graduation earlier, but when I clicked on all the links I got so confused by all the terms and timelines. This is so much clearer now that you broke it down for me, I'm not freaking out anymore!

[. . .] I think if I get really sick, getting my dad to send $6750 over shouldn't be a problem. For the longest time I was so confused when browsing the different insurance plans about the term 'deductible', I thought it was something to do with tax-deductible.

MIT students also struggle with filling out some financial aid forms. I helped out an international student who was confused about why they needed so much information from her parents back in Kenya, and how she was supposed to figure out what it was asking for, much less how to get the information!

Does 538 now suck?

My understanding was that 538 always sucked at everything except forecasting elections and discussing baseball statistics. And by "forecasting" I mean making a prediction of who would win Florida after a third of votes had already been cast.

But I have changed my mind. This new post is hilarious.

538 has mostly been trashed for writing articles where they take a simple time series, eyeball it to make a wacky point, and then do linear extrapolation with it until Kingdom Come. So what did Nate Silver do? All of the above.

This is obviously Native Silver doing satire of 538.

What the F is up with Washington?

ESPN took a poll of users asking them to evaluate David Stern as NBA commissioner.

What the F is up with Washington State?

Maybe it has something to do with this.

(Technical point: The map shows the most common or model response, not the average [median] response. If it showed the average response then Washington State would give him a C and every other state would give him a B.)

The Following

I watched the first season of The Following over the weekend and the thing I kept coming back to was how the villain, Joe Caroll, isn' that bad of a guy.

We quickly find out that Joe is a former professor of English Literature who murdered 14 girls on his campus around 2003-2004, although that number is later revised to 12.

My question is: what English professor hasn't ruined at least 14 lives?

College is expensive. Young people are impressionable. English is easy. There is a real appeal to a short-sighted 19-year old  and English professors are known for seducing students into the major and then leaving them for dead when they graduate saddled with debt and without skills.

I'm obviously joking but it would be nice to see an article from someone defending majoring in the humanities where they emphasize responsibility to the students. You hear a lot about how lazy students are (they are) and about how the humanities are important because they train you to "be a good citizen" (wtf?), but I haven't heard a professor in the humanities pour his heart out talking about how he cares about his students and it pains him when he finds out they are deep in debt and unemployed. Everyone teaching in college for 10 years or more has students like that and English professors surely have more than the average.

B.S. in English

Gerald Howard tells us about the value of his English degree with stories from his experience working as an editor:

We were theoretically required at that time to have our [profit and loss statements] yield a return of at least 8 percent, and I had become adept in ways to make or exceed that number. You could shave on the cover art. You could shave on marketing and advertising. You could basically lie about projected sales and hope no one called you on it. The techniques I had developed in college to make my ham-handed chem lab experiments yield the proper results found a practical new use.

Basically, you could lie.

But Gerald didn't lie . . . that much. His profit and loss statement only estimated a 7% rate of return so the CFO didn't want to approve it. How did he convince him?

 I made some weak noises about literary excellence, backlist sales, commitment to authors.

Basically, he made up some bullshit. (See "The Rule of 2.")

Lying and bullshitting are valuable skills, especially on Wall Street, where many Ivy League humanities majors look for a job. But Gerald doesn't think you should major in English just for the skill set.

The point is truth and beauty . . . [they are] why you should major in English.

That is not a typo. He writes it twice: "truth."

Don't be a Martin in FL

A lot of people have the Trayvon Martin story all wrong.

The focus has been on race. Travyon was black. George Zimmerman was not. That is why Travyon was killed.

But white people get killed by assholes in FL too. In fact, the most famous "stand your ground" case, one where the law actually applied, featured a black man who killed a white man in front of the white man's pre-school age daughter.

Now the sports world is abuzz about the racist treatment of Jonathan Martin at the hands of his fellow offensive lineman Richie Incognito. But does anyone doubt that white rookies get hazed in the NFL too, inside FL and outside?

The real common denominator in these cases is not race, it's the last name Martin.

If you're last name is Martin get the fuck out of FL ASAP for your safety and wellbeing.

Black people get murdered and harassed in every state, leaving FL is no escape. But Martin's seem to be singled out in the sunshine state.

Medicine isn't a Science

We've all heard a lot about how economics isn't a science like physics, medicine, and chemistry.

Economists didn't predict the financial crisis. Didn't you hear?

That got me thinking.

Susumu Tonegawa who won the Nobel prize in Medicine in 1987, is a professor at MIT. His son also went to MIT.

I say "went" not because he graduated but because he committed suicide during his freshmen year, right in his dorm room.

If medicine were a science, Tonewaga would have been able to predict his son's death. But he couldn't. You draw the conclusion.

But it isn't just Tonegawa who gets this stuff wrong. My wife is reading How Doctors Think so I read through a few chapters and it seems like every doctor has misdiagnosed a patient. In fact, even the good ones he singled out recount many misdiagnoses, sometimes even fatal ones.

You almost get impression from reading the book that doctors don't really understand the human body well enough to predict when people will get sick or prevent people from dying. But medicine is a science so I guess that is a wrong impression.

2016: Christie vs Crist

Here's my prediction for the 2016 presidential election.

Charlie Crist (D-FL) goes to war with Chris Christie (R-NJ) as both parties double down on "electability" after only allowing independents to vote in their primaries.

The suicide rate for journalists goes through the roof as they struggle to get the names straight.

The average voter refers to them as "the fat one" and "you mean that closest homo?"

The election ultimately comes down to Charlie's home state, FL, where half the voters are senior citizens who can't distinguish the names on the ballot.

Luckily for Charlie he's the governor of FL and has pulled a "Jeb," rigging the election in his favor.

Chris Christie petitions the Supreme Court to overturn the result and they think they did, but an 80-year old Scalia is charged with writing the opinion. The senile old man, entering his 25th year of suffering from Alzheimer's, writes "Charlie Crist" when he meant "Chris Christie" ensuring Charlie becomes the first gay president of the U.S.

I think I'm starting to understand Medicine

I've always been puzzled at how much "health research" money goes into developing drugs and understanding the biochemistry of the body. Shouldn't we spend more money thinking about how to get people to actually take up our current medical knowledge to use--getting people to exercise more, actually take their pills, eat healthier, and practice mindfulness and other good psychological practices.

This letter to the editor to the NYTimes helped me understand why we don't:

Re “Yes, Economics Is a Science” (Op-Ed, Oct. 21): ...
It is good to hear that economics is entering a phase when rigorous analysis and empirical testing will become the norm. . . . Scholars of physics, chemistry and medicine can study the movement of atomic particles or lab mice without any concern that the particles and the mice are interested in the results. . . .
DAVID C. WROBEL
New York, Oct. 21, 2013
The writer is a lawyer.

Medical research isn't about understanding how to make people healthy, it is about understanding mice!

Abortion Rights back in the spotlight

The Supreme Court ruled today that people have a right to abortions, invalidating centuries of precedent that people have to pay for services like surgery and tax preparation.

In the case, Fluke vs Holder, argued pro se by Georgetown law graduate and “slut” Sandra Fluke, the plaintiff argued that she has “abortion rights” as established in Row v. Wade. Since she had to drive a long distance and pay more than she wanted to get the abortion, her rights were being unconstitutionally trampled on by the market.

In a reversal of precedent the court agreed with Ms. Fluke, rejected the Obama administration’s argument that people had to pay for goods and service like food, tablet computers and prime real estate and abortion did not have a special place in U.S. law.

Well, it does now.

Next week the court will hear Cook vs. Fanboys Limited, a case where Apple fanboys claim they have a right to upgrade their tablets for free, at Apple’s expense, due to their “medically documented obsession with Apple products,” a DSM-VI certified psychological disorder. Pundits predict the court will be confused about what it is exactly that a “tablet” does.

NYTranslated: Does music make you successful?

Is Music the Key to Success?
by Joanne Lipman, translated by Steve White

Condoleeza Rice, the chief advisor to George W. Bush, the least successful president in recent memory, was a trained concert pianist. Alan Greenspan, the man who inflated the housing bubble as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, also played music as a child. Other people you have never heard of, the fat numbers gay at MSNBC, and the least deserving Best Director winner of all time also play or played music.

I know correlation is not causation, but in this case we'll just assume it is: music training makes people successful. I know because I asked a bunch of successful people who played music if music made them successful. They said maybe it had something to do with it now that I mention it.

You might ask why I asked people I knew were successful and who play music. Doesn't that beg the question on the correlation. Yes, but I was scared that if I asked successful people who didn't play music (most of them) that they might not attribute their success to music. I was even more afraid to talk to average people who played music (i.e. the vast majority) because it might force me to change my mind.

So, yes, I can't offer evidence for why music makes you smart, but I can offer a half-baked theory filled with buzzwords. Music is about collaboration, except when you play solo like most of the people I talked to. It focuses your mind, like mindfulness training except not as well. And it to play you have to listen and listening is good. I'll stop because you are probably convinced at this point.

Mr. Greenspan told me that the probability that so many high achievers played music in school is unlikely to be coincidence. Sociologists I consulted pointed out that everyone on my list was white or from an affluent household, and in most cases both, but I'm pretty sure that has nothing to do with their success.

So let me clarify. Music won't turn you into a star in your field. That probably requires hard work . . . in your field. But music education should be subsidized heavily so rich white kids can attribute their success to their violin and ignore the underlying social inequalities it represents.

Is a home run just a home run?

In sabermetrics, the statistical analysis of baseball, there is a lot of work done to estimate the value of players to team. How valuable is a player who hits .330 with an OBP of .387 with 12 HR? Is he more valuable than someone hitting .347 but with just a .365 OBP and 2 HR?

To make life simple sabermetricians generally try to answer questions like this by focusing on the player and his hits, walks, etc. and ignore what team he plays for and where he bats in the lineup. Stats like RBIs and runs depend on what other players do--unless you hit a home run someone needs to bat you in, and likewise you need someone on base to generate RBIs.

Traditionally this criticism is brushed aside as unimportant. The goal of asking "who is more valuable?" is to find our who is better and that question doesn't hinge on how good the other players are, does it?

But a home run isn't just a home run. The more people who are on base, the more runs you score when you hit a home run. Whether you play for a good offensive team or a bad one could have a big impact on how many runs a home run tends to be worth.

In fact, it DOES have a big impact on how valuable a player is by up to 40%. Replacing a replacement level hitter with Mike Trout would turn the Marlins' terrible offense (515 runs) into a merely bad one (584 runs predicted) for a gain of 69 runs. Doing the same trick for the Red Sox's potent offense could push a strong offense (853 runs) into the stratosphere (949 runs) for a gain of 96 runs.

96 runs is not "approximately" the same as 69 runs. It's important to take context into account when thinking about value.

Why edX is a failure

When MIT announced MITx I went on the record saying it will be a major flop.

No one had any idea what it was supposed to accomplish but across a wide range of goals it seemed doomed to failure.

Is it an educational gym, providing resources to help you build mental muscle?
Is it a personal trainer, providing you advice on how to train?
Is it a means to signal how smart you are?
Or a networking tool, the main function of a residential college?

It looks like the leadership is mostly hoping to be some combination of gym and signaling device, weighted toward gym. You can get certificates for passing classes, but most of the resources are going into developing tools. Look at the job postings:

Devops Engineer (2x)
Front-end Developer (2x)
Director of Services
Program Manager (2x)
Test Engineer
Software Engineer
Principal Software Engineer

It looks like 70% of their employees are programmers and the other 30% are administrators. Where are the educators? Evidently they aren't that important.

After a year and a half, MITx is well on its way to flopping.

Jindal: We need Low-isiana Standards

Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana announced his opposition to Common Core, an initiative led by 45 state governments to develop common, high standards for our nation's primary and secondary schools.

Jindal decried the "federalization" of education and pushed the state's board of education to avoid damaging the state's reputation as the second dumbest in the nation.

He urged teachers and students in the state to help "put the Low back into Low-isiana. We need Low standards, not D.C. standards." He suggested that Mississippi can pass his state in high school graduation rate if the tests asked students to write in complete sentences or do basic geometry while other states kept in place their comically low bars for high school graduation.

In comments with reporters after the press conference Jindal lamented that "we're just a bunch of dumb hicks in this state . . . let's face it, my dad grew up in India and more people understand his English than mine."

Why are poor people dumb?

Sendhil Mullanathain and Eldar Shafir have a new book out, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means Much More.

The book discusses a few experiments in psychology and introduces a few pieces of jargon to help readers remember the main points:

Focus Dividend - when you don't have a lot of time, or money, etc. you economize on its use, and your mind is better able to focus on the task at hand

Tunneling - the focus you get when time, or money, etc. is short has a negative side-effect: tunneling. You can only see things that relate to your goal. If you are own a diet, for instance, you can't stop counting calories, or thinking about sweets...

Bandwidth (Tax) - bandwidth is a loose word for "computational horsepower." Doing things uses up bandwidth and scarcity--of money or time, etc.--eats up bandwidth since, for instance, dieters are using some of their bandwidth repressing urges to eat sweets

That all happens in the first two chapters. The rest of the book has a lot of applications--to poverty and other things no one will remember--but the discussion of poverty has captured most of the attention of the press, including NYTimes essayist Tina Rosenberg.

She asks whether people are poor because of bad choices or whether they make bad choices because they are poor. It's probably a lot of both, but the scarcity paradigm nudges us to acknowledge that is might be more of poverty causing bad habits than we used to think.

The strange thing about the book is that it makes no mention of meditation or mindfulness. Psychologists know how to treat deficits of attention and lack of focus. Meditation, even as little as 15 minutes a day, trains people to bring their focus back to the present. You would think it would help people avoid tunneling while still reaping some benefits of the focus dividend but the book's recommendations are about text messages, simpler forms, and default enrollment . . . which doesn't sound that different from a traditional liberal focus on changing "the system" instead of changing people's behavior.

Second, we know most of what people do is based on habits, not conscious decisions. The bandwidth tax, they have shown, lowers fluid intelligence and executive control, but how does it influence habits? Is there an interaction: rich people don't get a bandwidth tax because they know what to do by habit (draw on a credit line?) while the poor have to think about which lender, which friends to borrow from, if its worth it to fix the car this week or wait until next week? Isn't going to a payday lender also mostly a problem of habit, not a byproduct of bad decision-making when you are tunneling? (As Tina notes, most loans go to people who visit semi-monthly.) This is surprisingly under explored in the book except in passing, calling the tendency of people given abundance to waste it and end up right back in a  scarcity trap the "psychology of abundance," i.e. habits.

Sad news from Florida

Sad cyber bullying story from Florida. Fortunately someone will be punished, although the death penalty is "unconstitutional" for teens it seems like the appropriate punishment.

Do higher minimum wages help to pay the bills?

James Surowiecki calls for a higher minimum wage, but do higher wages really help to pay the bills?

Not as much as you would think.

Part of it is because of taxes. We all know taxes get deducted from our paychecks, so when you get a raise of $2 an hour in Massachusetts you'll pay $0.11 cents an hour in higher state taxes, and $0.30 an hour more in federal taxes (most likely), and then of course contribute $31 cents toward social security and Medicare. So you only get to take home $1.28 of that $2/hour wage. If you spend the money on anything with a sales tax that is really just $1.20 since you'll have to use the other 8 cents to pay the tax.

So a $2 raise for a full-time worker (40 hours) isn't going to free up $80 in their budget, it is going to free up more like $48.

But that's not all. The real difference in take home pay is going to be far less than $1.20 in many cases because our government does a lot to help the poor--and stops doing it when people stop being poor. The $2 raise could cost you eligibility for Medicaid or reduce you subsidy for buying health insurance on the new exchange, reduce your allotment of food stamps, and shrink your Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

You'll lose $0.60 worth of food stamps for every hour you work and owe $0.32 more in federal income tax as your EITC is phased out. You'll have to pay around $0.52 cents more for your health insurance since you are more able to afford it. And you might also lose eligibility for affordable housing,  Pell Grants and other scholarships for your kids to attend college or free lunch if your kids are younger.

When you add it all up it is possible (and even likely if you have children) that a $2/hour raise wouldn't net you more than $10 a week in the bank. Most of the "income" would all disappear in tax deductions, higher taxes, higher expenses for health care, housing, and food.

That is not to say a higher minimum wage wouldn't help anyone out. Some people apply for few benefits and so have little to lose and people without children generally don't get much help from the government, even if they are poor.

Tim Scott hates entitlements

Tim Scott (R-SC) hates entitles. He opposes expanding Medicaid because "[w]e simply cannot continue to dig a hole" and argues that "increasing our entitlements [means] jeopardizing the future."

I guess that is a sensible mentality for a black conservative. He wants people to get up off their ass and work hard to make their lives better. It's hard to argue with that.

But it's also hard to get out of the entitlement mentality.

Senator Scott's press secretary put out a press release bemoaning the fact that "Senator Scott was not invited to speak at [the 50th anniversary celebration of MLK's "I have a Dream" speech]." Appearnetly, as CNN puts it, "the only black senator and is one of only eight African-Americans to ever serve in the U.S. Senate" is entitled to speak about the legacy of Dr. King.

Breaking: Tebow killed Odin Lloyd

In a shocking twist to the Aaron Hernandez murder investigation, it appears Tim Tebow is taking responsibility for the murder of Odin Lloyd.

In a press conference Tebow said he did "terrible, terrible things"to Lloyd. He claims to have erupted in rage after finding out that Lloyd had "disgraced himself and God by taking a life" by forcing his girlfriend to have an abortion. Tebow announced that he would "take full responsibility for [his] actions, and the consequences" adding that he "just want[s] to help the team win."

The shocking development clears the way for the Patriots to resign Hernandez at a discount as the Bristol County DA is unlikely to win any case against Hernandez.

ESPN's Skip Bayless bemoaned the "selfless act" saying Tebow "took a bullet for Aaron Hernandez, he is not guilty" and insisted Tebow could do more to help the team by dethroning Tom Brady as the Patriots starting QB. The rest of the world agreed that the Patriot's acquisition of Tebow has paid off handsomely.

How Doctors and Austerity Kill

David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu have an interesting op-ed in the New York Times.

They note that during economic catastrophes public health tends to worsen. More people start taking anti-depressants and more people commit suicide. People visit the doctor less and delay preventative care. When infectious disease control is cut, epidemics sometimes break out.

They argue that austerity is to blame since depressions tend to lead to decrease tax revenue and budget cuts, or austerity.

The obvious retort is that maybe the depressions themselves are to blame for high unemployment, suicides, and general misery. Maybe the lack of money and hopelessness are what gets people down, not cuts to TB control funding. But the authors . . . don't really address that issue. They assert that health declines more in countries that adopt austerity but they don't present any evidence for their claim, citing statistics from countries like the U.S. that adopted stimulus programs.

I used to think hospitals killed people. When people are at a hospital they are much more likely to die than when they are at work. But I've come to think that people go to a hospital when they are sick and likely to die. David and Sanjay probably disagree.