than girls.
If I stop there I probably won’t attract a lot feminist outrage — as did economist Larry Summers, former president of Harvard. Who was tarred and feathered for saying the same thing. But because all of those attacking Summers were clueless about statistics, they understood nothing of what he said.
So far only one journalist at the WSJ seems to have understood the latest study on gender and math performance.
Alex Tabarrok explains the implications of higher variance, given similar means.
All of these reports and many more like them are false. In fact, consistent with many earlier studies (JSTOR), what this study found was that the ratio of male to female variance in ability was positive and significant, in other words we can expect that there will be more math geniuses and more dullards, among males than among females. I quote from the study (VR is variance ratio):
Greater male variance is indicated by VR > 1.0. All VRs, by state and grade, are >1.0 [range 1.11 to 1.21].
Your tax dollars hard at work: The Library of Congress produces a braille version of Playboy.
It’s about bloody time — ‘Venti Vouchers’ is a policy we can all get behind…
Democrats in Congress today plan to introduce a bill to halt the recently-announced closing of some 600 Starbucks coffee stores, noting that the displacement of 12,000 Starbucks baristas would overwhelm government aid offices not prepared to handle so many clients for whom English is a second language….
“These people can’t just walk out of Starbucks and get a job at a grocery store or a factory,” said House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-CA. “They would need ESL classes and cultural training to learn how to relate to ordinary Americans and function in society.”…
“This is just another one of our heroic Democrat efforts to protect Americans from the impact of the Bush economic policies,” said Rep. Pelosi. “Under this president, America has become a cold and desolate place where corporations cut unprofitable activities to focus on increasing the bottom line, and returning value to shareholders. When Democrats retake the White House next year, we will reverse that trend.”
More…
Technorati Tags: Humor, Humour
I do hope Branson’s venture becomes a Harvard Business School case study in entreprenuership.
Virgin Group head Sir Richard Branson unveiled the latest addition to his air- and spaceline fleet at the Mojave Airport in California today, accompanied by the craft’s chief designer, Burt Rutan.
The White Knight 2 is a four-engine jet that will carry an 8-seat spaceship called SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 48,000 feet so that the spaceship can drop off and fire its rocket engine for a brief run to suborbital space. Branson’s Virgin Galactic hopes to begin regularly scheduled passenger service to space in 2010.
White Knight 2, Branson, and Rutan: Virgin Galactic owner Richard Branson (left) and air- and spacecraft designer Burt Rutan wave from the cockpit of the White Knight 2. Photo by Michael Belfiore
Rutan’s company Scaled Composites made history in 2004 with the world’s first privately funded manned spaceflights by its three-seat SpaceShipOne, which was carried aloft by the original White Knight. The White Knight 2 features two fuselages, each with its own cabin, connected by a single continuous wing arching between them, where the spaceship will ride. With the wing span of a B-29 bomber, it is the largest all-carbon-fiber aircraft yet built.
On hand to christen the White Knight Two outside a Scaled hangar was Branson’s mother, Eve. Not coincidentally, Eve is also the name of the mother ship. “If you’re going to name a mother ship,” Branson quipped to a gathering of perhaps two hundred reporters and dignitaries, including Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin, “you might as well name it after your own mother.”
Military historian Victor Davis Hanson reflects on then and now, separated by only 12 months:
A little more than a year ago most Americans—and nearly all the Democratic opposition in Congress—opposed the surge of troops into Iraq and Gen. David Petraeus’s change of tactics.
The conventional wisdom after four long years of war was that we were stuck in the middle of a hopeless civil war. There was no American military solution to quell the violence. The Iraq government was not only incompetent, but proof that democratic government itself was incompatible with Middle Eastern culture and religion.
Pundits were advocating trisecting the country into separate Shiite, Sunni, and Kurdish enclaves. Our presence in Iraq caused us to have taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan, while empowering Iran, and helping al Qaedi to gain new recruits in a new theater of operations. Democratic presidential candidates were hammering each other over Iraq and demanding that those who had voted to authorize the invasion apologize for their vote. Barack Obama wanted all American troops out by March 2008.
A New Political Reality
And now? July is closing with the fewest number of American combat fatalities since the war started. There is no civil war. The Maliki government has put down Shiite militias and won back Sunnis into the elected administration, and, as an autonomous and confident government, is in tense negotiations with the US over future basing of American troops. Al Qaeda has been humiliated and routed from Iraq. American troops, versed in counterinsurgency, are being redeployed to Afghanistan to reapply what worked against jihadists in Iraq. Iranian-backed militias are being disbanded or have fled back into Iran. The additional surge troops are now out of Iraq. Democratic opponents suddenly concede that the withdrawal of American troops should be predicated on conditions on the ground. Anti-war activists critique Iraq more as a possibly successful war not worth the human and material costs rather than an effort long ago lost.
What Happened?
So what happened in the last twelve months to cause such a radical turn-about in Iraq and here at home? The surge added some needed troops, but more importantly sent the symbolic message that the United States was not leaving, but determined—militarily—to defeat terrorists and give the Iraqi government critical time to consolidate its authority.
The so-called Anbar awakening in which Sunni tribal leaders turned on al Qaeda and joined forces with us was not caused directly by the surge, but would have failed without the confidence more Americans were on the way to support their fight against al Qaeda. Americans began to turn from counter-terrorism to counterinsurgency tactics that meant dispersing combat troops out of compounds and into Iraqi neighborhoods where they could protect Iraqis who resisted terrorism.
Don’t Forget …
Two critical developments are relatively unappreciated, but likewise proved critical. The first was the continual growth and improvement in the Iraqi security forces that now include many veteran units that have learned to confront and defeat terrorists.
Second, between 2003-7 American forces took an enormous toll on jihadists. We have heard mostly how many Americans have been lost, rarely how many of the enemy they have killed or wounded—but the aggregate number is in the tens of thousands. Even in postmodern wars, there are finite numbers of skilled combatants—and many of them simply did not survive their encounter with American troops.
The Copenhagen Consensus 2008 is getting underway. In the WSJ today Bjorn Lomborg summarizes the cost-benefit analysis of four of the thirty of the global challenges studied by the Copenhagen Consensus scientists over the past two years. Benefit/Cost = b/c ratios quoted are for current “mainstream” policies:
TRANSNATIONAL TERRORISM, b/c = 0.30
CLIMATE CHANGE, b/c = 0.90
DISEASES, b/c = 20.0
HUNGER, b/c = 16.0
Over two years, more than 50 economists have worked to find the best solutions to ten of the world’s biggest challenges. During the last week of May, an expert panel of 8 top-economists, including 5 Nobel Laureates, sat down to assess the research.
The ranked list: A prioritized list highlighting the potential of 30 specific solutions to combat some of the biggest challenges facing the world.
Combating malnutrition in the 140 million children who are undernourished reached the number one spot, after economist Sue Horton of Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada made her case to the expert panel.
Providing micronutrients for 80% of the 140 million children who lack essential vitamins in the form of vitamin A capsules and a course of zinc supplements would cost just $60 million per year, according to the analysis. More importantly, this action holds yearly benefits of more than $1 billion.
In effect, this means that each dollar spent on this program creates benefits (in the form of better health, fewer deaths, increased future earnings, etc.) worth more than 17 dollars.
Technorati Tags: Copenhagen Consensus
Here’s some analysis of Boone Pickens’ proposal by Geoffrey Styles, CEO of GSW Strategy Group:
T. Boone Pickens, well-known oilman and corporate raider, has a plan for reducing America’s reliance in imported oil by more than one-third within a decade or so. When I opened the morning paper, I found a full-page ad heralding the Pickens Plan and directing my attention to http://www.pickensplan.org/ for the details. The idea behind the plan is simple and appealing: ramp up wind power to displace natural gas from power generation, and then use the natural gas to fuel vehicles, backing out gasoline and diesel fuel. The net result of this shift would reduce US expenditures on imported petroleum by perhaps $250 billion per year at current prices. Although the plan appears feasible, its implementation would face serious obstacles. More importantly, its key provisions appear to conflict with other solutions that offer bigger efficiency improvements and greenhouse gas reductions. Perhaps its largest benefit is in laying out a clear set of choices for discussion, in contrast to the wonkish complexity of most energy policy proposals.
More…
Yves Smith has assembled data and analysis I’ve not seen elsewhere. I’m not sure what conclusions to draw from this. Will hiding under the bed help?
It no doubt seems absurd to question the idea that deleveraging is underway. We’ve had three heroic central bank interventions, starting in August 2007, to reverse seize-ups in the money markets. The asset backed commercial paper market has been almost in run-off mode. Leveraged buyout loans have been scarce to non-existent. Banks have cut home equity credit lines and credit card borrowing limits. Commercial and industrial loans have fallen. The private mortgage securitization market is a shadow of its former self.
Yet the macro level data, at least as far as the US is concerned, tells a dramatically different, indeed troubling story (click to enlarge):
The chart is admittedly a bit hard to read, but it is prepared from Fed’s Funds Flows through the latest reporting date, which is March 31, 2008. The chart comes courtesy Frank Veneroso’s June 18 report, “Why a Second Wave is Inevitable.” (no online version, but if you ask nicely, I can e-mail you a pdf). The line is Total Credit Market Debt/GDP. As you can clearly see, the steepness of the vertical ascent of the has not eased in the last year or two. If anything, it may have gotten worse.
We will return to discuss the implications of how big the debt level is, but the graph itself should serve to focus the mind. The March 31 level was 350% of GDP. The previous peak occurred in 1933, during the Great Depression, at just under 270% of GDP. Note that the peak was reached due to the start of the rapid fall in GDP taking hold faster than debts were written off, a dynamic not in operation now. So the comparable level to our situation is in fact lower than the 270% peak.
An additional bit of cheery news comes from reader Bjomar: Japan’s total debt to GDP in 1990 was roughly 250% (it took some triangulating among this, this, and this source, his interpolation of corporate debt at 100-140% of GDP, household at 65%, and government at 60%). And unlike us, Japan had a very high saving rate, so its net debt would have been less alarming.
On my recent quick turnaround trip to the West Coast, I had the opportunity to read all sorts of interesting research various readers had sent me that I simply could not get to previously. All of it was useful, but the Veneroso discussion, and particularly his chart, seemed the most unrecognized, underappreciated element of the credit crunch.
Now the story in the first paragraph is not inaccurate. Private sector credit growth has slowed, in fact pretty dramatically in the first quarter. But “slowing growth” and “deleveraging” are two different conditions. Alejandro Neut at Banco Bilbao provides a good overview of the Fed’s funds flow data for the first quarter of 2008:
Credit continued to decelerate in the first quarter of 2008. Total debt of the domestic nonfinancial sectors grew at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.5% (1 pp lower than in the previous quarter and the lowest rate since 2001). Even when the reduction in debt growth was not as pronounced as the one in 2007Q4, when debt eased from 9.1% to 7.5%, the decelerating trend shows no signs of abating. This bleak assertion is based in the yet strong deceleration of households’ debt, segment which remains the main driver of the current downtrend (households’ debt grew a meager 3.5% compared with the previously seasonally annualized growth of 6.1% in the previous quarter). Debt in almost all sectors grew at a lower pace than anytime during 2007. The only exception was the federal government’s debt, which grew at an impressive annualized rate of 9.5%.
Business debt continued to expand at a healthy pace Business’s debt grew 10.8% yoy. With interest payments at historical lows (relative to profits) debt growth in corporate America was robust. This explains why businesses have been shifting the means to finance itself, from bond issuance to bank loans. But risks are growing: the financial gap remains at a high level, indicating the need for external financing in order to keep current operations.
Read the whole thing.
…the task force said that its research “does not support the hypothesis that the activity of these groups is driving prices higher.”
Yes, we know that — but it doesn’t look like Congress has a clue. On the silly legislation making its way through Congress, Megan McCardle has this to say at The Atlantic:
Now suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a Senator . . . but I repeat myself.
and if you feel the need for more pain, try reading the lawgiving prose of your representatives here.
The captioned report [PDF] is by the Interagency Task Force on Commodity Markets (Task Force or ITF). The other Task Force participants include staff from the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and the Treasury, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities & Exchange Commission. From the Executive Summary:
In June 2008, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or Commission) formed an Interagency Task Force on Commodity Markets (Task Force or ITF). The Task Force draws on a broad range of government expertise on the fundamental factors and market forces affecting commodity markets. In light of the recent increases in energy prices and the resulting concerns of the public and policymakers, the Task Force has prepared this interim report on crude oil, which offers a preliminary assessment of fundamental and market factors affecting the crude oil market between January 2003 and June 2008.
The Task Force’s preliminary assessment is that current oil prices and the increase in oil prices between January 2003 and June 2008 are largely due to fundamental supply and demand factors. During this same period, activity on the crude oil futures market – as measured by the number of contracts outstanding, trading activity, and the number of traders – has increased significantly. While these increases broadly coincided with the run-up in crude oil prices, the Task Force’s preliminary analysis to date does not support the proposition that speculative activity has systematically driven changes in oil prices.
The world economy has expanded at its fastest pace in decades, and that strong growth has translated into substantial increases in the demand for oil, particularly from emerging market countries. On the supply side, the production of oil has responded sluggishly, compounded by production shortfalls associated with geopolitical unrest in countries with large oil reserves. As it is very difficult to rely on substitutes for oil in the short term, very large price increases have occurred as the market balances supply and demand.
If a group of market participants has systematically driven prices, detailed daily position data should show that that group’s position changes preceded price changes. The Task Force’s preliminary analysis, based on the evidence available to date, suggests that changes in futures market participation by speculators have not systematically preceded price changes. On the contrary, most speculative traders typically alter their positions following price changes, suggesting that they are responding to new information – just as one would expect in an efficiently operating market.
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