{"id":3159,"date":"2012-08-02T06:00:23","date_gmt":"2012-08-02T05:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=3159"},"modified":"2012-08-02T06:00:23","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T05:00:23","slug":"thoughts-about-freakonomics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2012\/08\/thoughts-about-freakonomics\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts about Freakonomics"},"content":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Freakonomics<\/a><\/p>\n

Freakonomics expanded<\/a><\/p>\n

In general, this book is not so bad. But it is not so good either. Light nonfiction reading. I didnt read it for any particular reason other than curiosity and knowing that it wudnt take long anyway.<\/p>\n

Chapter 2<\/h3>\n

An analysis of the language used in real-estate ads shows that<\/p>\n

certain words are powerfully correlated with the \ufb01nal sale price of<\/p>\n

a house. This doesn\u2019t necessarily mean that labeling a house \u201cwell<\/p>\n

maintained\u201d causes it to sell for less than an equivalent house. It does,<\/p>\n

however, indicate that when a real-estate agent labels a house \u201cwell<\/p>\n

maintained,\u201d she may be subtly encouraging a buyer to bid low.<\/p>\n

Listed below are ten terms commonly used in real-estate ads. Five<\/p>\n

of them have a strong positive correlation to the ultimate sale price,<\/p>\n

and \ufb01ve have a strong negative correlation. Guess which are which.<\/p>\n

Ten Common Real-Estate Ad Terms<\/p>\n

Fantastic<\/p>\n

Granite<\/p>\n

Spacious<\/p>\n

State-of-the-Art<\/p>\n

!<\/p>\n

Corian<\/p>\n

Charming<\/p>\n

Maple<\/p>\n

Great Neighborhood<\/p>\n

Gourmet<\/p>\n

A \u201cfantastic\u201d house is surely fantastic enough to warrant a high<\/p>\n

price, isn\u2019t it? What about a \u201ccharming\u201d and \u201cspacious\u201d house in a<\/p>\n

\u201cgreat neighborhood!\u201d? No, no, no, and no. Here\u2019s the breakdown:<\/p>\n

Five Terms Correlated to a Higher Sale Price<\/p>\n

Granite<\/p>\n

State-of-the-Art<\/p>\n

Corian<\/p>\n

Maple<\/p>\n

Gourmet<\/p>\n

Five Terms Correlated to a Lower Sale Price<\/p>\n

Fantastic<\/p>\n

Spacious<\/p>\n

!<\/p>\n

Charming<\/p>\n

Great Neighborhood<\/p>\n

Three of the \ufb01ve terms correlated with a higher sale price are phys-<\/p>\n

ical descriptions of the house itself: granite, Corian, and maple. As in-<\/p>\n

formation goes, such terms are speci\ufb01c and straightforward\u2014and<\/p>\n

therefore pretty useful. If you like granite, you might like the house;<\/p>\n

but even if you don\u2019t, \u201cgranite\u201d certainly doesn\u2019t connote a \ufb01xer-<\/p>\n

upper. Nor does \u201cgourmet\u201d or \u201cstate-of-the-art,\u201d both of which seem<\/p>\n

to tell a buyer that a house is, on some level, truly fantastic.<\/p>\n

\u201cFantastic,\u201d meanwhile, is a dangerously ambiguous adjective, as is<\/p>\n

\u201ccharming.\u201d Both these words seem to be real-estate agent code for a<\/p>\n

house that doesn\u2019t have many speci\ufb01c attributes worth describing.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpacious\u201d homes, meanwhile, are often decrepit or impractical.<\/p>\n

\u201cGreat neighborhood\u201d signals a buyer that, well, this house isn\u2019t very<\/p>\n

nice but others nearby may be. And an exclamation point in a real-<\/p>\n

estate ad is bad news for sure, a bid to paper over real shortcomings<\/p>\n

with false enthusiasm.<\/p>\n

If you study the words in ads for a real-estate agent\u2019s own home,<\/p>\n

meanwhile, you see that she indeed emphasizes descriptive terms<\/p>\n

(especially \u201cnew,\u201d \u201cgranite,\u201d \u201cmaple,\u201d and \u201cmove-in condition\u201d) and<\/p>\n

avoids empty adjectives (including \u201cwonderful,\u201d \u201cimmaculate,\u201d and<\/p>\n

the telltale \u201c!\u201d). Then she patiently waits for the best buyer to come<\/p>\n

along. She might tell this buyer about a house nearby that just sold for<\/p>\n

$25,000 above the asking price, or another house that is currently the<\/p>\n

subject of a bidding war. She is careful to exercise every advantage of<\/p>\n

the information asymmetry she enjoys.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, i got it wrong! Almost completely wrong. That almost never happens, so it kinda bugs me. :(<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

They were also a lot richer, taller, skinnier, and better-looking<\/p>\n

than average. That, at least, is what they wrote about themselves.<\/p>\n

More than 4 percent of the online daters claimed to earn more than<\/p>\n

$200,000 a year, whereas fewer than 1 percent of typical Internet<\/p>\n

users actually earn that much, suggesting that three of the four big<\/p>\n

earners were exaggerating. Male and female users typically reported<\/p>\n

that they are about an inch taller than the national average. As for<\/p>\n

weight, the men were in line with the national average, but the<\/p>\n

women typically said they weighed about twenty pounds less than the<\/p>\n

national average.<\/p>\n

Most impressively, fully 72 percent of the women claimed \u201cabove<\/p>\n

average\u201d looks, including 24 percent claiming \u201cvery good looks.\u201d The<\/p>\n

online men too were gorgeous: 68 percent called themselves \u201cabove<\/p>\n

average,\u201d including 19 percent with \u201cvery good looks.\u201d This leaves<\/p>\n

only about 30 percent of the users with \u201caverage\u201d looks, including a<\/p>\n

paltry 1 percent with \u201cless than average\u201d looks\u2014which suggests that<\/p>\n

the typical online dater is either a fabulist, a narcissist, or simply re-<\/p>\n

sistant to the meaning of \u201caverage.\u201d (Or perhaps they are all just prag-<\/p>\n

matists: as any real-estate agent knows, the typical house isn\u2019t<\/p>\n

\u201ccharming\u201d or \u201cfantastic,\u201d but unless you say it is, no one will even<\/p>\n

bother to take a look.) Twenty-eight percent of the women on the site<\/p>\n

said they were blond, a number far beyond the national average,<\/p>\n

which indicates a lot of dyeing, or lying, or both.<\/p>\n

Some users, meanwhile, were bracingly honest. Seven percent of<\/p>\n

the men conceded that they were married, with a signi\ufb01cant minority<\/p>\n

of these men reporting that they were \u201chappily married.\u201d But the fact<\/p>\n

that they were honest doesn\u2019t mean they were rash. Of the 243 \u201chap-<\/p>\n

pily married\u201d men in the sample, only 12 chose to post a picture of<\/p>\n

themselves. The reward of gaining a mistress was evidently out-<\/p>\n

weighed by the risk of having your wife discover your personal ad.<\/p>\n

(\u201cAnd what were you doing on that website?\u201d the husband might blus-<\/p>\n

ter, undoubtedly to little avail.)<\/p>\n

It might just be self-selection.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Of the many ways to fail on a dating website, not posting a photo<\/p>\n

of yourself is perhaps the most certain. (Not that the photo necessarily<\/p>\n

is a photo of yourself; it may well be some better-looking stranger, but<\/p>\n

such deception would obviously back\ufb01re in time.) A man who does<\/p>\n

not include his photo gets only 60 percent of the volume of e-mail re-<\/p>\n

sponse of a man who does; a woman who doesn\u2019t include her photo<\/p>\n

gets only 24 percent as much. A low-income, poorly educated, unhap-<\/p>\n

pily employed, not very attractive, slightly overweight, and balding<\/p>\n

man who posts his photo stands a better chance of gleaning some<\/p>\n

e-mails than a man who says he makes $200,000 and is deadly hand-<\/p>\n

some but doesn\u2019t post a photo. There are plenty of reasons someone<\/p>\n

might not post a photo\u2014he\u2019s technically challenged or is ashamed of<\/p>\n

being spotted by friends or is just plain unattractive\u2014but as in the<\/p>\n

case of a brand-new car with a For Sale sign, prospective customers<\/p>\n

will assume he\u2019s got something seriously wrong under the hood.<\/p>\n

Getting a date is hard enough as it is. Fifty-six percent of the men<\/p>\n

who post ads don\u2019t receive even one e-mail; 21 percent of the women<\/p>\n

don\u2019t get a single response. The traits that do draw a big response,<\/p>\n

meanwhile, will not be a big surprise to anyone with even a passing<\/p>\n

knowledge of the sexes. In fact, the preferences expressed by online<\/p>\n

daters \ufb01t snugly with the most common stereotypes about men and<\/p>\n

women.<\/p>\n

Interesting. Altho the data from OKC is more optimistic. Check their blog with loads of data here: http:\/\/blog.okcupid.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Chapter 3<\/h3>\n

Along with the bad pay, the foot soldiers faced terrible job condi-<\/p>\n

tions. For starters, they had to stand on a street corner all day and do<\/p>\n

business with crackheads. (The gang members were strongly advised<\/p>\n

against using the product themselves, advice that was enforced by<\/p>\n

beatings if necessary.) Foot soldiers also risked arrest and, more worri-<\/p>\n

some, violence. Using the gang\u2019s \ufb01nancial documents and the rest of<\/p>\n

Venkatesh\u2019s research, it is possible to construct an adverse-events<\/p>\n

index of J. T.\u2019s gang during the four years in question. The results are<\/p>\n

astonishingly bleak. If you were a member of J. T.\u2019s gang for all four<\/p>\n

years, here is the typical fate you would have faced during that period:<\/p>\n

Number of times arrested 5.9<\/p>\n

Number of nonfatal wounds or injuries 2.4<\/p>\n

(not including injuries meted<\/p>\n

out by the gang itself for rules<\/p>\n

violations)<\/p>\n

Chance of being killed 1 in 4<\/p>\n

A 1-in-4 chance of being killed! Compare these odds with those<\/p>\n

for a timber cutter, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls the most<\/p>\n

dangerous job in the United States. Over four years\u2019 time, a timber<\/p>\n

cutter would stand only a 1-in-200 chance of being killed. Or com-<\/p>\n

pare the crack dealer\u2019s odds to those of a death-row inmate in Texas,<\/p>\n

which executes more prisoners than any other state. In 2003, Texas<\/p>\n

put to death twenty-four inmates\u2014or just 5 percent of the nearly 500<\/p>\n

inmates on its death row during that time. Which means that you<\/p>\n

stand a greater chance of dying while dealing crack in a Chicago hous-<\/p>\n

ing project than you do while sitting on death row in Texas.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

These budding drug lords bumped up against an immutable law<\/p>\n

of labor: when there are a lot of people willing and able to do a job,<\/p>\n

that job generally doesn\u2019t pay well. This is one of four meaningful fac-<\/p>\n

tors that determine a wage. The others are the specialized skills a job<\/p>\n

requires, the unpleasantness of a job, and the demand for services that<\/p>\n

the job ful\ufb01lls.<\/p>\n

The delicate balance between these factors helps explain why, for<\/p>\n

instance, the typical prostitute earns more than the typical architect.<\/p>\n

It may not seem as though she should. The architect would appear to<\/p>\n

be more skilled (as the word is usually de\ufb01ned) and better educated<\/p>\n

(again, as usually de\ufb01ned). But little girls don\u2019t grow up dreaming<\/p>\n

of becoming prostitutes, so the supply of potential prostitutes is<\/p>\n

relatively small. Their skills, while not necessarily \u201cspecialized,\u201d are<\/p>\n

practiced in a very specialized context. The job is unpleasant and for-<\/p>\n

bidding in at least two signi\ufb01cant ways: the likelihood of violence and<\/p>\n

the lost opportunity of having a stable family life. As for demand?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just say that an architect is more likely to hire a prostitute than<\/p>\n

vice versa.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Chapter 4<\/h3>\n

In 1966, one year after Nicolae Ceaus\u00b8escu became the Communist<\/p>\n

dictator of Romania, he made abortion illegal. \u201cThe fetus is the prop-<\/p>\n

erty of the entire society,\u201d he proclaimed. \u201cAnyone who avoids having<\/p>\n

children is a deserter who abandons the laws of national continuity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such grandiose declarations were commonplace during Ceau-<\/p>\n

s \u00b8escu\u2019s reign, for his master plan\u2014to create a nation worthy of the<\/p>\n

New Socialist Man\u2014was an exercise in grandiosity. He built palaces<\/p>\n

for himself while alternately brutalizing and neglecting his citizens.<\/p>\n

Abandoning agriculture in favor of manufacturing, he forced many of<\/p>\n

the nation\u2019s rural dwellers into unheated apartment buildings. He<\/p>\n

gave government positions to forty family members including his<\/p>\n

wife, Elena, who required forty homes and a commensurate supply of<\/p>\n

fur and jewels. Madame Ceaus\u00b8escu, known of\ufb01cially as the Best<\/p>\n

Mother Romania Could Have, was not particularly maternal. \u201cThe<\/p>\n

worms never get satis\ufb01ed, regardless of how much food you give<\/p>\n

them,\u201d she said when Romanians complained about the food short-<\/p>\n

ages brought on by her husband\u2019s mismanagement. She had her own<\/p>\n

children bugged to ensure their loyalty.<\/p>\n

Ceaus \u00b8escu\u2019s ban on abortion was designed to achieve one of his<\/p>\n

major aims: to rapidly strengthen Romania by boosting its popula-<\/p>\n

tion. Until 1966, Romania had had one of the most liberal abortion<\/p>\n

policies in the world. Abortion was in fact the main form of birth<\/p>\n

control, with four abortions for every live birth. Now, virtually<\/p>\n

overnight, abortion was forbidden. The only exemptions were moth-<\/p>\n

ers who already had four children or women with signi\ufb01cant standing<\/p>\n

in the Communist Party. At the same time, all contraception and sex<\/p>\n

education were banned. Government agents sardonically known as<\/p>\n

the Menstrual Police regularly rounded up women in their work-<\/p>\n

places to administer pregnancy tests. If a woman repeatedly failed to<\/p>\n

conceive, she was forced to pay a steep \u201ccelibacy tax.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ceaus \u00b8escu\u2019s incentives produced the desired effect. Within one<\/p>\n

year of the abortion ban, the Romanian birth rate had doubled. These<\/p>\n

babies were born into a country where, unless you belonged to the<\/p>\n

Ceaus \u00b8escu clan or the Communist elite, life was miserable. But these<\/p>\n

children would turn out to have particularly miserable lives. Com-<\/p>\n

pared to Romanian children born just a year earlier, the cohort of chil-<\/p>\n

dren born after the abortion ban would do worse in every measurable<\/p>\n

way: they would test lower in school, they would have less success in<\/p>\n

the labor market, and they would also prove much more likely to be-<\/p>\n

come criminals.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Now, for the sake of argument, let\u2019s ask an outrageous question:<\/p>\n

what is the relative value of a fetus and a newborn? If faced with the<\/p>\n

Solomonic task of sacri\ufb01cing the life of one newborn for an indeter-<\/p>\n

minate number of fetuses, what number might you choose? This is<\/p>\n

nothing but a thought exercise\u2014obviously there is no right answer\u2014<\/p>\n

but it may help clarify the impact of abortion on crime.<\/p>\n

For a person who is either resolutely pro-life or resolutely pro-<\/p>\n

choice, this is a simple calculation. The \ufb01rst, believing that life begins<\/p>\n

at conception, would likely consider the value of a fetus versus the<\/p>\n

value of a newborn to be 1:1. The second person, believing that a<\/p>\n

woman\u2019s right to an abortion trumps any other factor, would likely<\/p>\n

argue that no number of fetuses can equal even one newborn.<\/p>\n

But let\u2019s consider a third person. (If you identify strongly with ei-<\/p>\n

ther person number one or person number two, the following exercise<\/p>\n

might strike you as offensive, and you may want to skip this para-<\/p>\n

graph and the next.) This third person does not believe that a fetus is<\/p>\n

the 1:1 equivalent of a newborn, yet neither does he believe that a<\/p>\n

fetus has no relative value. Let\u2019s say that he is forced, for the sake of ar-<\/p>\n

gument, to af\ufb01x a relative value, and he decides that 1 newborn is<\/p>\n

worth 100 fetuses.<\/p>\n

There are roughly 1.5 million abortions in the United States every<\/p>\n

year. For a person who believes that 1 newborn is worth 100 fetuses,<\/p>\n

those 1.5 million abortions would translate\u2014dividing 1.5 million by<\/p>\n

100\u2014into the equivalent of a loss of 15,000 human lives. Fifteen<\/p>\n

thousand lives: that happens to be about the same number of people<\/p>\n

who die in homicides in the United States every year. And it is far<\/p>\n

more than the number of homicides eliminated each year due to le-<\/p>\n

galized abortion. So even for someone who considers a fetus to be<\/p>\n

worth only one one-hundredth of a human being, the trade-off be-<\/p>\n

tween higher abortion and lower crime is, by an economist\u2019s reckon-<\/p>\n

ing, terribly inef\ufb01cient.<\/p>\n

I dont like the conflation of the value of a newborn with that of any other nonfetus. See Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Chapter 5<\/h3>\n

Has there ever been another art so devoutly converted into a science<\/p>\n

as the art of parenting?<\/p>\n

Over the recent decades, a vast and diverse \ufb02ock of parenting ex-<\/p>\n

perts has arisen. Anyone who tries even casually to follow their advice<\/p>\n

may be stymied, for the conventional wisdom on parenting seems to<\/p>\n

shift by the hour. Sometimes it is a case of one expert differing from<\/p>\n

another. At other times the most vocal experts suddenly agree en<\/p>\n

masse that the old wisdom was wrong and that the new wisdom is, for<\/p>\n

a little while at least, irrefutably right. Breast feeding, for example, is<\/p>\n

the only way to guarantee a healthy and intellectually advanced<\/p>\n

child\u2014unless bottle feeding is the answer. A baby should always be<\/p>\n

put to sleep on her back\u2014until it is decreed that she should only be<\/p>\n

put to sleep on her stomach. Eating liver is either a) toxic or b) imper-<\/p>\n

ative for brain development. Spare the rod and spoil the child; spank<\/p>\n

the child and go to jail.<\/p>\n

In her book Raising America: Experts, Parents, and a Century of Ad-<\/em><\/p>\n

vice About Children<\/em>, Ann Hulbert documented how parenting experts<\/p>\n

contradict one another and even themselves. Their banter might be<\/p>\n

hilarious were it not so confounding and, often, scary. Gary Ezzo,<\/p>\n

who in the Babywise book series endorses an \u201cinfant-management<\/p>\n

strategy\u201d for moms and dads trying to \u201cachieve excellence in parent-<\/p>\n

ing,\u201d stresses how important it is to train a baby, early on, to sleep<\/p>\n

alone through the night. Otherwise, Ezzo warns, sleep deprivation<\/p>\n

might \u201cnegatively impact an infant\u2019s developing central nervous sys-<\/p>\n

tem\u201d and lead to learning disabilities. Advocates of \u201cco-sleeping,\u201d<\/p>\n

meanwhile, warn that sleeping alone is harmful to a baby\u2019s psyche<\/p>\n

and that he should be brought into the \u201cfamily bed.\u201d What about<\/p>\n

stimulation? In 1983 T. Berry Brazelton wrote that a baby arrives in<\/p>\n

the world \u201cbeautifully prepared for the role of learning about him- or<\/p>\n

herself and the world all around.\u201d Brazelton favored early, ardent<\/p>\n

stimulation\u2014an \u201cinteractive\u201d child. One hundred years earlier, how-<\/p>\n

ever, L. Emmett Holt cautioned that a baby is not a \u201cplaything.\u201d<\/p>\n

There should be \u201cno forcing, no pressure, no undue stimulation\u201d dur-<\/p>\n

ing the \ufb01rst two years of a child\u2019s life, Holt believed; the brain is grow-<\/p>\n

ing so much during that time that overstimulation might cause \u201ca<\/p>\n

great deal of harm.\u201d He also believed that a crying baby should never <\/strong><\/p>\n

be picked up unless it is in pain. As Holt explained, a baby should be <\/strong><\/p>\n

left to cry for \ufb01fteen to thirty minutes a day: \u201cIt is the baby\u2019s exercise.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n

lolwut?<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

First some, at some places, dubious discussion of race and intelligence. Of course, all focused on the X-theories (Rushton and Jensen’s term). Avoiding to talk about the difference in genetics between populations.<\/p>\n

A child who had a low birthweight tends to do poorly in school. It<\/p>\n

may be that being born prematurely is simply hurtful to a child\u2019s over-<\/p>\n

all well-being. It may also be that low birthweight is a strong fore-<\/p>\n

caster of poor parenting, since a mother who smokes or drinks or<\/p>\n

otherwise mistreats her baby in utero isn\u2019t likely to turn things around<\/p>\n

just because the baby is born. A low-birthweight child, in turn, is<\/p>\n

more likely to be a poor child\u2014and, therefore, more likely to attend<\/p>\n

Head Start, the federal preschool program. But according to the<\/p>\n

ECLS data, Head Start does nothing for a child\u2019s future test scores.<\/p>\n

Despite a deep reservoir of appreciation for Head Start (one of this<\/p>\n

book\u2019s authors was a charter student), we must acknowledge that it<\/p>\n

has repeatedly been proven ineffectual in the long term. Here\u2019s a likely<\/p>\n

reason: instead of spending the day with his own undereducated,<\/p>\n

overworked mother, the typical Head Start child spends the day with<\/p>\n

someone else\u2019s undereducated, overworked mother. (And a whole<\/p>\n

roomful of similarly needy children.) As it happens, fewer than 30<\/p>\n

percent of Head Start teachers have even a bachelor\u2019s degree. And the<\/p>\n

job pays so poorly\u2014about $21,000 for a Head Start teacher versus<\/p>\n

$40,000 for the average public-school kindergarten teacher\u2014that it<\/p>\n

is unlikely to attract better teachers any time soon.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, premature babies are alot<\/em> less smart. Some of the science is summed up here. http:\/\/www.prematurity.org\/research\/not-catchingup2.html<\/a><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Matters: The child has many books in his home.<\/p>\n

Doesn\u2019t: The child\u2019s parents read to him nearly every day.<\/p>\n

As noted earlier, a child with many books in his home has indeed<\/p>\n

been found to do well on school tests. But regularly reading to a child<\/p>\n

doesn\u2019t affect early childhood test scores.<\/p>\n

This would seem to present a riddle. It bounces us back to our<\/p>\n

158 What Makes a Perfect Parent?<\/p>\n

original question: just how much, and in what ways, do parents really<\/p>\n

matter?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with the positive correlation: books in the home equal<\/p>\n

higher test scores. Most people would look at this correlation and infer<\/p>\n

an obvious cause-and-effect relationship. To wit: a little boy named<\/p>\n

Isaiah has a lot of books at home; Isaiah does beautifully on his read-<\/p>\n

ing test at school; this must be because his mother or father regularly<\/p>\n

reads to him. But Isaiah\u2019s friend Emily, who also has a lot of books in<\/p>\n

her home, practically never touches them. She would rather dress up<\/p>\n

her Bratz or watch cartoons. And Emily tests just as well as Isaiah.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Isaiah and Emily\u2019s friend Ricky doesn\u2019t have any books at<\/p>\n

home. But Ricky goes to the library every day with his mother. And<\/p>\n

yet he does worse on his school tests than either Emily or Isaiah.<\/p>\n

What are we to make of this? If reading books doesn\u2019t have an im-<\/p>\n

pact on early childhood test scores, could it be that the books\u2019 mere<\/p>\n

physical presence in the house makes the children smarter? Do books<\/p>\n

perform some kind of magical osmosis on a child\u2019s brain? If so, one<\/p>\n

might be tempted to simply deliver a truckload of books to every<\/p>\n

home that contains a preschooler.<\/p>\n

That, in fact, is what the governor of Illinois tried to do. In early<\/p>\n

2004, Governor Rod Blagojevich announced a plan to mail one book<\/p>\n

a month to every child in Illinois from the time they were born until<\/p>\n

they entered kindergarten. The plan would cost $26 million a year.<\/p>\n

But, Blagojevich argued, this was a vital intervention in a state where<\/p>\n

40 percent of third graders read below their grade level. \u201cWhen you<\/p>\n

own [books] and they\u2019re yours,\u201d he said, \u201cand they just come as part of<\/p>\n

your life, all of that will contribute to a sense… that books should be<\/p>\n

part of your life.\u201d<\/p>\n

So all children born in Illinois would end up with a sixty-volume<\/p>\n

library by the time they entered school. Does this mean they would all<\/p>\n

perform better on their reading tests?<\/p>\n

Probably not. (Although we may never know for sure: in the end,<\/p>\n

the Illinois legislature rejected the book plan.) After all, the ECLS<\/p>\n

data don\u2019t say that books in the house cause high test scores; it says<\/p>\n

only that the two are correlated.<\/p>\n

How should this correlation be interpreted? Here\u2019s a likely theory:<\/p>\n

most parents who buy a lot of children\u2019s books tend to be smart and<\/p>\n

well educated to begin with. (And they pass on their smarts and work<\/p>\n

ethic to their kids.) Or perhaps they care a great deal about education,<\/p>\n

and about their children in general. (Which means they create an en-<\/p>\n

vironment that encourages and rewards learning.) Such parents may<\/p>\n

believe\u2014as fervently as the governor of Illinois believed\u2014that every<\/p>\n

children\u2019s book is a talisman that leads to unfettered intelligence. But<\/p>\n

they are probably wrong. A book is in fact less a cause of intelligence<\/p>\n

than an indicator.<\/p>\n

What a dumb idea. There was a recent study mentioned by Razib Khan that made exactly such a study… not using a proper control for genetics, and came to the same conclusion. Fucking derp. I did look for the study or link to article about the study, but failed to find it.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

In a paper titled \u201cThe Nature and Nurture of Economic Out-<\/p>\n

comes,\u201d the economist Bruce Sacerdote addressed the nature-nurture<\/p>\n

debate by taking a long-term quantitative look at the effects of<\/p>\n

parenting. He used three adoption studies, two American and one<\/p>\n

British, each of them containing in-depth data about the adopted<\/p>\n

children, their adoptive parents, and their biological parents. Sacer-<\/p>\n

dote found that parents who adopt children are typically smarter, bet-<\/p>\n

ter educated, and more highly paid than the baby\u2019s biological parents.<\/p>\n

But the adoptive parents\u2019 advantages had little bearing on the child\u2019s<\/p>\n

school performance. As also seen in the ECLS data, adopted children<\/p>\n

test relatively poorly in school; any in\ufb02uence the adoptive parents<\/p>\n

might exert is seemingly outweighed by the force of genetics. But,<\/p>\n

Sacerdote found, the parents were not powerless forever. By the time <\/strong><\/p>\n

the adopted children became adults, they had veered sharply from the <\/strong><\/p>\n

destiny that IQ alone might have predicted. Compared to similar <\/strong><\/p>\n

children who were not put up for adoption, the adoptees were far <\/strong><\/p>\n

more likely to attend college, to have a well-paid job, and to wait until <\/strong><\/p>\n

they were out of their teens before getting married. It was the in\ufb02u-<\/strong><\/p>\n

ence of the adoptive parents, Sacerdote concluded, that made the dif-<\/strong><\/p>\n

ference. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Eh. Ive read the opposite. Sort of. That was for IQ scores. This is for college attendency. Money matters for that, and since the adoptive parents were richers, they cud more easily pay for that. College education does predict income independently of IQ. Everything fits.<\/p>\n

It wud be interesting to see the same study in Denmark where college does not cost money (no tuition). Wud adoptive parents still boost college attendency rates? They might still provide some help with course work etc. Altho i think most people move out by the time they start attending college. This also requires some money, but it is doable without support as well.<\/p>\n

Here is the abstract<\/a>:<\/p>\n

This paper uses data on adopted children to examine the relative importance of biology and environment in determining educational and labor market outcomes. I employ three long-term panel data sets which contain information on adopted children, their adoptive parents, and their biological parents. In at least two of the three data sets, the mechanism for assigning children to adoptive parents is fairly random and does not match children to adoptive parents based on health, race, or ability. I find that adoptive parents’ education and income have a modest impact on child test scores but a large impact on college attendance, marital status, and earnings. In contrast with existing work on IQ scores, I do not find that the influence of adoptive parents declines with child age.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Chapter 6<\/h3>\n

Here\u2019s a question to begin with: where does a name come from,<\/p>\n

anyway? Not, that is, the actual source of the name\u2014that much is<\/p>\n

usually obvious: there\u2019s the Bible, there\u2019s the huge cluster of tradi-<\/p>\n

tional English and Germanic and Italian and French names, there are<\/p>\n

princess names and hippie names, nostalgic names and place names.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, there are brand names (Lexus, Armani, Bacardi, Timber-<\/p>\n

land) and what might be called aspirational names. The California<\/p>\n

data show eight Harvards born during the 1990s (all of them black),<\/p>\n

\ufb01fteen Yales (all white), and eighteen Princetons (all black). There<\/p>\n

were no Doctors but three Lawyers (all black), nine Judges (eight of<\/p>\n

them white), three Senators (all white), and two Presidents (both<\/p>\n

black). Then there are the invented names. Roland G. Fryer Jr., while<\/p>\n

discussing his names research on a radio show, took a call from a black<\/p>\n

woman who was upset with the name just given to her baby niece. It<\/p>\n

was pronounced shuh-TEED but was in fact spelled \u201cShithead.\u201d *<\/p>\n

Retard level increasing…<\/p>\n

Reminds me of this one: http:\/\/www.snopes.com\/racial\/language\/le-a.asp<\/a><\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Why vote?<\/h3>\n

Within the economics departments at certain universities, there is a<\/p>\n

famous but probably apocryphal story about two world-class econo-<\/p>\n

mists who run into each other at the voting booth.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you doing here?\u201d one asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy wife made me come,\u201d the other says.<\/p>\n

The \ufb01rst economist gives a con\ufb01rming nod. \u201cThe same.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a mutually sheepish moment, one of them hatches a plan: \u201cIf<\/p>\n

you promise never to tell anyone you saw me here, I\u2019ll never tell any-<\/p>\n

one I saw you.\u201d They shake hands, \ufb01nish their polling business and<\/p>\n

scurry off.<\/p>\n

Why would an economist be embarrassed to be seen at the vot-<\/p>\n

ing booth? Because voting exacts a cost\u2014in time, effort, lost pro-<\/p>\n

ductivity\u2014with no discernible payoff except perhaps some vague<\/p>\n

sense of having done your \u201ccivic duty.\u201d As the economist Patricia<\/p>\n

Funk wrote in a recent paper, \u201cA rational individual should abstain<\/p>\n

from voting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The odds that your vote will actually affect the outcome of a given<\/p>\n

election are very, very, very slim. This was documented by the econo-<\/p>\n

mists Casey Mulligan and Charles Hunter, who analyzed more than<\/p>\n

56,000 Congressional and state-legislative elections since 1898. For<\/p>\n

all the attention paid in the media to close elections, it turns out that<\/p>\n

they are exceedingly rare. The median margin of victory in the Con-<\/p>\n

gressional elections was 22 percent; in the state-legislature elections, it<\/p>\n

was 25 percent. Even in the closest elections, it is almost never the case<\/p>\n

that a single vote is pivotal. Of the more than 40,000 elections for<\/p>\n

state legislator that Mulligan and Hunter analyzed, comprising nearly<\/p>\n

one billion votes, only seven elections were decided by a single vote,<\/p>\n

with two others tied. Of the more than 16,000 Congressional elec-<\/p>\n

tions, in which many more people vote, only one election in the past<\/p>\n

one hundred years\u2014a 1910 race in Buffalo\u2014was decided by a single<\/p>\n

vote.<\/p>\n

I often stumble into people who either doesnt want to or is simply unable to get this idea into their heads. It is a waste of time to vote unless u have some crazy weightings in the cost\/benefit analysis.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

WHAT DO THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS HAVE IN COMMON WITH AN iPOD?<\/h3>\n

My iPod shuf\ufb02e reminds me of this every time I use it. I\u2019m consis-<\/p>\n

tently surprised at how often it plays two, three, or even four songs by<\/p>\n

the same artist, even though I have songs by dozens of different artists<\/p>\n

on it. On a number of occasions, I\u2019ve even become mistakenly con-<\/p>\n

vinced I don\u2019t have the iPod on shuf\ufb02e, but rather I\u2019m playing all the<\/p>\n

songs by one artist. If someone is really bored, maybe they can repeat-<\/p>\n

edly have the iPod shuf\ufb02e the songs, record the data, and see if the<\/p>\n

shuf\ufb02e function really is random. My guess is that it is, because what<\/p>\n

would be the point of Apple doing something different? I have a<\/p>\n

friend Tim Groseclose, a professor of political science at UCLA, who<\/p>\n

was convinced that the random button on his CD player knew which<\/p>\n

songs were his favorites and disproportionally played those. So I bet<\/p>\n

him one day, made him name his favorite songs in advance, and won<\/p>\n

lunch.<\/p>\n

>professor of political “science”<\/p>\n

>doesnt understand basic cognitive bias (confirmation bias<\/a>, memory version)<\/p>\n

>doesnt understand probability\/statistics<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

WHAT DO THE KANSAS CITY ROYALS HAVE IN COMMON WITH AN iPOD?<\/h3>\n

After dissing Wikipedia a bit for the standard reasons, especially given this is written in 2005 or something…<\/p>\n

On page 35 of Freakonomics<\/em>, we make a passing reference to the<\/p>\n

Chicago Black Sox, the name given to the Chicago White Sox after<\/p>\n

eight players were found to have colluded with gamblers to throw the<\/p>\n

1919 World Series.<\/p>\n

A reader recently wrote:<\/p>\n

The 1919 white sox were not known as the<\/p>\n

black sox because they threw the world weries [sic]. They were called that<\/p>\n

because their owner (whose name i do not have) was too stingy to have<\/p>\n

their uniforms cleaned regularly so that they frequently showed up on the<\/p>\n

diamond in dirty uniforms. You\u2019re welcome.<\/p>\n

This was in fact the second reader to write with this same correc-<\/p>\n

tion. We had asked the \ufb01rst reader for his source; he said he thought<\/p>\n

he \u201cheard it once on ESPN,\u201d but couldn\u2019t be sure. After receiving this<\/p>\n

second e-mail, I decided to investigate. Here is my reply to reader no.<\/p>\n

2, and to anyone else who may care:<\/p>\n

I looked into the Black Sox thing. It is true that the Wikipedia<\/p>\n

entry says this: Although many believe the Black Sox name to<\/p>\n

be related to the dark and corrupt nature of the consipiracy<\/p>\n

[sic], the term Black Sox had already existed before the \ufb01x was<\/p>\n

investigated. The name Black Sox was given because parsimo-<\/p>\n

nious owner Charles Comiskey refused to pay for the players\u2019<\/p>\n

uniforms to be laundered, instead insisting that the players<\/p>\n

themselves pay for the cleaning. The players refused, and the<\/p>\n

subsequent series of games saw the White Sox play in progres-<\/p>\n

sivly [sic] dirtier uniforms, as dust, sweat, and grime collected<\/p>\n

on the white, woollen [sic] uniforms until they took on a much<\/p>\n

darker shade. (does anyone have proof of this? sounds like<\/p>\n

urban legend to me)<\/p>\n

Am i going to call the authors names for choosing a particular bad example from Wikipedia, an anecdote with no source? Not even (besides the effect of writing that sentence, and this!)<\/p>\n

What then, Emil, are u going to complain about? The tendency of people to SPAM [sic]’s in their quotations. Why, why, why do they do it? Are they so afraid that someone will think that they have made a spelling mistake? Why else? To avoid the editor having it removed? To point out the mistake or ‘mistake’ in the original source, either to help the person spell better (unlikely) or just to slander him?<\/p>\n

Is there some obvious reason im missing? It has been annoying me for years since i first thought about it.<\/p>\n

Another thing. Such [sic]’s interrupt the reading flow of the text, as the reader automatically begins to look for the word spelled nonstandardly. That the reader begins to look for it shud ring a bell. It means that the reader didnt even notice it to begin with, thus illustrating the pointlessness of pointing it out.<\/p>\n

Besides, 1 of the 3 [sic]’s above is NOT a spelling mistake (probably). consipiracy<\/em> instead of conspiracy<\/em> is a typo. Teachers actually do classify errors in papers into categories. This is very useful, as that makes it possible to see which errors are committed often and which arent, and then figure out how to fix it. I used such information when i was designing my proposal<\/a> to fix some of the problems with danish spellings.<\/p>\n

For instance, progressivly<\/em> instead of progressively<\/em> is becus the E is silent. Not just part of a strange digraf as is common in EN, e.g. -IxE- where the x is a consonant and the sound related to it is \/a\u026a\/, ex. pike<\/em> and Mike<\/em>.<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Freakonomics Freakonomics expanded In general, this book is not so bad. But it is not so good either. Light nonfiction reading. I didnt read it for any particular reason other than curiosity and knowing that it wudnt take long anyway. Chapter 2 An analysis of the language used in real-estate ads shows that certain words […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1653,1921],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychology","category-sociology","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3161,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3159\/revisions\/3161"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}