Not as Undecided as I Thought! October 31, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in life, politics.8 comments
Apparently the editorial board of the New York Times is reading my blog:
AS we enter the final week of a seemingly endless election campaign, opinion polls continue to identify a substantial fraction of voters who consider themselves “undecided.” … Comedians and other commentators have portrayed these people as fools, unable to choose even when confronted with the starkest of contrasts.
I had no idea when I wrote that post that others were also making fun of these people. However, I pulled a “Bush” – I went off on the undecided’s without actually doing any research to see what was really going on. In my own defense: this blog is free!
The NYT’s, however, is not the same. They did some research:
Recent research in neuroscience and psychology, however, suggests that most undecided voters may be smarter than you think. They’re not indifferent or unable to make clear comparisons between the candidates. They may be more willing than others to take their time — or else just unaware that they have essentially already made a choice.
Without other information I would have guessed the latter. I’m sure it has happened to you before: someone drops by and asks for advice. After a while it becomes clear they have already decided in their head which way they want to go and are looking for confirmation or just trying to make sure nothing was missed.
They also point out why a common technique of people who are “efficient” (but perhaps not always right) works:
In measurements of decision-related neural activity, after there is enough evidence to reach a person’s decision threshold, his brain can ignore further input even when it might improve accuracy. The brain goes ahead and decides, freeing up mental resources to deal with other problems.
I suppose the key is knowing what decisions to take a long time with and what decisions to make quickly and move on with.
As far as the current contest is concerned: I moved on a while ago!
Hazard Of Travel October 29, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in Uncategorized.7 comments
Slowly Paula and I have been moving back into our Condo. I arrived on Sept. 1, and since then every weekend a little bit more gets done. We finally have the furniture in the right place, and we are starting to unpack all the boxes that came back from Europe, sort everything into its cubby hole… This pile of AC adaptors was spread around – in back-packs, suit cases, boxes… I think every time I travel I forget an adaptor so I have to buy a new one…
If you don’t exercise that muscle… October 28, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in blog.3 comments
I apologize for the lack of posting. I’m teaching a course that is a lot of fun – but it is a huge amount of work. The last course I taught took me about one hour of prep time for each hour of teaching – that was great for getting research done, having time to write the blog. This course I’m doing now is about 5-8 hours per hour of teaching. So, some things have had to suffer… like my research time. 
I’ve also found something that is normal, I suppose, in retrospect. Normally I see lots of things during the day that I think will make a good blog posting. Some of them I remember long enough to get into my blogging queue. Others are just left behind – because I have so many it rarely matters if I forget a few. But I’m not thinking up ideas as frequently as before. That is partly because of the time I have. The other part is because that idea muscle seems to have atrophied…
I’ll try to pick up the pace a bit, but with that muscle out of shape it may be a bit lame for a while!
The Societe General Trading Scandal October 19, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in France, life.2 comments
Given the current mess of the financial markets, I wonder if anyone remembers Societe General from much earlier this year? It is a big French bank, with branches open all over in France. It was all over Marseille, for example, where I was all of last year. Remember that rouge trader who opened up 50 billion euros of unauthorized trades (Jerome Kerviel)? Living there at the time I definitely do. It was very much the topic of conversation at the lunch table (and probably bars, had I understood French better).
I managed to sqeeze in reading the current issue of the New Yorker today. It has a fascinating article on exactly this – but it was more told from Jerome’s point of view. What I’d not appreciated was that while that 50 billion was a bet gone wrong, he’d had many positions that had gained him huge amounts of money. His first big bet – betting that the subprime problem would affect things more than US government officials and everyone else was claiming they would. He made that bet late 2007! Guy had some foresight!
The funny thing is that when I say “gained him huge amounts of money” I’m not really being correct. It was the bank that got the money. The only way he extracted stuff from his successes was through bonuses. And being a mid-level employee those weren’t very big. So there is a big mystery around what motivated him to do it. He had to go to extraordinary lengths in order to accomplish this – because of the way his job performance was monitored he basically had to cover all of his positions every single day – so it must have added a huge amount of stress to his life.
When the scandal first broke most people were amazed that any single trader could actually have done this without their supervisor’s knowledge. Sure enough, his supervisor was fired and later said “I am not qualified to run a trading desk. I can build complex financial instruments – but run a trading desk? No.” And given the number of interactions Jerome had with SG’s trading compliance staff over trades the computer flagged as suspicious…
The article is fascinating. If you have a chance, I’d definitely recommend reading it. He almost made the bank go under – one of the biggest in France – and yet he seems refreshingly innocent. Though, clearly he is not.
Is There Really An Undecided Voter? October 18, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in politics.8 comments
I listened to the final debate. McCain finally seems to have gotten his fire under control – a much more even burn. I listened to it on the radio, actually, so I had a different impression than did the TV viewers. The “air-quotes” around the “mother’s health”, for example, sounded much more reasonable when he said it over the radio. On TV it almost looked like he was dissing mother’s everywhere.
At this point, however, I’m starting to wonder about that 20% or so of undecided voters. I always expect some small number – I often have trouble deciding on small things and I tend to procrastinate on big things. But 20%? That is a lot of people.
I don’t really understand how they can be undecided. There are some pretty stark contrasts between the two candidates. To be undecided means you don’t care about those stark differences. How similar are they? Well, they are both men. So that is a toss-up. Both US senators, so that is a toss-up. And if you don’t care then that means the things they are different on you don’t care about. Energy future, health care, Iraq war, etc. If you want to argue that the two of them offer different shades of the same solution – fine – Nader is still in the race. I think he is on 45 state ballots… And even if he wasn’t Obama or McCain should be closer to what you believe in.
The only plausible excuse I can come up with for the large fraction of undecided’s is they just haven’t been paying attention. In a normal year that seems plausible. And it might even be normal to tune out the campaign with its ceaseless negative attacks – which mostly make me just roll my eyes (on both sides – give it up people – you can’t distill a single vote or anything down to a yes or no – this country is way too complex to be governed with “yes” or “no”). But this year seems fundamentally different than previous years. The war in Iraq and recession and the implosion of the financial markets and how the USA interacts with the rest of the world. Holy cow – how can one not pay attention!?
Whatever. I don’t get it. Vote on November 4th. And have a great weekend. I have no idea what I’m going to do this weekend…
What is up with Italy? October 17, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in politics.add a comment
My friend Toby just pointed this out to me:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7215/full/455835b.html
It is a dark and angry time for scientists in Italy, faced as they are with a government acting out its own peculiar cost-cutting philosophy. Last week, tens of thousands of researchers took to the streets to register their opposition to a proposed bill designed to control civil-service spending. If passed, as expected, the bill would dispose of nearly 2,000 temporary research staff, who are the backbone of the country’s grossly understaffed research institutions — and about half of whom had already been selected for permanent jobs.
That sounds awful! Note that last line "about half of whom have already been selected for permanent jobs." In Italy they will run you through the ringer to be hired for a position… you get to the end of it (and it is hard), and hey — sorry, there is no position available for you right now, so just hang out until we find one for you. The system was already limping before Berlusconi started this.
Italy, a G8 country, has one of the lowest R&D expenditures in that group — at barely 1.1%, less than half that of comparable countries such as France and Germany.
I guess the extra cash is required to save Al Italia – one of Berlusconi’s campaign promises.
The Berlusconi government may feel that draconian budget measures are necessary, but its attacks on Italy’s research base are unwise and short-sighted. The government has treated research as just another expense to be cut, when in fact it is better seen as an investment in building a twenty-first-century knowledge economy.
Indeed. The sad thing is that it is all to easy to see things from this point of view when you are frantically trying to cut budgets. I count myself as lucky this hasn’t happened yet in the USA. But I don’t think the US budget has been under nearly the pressure of the Italian budget. When the time comes, as it seems like it must these days, I hope our government has a more enlightened response.
Out of Control? Make up stuff! October 17, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in science.5 comments
I listened to a fascinating podcast from NPR Science Friday on the way into work today. The segment, titled “When not in control, people imagine order”, describes how people in (stressful) situations out of their control they will come up with reasons for why things are happening around them – even if they aren’t correct. One example used in the broadcast was stamping your feet before going into a meeting. If you do that, the people in the meeting will be more likely to accept and agree with your ideas. Clearly, there can be no external cause-and-effect, but you could see… we all have these little superstitions. How about a base-ball batter. They noted that military personal in battle environments tend to do the same thing. Fun fact: sales of astrology books increased during the great depression (does anyone know how to see sales of astrology books as a function of time on Amazon?).
As you might imagine, recognizing patterns in what is going on around us is part of our survival programming. If we can make order out of what is going on, we can predict it, and thus we can take advantage of it. Leave meat out? Bear comes around. Hey – lets set a trap! Except, it can go too far – stopping your feet can’t possibly have any effect on the people in the meeting; the best it can do is boost your confidence. But if you knew that perhaps you could take a more direct path to boosting your confidence (shot of tequila!?).
What I really liked about this was that this is what my job is supposed to be. I’m supposed to look at data and come up with patterns to describe the data I see. There are lots of effects that might or might not be relevant. All of us in this field think up patterns where they don’t actually exist. Indeed, one is encouraged to come up with patterns no matter how crazy. The key is that the patterns have to be tested. The stomping feet thing might be based on a one-time accident. But here we would have to invent a double-blind study to test that before declaring the correlation was causal.
The program is worth a listen – it is short, about 20 minutes. And you get to hear someone call in and note that this study can’t really be correct because it implies that everyone who thinks the Kennedy assassination was a conspiracy must be making up a pattern that doesn’t exist because they are under stress. And we all know that conspiracy theory is correct.
Kids are Master of the Unexpected October 16, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in university.add a comment
Today is my in-between day. I teach Tuesday and Thursday. I am enough ahead in lecture prep that today I was going to do research during the day and then finish off class prep tonight. Except J-mo decided today was a good day to be sick and stay home from day-care. Ever tried to do anything requiring concentration when home alone watching a kid? Right… doesn’t happen! I think by 1pm I’d made it all the way through my email. That was the sum-total of my contribution to the world’s knowledge.
By the time Paula returned home to take over it was late enough that I had to go back to preparing for class.
Best laid plans… At least tomorrow night starts the “weekend” for me and I should be able to get some research done.
Now it is midnight, and having finished enough class preparation and J-mo in bed, it is time to get back to research!
N.B. Was listening to the debate while writing up some lecture notes… I wonder if I accidentally put Joe Plumber in there?
UW Prez: Full Speed Ahead, damm the stock market! October 15, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in UW, university.1 comment so far
I drew the faculty senate short-straw this year. This means, for the next two years, I must attend the faculty senate meetings. This university (and many others) have a joint governance arrangement – both the faculty and administration participate in running the University. The faculty’s role is fairly minor – there are certainly things that the president can’t do without the faculty’s official agreement. The faculty senate is that formal line of communication between the faculty and the administration (personally, I think the informal ones are more important).
As a result I did something I’d never done for the past 7 years – I went to hear the president’s yearly address for the first time. Sort of like a state-of-the-union. It surprised me. First of all, this guy seems good – not like a lot of the one previous one I knew. Second, he wasn’t all doom-and-gloom about the financial situation. We aren’t endowed the way Harvard is, for example, but we have a substantial endowment and we depend on that for a lot of our funding. Further, we get about 400 million (or 12% of the total yearly budget) from state coffers. And our state collects its revenues from a sales tax – which means when everyone decides not to buy the state feels the pinch right away… say, like, right now, for example. Oh, and my salary? That comes from the 400 million.
So I fully expected Emmert to be setting up two years of belt tightening. I was quite wrong! Two things seem to be behind this. First, UW has just completed a 7 year effort to raise a huge amount of money to improve its endowment. That exceeded expectations and plans. As Emmert pointed out – thank goodness we aren’t out there trying to raise 100’s of millions of dollars right now (he seemed to imply he got at least one check for 50 million!!). The second thing was they had managed to park most of the university’s investments in fairly safe places – so it had weathered the stock-market crash quite well. There was not a little smugness in that line when he delivered it. And no, he didn’t reveal UW’s secrets.
The upshot is, Emmert thinks, things will be tight, we don’t have to stare at our toes until this financial crisis blows over. Indeed, he said that this might be an opportune time to do what other universities were doing to us about 4 years ago – poach! That is good news as we have just lost a few high profile people in our department and are starting aggressive searches to replace them.
Also, on a more embarrassing note, I wasn’t watching where I was going on the way out and bashed into one of our board of regents members, Bill Gates (the father of the Bill Gates everyone knows). Ops. Sorry.
This is getting to me… October 13, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in politics.add a comment
Palin is everywhere! I was at a small birthday party last week and I saw this on one of the tables. A Korean magazine. Everytime I see her it makes me recal how my thinking of her and the McCain ticket have evolved:
- Pre-Palin – seems like he would be ok, don’t know that I would vote for him because some of his positions are not mine, but he would be better than bush.
- Palin-Pick – Who is this? From Alaska? Has he pulled a fast one and changed the whole race?
- Near-post-Palin – Ok, this has got to be a joke. She doesn’t sound like she has the experience at all! McCain seems to have not only been a maverick here, but also irresponsible. I think the election is over!
- Convention – Holy cow, really? She gives McCain a bump? How does that work! Do people really like the idea of her being president or is it something else!? And McCain/Palin are now drawing even with Obama/Biden!?? Boy, was I ever wrong.
- Post-Convention – The more I hear about her the lower my opinion of her as a VP candidate sinks. It seems totally irresponsible and a rather cynical pick by McCain. As a result, my opinion of McCain has sunk even further.
The other thing that really gets me is the republican’s don’t seem to be willing to do the hard work. Running the USA is no small job! The person that is going to do that has to do lots and lots of homework – pretty much training for it for years. And they still won’t be ready (there is always on-the-job training for this in my opinion)!! The republicans seem to be taking the attitude that if they yell loud enough that we will all be cowed into thinking she will be ready. A play from an old playbook, I suppose. I am hopeful that it isn’t working. Even Brooks has called her a cancer on the republican party!
When it comes to trade I tend to lean more towards traditional republican positions (i.e. I do think free trade is a good thing). For business I’m probably between the two parties somewhere. I’m certainly more democrat than republican when it comes to how government should interact with society, and I’m definitely democrat when it comes to social values (vs the modern republican party).
I am hopeful (fingers crossed!) that the republicans will get the butts nailed in this election and realize they have to go back to the drawing board and put together serious candidates at the national level. It would be horrible to me if the current horrid behavior was rewarded.
