BMI and life expectancy -- the results

What is the relationship between BMI and life expectancy? It's a question with big public health implications that not many people seem to know the answer to, even intuitively.

Ideally, I would've liked to have found a graph plotting the relationship between BMI at some age and life expectancy, but a Google search turned up nothing. Instead, I looked at two articles: one was a huge meta-study entitled Body-mass index and cause-specific mortality in 900 000 adults: collaborative analyses of 57 prospective studies, and the other was a study from the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled Years of life lost due to obesity.

The results of the first study:

BMI is in itself a strong predictor of overall mortality both above and below the apparent optimum of about 22·5–25 kg/m². The progressive excess mortality above this range is due mainly to vascular disease and is probably largely causal. At 30–35 kg/m², median survival is reduced by 2–4 years; at 40–45 kg/m², it is reduced by 8–10 years (which is comparable with the effects of smoking). The definite excess mortality below 22·5 kg/m² is due mainly to smoking-related diseases, and is not fully explained.

And the second:

Results Marked race and sex differences were observed in estimated YLL. Among whites, a J- or U-shaped association was found between overweight or obesity and YLL. The optimal BMI (associated with the least YLL or greatest longevity) is approximately 23 to 25 for whites and 23 to 30 for blacks. For any given degree of overweight, younger adults generally had greater YLL than did older adults. The maximum YLL for white men aged 20 to 30 years with a severe level of obesity (BMI >45) is 13 and is 8 for white women. For men, this could represent a 22% reduction in expected remaining life span. Among black men and black women older than 60 years, overweight and moderate obesity were generally not associated with an increased YLL and only severe obesity resulted in YLL. However, blacks at younger ages with severe levels of obesity had a maximum YLL of 20 for men and 5 for women.

Conclusion Obesity appears to lessen life expectancy markedly, especially among younger adults.

So both papers support the popular notion that higher BMIs lessen life expectancy "markedly". But compared to what? Is the relationship in line with people's intuition? What researchers consider to be large differences in life expectancy may not seem so large to the lay public.

An admittedly confusing survey on this blog last week asked readers to estimate the survival probability of a 6 feet tall male given that his weight is 175, 235, or 320 pounds (with a corresponding BMI range of healthy, overweight, and extremely obese, respectively). I would then compare the survey responses to the statistics from the chart below.


Click to enlarge

The dark, solid lines in the charts below are the same statistics from the chart above, which I am calling the "true" probability. The light lines are the survey responses, and the dashed lines are the average of the survey responses. One of the survey responses pictured below was a bit of an outlier (saying in each case that there was a greater than 50% chance of surviving to 90), so I excluded it from the average.


Click to enlarge

The next chart shows the difference between the "true" probability and the average of the survey responses.



And finally, here is a look at the data combined into one chart.


Click to enlarge

Some observations:
-In all three cases, respondents underestimated the probability of surviving to 60, and overestimated the probability of surviving to 90.
-Every single respondent underestimated the probability of surviving to 60, and in the case of an obese person, most respondents severely underestimated the probability.
-Respondents were furthest from the "truth" with the obese person, and closest to the "truth" with the a person in the healthy weight range.
-On average, respondents overestimated the degree to which a higher BMI lessens life expectancy.

I think this topic of truth versus intuition in how BMI affects life expectancy deserves much more attention. It's pretty sad if the most information comes from a confusing blog survey with 12 responses. Please let me know if you are aware of any serious research done on this.

If, for some reason, you'd like to play with the data yourself, the survey responses are available here.

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Related:
Life expectancy charts
Life expectancy map of the U.S.

A call to the elderly: Get wired

This brief article about a 97 year old blogger inspired me to try to get my grandparents blogging. Here's hoping that I'm successful because they have lots of interesting things to say -- way more than us 20-somethings.

Lopez said discovering the Internet and communicating with people all over the world changed her life, and she urged elderly people everywhere to get wired.

"It took 20 years off my life," Lopez wrote. "My bloggers are the joy of my life. I did not know there was so much goodness in the world."

Mini Greg Oden doing mundane things [photo album]

Hilarious and sad at the same time.



[Hat tip: Ball Don't Lie]

Indy 500 in under 2 minutes

Just hit play.



[Hat tip: Kottke]

Comparing mass transit systems [infographic]

Simple but effective: this infographic shows subway systems from around the world at the same scale. San Francisco and Los Angeles stand out as being odd for having only a few lines that travel long distances.

The infographic below takes a similar look at mass transit systems in North America, but adds a few more dimensions of data. The full sized .pdf can be viewed here.

[Hat tip to Map Scroll for both]

What does "chance of rain" mean? Not what most people think.

What does a 20% chance of rain mean? Many people are confused, and rightfully so. The Newsweek blog explains:

Many people think it means that rain will fall over 20 percent of the area covered by the forecast, in which case people commuting to Manhattan from the outer boroughs, New Jersey, Connecticut or Westchester probably figure that they’ll get wet either coming or going, according to a study led by cognitive psychologist Susan Joslyn of the University of Washington (in Seattle, where they know something about rain). Others think “20 percent chance” means it will rain for 20 percent of the time period covered by the forecast, she and her colleagues report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. Only about half the population knows that “20 percent chance of rain tomorrow” means “it will rain on 20 percent of the days with exactly the same atmospheric conditions,” Joslyn said.

Weather forecasting is a funny business. Forecasters spend precious minutes using detailed swooping maps of weather patterns to show off their expensive doppler radar technology. We don't need to know how they came up with the forecast but, for some reason, they use up as much as half of the news program explaining their process before telling you what you really want to know: what's the temperature going to be, and will I need an umbrella?

It's strange that with all the expensive technology and resources devoted to predicting the weather, local news stations still report such a weak, confusing chance of precipitation measure -- a measure that says nothing about the timing or intensity of the precipitation. There are many other measures that would be more useful and no harder to estimate; so why, I wonder, are we still stuck on the current measure?

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Related:

How accurate are local news weather forecasts? (Freakonomics blog 04/08: Outside of 3 days, if you assume each day that it is not going to rain, you will be right more often than the weather forecasters. Put another way, beyond 3 days, not only are forecasters totally guessing, but they are also guessing systematically worse than a random-walk (assuming it will rain about 13% of the days)!)

Forecast Advisor (a site showing the accuracy of all major weather forecasters in your area)

Umbrella Today? (Enter your location and find out whether you'll need an umbrella today)

Reminder: Please complete BMI and life expectancy survey

The response rate so far has been pitiful. Please complete the survey today so that I'll have at least moderately interesting results to report this weekend. It's OK if all you have are wild guesses.

Visualizing randomness

What does randomness look like?

RANDOM WALK asks this question and presents experiments in mathematics and physics, showing the mysterious interaction of chaos and order in randomness.

The project RANDOM WALK simulates randomness in visualizations, which are easy to understand. In this way, it delivers insight into a phenomenon, which has so far remained unexplained.

The project is the result of the very interesting thesis work of Daniel Becker at the University of Applied Sciences in Mainz, Germany.

[Hat tip: Datavisualization]

Eating like our ancestors

North Carolina Public Radio's The People's Pharmacy presented a number of challenges to conventional dietary wisdom in a recent show called Traditional Diets. The show's guest was Sally Fallon Morell, founder of the Weston A Price nutrition education foundation. Their web site lists the characteristics of the ideal, traditional diet: 

1. The diets of healthy primitive and nonindustrialized peoples contain no refined or denatured foods such as refined sugar or corn syrup; white flour; canned foods; pasteurized, homogenized, skim or low-fat milk; refined or hydrogenated vegetable oils; protein powders; artificial vitamins or toxic additives and colorings.
   
2. All traditional cultures consume some sort of animal protein and fat from fish and other seafood; water and land fowl; land animals; eggs; milk and milk products; reptiles; and insects.
   
3. Primitive diets contain at least four times the calcium and other minerals and TEN times the fat soluble vitamins from animal fats (vitamin A, vitamin D and the Price Factor--now believed to be vitamin K₂) as the average American diet.
   
4. In all traditional cultures, some animal products are eaten raw.
   
5. Primitive and traditional diets have a high food-enzyme content from raw dairy products, raw meat and fish; raw honey; tropical fruits; cold-pressed oils; wine and unpasteurized beer; and naturally preserved, lacto-fermented vegetables, fruits, beverages, meats and condiments.
   
6. Seeds, grains and nuts are soaked, sprouted, fermented or naturally leavened in order to neutralize naturally occuring antinutrients in these foods, such as phytic acid, enzyme inhibitors, tannins and complex carbohydrates.
   
7. Total fat content of traditional diets varies from 30% to 80% but only about 4% of calories come from polyunsaturated oils naturally occurring in grains, pulses, nuts, fish, animal fats and vegetables. The balance of fat calories is in the form of saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids.
   
8. Traditional diets contain nearly equal amounts of omega-6 and omega-3 essential fatty acids.
   
9. All primitive diets contain some salt.
   
10. Traditional cultures consume animal bones, usually in the form of gelatin-rich bone broths.
    
11. Traditional cultures make provisions for the health of future generations by providing special nutrient-rich foods for parents-to-be, pregnant women and growing children; by proper spacing of children; and by teaching the principles of right diet to the young.

The site also lists the following dietary dangers:

1. Don't eat commercially processed foods such as cookies, cakes, crackers, TV dinners, soft drinks, packaged sauce mixes, etc.
2. Avoid all refined sweeteners such as sugar, dextrose, glucose and high fructose corn syrup.
3. Avoid white flour, white flour products and white rice.
4. Avoid all hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated fats and oils.
5. Avoid all vegetable oils made from soy, corn, safflower, canola or cottonseed.
6. Do not use polyunsaturated oils for cooking, sauteing or baking.
7. Avoid fried foods.
8. Do not practice veganism; animal products provide vital nutrients not found in plant foods.
9. Avoid products containing protein powders.
10. Avoid pasteurized milk; do not consume lowfat milk, skim milk, powdered milk or imitation milk products.
11. Avoid battery-produced eggs and factory-farmed meats.
12. Avoid highly processed luncheon meats and sausage containing MSG and other additives.
13. Avoid rancid and improperly prepared seeds, nuts and grains found in granolas, quick rise breads and extruded breakfast cereals, as they block mineral absorption and cause intestinal distress.
14. Avoid canned, sprayed, waxed, bioengineered or irradiated fruits and vegetables.
15. Avoid artificial food additives, especially MSG, hydrolyzed vegetable protein and aspartame, which are neurotoxins. Most soups, sauce and broth mixes and commercial condiments contain MSG, even if not so labeled.
16. Avoid caffeine-containing beverages such as coffee, tea and soft drinks. Avoid chocolate.
17. Avoid aluminum-containing foods such as commercial salt, baking powder and antacids. Do not use aluminum cookware or aluminum-containing deodorants.
18. Do not drink fluoridated water.
19. Avoid synthetic vitamins and foods containing them.
20. Do not drink distilled liquors.
21. Do not use a microwave oven.

I think they are probably right on a lot of points, but I have some objections. First, as a general rule, I don't trust anyone who presents only one point of view. If you look through some of the articles on their web site, all of the literature they cite is either in their favor or "obviously flawed". If an exhaustive search of 3,000+ articles has not satisfactorily presented evidence contrary to your worldview, you are at best delusional and at worst a liar.

Secondly, it's absurd to think that our ancestors had an ideal diet. I don't think I need to explain why.

Finally, it's a bit too "Boo Industry" for my tastes. It almost sounds like she would be in favor of a repeal of the agricultural revolution -- 'let's go back to the olden days when we ate what we grew, and ate our meat all the way down to and including the bones -- then we'd be way healthier!' If there's one thing that gets under my skin, it's the overly idealized sense of the past, that all was pristine and wonderful then. Does anyone really want to go back to the not-too-distant past when nearly everyone worked on farms and the life-expectancy at birth was less than 40? And why, if the primitive diet is so wonderful, has every moderately wealthy civilization in the history of the world weened themselves from it? Is it because they're blindly ignorant, or because they prefer to eat differently, given the choice?

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Related:
Seth Roberts names the ways experts are wrong about nutrition

The leisure gap [chart]

From The Economist:

DESPITE changing attitudes and even laws to promote equality between the sexes, it appears that women still have their work cut out. Men enjoy more leisure time than women in every one of 18 countries examined by the OECD. Italian men have it easiest in comparison with women, lazing around for nearly 80 minutes more each than women who, apparently, clean the house. Other staunch Catholic countries also see big gaps between the sexes, and even in egalitarian Norway men manage to sneak an extra four minutes more to themselves.

I wish I could get my hands on these data because it would be very interesting to see leisure time split in other ways. For example, differences by age, location, or wages.

History of the internet [infographic]

Click to enlarge

This infographic is a great reminder that the web is still in its infancy. In our lifetimes, the web is going to improve dramatically in ways we cannot predict, and with it, so will the quality of our lives.

It's interesting how there are no recorded significant moments since early 2007. I imagine this is only because it's too early to know which events are significant yet.

Don't eat the marshmallow!

Which characteristic is most important to success? You might think intelligence, creativity, or the ability to effectively communicate, but according to Joachim de Posada, you'd be wrong.

The single most important factor, he believes, is self-control. He describes the results of the Marshmallow Experiment in the six minute TED talk embedded below. In short, four-year-olds who were able to delay gratification enjoyed greater success as adults.



Jonah Lehrer also had an excellent write up on the Marshmallow Experiment in The New Yorker last week, from which I borrow these enlightening quotes:

At the time, psychologists assumed that children’s ability to wait depended on how badly they wanted the marshmallow. But it soon became obvious that every child craved the extra treat. What, then, determined self-control? Mischel’s conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the “strategic allocation of attention.” Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow—the “hot stimulus”—the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from “Sesame Street.” Their desire wasn’t defeated—it was merely forgotten. “If you’re thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it,” Mischel says. “The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place.”

[. . .]

When he and his colleagues taught children a simple set of mental tricks—such as pretending that the candy is only a picture, surrounded by an imaginary frame—he dramatically improved their self-control. The kids who hadn’t been able to wait sixty seconds could now wait fifteen minutes. “All I’ve done is given them some tips from their mental user manual,” Mischel says. “Once you realize that will power is just a matter of learning how to control your attention and thoughts, you can really begin to increase it.”

So distraction techniques can be useful for resisting temptation, but self-control involves more than just resisting temptation. Resisting bad things (temptations) is important, but it's arguably more important to resist neutral things. I don't think anyone needs to hide under the table to resist watching sports, for example, but it takes serious self-control for a person to put neutral things to the side in favor of better things.

Another limitation of this study as I see it is that they are being told not to eat the marshmallow, whereas outside of the lab we don't usually have the benefit of someone telling us not to eat too much junk food or whatever. Despite these limitations, the long term results of the study are amazing, and leave me with more questions than answers about the nature of self-control.

BMI and life expectancy -- test your intuition

It's repeatedly said that the most important thing for health is to maintain a healthy weight, but we rarely hear anything about how important it is -- that is, how many years of our lives we can expect to save by maintaining a healthy weight. It's one of the most important questions to personal and public health decisions, but it's the rare person who knows the size of the effect of BMI on life expectancy.

It's much harder to find information on the relationship between BMI and life expectancy than you'd think. A Google search is unlikely to be of much help. In a few days, I'll post the information I was able to find, but it struck me that the size of the effect might be significantly different from what people believe (I won't say in which direction).

Most people know that the probability of a male in the United States living at least to age 72 is about 50%. What I want to test is how people think that probability changes with different BMIs.

Please take a moment to complete the survey below. The correct answers and survey responses will be posted later this week.

"How to Give a Great Man to Man Hug" [video]

[Thanks, Pavs]

Hindugrass

At first it sounds like a bizarre fusion of cultures, but when you think about it, it makes perfect sense -- classical Indian music and bluegrass have a lot in common.

The band Hindugrass joined Frank Stasio in The State of Things studios last week to talk about their music and play a few songs. Highly recommended listening.

Criminally, Pandora has yet to offer a Hindugrass station.

Daniel Gilbert is blogging again!

The brilliant Harvard Psychologist has made his return to blogging at Stumbling on Happiness. The first post explains how our national decline in happiness is not the result of a lack of money, but rather a lack of certainty.

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Related:
Dan Gilbert, where have you been all my life?

Stimulus map vs. economic stress map

Economic stimulus transportation infrastructure projects [Hat tip: Richard Florida]



National stress index (5/18 post)



Some observations:

-The stimulus money was funneled to the wrong parts of Michigan, Tennessee, Mississippi, and North Carolina.

-Wyoming, Iowa, and the Northeast made out well.

-What sort of politics are at work in New Mexico?

-Overall, I am impressed at how well the stimulus distribution matches the need, especially in the West.

The economics of journalism

Why Journalists Deserve Low Pay (Christian Science Monitor, 5/19):

To create economic value, journalists and news organizations historically relied on the exclusivity of their access to information and sources, and their ability to provide immediacy in conveying information. The value of those elements has been stripped away by contemporary communication developments. Today, ordinary adults can observe and report news, gather expert knowledge, determine significance, add audio, photography, and video components, and publish this content far and wide (or at least to their social network) with ease. And much of this is done for no pay.

The author of this opinion piece is a media economics professor who writes the blog The Media Business.

Tyler Dukes has more to say on this.

Natural disaster heat map

Click to enlarge

This map shows the combined risk of death from cyclones, floods, earthquakes, and landslides. It was adapted by the New York Times from the United Nations study of global disaster risk, which contains all kinds of other maps and data. Read more about the study on the Dot Earth blog.

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Related:
Natural disaster death map (12/17/08)
The picture looks a bit different when you account for the leading natural killers: heat/drought, severe summer weather, and severe winter weather.

Dog aggression has little to do with breed

ScienceDaily 5/1:

Many dogs are put down or abandoned due to their violent nature, but contrary to popular belief, breed has little to do with a dog's aggressive behaviour compared to all the owner-dependant factors. This is shown in a new study from the University of Córdoba, which includes breeds that are considered aggressive by nature, such as the Rottweiler or the Pit Bull.

Malthus lives [infographic]

Click to enlarge

This infographic from New Scientist shows the per capita U.S. annual consumption of various natural resources, as well as how many years of supplies the world has left if resources continue to be consumed at the current rate.

If you, like many others, believe the Malthusian idea that the exponentially growing population will eventually lead to outstripping natural resources and widespread famine and poverty, please take a moment to listen to the other side of the story:

San Francisco: 1906 and 2006

1906 San Francisco (high resolution panorama taken after the earthquake)




2006 San Francisco (a photo from Ron Klein)



You must view the 1906 panorama in full size -- it is absolutely captivating.

[Hat tip: Bluematter -- the blog with consistently the best Friday posts.]

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Related:
June 2005 San Francisco in HD (and other interesting links from Newmark's Door)

Getting teenagers interested in science [video]

Watch as high school students awkwardly try to tell us what they think we want to hear. Only one student seems on track to become a cold-blooded economist; the rest are training to become politicians.



[Thanks, dear]

Two exciting developments in Wi-Fi

1. Craig Newmark points to a New York Times article about Verizon's upcoming Novatel MiFi 2200 -- a "personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot".

2. TimesOnline 5/17:

A device that could dramatically reduce the number of collisions by eliminating driver error is to be tested in Europe. The system uses technology similar to wi-fi to enable vehicles to communicate with each other, sharing information about their speed and location, to determine when a crash is imminent. It can then warn the driver or take over the controls.

If this system is successful, it will be a big step in the direction of driverless personal transportation. Click the image below to see how it would work.

LeBron game time vs. LeBron news time

In his 81 games played this season, LeBron James played a total of 50.9 hours of basketball -- about a week's worth of work for many people.

In the same time period, there were about 19,000 news articles published with his name in it according to Google News.

That's about 373 news articles per hour of game play. Assuming the articles take 3 minutes to read on average, that's about 40 days of reading material compared to 2.1 days of actual game footage.

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Related:
Wages of Wins crunches the numbers for the best players this season (Surprisingly, LeBron is #2)
LeBron compared to Kobe Bryant: quantitatively, qualitatively
LeBron compared to Michael Jordan
LeBron is beyond driven, more like obsessed (Morning Journal 5/2)

Health Visualizer

A group including Ben Fry created this intuitive, interactive health visualizer for GE as part of their new health care initiative.

I found the differences in rates of heart disease between the BMI groups to be surprisingly small. I'll be adding a series of posts next week about the relationship between BMI and life expectancy.

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Related:
The importance of externalizing ideas (quotes from Ben Fry's dissertation)

Ending unresponsive programs without the task manager

For all the unfortunate Windows users like me out there, Makeuseof.com provides a nice tip on how to kill unresponsive programs a little quicker.

Just follow these two simple steps to create a shortcut:

1. Right-click on the desktop and choose New > Shortcut.

2. In the dialog box that appears, copy and paste the following:
taskkill.exe /f /fi “status eq not responding”

Now you can drag this shortcut into the quick launch bar and click it anytime a program becomes unresponsive.

The state of the economy [maps]

In a few seconds, a comprehensive picture of the economy emerges more clearly than what has attempted to be described through countless hours of news reporting. You wonder why they don't just show us the maps in the first place.

The full set of maps allowing you to browse statistics by county is available from the AP here.

[Hat tip: Nicolas Rapp]

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Related:
Unemployment map from the NYT (3/23)
U.S. mental distress map

Pics: You are what you eat

Good Magazine has a pictorial essay where Mark Menjivar photographs the contents of strangers' refrigerators.

[Hat tip: PSFK]

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Related:
Fridgewatcher.com (A look inside refrigerators around the world)

Astrophotography reaches new heights [photo]

Click to enlarge

Even upon close inspection, you might not notice what's happening in this photo. There is a small black dot, two actually, that you could easily confuse for a spec of dust on your computer screen.



What this photo shows is, in fact, the Space Shuttle Atlantis silhouetted against the sun immediately before reaching the Hubble Space Telescope.

Incredible!

More from Bad Astronomy.

Best optical illusion of the year contest

And the winner of the crazy trophy goes to . . .

Top 10 finalists. (Warning: might be slow to load)

Winners from the American Institute of Physics.

[Hat tip: VoluntaryXchange]

Observing self-control with an MRI

ScienceDaily reports on a self-control experiment performed by Caltech researchers

After centuries of debate in social sciences we are finally making big strides in understanding self-control from watching the brain resist temptation directly. This study, and many more to come, will eventually lead to much better theories about how self-control develops and how it works for different kinds of temptations.

Act normal

[Hat tip: Bluematter]

Free solar panels

One small catch: the power generated by the solar panels goes to Duke Energy, not you.

Duke Energy's North Carolina Solar Distributed Generation Program is getting national attention as Scientific American picked up the story:

Over the next year, the utility plans to spend $50 million to plop a variety of different kinds of photovoltaic panels on commercial buildings, the roofs of private homes, and other property in North Carolina.

Once installed, the 10 megawatts worth of solar panels are expected to produce enough alternating-current electricity to power 1,300 homes. But the utility’s main goals for the demonstration project are to gain experience with distributed generation—putting the power plant closer to the customer—and with integrating intermittent, renewable resources like sunshine into the grid.

Duke will own the solar panels and the electricity they produce. Property owners will get a nominal but so far undetermined rental fee, says Duke spokesman David Scanzoni. More than 500 businesses and homeowners have registered to be considered. “Very few are interested in it for the money,” he said. “No one will get rich doing this."

It’s the first time, as far as we know, that a utility has put part of its power-generating equipment on the homes of residential customers. A similar program in California places photovoltaic panels on commercial customers’ rooftops.

No word yet on how much the electricity generated this way will cost, though it will probably be more than the retail rate of 8¢ per kilowatt-hour in North Carolina.

This is an interesting move economically. It seems many people are willing to donate their property to the cause, as evidenced by this quote from the company:

Please be aware that we have received a large number of requests to participate in this program and will not be able to satisfy every request. New requests will be added to a waiting list.

So Duke will be able to find cheap property in abundance, the only question is how long it will take for the solar panels to pay for themselves. Plus, Duke will receive all kinds of recognition and acclaim (and probably political favors) for their saintly green-ness. So I'm wondering why energy companies all over the world aren't already doing this.

Duke Energy customers in North Carolina may submit their name via this online form. I submitted my name even though my roof might be a bit too small and old for them, but I have a big, flat sunny backyard they should be interested in. I'm just not sure if I'm interested in having them put their solar panels all over it.

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Related:
Scott Adams discusses how the problem of financing greening investments could be solved by the government.

U.S. income distribution [infographic]

Click to enlarge

Christine of Visualizing Economics created this wonderful infographic showing the 2000 household income distribution by occupation. This histogram already looks highly skewed, but it would be much more so if the top 1% of earners were included(!).

So what does the shape of this histogram look like: a nose, or the belly of a pregnant woman? You decide.

Google's vision for search

BBC News 5/12: Google unveils 'smarter search'

"The race in search is far from over and innovation and continued improvement is absolutely pivotal," said Google's Marissa Mayer. "I've said this many times but search is still in its infancy. Our engineers are worried about what is the next big thing in search and how are they going to find it."

Inefficiencies, arbitrariness, market failures, lock-in effects, and QWERTY keyboards

That's the theme of the latest Spark interview with interface researcher Jared Spool.

Mr. Spool believes that the QWERTY keyboard and many other designs are inefficient and arbitrary, and that the only reason they persist is because they're cheaper to reproduce rather than to recreate.

My former professor at NC State and one of the smartest people I know, Steve Margolis, would beg to differ. It is amazing to me that Jared Spool would neglect to mention this landmark paper that convincingly argues the exact opposite of what he believes.

I'm glad to see Spark covering topics like this, but boy did they choose the wrong guest.

The budget in perspective [video]

8,880 pennies are used to put the federal budget and the proposed budget cuts in perspective in this 98 second video. The amateurishness and the messy apartment setting make this video all the more appealing.



[Hat tip: information aesthetics]

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Related:
Places to trim the budget [charts].

Television viewership over time [graph]

Click to enlarge

If I'm interpreting this correctly, 70% of U.S. households watch prime-time television on any given night, and the percentage of households viewing basic cable during prime-time has grown from < 5% in 1984 to around 35% in 2008.

I am somewhat surprised (and saddened) that the percentage of households watching prime-time television has increased in the past decade. I know a lot of people are multi-tasking, but I would have thought that the rise of the internet would spur a decline in television viewership.

[Hat tip: DataViz]

Tips for Effective Digestion

The following is a guest post from Kat Sanders, who regularly blogs on the topic of phlebotomist school at her blog Health Zone Blog. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: katsanders25@gmail.com.

There’s nothing more embarrassing than making unwanted bodily noises in public; although we all know that belching and farting are natural occurrences, they cause more than a few red faces and turned up noses when they’re audible and, worse, when they reach your olfactory senses. If your digestive system is up to scratch, there’s no reason why your stomach should make all these uncomfortable noises. Besides, you need to have good digestive powers if you want all the nutrients from the food you eat to be absorbed into your body and give you the strength and health you need. So if you’re looking for tips to improve your digestive system, here’s what you need to know:

• Don’t eat in a hurry; take the time to slowly chew your food and enjoy your meal.
• Don’t swallow or gulp down your food; take the time to chew it properly.
• Don’t eat on the go or when walking around or in front of the television. Use the time you eat only to eat.
• Eat small meals; if you’re hungry, you can eat five small meals as opposed to four large ones. The point is to keep your stomach from becoming too full.
• Get some rest once you finish your meal instead of rushing on to your next task. Sitting down and relaxing for around 10 minutes should do the trick.
• Don’t drink fizzy sodas and carbonated drinks with your meal; they make you belch.
• Avoid eating food that’s too spicy or too rich, especially if your whole meal consists of such food.
• Eat food that contains natural fiber; include more fresh vegetables and fruits in your diet.
• Don’t eat late at night, especially food that’s rich and heavy in fats and processed sugars.
• As much as possible, eat food that’s freshly cooked.
• Drink hot water to improve your digestive process.
• Lead an active lifestyle with plenty of exercise and lots of fresh air.
• Avoid stressful situations.
• Know which foods agree or don’t agree with your digestive system.
• Don’t get into the habit of popping antacids or other pills every time you have a problem related to your digestive system.
• Drink lots of water; it helps in bowel movement.
• Make sure you answer the call of nature at least once a day, preferably in the morning as soon as you wake up.
• Maintain a healthy weight.
• Cleanse your colon once in a while by fasting or eating just fruits and juices for a day, otherwise it could get clogged with excess waste and prevent digestion from being effective.

Mapping US farms

Click to enlarge

The New York Times shows locations of farms by type (all, organic, vegetable, milk cows, orchards).

Accompanying article.

[Hat tip: Map Scroll]

Chessboard in 3D

This re-imagined chessboard from Google's creative director better represents the battle taking place, but it seems it would also make play more difficult. This is a good metaphor for information design: although the pieces (data) remain the same, a simple change in the surface (background) makes visual interpretation more difficult.

[Hat tip: PSFK.]

8,176 news reports per swine flu death (...and counting)

It's easy to see why traditional news media are falling prey to the internet when a 138 second video can make a point more clearly than hours of reporting.



[Hat tip: information aesthetics]

New video from the stand-up economist

The Stand-Up Economist, Yoram Bauman, released a 5 minute video of his performance for the American Economic Association:



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Related:
The surprising personality characteristics of stand-up comedians are described in a new paper in Personality and Individual Differences:

Stand-up comedians are a vocational group with unique characteristics: unlike most other entertainers with high creative abilities, they both invent and perform their own work, and audience feedback (laughter or derision) is instantaneous. In this study, the Big Five personality traits (NEOFFI-R) of 31 professional stand-up comedians were compared to those of nine amateur comedians, 10 humor writers and 400 college students. All four groups showed similar neuroticism levels. Professional stand-up comedians were similar to amateur stand-up comedians in most respects. However, compared to college students, professional and amateur stand-up comedians on average showed significantly higher openness, and lower conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness. Compared to stand-up comedians, comedy writers showed higher openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness. These results challenge the stereotype of comedians as neurotic extraverts, and suggest a discrepancy between their stage persona and their true personality traits.

[Hat tip: Tyler Cowen]

Where the textbook dollar goes [infographic]

Click to enlarge

So if the publishers bypassed the bookstores and sold their books directly online, a book that would ordinarily sell for $100 in stores could be sold for $62 online. Am I missing something? With a price difference that large, it seems all books would be sold online.

With authors making less than 12 cents on the dollar, it seems awfully hard to make a living off their writing. To make $100,000 (a year's salary for many professors), they would have to sell $855,000 worth of textbooks!

[Hat tip: DataViz]

"Is Information Visualization the Next Frontier for Design?"

Fast Company 5/10:

If we're going to live in a world driven by data, the thinking goes, we need a simple means of digesting it all. We are increasingly a visual society, and our understanding of the world is increasingly made possible by this new visual language.

I think the use of the word increasingly here downplays the significance of information design. It suggests that information design is becoming more important, but does not stress how important it already is.

Cognitive psychologist Donald Norman puts it better in his book Things That Make Us Smart:

The power of the unaided mind is highly overrated. Without external aids, memory, thought, and reasoning are all constrained. But human intelligence is highly flexible and adaptive, superb at inventing procedures and objects that overcome its own limits. The real powers come from devising external aids that enhance cognitive abilities. How have we increased memory, thought, and reasoning? By the invention of external aids: It is things that make us smart.

Q & A with NBC-17 general manager, Barry Leffler

Barry Leffler -- the general manager of WNCN, the NBC affiliate in the Triangle -- has graciously agreed to answer questions for Wehr in the World readers. I thank Mr. Leffler for his time.

Q. You took a unique approach by airing short video messages asking viewers to send their feedback. How has that worked out? What's the best feedback you've received?

A. We work very hard at NBC 17 to “listen” to our viewers. One of the ways we do that is by asking people to e-mail us their comments about our newscasts. What do they like? How can we improve? It’s also a great tool for people to let us know when we get something wrong so we can go on the air and make a correction. The best part of the on-air appeal for feedback is the conversations we have with our viewers. These are exchanges we wouldn’t have otherwise. I also think people appreciate that they receive a reply from me or one of our senior news managers usually within one business day.

As to the best feedback: I don’t think any one e-mail has stood out… but the trends we see from hearing from so many people help us shape our newscasts. Combined with other “listening” techniques, we have significantly reduced the amount of crime news in our shows, and put those resources into covering topics such as education, the economy, health, etc. We have also heard loud and clear that people want a newscast balanced with positive stories… which we work hard to do.

Q. How does NBC-17 determine which stories to cover, and the length of each segment?

A. The decision on which stories to cover are made on a daily basis based on the news of the day, resources available, and as mentioned above, the type of stories our viewers tell us they’d like to see. The length is based on how long it takes to present the facts. We have no guidelines on minimum and maximum lengths… just that when we’ve exhausted the details we move on to the next story. We do have to deal with the time constraints of our program schedule (the 6pm News is 30 minutes, the 7pm News is an hour)… so if a story has more information than we are able to present on-air, after getting the key facts out over the air, we will utilize our website for those who want more.

Q. What are the most important decisions you, as the general manager, make on a day-to-day basis?

A. Every day brings something different!

Q. How is it that news stations measure how well they're doing? In other words, what data are you using to support your decisions?

A. There are various measurements… some statistical and some anecdotal. We get ratings reports that tell us approximately how many people are watching and web stat reports that show us how our internet sites are being utilized. We also conduct formal research… as well as a lot of informal research through our Community Listening Tours, informal focus groups and listening to the feedback we get.

Q. Who are the main competitors to local news stations?

A. I regard Google, Yahoo, etc as the biggest competitors to local news stations.

Q. How much competition is there between the local news stations?

A. This area is very fortunate to have three highly respected and hard working television newsrooms that push each other to be better. The winner is the viewer. Each of has our own niche/focus… but clearly we all want to be number one.

Q. How do you think local news stations will change in the next 10 years?

A. We will continue to adapt ourselves to providing local content across whatever platforms our community wants to receive information. It’s clichéd but true, we need to be ready to deliver local information “Wherever, Whenever and However” people want to consume it.

Q. It seems the market rewards news content for its sensationalism. Is this a bad thing, and if so, what can be done about it?

A. I’m not sure that’s always true. But ultimately, viewers have a big say in what we all do by voting with their remotes. If they don’t like something they see on television, they can easily choose to turn it off or watch something else.

Q. What else haven't I asked that would be especially interesting for Wehr in the World readers to know?

A. I think your readers would be every interested in some of our “non-NBC 17 branded web products. If you haven’t checked them out yet, here are a few:

www.MyNC.com: dedicated to aggregating local news, information and user contributions at a local community level. No more searching seven or eight websites looking for what’s going on in your specific town or community. There’s also an easy way for anyone to post stories about their community and see them appear online right alongside the professional media content (we view a story posted by a community member as just important as anything we would report). You will also find at MyNC.com aggregation sites for Events (things to do), Classifieds, etc (again, no more having to search multiple sites).

www.30Threads.com: the ultimate site for blogs and all things interesting in the Triangle. Hundreds of local blogs are organized by topic, geography, etc… and Ginny Skalski (and other staff members) highlight 30 posts (hence, the name 30 Threads) ranging from the hot topics of the day to the offbeat and quirky.

www.Music.MyNC.com: the local band music scene is extremely vibrant in our area and this site is dedicated to covering it. Aside from local music news, we are recoding on average of two bands a week who appear live on the web from our studio for “Sessions at Studio B”… with the video of the performances and interviews available shortly afterwards for viewing at anytime.

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Related:

Q & A with News & Observer president, Orage Quarles III

Wehr in the World ranked among business/economics sites

Wehr in the World debuts at number 73 in the business/economics web site directory compiled by Brian Gongol, making this the Chillicothe Gazette of business/economics sites. Nothing against Chillicothe, but I've still got some work to do... :-)

A better way of viewing photos [video]

TechCrunch debuts a new API to view Facebook photos {4 minute video embedded below}. It's not available for download yet, but will be soon. [Thanks to Marlena Compton for the pointer.]



This reminds me very much of CoolIris, which is a similar way of viewing images from a Google Image search or on Flickr or wherever. I use the Firefox add-on all the time.

"Sociable squatting"

If I was alive in the 1950s, I would've been all over this.

Kottke quotes Wikipedia:

Hunkerin' (also known as "Hunkering") had been in use in different cultures, particularly in Asia, for centuries when it suddenly became a fad in the United States in 1959. Time reported that the craze started at the University of Arkansas when a shortage of chairs at a fraternity house led students to imitate their Ozark forefathers, who hunkered regularly.

Before long, hunkerin' had spread, firstly to Missouri, Mississippi and Oklahoma, thence across the rest of the country. While males were the predominant hunkers, it was reported that females hunkerers were welcomed. Within months, regional hunkerin' competitions were being held to discover champion hunkerers.

Considered by authorities as much preferable to the craze of the previous year, phonebooth stuffing, people hunkered for hours at a time on car roofs, in phone booths and wherever people gathered. Life referred to it as "sociable squatting". Different styles of hunkerin' were reported as "sophisticates" tended to hunker flatfooted while other hunkered with their elbows inside the knees.

Raleigh artists revive abandoned water treatment plant

www.bainproject.com

The Bain Project is a site-specific art installation exploring Raleigh’s historic E.B. Bain Waterworks. On view throughout Bain will be installations and performances of 12 artists who have worked collaboratively in the space for the past 9 months. The building and the accompanying temporary art will be open to the public on two consecutive weekends:

May 9th, 10th and May 16th, 17th, 2009, from 1 to 5 pm.

Some of the artists were interviewed by Frank Stasio on The State of Things 5/1.

Economic sentiment since 1990 [graph]

Click to enlarge

Dow Jones introduces a new economic sentiment indicator. [Hat tip: Carpe Diem]

In the graph above, economic sentiment (the blue line) is plotted against the consumer confidence index (dark green) and UM's consumer sentiment index (red).

As the Future Catches You

I highly recommended this book to everyone. It opened my eyes to the potential of genomics, which is altogether exciting and scary.

This was my first time reading a book of this structure -- it sort of resembles a ransom note, with many different text sizes and fonts and lots of white space. It reads very quickly, and makes it easy to get a sense of Juan Enriquez's voice.

The language of the body

Washington Post 6/24/08 with slideshow.

[Hat tip: Ben Casnocha]

"Misery index": tax rates by country [chart]

Click to enlarge

I think most economists would agree with me that a tax on spending (similar to a sales tax) is economically the least bad tax, but because of its political unpopularity, it is generally a small fraction of the total tax pie, as shown in the chart from Forbes above.

Also, I did not realize China was taxed so heavily!

[Hat tip: DataViz]

Chilean Economics

You might be surprised to learn that Chile is ranked number 11 in the index of economic freedom, just behind the U.K.

Andrew Leigh points to a Bloomberg article profiling the unique Chilean finance minister, Andres Filasco. As Leigh mentions, Filasco's publications include two books on free trade, and two romance novels.

US mental distress map

Click to enlarge

The map shows percentage of residents reporting frequent mental distress, defined as 14 or more days of emotional discomfort -- including stress, depression, and problems with emotion -- during the previous month.

Story from Nat Geo.

Facing Deportation [infographics]

Facing Deportation: Causes and Processes.

The work looks to be of New York Times quality, but amazingly was created by UNC journalism postgraduate Eileen Mignoni as part of her thesis work.

I was curious how a journalism major developed such impressive info design skills, so I emailed her and received this response, which I am posting with her permission:

Hey Justin,

They do teach this stuff in journalism school, particularly at UNC, which has a phenomenal Visual Communications sequence. Carolina has one of the best infographic artists in the world in it's journalism school - Alberto Cairo - http://www.albertocairo.com/. He worked at El Mundo before coming to UNC, which is the paper that very much influenced the New York Times as they transitioned from illustration type graphics to clean, data driven graphics. I, alas, did not have time in the master's program to take his classes. However, I was his research assistant, and so got to read his manuscripts before publication. Knowing graphics were necessary to telling the full story, I went to something called 3 day Beyond Bootcamp, http://www.beyondbootcamp.org/ session at the University of Miami at which Alberto and his good friend, Xaquín Xocas, http://www.xocas.com/blog/, of the New York Times taught. Another pioneering info graphics artist at UNC is Don Wittekind, althought I haven't worked with him much. I only know he is supposed to be very good.

I designed the maps and the flow chart in Adobe Illustrator, and brought them into Flash to make them interactive. It took me at least two weeks, including the time to do the research to get the flow chart accurate.

After graduation I am first going to the Carolina Photojournalism Workshop, and then I am a part of the News 21 team at UNC. We're going to have way more cool graphics and maps for that, although I will be doing mostly storytelling, as that is my strength. I'll send you a link to that when we've got something up.

Best,
Eileen

[Hat tip: Infographic News]

Buy or rent? [infographic]

Click to enlarge

This infographic from the New York Times shows the purchase price of a typical house divided by the annual rent of that house, so the higher the number, the more expensive it is to own relative to rent. The ratio tells you roughly how many years it would take to pay for a house with the current rent.

In all major cities, the cost of owning has gone down relative to renting. Of these cities (which disappointingly does not include Detroit), Columbus, OH is currently the best place to own, and San Jose the worst. Raleigh is about average with a ratio of 18.1, but the cost to own has declined much less than most other cities.

[Hat tip: DataViz]

Choice Blindness [video]

A disconcerting form of irrationality discussed in this New Scientist article.

[Hat tip: Quantified Self]

Q & A with Tyler Cowen

For anyone who reads economics blogs, Tyler Cowen needs no introduction -- he is perhaps the world's most prolific econoblogger, writing alongside Alex Tabarrok on Marginal Revolution. Tyler and Alex are part of a highly successful blogging movement by George Mason University economists -- including contributors to Overcoming Bias, EconLog, Cafe Hayek, EconTalk, Austrian Economists, and I think I can count GMU alumnus and now Michigan economist Mark J. Perry of Carpe Diem.

Tyler received his PhD from Harvard, where he was mentored by the legendary Tom Schelling. Tyler's academic career has focused on the economics of arts and culture, but one of the most impressive things about Tyler is his ability to speak intelligently on a wide variety of topics. This is probably due in part to his well-known ability to read and process information unusually quickly.

Tyler's contributions to public knowledge are many. Beyond his prolific blog, he has written a series of books including most recently the popular economics book, Discover Your Inner Economist. He also frequently appears in the New York Times and on NPR.

I thank Tyler for taking time to answer questions for Wehr in the World readers.


Q. I'm curious about the time commitment of your blog. In a typical day, how much time do you spend on the following:

A. Writing on MR -- One hour?
Thinking about what to write -- Close to zero, or during downtime.
Reading comments on MR -- 20 minutes? If I'm traveling I don't read them at all.
Reading other blogs -- 40 minutes?
Reading and writing blog-related emails -- I get quite a few, I'm not sure what it amounts to in terms of time. I do try to respond to almost everybody.
Looking at traffic statistics -- Zero, this is counterproductive.

The big time cost is reading but of course I would be doing that anyway.


Q. What has been the effect of George Mason University's economist bloggers on the Department? If it's been a NET positive effect, why do you think other departments aren't doing more to support or encourage faculty blogging?

A. It makes us more interesting and gives us great lunch conversations. We have much more influence on the world. But there are all sorts of popular and quasi-popular media and mostly they are not rewarded within academia more narrowly. That's OK, it keeps the competition down!


Q. Historically, who were the best minds in economics? Who are the best and brightest economists advancing the biggest ideas today?

A. Smith and Keynes and Hayek, I think. Friedman had an amazing clarity. Arrow has a stunning IQ. Those would be my top picks. Maybe Hume and J.S. Mill would be at the very top, if you count them as economists, although their economic ideas were not their greatest contributions they are the greatest minds to have graced our profession.


Q. To what do you credit your unusual ability to rapidly absorb and order information? How exactly does your mind organize information? How can others exercise their mind to become more like Tyler Cowen?

A. I discuss this at length in my next book, *Create Your Own Economy*. It is due out July 9, buy a copy! But I don't want to pre-empt that content.


Q. Of all your many contributions to public knowledge, for what do you most want to be remembered? What do you take the most pride in? What, in your opinion, has been your greatest work?

A. I don't think any of them will be remembered. If they have influence, it will be through absorption into a broader stream.

My next book has some chance of real influence and being remembered.

I am very fortunate that my age-creativity profile does not fit the usual pattern of decline after age 35 (this possibility is related to my next book as well). So at 47 I like to think that I can still do better. This is unusual among economists, but given the nature of what I do -- I'm more of an information collector than a theorist per se -- I believe it might be possible. I'm certainly not going to stop trying.