Basketball coaches paid more than chancellors?

According to the university's Internal Revenue Service Form 990, men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski once again received the most compensation from the school among those who are not officers, directors or trustees of the university. Kryzewski, who like many other famous collegiate coaches also receives money from outside sources for endorsements, took home $3.6 million from Duke during the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2008. His compensation was $1,482,532 more than he received the previous fiscal year, an increase of 68 percent [thanks to a renegotiation of his contract due to talks with the Lakers].

This information comes from Durham's Herald Sun. It might not surprise you that Coach K receives the highest salary at Duke, but this is not unusual even for schools with smaller basketball programs and lesser-known coaches. I remember reading somewhere that George Mason University's basketball coach earns more than both their Nobel Laureates and their President.

Could a basketball coach possibly bring more value to a university than a Chancellor or Nobel Prize winner? I suppose it's possible if the coach's performance affects the demand for incoming students more than these academics or university administrators. Imagine if the NCAA did not restrict schools' ability to compensate athletes -- it's quite possible that the highest earners at the university would be a couple of 18 year olds!

But, the value a coach/academic/administrator/athlete brings to the university is not equal to the value they bring to the world. Universities and academics offer serious positive externalities; this is to say that they produce more value than what is reflected in their salaries. While coaches and athletes bring entertainment value and public recognition that may sway students from one university to another, it is the professors who are changing students' lives and occasionally making giant discoveries that produce more value than any entertainer ever could.

Bottom-line: Subsidize educators! (Or tax entertainers.)

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Related:
Q & A with sports economist Skip Sauer
Salary distribution of NFL players

Buckminster Fuller

I have only recently discovered the fascinating personality of Richard Buckminster Fuller. There was an excellent segment on CBS Sunday Morning a few weeks ago which unfortunately was not published to the web.

Wikipedia describes Buckminster as "an American architect, author, designer, futurist, inventor, and visionary" but I think you could even add a few more titles such as scientist and philosopher. Clearly, he was a creative man with a wide perspective.

From his Wikipedia entry, I learned that he is the most documented person in history: he wrote in his journal every 15 minutes from 1915 until his death in 1983, creating what turned out to be a 270 feet long journal. This includes records of nearly every talk and lecture he ever gave.

Also, for a time, he experimented with polyphasic sleep where he took 30 minute naps every 6 hours adding up to only two hours of sleep per day. The experiment lasted for two years and apparently ended only because his schedule conflicted with those of his business associates.

He got his start teaching at a small school near Asheville, North Carolina called Black Mountain College. (The school closed in 1957 but the campus has since been used for a Christian boys' summer camp and for art festivals.) Here, he developed the idea of the geodesic dome, for which he would become best known.

The geodesic dome has many favorable architectural properties and some say the only reason the domes have not gained widespread use is because they are too different from traditional structures. The Wikipedia entry, however, claims that domes are difficult to rain-proof, and that they have unusual air stratification and moisture distribution properties leading to accelerated deterioration of wood products. Buckminster envisioned the domes being used for low-cost housing as they are easy to erect and effectively protect against the elements (except, it seems, rain).

I have been browsing Buckminster's Digital Collection from Stanford University which has all kinds of freely-available talks and lectures. He has a unique speaking style and is at times very difficult to follow. He seems to ramble incessantly, but I have a sense that if you paid close enough attention, the ideas would all somehow tie together.

I'm not generally one for sound bites, but the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago has collected some truly great Buckminster Fuller quotes. Definitely worth a look.

And all this is only scratching the surface of his fascinating story.

Up and comers [infographics]

There are some good things happening at the University of Eindhoven's (Denmark Netherlands) Visualization Group, one example of which is the work of Danny Holten.

[Hat tip: Visualization Blog]

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Related:
Ship Density Visualization (from another student in Eindhoven's visualizaton group)

To specialize or not to specialize

Is it better to generalize or specialize? This age-old question is weighing heavy on my mind lately as I am looking into graduate programs.

In the words of Hal Varian, the key to success is to have scarce factors of production that are highly complementary to something that's ubiquitous and cheap. In Google's case, information is ubiquitous and cheap, but a quality search engine is scarce. In my case, I am thinking of what scarce factors of production I might be able to apply to information.

Although Scott Adams always says not to take career advice from a cartoonist, he offers up a well-reasoned argument:

Capitalism rewards things that are both rare and valuable. You make yourself rare by combining two or more “pretty goods” until no one else has your mix. [...] At least one of the skills in your mixture should involve communication, either written or verbal. And it could be as simple as learning how to sell more effectively than 75% of the world. That’s one. Now add to that whatever your passion is, and you have two, because that’s the thing you’ll easily put enough energy into to reach the top 25%. If you have an aptitude for a third skill, perhaps business or public speaking, develop that too.

It sounds like generic advice, but you’d be hard pressed to find any successful person who didn’t have about three skills in the top 25%.

My current thought is that I'd like to become pretty good at writing, and then combine this with visual analytics and a somewhat specialized knowledge of information economics and genomics. If any readers have thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

One thing I worry about with these courses of study is that they are all pretty new to graduate curriculums and I need to be wary that I am not falling for any fads.

Craig Newmark points to a quote from Joel Best's Flavor of the Month: Why Smart People Fall for Fads:

Department chairs attend many meetings at which the future is unveiled, priorities are articulated, and innovations are announced. Over the years, I have been assured that our university—if not all of higher education— was about to be transformed by affirmative action, the Pacific Rim, assessment, active learning, cooperative learning, distance learning, service learning, problem-based learning, responsibility-based management, zero-based budgeting, broadening the general education requirements, narrowing the general education requirements, capstone courses, writing across the curriculum, multicultural education, computer networking, the Internet, water (don’t ask), critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and I don’t know what else. I have gone on retreats; participated in program reviews; served on task forces; puzzled over mission statements; written five-year plans, three-year plans, and niche reports; and listened to proclamations from provosts, assistant provosts, deans, associate deans, and wannabe deans. I have been assured with tight-lipped seriousness: “This is not a fad.” Still, after all these amazing transformations, today’s universities do not seem all that different than they were when I was a student.

Thoughts, please?

Misleading camera angles in baseball

Slate 6/25: You Call That a Strike?!

(You must click the link if for no other reason than to see the video demonstrations of the difference between a camera off-center at 10 to 15 degrees toward left-field (as most cameras are) and a camera from straight-away center (as only 3 major league cameras are).)

Stupid human trick [video]

Here is me and my two year old mutt, Khan. (Sorry for the poor choice of camera angle.)

Don't mess with the U.S.

Click to see the scary face full-size

Photo: In the third round of Wimbledon, U.S. teenager Melanie Oudin unleashes her face of wrath, resulting in a decisive victory over former No. 1 Jelena Jankovic.

AP Story

Resume infographic

Click to enlarge

I particularly enjoyed his daily humor intake & output trend line. I'd hire him.

[Hat tip: Chart Porn]

Hair color map of Europe

Found via Wikipedia.

Monthly employment rates by state 1976-2009 [infographics]

Visit Jorge Camoes' blog for the commentary on his wonderfully informative charts.

I think it's worth pointing out that, even for Michigan, the unemployment situation was worse in the early 80's; but, looking at the surface chart, it appears that we are on our way to a similar crisis. The crisis, though, is a lack of employment opportunities for low-skilled labor, and not a crisis of economic output.

GDP will continue to rise, and may soon even grow at a faster rate as many low-skilled unemployed people take the opportunity to develop new skills.

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Related:
Unemployment rate U.S. map
Unemployment rate by education level over time [graph]
A closer look at the unemployment rate
Job gains and losses by sector over time [infographic]

Predicting the weather a year in advance

As explained in this brief Nightline segment, A physicist is using a proprietary formula based on patterns in the sun to predict severe weather events and general weather patterns up to a year in advance. He calls it completely revolutionary and plans to release details of the process within the next few months.

What the segment does not tell you, however, is the predictions' accuracy. According to his website, he is at least beating the odds:

In 4,000 Weather Test Bets over 12 years with William Hill, Weather Action forecasts made a profit of some 40% (£20,000).

Schelling's chessboard

In a classic experiment, Tom Schelling used a chessboard to explain how racial segregation can emerge if people have only a mild preference for the color of their neighbor. Tim Harford demonstrates (using eggs) in the 2 minute video embedded below. For more, see Tim's post.



Schelling, by the way, mentored Marginal Revolution blogger and George Mason economist Tyler Cowen. I'd pay to be a fly on the way when those two minds came together.

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Related:
Q & A with Tyler Cowen

Bubbles burst since 1994 [chart]

From the Wall Street Journal (6/19).

Einstein was a visual thinker...

I picked up a book called Thinking Like Einstein (published 2004) by Thomas West about the value of thinking and presenting information visually. So far it's been a decent read, but he makes bolder claims than I would. Here are a few quotes from the introduction that grabbed me:

Now, in the thin leading edge of the twenty-first century, computer graphics and visual technologies are in use around us everywhere, yet most us have no idea of the real power of these technologies. Our children live in a visual world of television and video games (unfortunately with too little visual observation of the natural world), yet most schools continue to be increasingly obsessed with the narrow skills linked to the ancient technologies of writing, reading, and the book. These are important, of course, but these alone are not enough to prepare our children and grandchildren for really high-value work in a global marketplace.

We focus on the facts, yet no one acknowledges that the essence of science is not a list of facts but a process that, for many of the best scientists, is largely visual -- making discoveries about patterns in nature through seeing patterns in complex visual information.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a moving diagram based on highly complex computer data is worth a million words. This transition promises to be true revolution -- not about how we will use technology, but about how we will learn (or relearn) to use our brains.

What is a healthy time perspective? [video]

Philip Zimbardo, the psychologist who brought you the notorious Stanford prison experiment, describes a healthy view of time in the 6 minute TED talk embedded below.

First of all, why can't I find anything about this on Wikipedia? (The closest I've come is this page on time perception.)

This is definitely a topic I want to explore further because to me it seems a little fishy. I'm not sure if it's overly simplistic or if it just bothers me that I am apparently not past-oriented enough.

Life expectancy map vs. GDP per capita map

I had not seen the maps side by side before, so I thought others might be interested as well. (Top: life expectancy; Bottom: GDP per capita)

The thing that stands out most to me is Afghanistan's low life expectancy: I did not know it was on par with Sub-Saharan Africa.

The Economics of Restaurants

Craig Newmark points to three Business Week articles on the restaurant industry.

The following are some selected quotes I found particularly interesting:

His research—consistent with similar studies—found that about one in four restaurants close or change ownership within their first year of business. Over three years, that number rises to three in five. While a 60% failure rate may still sound high, that's on par with the cross-industry average for new businesses.

One widely held belief is that franchise restaurants are much safer bets than independent restaurants. But Parsa found that the three-year success rate for franchised restaurants is actually only a few percentage points higher than it is for independents—about 43%. That's a far cry from the 90% or higher success rates trumpeted by many franchisors.

Restaurant owners weren't failing because they had ill-defined competitive strategies. They weren't failing because they lacked access to capital, or because they chose poor locations, either. (These are factors, Parsa says, just not typically make-or-break ones.) Rather, the single most critical element of a restaurant's success, Parsa says, is the presence of a distinctive, well-researched concept. This insight is, admittedly, a bit of an anticlimax. The importance of a concept seems like it would be obvious to anyone prepared to invest thousands of dollars in said concept. As it turns out? Not so much. When asked to describe their concept, failed restaurant owners answered "vegetarian food" or "Alaskan seafood"—when pressed, and they couldn't expand their description beyond food production. In contrast, the successful restaurant owners could describe, in detail, an entire operating philosophy encompassing everything—the ambiance, the service, the decor—not just the food.

Years in retirement over time

Take a guess at the increase in average years in retirement since 1960.

Maybe it's gone up by 5% or 10%, you might say.

I was surprised to learn that it has increased by ... wait for it ... more than 800% ! -- from 1.6 years in 1960 to 13.5 years in 2005.

Carpe Diem presents the BLS statistics.

Ship density visualization

Click to enlarge

From a PhD student in the Visualization group at Eindhoven University:

Our new method shows millions of data points during one week of shipping movement. The image shows that captains nicely obey the maritime rules.

[Hat tip: Visualization Blog]

The skill of free throw shooting

Findings from Barry Zimmerman's study on the development and advancement of expertise (a chapter from the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance):

There were no significant differences between experts and non-experts in their frequency of practice, playing experience, and knowledge of free-throw shooting techniques, but there were significant differences in their methods of self-regulation during practice. [...] It was found that experts set more specific goals, selected more technique-oriented strategies, made more attributions to strategy use, and displayed higher levels of self-efficacy than either non-experts or novices. When asked to self-reflect after two consecutive misses, free-throw experts were more mindful of their specific, technique-oriented flaws than boys in the other two groups.

What's interesting is that if there are clear ways to improve free-throw performance through deliberate practice, why, then, have professional basketball players not improved their free-throw performance over time?

NYC Homocide map

Where would such a beautiful, informative interactive graphic come from? The New York Times, of course.

Summer time!

Click to enlarge

Summer Solstice officially arrived at 12:45 PM EST today.

Traffic barrel monster artist arrested

Update 3 (6/18): Oh wow. All Things Considered, the NPR program listened to by millions of people around the world daily, picked up the story and interviewed the artist.

When it comes to the barrel monster, Carnevale says he didn't realize how expensive the barrels he used were to the company — each one, he says, costs $120. Even so, Carnevale says the company officials he spoke with weren't interested in pursuing charges.

"They'd like the sculpture back from the police department to use for advertising purposes," he says.

The Facebook group now totals more than 4,000 supporters, the story has subsequently been picked up by the AP and Washington Post, and capitalism comes through again as a new web site is attempting to profit from the hysteria by selling $30 t-shirts.

Now, you can follow updates on twitter: https://twitter.com/barrelmonster. [Hat tip: 30Threads]

. . . This is getting to be insane.

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Original Post

WRAL breaks the story about the NC State student arrested for creating a monster out of traffic barrels.



This is far from the student’s first stunt. It’s not even his first traffic barrel sculpture:



I understand that it would be unreasonable to expect the authorities to draw the line between simple vandalism and art (and even this work of art was destruction manipulation of someone else’s property), but come on -- Raleigh the world needs this.

To me this is like Edward Scissorhands coming and sculpting your bushes unannounced: true, you didn’t invite him, but the final product is way better than what was there before. Besides, consider the “property” of interest here: this is not someone’s precious bushes; it is heinous orange and white striped road blemishes paid for out of the public's pocket. If our system can’t tolerate the beautification of these, then either the police take themselves too seriously, or worse, we have a system that suppresses harmless displays of imagination.

Until his work turns from constructive to destructive, throwing this man in jail would be orders of magnitude worse than any crime he has ever committed. Just read a couple of his quotes and I think you will agree:

Raleigh’s Downtown Wide Open festival provided me with some entertainment in the form of some fireworks and I sat for a bit and watched the thousands of people make their mad dash out of downtown. After watching, for some time, the ants from my high seat in the sky I proceeded getting down to business. Tonight’s climb had a mission objective: test my nerve and my faith in my climbing gear. I won’t lie and say this little maneuver failed to scare me. It did. But that’s good for you every once in a while; to get that ultra shot of adrenaline going. But in a few seconds it fades and you relax and like a bat hanging from the ceiling you lay back and look down at a world full of busy bees who scurry about pursuing activities they think are important. If they only knew.

I found it hard not to let out a mad indian war cry from my perch above the city street teaming with bar-hoppers. “Wake up! Look up! There is a whole world of adventure outside your world of cubicles and alcohol-escapism!” But I doubt they would listen.

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Now that his name and face are public, I searched the North Carolina court system website for his court date, but so far the only record with his name is a speeding violation, and that is way over in Richmond County (between Charlotte and Fayetteville). I'll keep you updated if I learn anything new.

Update 1: The N&O picks up the story. The barrels are owned by a contractor working on the Hillsborough St. renovation. Apparently, the artist has offered to pay for the barrels (estimated ~$360) and a court case is scheduled for July 21st.

Update 2: The NC State newspaper, The Technician, had a June 3 interview with the artist.

He suggests on his blog that you might be able to help by writing to the city's DA, but this is likely wishful thinking. I would love to know what the city plans on doing with the barrel monster. If it's for sale, I'd happily bid on it. If enough people express interest in purchasing the monster, perhaps it would open the city's eyes.

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Related:
No Promise of Safety (his blog)
A healthy discussion about his industrial tower painting on the New Raleigh blog

Bad Art

I first heard of the Museum of Bad Art when Kerry posted about it last March. Kottke linked to it again last week.

(Much of the collection is hilarious, but I must admit, with some pieces I think "that's not all that bad." Shows my artistic sensibilities, I guess.)

Many of the artists are anonymous, and probably not artists by trade, but I believe even the collection of bad art among highly successful professional artists would be fairly sizable. Fine art, especially, is a learned talent. Consider the artwork covering the walls of an elementary school classroom -- some of it is better than others to be sure, but none of it is good. It sounds obvious to say, but I think a lot of people fail to understand this point: Artists are not born, they are made -- even little Van Gogh's crayon drawings would have sucked.

I would love to see the works of the great artists lined up in a timeline by their age. Unfortunately I think much of their earliest work is hidden from public view because, well, it sucked.

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Related:
The latest Think Different TV with Colin Marshall discusses the need for a "museum of first drafts".

An obnoxious optical illusion

I have watched this probably 10 times now and I'm still fooled every time. I am tempted to reproduce the illusion myself just to test its legitimacy.



[Hat tip: Kottke]

Starting a blog is the easy part

"Blogs Falling in an Empty Forest" New York Times 6/5:

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which runs a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks had been updated in the past 120 days. That translates to 95 percent of blogs being essentially abandoned, left to lie fallow on the Web, where they become public remnants of a dream — or at least an ambition — unfulfilled.

Judging from conversations with retired bloggers, many of the orphans were cast aside by people who had assumed that once they started blogging, the world would beat a path to their digital door.

Now, for your viewing pleasure, there is a site collecting those remnants of unfulfilled dreams: One post wonder.

[Hat tip: ECONJEFF]

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P.S. - Congratulations to myself for breaking the 6 month blogging-threshold. Amazingly, there are a few mysterious souls lurking in some dark, web-enabled corners of the earth that still return to this blog regularly. Thanks to all those who read and comment on this blog!

Beard growth, time lapsed

Trendhunter:

Christoph Rehage planned to walk about 5,000 km from China to Germany, taking a photo of himself every day for one year—and not shaving once.

You will see in the video that he grew a “mighty long beard” throughout that time. The original goal was to reach Germany from China; however, he did not accomplish his goal on foot. Rehage did walk from Urumqi in the northwest of China to Beijing, which is still a feat, all on its own. Watch the video to his transformation.

Add rainfall to the list of things for young parents to worry about

We examine the effect of early-life rainfall on the health, education, and socioeconomic outcomes of Indonesian adults. We link historical rainfall for each individual's birth year and birth location with adult outcomes from the 2000 Indonesia Family Life Survey (IFLS). Higher early-life rainfall has large positive effects on the adult outcomes of women, but not of men. Women with 20 percent higher rainfall (relative to the local norm) are 0.57 centimeters taller, complete 0.22 more schooling grades, and live in households scoring 0.12 standard deviations higher on an asset index. Schooling attainment appears to mediate the impact on adult women's socioeconomic status.

Under the Weather: Health, Schooling, and Economic Consequences of Early-Life Rainfall.

[Hat tip: Geary Behavioural Economics Blog (with an all-new look!)]

Living abroad and creativity

Scientific American 6/14:

It turns out that the length of time spent living abroad is a significant predictor of coming up with the most creative solution. But, it was only living abroad that rewarded students with increased creativity. Two weeks of hostel hopping don’t count.

The article is gated, but you can read the abstract here.

I don't doubt that living abroad enhances creativity somewhat, but I wish they would show some numbers. A "significant" difference does not imply a considerable difference. I want to know the size of the effect, and how it compares to other factors.

The Higher Education Bubble

Tyler Cowen 6/10:

The higher education bubble has burst. The expiration of stimulus funds in 2011 will be a crushing event for many public sector universities.

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"Will Education be the Next Bubble to Burst?" The Chronicle of Higher Education 5/22:

Consumers who have questioned whether it is worth spending $1,000 a square foot for a home are now asking whether it is worth spending $1,000 a week to send their kids to college. There is a growing sense among the public that higher education might be overpriced and under-delivering.

[Hat tip: Freakonomics]

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I, too, am beginning to question the value of higher ed. I spent a night teaching myself genomics through videos and articles all over the web, and when you can customize something like this to your own knowledge -- pausing videos to look up something on Wikipedia or whatever -- I probably gained a much deeper understanding than I ever would have in a classroom lecture. The one thing that's missing is a professor to provide feedback on what I've learned, but this, too, would not be hard to solve with the web.

Why I'm cheap

Let's say you're interested in expanding your horizons and seeing the world, and so you decide to book a lovely week long vacation to Tokyo for two at the modest price of $2,700. "This is only a fraction of my salary," you might rationalize, "I can easily afford this, and it would be a wonderful experience". It seems that this is how most people think about the decision, but, critically, they're ignoring the time-value of the money.

Scenario 2

A better way to look at the problem is to say "we could invest the $2,700, and in 10 years we could expect to have $5,800 to go to both Tokyo and Paris. Or we could wait 20 years and have ~$12,600 (~5 trips to Tokyo); 30 years and have ~$27,000 (~10 trips to Tokyo); or 40 years and have ~$59,000 (~22 trips to Tokyo)."

Scenario 2 is still inherently selfish; it's just delaying the vacation until later in life, when you will be able to get more and better vacations. But I think this is still too short sighted, and I go a step further:

Scenario 3

I could stay home, read a book about Tokyo, invest the money, let it grow. If I let that $2,700 grow for 77 years, it would be worth over $1,000,000. True, I wouldn't be around to make use of it, but I'll take $1M for my grandchildren over an extravagant vacation for myself.

And consider this . . .

In 100 years, it will be worth nearly $6M.
In 144 years, it will exceed the NET worth of LeBron James ($170M).
In 166 years, it will have reached ~$1B (BILLION).
In 215 years, it will exceed the NET worth of Bill Gates ($40B).
In 257 years, it will have reached ~$1T (TRILLION).
In 290 years, it will exceed the current value of the U.S. GDP ($13T).
In 309 years, it will exceed the current value of the Gross World Product ($56T).

. . . all for what was originally a modest vacation for two.

That might seem surreal, but do the math yourself. I assumed an 8% annual growth rate.

This is why try to be careful with every dollar -- because it's hard to justify needlessly spending a dollar on myself when I know it could be worth so much more given a little time.

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Related:
Historical stock growth rates [histogram and calculator]
Calculate your future stock earnings

More Nicholas Felton creative fodder

One personal annual report a year is not enough for me, so I have a google alert with Nicholas Felton's name. Recently, I've discovered some more creative infographic inspiration from the man himself:

He has a Tumblr!

Theofficeof.feltron.com has a portfolio of his work.

And finally, a photostream on flickr.

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Related:
2008 Personal Annual Report (with a 3 minute video from WSJ)
Felton interviewed by Spark
Predicted energy trends infographic

The account of a short career at the New Yorker

Dan Baum runs the story as a series of tweets from May 8 - 12 which can be viewed in full at his website: http://www.danbaum.com/Nine_Lives/New_Yorker_tweets.html.

Lesson learned: Stay out of journalism because even at its pinnacle, it's an anxiety-ridden world where the benefits are low, and office politics predominate.

[Hat tip: Seth Roberts]

Job gains and losses by sector over time [infographic]

Click to enlarge

Once you take 30 seconds to figure out how to read the chart, this is a brilliantly informative graphic.

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Related:
Unemployment rate by education level over time

A new video from Keith Loutit

Bathtub V from Keith Loutit.

I think it's not quite as good as the previous video in the series, but that might have been the most impressive 3 minutes of web video I've seen.

Wikipedia: the 2-feet tall book

PSFK 6/10:

Rob Matthews has created a hefty physical version of Wikipedia’s featured articles. The 2,559 digital articles have been transformed into a massive, 5,000 page hardbound book that looks to be around 2 feet tall. Though thoroughly impractical, the project beautifully illustrates the usefulness of digital information.

Unemployment rate by education level over time [graph]

Click to enlarge

I am amazed by how smooth and consistent the trend is. The lines never once cross! An 8% rate of unemployment is generally considered high, but get this: the unemployment rate for those with less than a high school diploma is consistently 8 to 10 percentage points higher than the rate for those with a bachelors degree or higher!

[Calculated Risk 6/6]

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Related:

A closer look at the unemployment rate

A few good ones from the Passive-Aggressive archives

passive-aggressive (and just plain aggressive) notes

Time lapse of HD video scoreboard installation

If you read local blogs in the Triangle, you have doubtless seen this by now, but for everyone else (particularly the engineering types), you might appreciate this time lapse video of the installation of the new HD video board in the RBC Center.



[I saw it on the NC State Sports Blog first, so I will hat tip them]

Kiva experiments with opening lending to U.S. entrepreneurs

Marketplace 6/10:

Microcredit in the U.S. has existed for two decades, but it gets less attention here than in the rest of the world. The average U.S. loan is $7,000, compared to a few hundred abroad. And relative need may be perceived differently too. [...] To test the waters, Kiva is having two U.S. microfinance institutions post their entrepreneur's profiles online.

This is a fascinating development and I've long wondered why there is not a website for direct person-to-person lending. I'd be very interested to know the interest rates on the microloans to U.S. entrepreneurs; the interest rates in developing countries are typically above 40% because of the small amount of the loans and the time cost. But while the loan amounts are higher and the time costs smaller in the U.S., I have also heard that the default rate is much higher among U.S. entrepreneurs (possibly because there is less competition among lenders in developing countries), so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. Plus, if you're going to open your doors to the U.S., then the next logical step is to open your doors to the entire world.

Frequency of overtime games in the NBA [histogram]

Cheap Talk (6/10): The Overtime Spike in NBA Basketball

Here is a frequency histogram of the difference in points between the home team and visiting team at the end of regulation play. These are data from all NBA games 1997-2009. A positive number means that the home team won, a zero means that the game was tied and therefore went into overtime. Notice the massive spike at zero.

Visit the link above for a very cool video showing how this histogram changes in the waning seconds of a game.

It's not surprising that there is a spike at zero given end-of-game strategy -- a team with the opportunity to tie or lead will likely elect to take the high-percentage option -- but what surprises me is the size of the spike. I would guess that this spike would be lower in high school basketball, for example, since players are less likely to convert on end-of-game opportunities, but it would be interesting to see the two histograms side by side.

Oil prices over time [infographic]

I'm not sure how much can be gathered from these selected 9 years of oil price data, but the infographic has some nice features, particularly with the annotation.

[Hat tip: Visualizing Economics]

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Related:
Natural resources remaining [infographic]
Deutschland's past 60 years (spiral graphic)

Historical stock growth rates [histogram and calculator]

Click to enlarge

This infographic comes from a post last December on the Daily Kos. It shows the percentage change in the S & P 500 Market Index for every year since 1825. 2008, we can see, was a historically bad year (unless you're a short seller).

While this is a great way to summarize historical stock trends, it's not the best way to judge the expected rate of return on your investments because, for example, a 100% growth rate one year followed by a 50% decline the next would not be an average return of 25%, but rather a real annualized gain of zero. To gain a better perspective, moneychimp.com offers this calculator showing the real annualized return for a selected date range.

Lamar Odom's candy diet

"People making it like I sit there and eat a whole plate of candy before I play a basketball game," Odom said. "I don't think anyone could do that."

[. . .]

He joked that the uproar from those who disapprove has him considering a switch from candy to salad. "I'm going to say my favorite thing is to eat salads and I'll be like the altar boy," he said.

AP story on the LA Lakers player's love of candy.

Odom, apparently, is not the only Laker whose diet has needed work:

Throughout the years, [coach Phil] Jackson has had several players with lousy eating habits.

"A lot of these players come from positions in life where their diet probably is one of the main things they have to correct when they become professional players," he said.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by this, but in the highly competitive world of professional sports, it does somewhat surprise me that even a lousy diet does not prevent athletes from succeeding.

Overhauling Public Education

Yesterday's Talk of the Nation featured a 30 minute interview with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his plans to overhaul the educational system, calling it "the civil rights issue of our generation". I agree that it's hard to think of a topic more important than this one.

I am delighted that he is in favor of things like merit pay and charter schools, but why not take it the final step and be in favor of getting the government out of the business of running schools altogether? This is not to say that the government should not finance education, particularly for those who cannot afford it -- it's simply to say that schools should not be run by politicians.

His criteria for charter schools are:

1.) There needs to be a high barrier to entry so that only the very top applicants are given permission to run their own school.
2.) The schools need to be given the freedom to operate and be innovative.
3.) The schools need to be held accountable for their performance.

I applaud him for point # 2, and I think this is single most important issue in the education reform discussion. But points 1 and 3 are again just dragging the schools back into politics. Instead of letting the politicians decide who is a good applicant or which schools are performing best, let the parents decide; and instead of letting the politicians decide the optimal class size, or the right teacher pay, let the schools decide.

My ideal scenario would be for parents to get an educational stipend so they can choose to spend it on whichever school they want, and the schools can choose to charge whatever they want, and run their school however they want. Why not at least try this in some small section of the country and see how it works? Besides, the burden of proof should be on the government to prove why schools should not be run like regular businesses.

Bottom-line: The single biggest problem in the public school system is that schools are run by politicians in the interest of politicians instead of by businesspeople in the interest of parents.

Jason Salavon's Late Night Triad

When Martin Wattenberg likened the work of Jason Salavon to a world of ethereal platonic essences, I had to find out what this guy was all about, so I perused his website.

This is not new, but I don't know how I missed it before:

In this 2003 installation, from a broader series begun in 1997, 64 nights' worth of the major US late night talk shows have been aligned and averaged using basic transformations. The result is a triptych of video projections with soundtrack, presenting an amalgamation of monologues which reveals the ghosts of repetitious structure and nightly activity.

You must check out the 3.5 minute video -- I can't come up with a better way to describe it than, well, ethereal platonic essences.

The similarities are incredible -- not only in that the 64 shows are similar enough for a clear picture to emerge, but also in the similarities between the three shows. Their bodies occupy a nearly identical portion of the screen, their wardrobe hues average out to be about the same, and all three sets are lined at the bottom with a dark streak and at the top with a bright blue streak. The economics of this are fascinating -- is it that the three shows are copying each other, or have they settled at some sort of optimum? It's hard to believe that the shows receive enough viewer feedback to truly optimize all these decisions -- set layout, lighting, wardrobe, length of segments, camera angle and zoom, etc., etc. -- but maybe the market forces work in stronger and subtler ways than we can imagine!

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Related:
30 minute Documentary on Jason Salavon from the Columbus Museum of Art

What is this room used for?

Click the image to find out.

New York Times article

[Hat tip: BLDG BLOG]

Deutschland's past 60 years [infographic]

Click to enlarge

From the newish infographic blog by Jan Schwochow (written in German): Golden Section Graphics News.

[Hat tip: Infographic News]

Q & A with Martin Wattenberg

Martin Wattenberg is a leading expert in the field of information visualization. Even if you know nothing about the field, you are likely to recognize some of his projects: for his wife's book, he created the baby name voyager, which went viral on the web; history flow tracks the edit history of wikipedia pages; one of his earliest projects was the map of the market; and many other projects can be viewed at his website.

He is the founding manager of IBM’s Visual Communication Lab, which researches new forms of visualization and how they can enable better collaboration. The group is making strides to democratize information visualization with Many Eyes and the New York Times Visualization Lab, which provide users with the tools to visualize and analyze text and data in the style of Martin Wattenberg.

I am sincerely grateful to Martin for his thoughtful responses.


Q. What can I say to help people better understand the value of information visualization?

A. A jeweler selling a ring always asks the customer to try it on. The same trick works with data visualization: if you can show people their own data in the form of a chart, they find it hard to go back to a table.


Q. How might visualization be used in ways that it is not currently being used?

A. My collaborator Fernanda Viegas and I believe that visualization is an expressive medium. One of the themes of our work is extending this technology to spark memories, to spur creativity, to convey subtle thoughts and emotions.


Q. Many Eyes and the New York Times Visualization Lab are tremendous efforts to democratize visualization. How do you think it’s going so far? How would you like to see it evolve?

A. I'm very happy with how they're working. At the same time, one of the exciting aspects of the field is just how far we still have to go. One important area for improvement is handling data other than numbers: text, images, and video. We've done some work here, but there's huge progress still to be made. I'd also like to work on ways to deepen the analytic discussions that take place around visualizations.


Q. Briefly, please describe the process of creating visualizations start to finish. I’m sure no two are the same, but generally how do you come up with the idea, how much planning is involved, how long does it take, how many people work on it and in what roles, what tools are used, etc.?

A. The process can vary tremendously, and it's different for different people. The one constant is that every single good idea in the visualization world has come from intense engagement with real-life data sets. That's why my first piece of advice for people starting to work on visualizations is to begin by finding data they care about deeply.


Q. What makes a visualization really good?

A. Different projects succeed in different ways. Florence Nightingale saved millions of lives with her charts. The Hertzsprung-Russell diagram and the periodic table of elements led to huge scientific advances. But I also value gentler aims. When I look at the work of Jason Salavon, for instance, I feel like I'm making contact with a world of ethereal platonic essences.


Q. What sort of education would you recommend for aspiring information visualizers? Which subjects should they study, and in what order (computer science, design, mathematics/statistics, human-computer interaction, other)? Are there particular programs such as MIT’s Media Lab that you would recommend?

A. Anyone doing visualization will have to think about colors, mouse clicks, numbers, algorithms, and so on. That doesn't mean you have to take academic courses in design, HCI, statistics, and programming, however. You can get a working knowledge of these areas in many ways.

Looking at people whose work I admire, their educations had three things in common. First, they all learned at least one subject deeply--though there's no pattern in the subjects they studied! Second, they didn't simply learn theory, but also became good at the craft aspects their field, whether design, programming, or architecture. And finally, everyone I know who does good work is intensely curious about the world and always learning pieces of new fields--as a result they find it easy to see the big picture in a project, and to communicate with collaborators.

For people choosing a graduate school, a big issue is finding the right advisor. Your best bet may be to look at who is writing the academic papers that interest you the most. You can also learn a lot outside of academia. When it comes to visualization there's real intellectual action at corporate research labs and at media companies.


Q. What should aspiring visualizers know that would not be obvious to ask?

A. The time is right to make an impact in visualization! This field is new, and so is much more accessible than doing algebraic geometry or playing the violin. Today, if you're interested in data and graphics and have a creative approach--especially if it's based on a deep idea from a seemingly unrelated field--it's entirely possible for your visualization to sweep the web. The key to success is finding data you think is tremendously important, and that you want to share with other people.

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Related:
Q & A with Nathan Yau of FlowingData
He creates ways of seeing information (Boston Globe 12/12/08)
Rise of the Data Scientist (FlowingData 6/4/09)

A closer look at the unemployment rate

Richard Florida looks at the current rates of unemployment by race, gender, education, and class.

Human Capital/Education: Unemployment is even more uneven by education or human capital level. The unemployment rate for college graduates is 4.8 percent, half that for high school (only) graduates (10 percent), and one-third of the 15.5 percent rate facing those without a high school diploma.

Aerials over Texas

Both come from the very good but too infrequently updated e.m.m.a.

In the Year 3000

"In the year 3000: YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook merge into one huge, time wasting site called YouTwitFace."

-Conan O'Brien

[Thanks, Pavs]

Life expectancy over time [charts]

Understanding Uncertainty offers this interactive chart allowing you to parse and visualize life expectancy back to 1845. [Hat tip: Chart Porn]



The thing that stands out most to me is that while life expectancy has steadily increased from 41 in 1845 to 77 in 2006, life span has not increased nearly as much; even in 1845, some people were living into their late 90's.

The chart below better represents the point that life expectancy is increasing, but life span, not so much. The chart comes from the presentation delivered by David Sinclair at the Rand Summer Institute called Aging Research: What and When Will Be the Impact on Society? I highly recommend viewing at least chapters 1 through 8, but chapters 9 and above were a bit too technical for me. [Hat tip to Geary Behavioral Economics Blog]



But wait, there's good news: Aubrey de Gray, in one of my favorite TED talks ever, convinces me that aging is not inevitable, and that life span can be considerably increased.



Other interesting things . . .

Wikipedia offers this table of life expectancy throughout human history:

Humans by Era	Average Lifespan at Birth (years)
Upper Paleolithic	33
Neolithic	20
Bronze Age[5]	18
Bronze age, Sweden[6]	40-60
Classical Greece[7]	20-30
Classical Rome[8]	20-30
Pre-Columbian North America[9]	25-35
Medieval Islamic Caliphate[10]	35+
Medieval Britain[14][15]	20-30
Early 20th Century[16][17]	30-40
Current world average[18][19]	70 (2008 est.)

And here is what life expectancy looks like in the world today:



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Related:
The geography of life expectancy in the US
BMI and life expectancy

Re-thinking rules in sports

There are already constant trade-offs in sports between size and skill, but David Friedman wants to add another dimension: the number of players. He modestly proposes that, instead of limiting the number of players (which results in "blatant bigism"), limit the total weight of the football team to 2400 pounds, or similarly, in basketball, limit the total height of the basketball team.

This is an interesting idea and would require much more calculus on the team's part to set the right mix of size and number of players on the field. I have no idea what the optimal mix would look like, but it's interesting to think about.

Focus

Two paragraphs succinctly describe the importance of focus in the age of the web, including this quote: [Hat tip: Kottke]

As with philosophy, poetry is a time-intensive practice that requires deep focus and concentration. Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook and the host of real-time-web feed services belong on the opposite side of the spectrum. They are quintessentially distraction-based media; shallow on context and truncated into staccato bursts of conversation.

Before he was Google's Chief Economist, Hal Varian wrote a piece on Markets for Information Goods, which included this telling quote on the increasing scarcity of time:

The supply of information (in virtually every medium) grows exponentially whereas the amount that is consumed grows at best linearly. This is ultimately due to the fact that our mental powers and time available to process information is constrained. This has the uncomfortable consequence that the fraction of the information produced that is actually consumed is asymptoting towards zero.

Trouble on the horizon for NCAA basketball

Skip Sauer: Turning pro early, in Europe

A few top-level college players are already skipping college to play overseas, and it's safe to assume the trend will continue as the talent levels and salaries improve across the pond. If Europe eventually becomes the primary destination for top-level talent, the NCAA will be forced to change. Some people may believe that the NCAA will be fine because alumni will always support their teams no matter the talent level, just like believing that people will buy the same amount of gas as prices go up, but this view requires an unhealthy respect for the Law of Demand. ACC teams are not going to fill 20,000 seat stadiums if the talent level sinks to that of the Colonial Athletic Association.

In the next 50 years or so, I suspect that growing international competition will force the NCAA to drop their rules preventing athletes from earning fair compensation.

...at least I hope so.

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Related:
Q & A with the Sports Economist, Skip Sauer

Two water contraptions

1. The Oculus Yacht (250-foot luxury vessel styled after the jaw and eye socket bone structure of large oceanic creatures) [via PSFK]

2. The Falkirk Wheel (a clever solution to lift and lower boats 79 feet from one canal to another)

Automaker market share over time [infographic]

From the Financial Times



Things really do change slowly. Despite clearly inferior vehicles, US automakers still lead in market share. The Big Three automakers combined have 47% market share compared to the Japanese manufacturers with only 35%.

In 1980, the Big Three had 76% of the market, so it's an admittedly large drop, but it surprises me that they are still holding down nearly 50% market share with lower quality and higher prices.

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Related:
Product adoption rates over time

Vernon Smith

I cannot wait to read the autobiography of Vernon Smith, easily one of the most fascinating people in the field of economics. He shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics with Daniel Kahneman for his pioneering work in experimental economics. This was one of the most interesting years for the Nobel Prize because Khaneman's lab work in behavioral economics showed that people are systematically irrational while Smith's lab work, in sharp contrast, showed that markets perform remarkably efficiently, even with a small number of buyers and sellers. There is a 30 minute interview with the two giants on the Nobel Prize web site here.

Vernon Smith is about as free-market as they come, and has a profound respect for the work of Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek. But his work is some of the first to show quantiatively, unequivically just how efficiently markets operate. Interestingly, Smith was originally skeptical of traditional economic orthodoxy and designed the experiments for his class to prove that markets don't actually operate how theory predicts. But to his disbelief, the experiments showed time and time again that markets tend toward the efficient price and output. For more on Smith's work and philosophy, I recommend listening to either of his two EconTalk interviews.

I've been fascinated with Smith's work ever since I saw him give a talk at NC State a few years ago. For awhile, it was my intention to go to graduate school at George Mason to hopefully study experimental economics with Smith's group, but he left for a small school in California called Chapman University that does not offer a graduate program in economics. (This is surprising considering that the school's president, James L. Doti, is a well-known economist and a member of the Governator's Council of Economic Advisors.)

Smith's former colleague, Tyler Cowen, offers a review of Smith's autobiography the way only Tyler Cowen can -- with incredible succinctness and clarity.

Here is a quote from the back flap of the book:

Any three-year-old can force you to the outermost limits of your knowledge by asking , "Why?" three times in response to any answer. It is a soberting observation that all children pass through a short "repeat-why" stage, pressing to identify the limits of what is known, before they learn to stop asking and arbitrarily accept living with less, a state that I have found troubling...throughout my life.