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Yiddish newspapers and talking cows, a case for Jewish education

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Jewish education is a mess according to the Times. Most anyone outside it, who’d look in would agree: Ancient books, pre-science outlooks, anti-inclusive, and taught in a garble of languages, Yiddish, English, Aramaic, Hebrew. The New York Times has runs regular editorials claiming that Jewish education robs children of a future, or an entrance to society, producing adults who know nothing of geometry or higher math, or modern history, incapable of voting intelligently in today’s elections (they often vote Republican). The Times’s experts, are often the products of this education, but claim to have risen above it, only because of extra work. As a proof, they often cite the Talmud as a source of useless knowledge of ancient Jewish law, rejected Bible history, and only the most basic views of math. By way of a response, I’d like to quote something I’d heard in synagog a couple of weeks back:

“I’m so glad that I learned geometry in school, and not taxes. It’s really come in handy this parallelogram season.“

The speaker was an accountant, and the point of the joke is that there is no parallelogram season. There is a tax season, though, and tax law follows a bizarre logic that is not geometric, but is somewhat talmudic. As for the useless languages, they are all in use, both as spoken languages and written languages, no less useful than Latin, and certainly more alive. There are currently 5 yiddish-language newspapers being published in New York alone, see below. They compete with each other for readers, while competing also with the Times, the Post, and with another ten or more Hebrew and English journals, several of them Jewish, either published on paper or as web-journals. People read them, though the Times prefers to ignore their existence.

There are five newspapers published currently in Yiddish in New York. The Forward (Tony Curtis and duck) and the Vort are left-leaning, the Algeminer, the Blat, and the Zeitung, are more right and center. There is a readership. Why a duck?

And that brings us to the subject matter, Talmud. Much of Jewish learning is Talmud, either distilled or pure, study of a set of books written between 1000 and 2000 years ago in Israel, Babylon, and France mostly, with commentaries from Spain, Morocco, Egypt, Germany, and Poland. Those who learned talmud tend to find it useful. The legal organization and approach resonates to them in the understanding of taxes, contracts, building, damage assessment, marriage, ethics, even in dealing with alcoholism. Talmud is so useful that it’s common for working, orthodox Jews to continue their learning it throughout their lives. A common practice is to learn a page every day in synchrony with other Jews. Today’s page, when I started writing this post, was Nazir 10. It includes a talking cow, just the sort of section that the Times likes to cite to show the uselessness of it all. I’ll forgive their lack of understanding, but not their laziness for not even bothering to try to understand.

Nazir 10 begins by saying: “If a cow says, ‘I will be a Nazir (that is, I will give up wine for a month) if I stand up’. Then, if it gets up, one school of rabbinic thought (Bais Shammai) says he is a nazir. Another school of thought (Bais Hillel) says he is not a nazir.” The page goes on to speak about taking doors, but I’ll stop here after the first 2 sentences and will try to explain what the Times does not care to examine.

Notice that cows are female, and they typically don’t speak, but here you find a “he” who might have to give up wine. This “he”, this male, is understood to be a person looking at the cow, likely a person with an alcohol problem. He sees a cow lying on the ground (in the mud figuratively) and identifies it to himself. That is, he sees himself lying in the mud. He thinks it’s impossible for the cow to get up because he imagines that he himself can not get up. (This is just the Talmud’s way of discussing things). According to Bais Shammai, the person is understood to have said to himself, “if that cow can get up, I will take it as a sign that I can get up, and I will take it on myself to avoid wine and wine products for a month.” Now, according to Bais Shammai, if the cow gets up, the man is obligated to stop drinking for a month.

“I love television, and find it very educational. When someone turns it on, I go read a book.” G. Marx

Bais Hillel says he is not obligated at all. They say that a drunk who wants to change, must do more than be inspired, he must make a real verbal commitment. He must verbally obligate himself to give up drink. We follow this latter opinion, but learn Bais Shammai’s view too, because there are important ideas about self-identity.

Those are just the first two lines of the page. In secular school, you learn stories too, sometimes stories with talking animals, but these are usually modern stories, where the challenges are external, bullying say, but in a sense such stories are sanitized. The internal demons are removed, and these are often the hardest to battle. Even dealing with external problems is often pushed on an external authority, a teacher usually. You are considered to be too weak to deal with a problem. Sometimes that’s true, usually there is at least some part you could deal with. The lack of self-obligation leaves modern school stories flat. Few kids enjoy them, or feel they get anything from them. A result in Detroit is that schools have <50% attendance. Kids leave barely literate with appalling math skills. We blame the teachers and the subject. It’s the book: Sally has 15 tomatoes and wants to give 4 to a friend, how many will she have left? is this relevant? Does this excite?

Talmud teaches some logic, some math, and some geometry, but only for measuring distances and volumes, the application that geometry was named for (geometry = measuring the earth). They learn the rest as needed, and often learn quite a lot.

As Groucho Marx said: “My education is self inflicted.”

The products of Jewish education become successful, often in business, hiring their better-educated brothers. Some become lawyers, accountants, writers, businessmen, or psychologists — more than our share in the population — or mathematicians and scientists. Some even excel in academics or journalism. The Times does not mention this.

Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Karl Marx

My three children all went to Jewish, religious school and got the education that the Times calls abuse. So far, my son (31) has two masters degrees, both in artificial intelligence/ computer science. My older daughter (28) is getting her PhD in Psychology, and my younger daughter (23) is working on her masters in epidemiology. I suspect they benefited from the education. My suggestion to the Times, is in another Marx quote: “If you find it hard to laugh at yourself, I would be happy to do it for you.”

Robert Buxbaum, March 1, 2023. “History may not think with its feet, but it certainly doesn’t walk on its head.”– Karl Marx, the less-funny, Marx brother. Jewish educated, he became a journalist.

Girls are doing better, Boys are doing far worse.

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When I began college in 1972, the majority of engineering students and business students were male. They from the top of their high school classes, and from stable homes mostly; they went on to high paying jobs. Boys also dominated at the bottom of society. They were the majority of the criminals, drug addicts, and high-school dropouts. Many went off to Vietnam. Some, those who were handy, went to trade schools and a reasonable life, productive life. Society did not seem bothered by the destruction of boys in prison, or Vietnam, or by drugs, but there was an outcry that so few women achieved high academic levels. A famous presentation of the problem was called “for every 100 girls.” An updated version appears below showing the status as of October, 2021. A more detailed version appears further down.

From the table above, you can see that women are now the majority of those in college, the majority of those with a bachelors degree or higher, and a majority of those with advanced degrees. Colleges added special tutoring, special grants, and special programs. Each college had a Society of Women Engineers office, and similar programs in law and math. All of these explicitly excluded men or highly discouraged their presence. The curriculum was changed too; made more female-friendly. Dirty, and physical experiments were removed, replaced with group analysis of the social interactions — important aspects of engineers that boys were far-less adept at doing well. Perhaps society and engineering is better off now, but boys (men) are far worse off. This is particularly seem by the following chart, looking at the bottom. Boys/men provide the vast majority of the prison population, of those diagnosed as learning disabled, of those expelled, or overdosed, and among the war dead.

I’ve previously noted that a majority of boys in school are considered disruptive, and that these boys are routinely diagnosed as ADHD and drugged. It is not at all clear that this is a good thing, or that the drugs help anyone but the teacher. I’ve also noted that artwork and attitudes that were considered normal for boys are now considered disturbing and criminal like saying I wish the school was blown up. The cure here, perhaps is worse than the disease. I’m not saying that we should encourage boys to say such things, but that we should acknowledge a difference between an active and a passive wish. And we should find a way to educate boys/men so they don’t end up unemployed, addicted, or dead. Currently boy, particularly those at the bottom are on the scrap-heap of society.

Here is some source material for the above:

Robert Buxbaum, May 28, 2022

A high minimum wage killed Detroit, perhaps Seattle and NYC too.

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In July, eitght years ago, Detroit filed for bankruptcy protection. The US was well into an economic expansion, but the expansion had largely bypassed Detroit. The Detroit area unemployment rate was 9.7%, and the Detroit city rate was 17%, among the highest in the nation. Tax income was not sufficient to pay retirement or current employees. The city was riven by corruption and crime, and attendance in school was dismal, less that 25% in some districts, about 55% as an overall average. Kids no longer saw a value in education. After bankruptcy, things started to improve dramatically.

Detroit area unemployment rate, 2005 to 2021.

The largest cause of the problem, and of the solution, in my opinion, was a high Detroit minimum wage that applied before bankruptcy and that was voided by bankruptcy. It was called a “living wage”. In 2013 it was $16/ hour and applied to any business that dealt with the city and did not offer health insurance (see more on the specifics here).The stated purpose was to insure that all workers could support a family of four in some middle-class standard, by one wage-earner working 40 hours per week. It was a view of Detroit family life and economic need that didn’t match Detroit reality. In practice most of Detroit were not 4 person, one wage-earner households. It meant that most Detroiters could not find jobs, since most companies worked in some way with the city. The only workers who could find jobs were those with special skills or political connections. The alternative was criminal business including drug sales, prostitution and burglary. The unemployment rate was 70% among Detroit’s teenagers.

The high minimum wage bought loyalty for Detroit’s political bosses; they gave out jobs for kickbacks, and some went to jail, including the mayor. Most Detroiters could not find jobs, though, and this especially hurt those looking for their first job: the job that would demonstrate that math and spelling were important; that you had to show up on time, dressed clean, and that you were not to insult the customers. High unemployment meant low tax revenue, made worse by high city employment costs for basic services: janitors, secretaries, and mail room personnel. The city was a mess.

When Detroit went bankrupt, among the first changes was to eliminate the $!6/hour living wage for employees and others doing business with the city. This helped bring the city budget into balance, and it brought in residents, businesses, and developers. By January 2020 Detroit’s unemployment rate had fallen to 6%, and Detroit metro unemployment had fallen to 4.2%, the lowest rates on record. Employment gives a motivation to stay in Detroit and to stay in school: there are jobs to be had for those who could add and spell. I covered these improvements here.

Seattle are unemployment rate 2015 to 2021. Seattle’s unemployment rate is now higher than Detroit’s.

Meanwhile, Seattle voted to raise their minimum wage to $15, with the change law taking effect in stages. The law fully came into effect three months ago, in January, 2021. New York voted for similar changes more recently. It is hard to be sure of the effect of the high minimum wage but already it seems to have hit employment. By the latest data, Seattle’s unemployment rate has risen to 6.9%. That’s higher than in Detroit, a real reversal. While unemployment in New York City has yet to rise much, they have seen a drop in rent rates while Detroit has seen a rise. New York’s are also moving to be more out of balance, something that leads to corruption and bankruptcy. We’ll see how this works out.

Robert Buxbaum, March 25, 2021. Among my first blog posts were complaints about Detroit’s high “living wage”, see here for example. As Puerto Rico slid into bankruptcy, I complained about the same thing.

On-line education sucks.

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…And [the leper] shall cover his face to the lip, and call out unclean, unclean… (Lev. 13: 45)

Video and TV-learning has been with us for a long time. It’s called PBS. It’s entertaining, but as education, it sucks. You can see the great courses on DVD too. The great professors teaching great material. It’s entertaining, but as education, they suck.

Consider PBS, the public broadcast system, it was funded 50 years ago and given a portion of the spectrum to be a font for at-distance education. At first they tried showing classroom lectures from the best of professors. Few people watched, and hardly anyone learned. Hardly anyone was willing to do catch every lecture, or do any of the reading or any of the assigned homework. Some did some problems, but only if they already knew the subject, sort of as a refresher . No viewer of record learned enough to perform a trade based on PBS-learnign, nor achieved any academic proficiency that would allow them to publish is a reviewed journal, unless they already had that proficiency. A good question is why, but first lets consider the great DVD lectures in science or engineering . They too have been around for years, but I’ve yet to meet anyone of proficiency who learned that way. Not one doctor, lawyer, or engineer whose technical training came this way. Even Sesame street. My sense is that no one ever learned to read from this, or from the follow-on program reading rainbow, except that they had parental help — the real teachers being the parent. My sense is that all formal education over video is deficient or worthless unless it’s complimented by an in-person, interaction. The cause perhaps we are not evolutionarily developed to connect with a TV image the way we connect with a human.

Education is always hard because you’re trying to remold the mind, and it only works if the student wants his or her mind molded. To get that enthusiasm requires social interaction, peer pressure and the like, and it requires real experience, not phony video. Play is a real experience, and all animals enjoy play. it convinces them they can do things, This stag on a now-empty soccer field is busy developing soccer skills and is rewarded here with a reaching his goal. Without the physical goal there would be no practice, and without the physical practice there would be no learning.

For people, the goals of the goals of the teacher must be made to match those of the student. The teachers goals are that they student should love learning, that he or she should acquire knowledge, and that he or she should be prepared to use that knowledge in a socially acceptable way. For the student, the goals include being praised by peers, and getting girls/ boys, and drinking. Colleges work, to the extent they do, but putting together the two sets of goals. Colleges work best in certain enclaves — places where the student’s statues increases if he or she does well on exams or in class, where he or she can drink and party, but will get thrown out if they do it so much that their grades suffer. Also colleges make sure to have clubs and sports where he or she can develop a socially acceptable way to deal with others. Remove the goals an rewards, and the lessons become pointless, or “academic.”

A cave painting from France. It’s diagrammatic, not artistic. It shows where you stand, how you hold the spear, and where the spear is supposed to go, but the encouragement to do it had to be given in person..

It might be argues that visual media can make up for real experience, and to some extent this is true. Visual media has been used since the beginning, as with this cave painting, but it only helps. You still need personal interaction and real-life experience. An experienced hunter could use the cave picture to show the student where to stand and how to hold the spear. But much of the training had to be social, with friends before the hunt, in the field, watching friends and the teacher as they succeed or fail. And — very important — after the hunt, eating the catch, or sitting hungry rubbing one’s bruises. This is where fine-points are gained, and where the student became infected with the desire to actually do the thing right. Leave this out, and you have the experience of the typical visitor to the museum. “Oh, cool” and then the visitor moves on.

In a world of Zoom learning, there is no feast at the end, no thrill of victory, and no agony of defeat. The students do not generally see each other, or talk to one another. They do not egg each other on, or condemn bad behavior. They do not share stories, and there is no real reward. There is no way to impress your fellow, and no embarrassment if you fail, or fail to work. The lesson does not take hold because we don’t work this way. A result is that US education as we know it is in for a dramatic change, but the details are sill a little fuzzy.

As best I can tell, our universities managers do not realize the failure of this education mode, or the choose to ignore it. If they were to admit defeat, they would lose their job. They can also point to a sort of artificial success, as when an accomplished programmer learns a bit more programming, or when an accomplished writer learns a new trick, but that’s not real education, and it certainly isn’t something most folks would pay $50,000 per year for.

Harvard University claims it will be entirely on-line next year, and that it will charge the same. We will have to see how that works for them. You still get the prestige of Harvard, though you can no longer join the crew team, or piss on the statue of John Harvard. My guess is that some people will put up with it, but not at that price. Why pay $50,000 — the equivalent of over $100/hour when you can get a complete set of DVDs on the material for $100, and a certificate. Without the physical pain or rowing, or the pleasure of pissing, there is no real connection to your fellow student, and a lot of the plus of Harvard is that social connection.

On line education isn’t strange; it just isn’t education.

I expect the big mid tier colleges to suffer even more than the great schools. I don’t expect 50,000 students to pay $40,000 each to go to virtual Indiana State. Why should they? Trade-schools may last, and mini-colleges, those with a few hundred students, that might be able to continue in a version of the old paradigm, and one-on-one or self-learning. This worked for Lincoln, and Washington; for Heraclitus and for Diogenes. Self study and small schools are good for self-reflection and refinement. The format is different from on-line, more question and answer. Some folks will thrive, others will flounder — Not everyone learns the same– but the on-line university will die. $40k of student debt for on-line lectures followed by an on-line, virtual graduation? No, thank you.

The reason that trade schools will work, even in a real of COVID, is they never focussed as much on personal interaction, but more on the interaction between your hands and your work. This provides a sort of reality check that doesn’t exist in typical on-line eduction. If your weld breaks, or your pipe leaks, you see it. Non-trade school, on-line eduction suffers by comparison, since there is no reality in the material. Anything can be shown on screen. My undergrad college, a small one, Cooper Union, used something of a trade school approach. For example, you learned control theory while sitting underneath a tank of water. You were expected to control the water height with a flow controller. When you got the program wrong, the tank ran dry, or overflowed, or did both in an oscillatory way. I can imagine that sort of stuff continuing during COVID lockdowns, but not as an on-line experience.

It seems to me that the protest and riots for Black Lives serve as a sort of alternative college, for the same type of person. It relieves the isolation, and provides a goal. My mother-in-law spent her teenage years in Ravensbruk concentration camp, during the holocaust, and my father-in-law survived Auschwitz. They came out scarred, but functional. They survived, I think, because of a goal. A recognition that the they were alive for a reason. My mother-in-law helped her sister survive. For many these days, ending racism by, tearing down statues is the goal. The speeches are better than in on-line colleges., you get the needed physical and social interaction, and you don’t spend $50,00 per year for it.

Robert Buxbaum July 24, 2020. These are my ramblings based in part on my daughter’s experience finishing college with 4 months of on-line eduction. The next year should see a shake-out of colleges that are not financially sound, I expect.

A logic joke, and an engineering joke.

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The following is an oldish logic joke. I used it to explain a conclusion I’d come to, and I got just a blank stare and a confused giggle, so here goes:

Three logicians walk into a bar. The barman asks: “Do all of you want the daily special?” The first logician says, “I don’t know.” The second says, “I don’t know.” The third says, “yes.”

The point of the joke was that, in several situations, depending on who you ask, “I don’t know” can be a very meaningful answer. Similarly, “I’m not sure.”  While I’m at it, here’s an engineering education joke, it’s based on the same logic, here applied:

A team of student engineers builds an airplane and wheel it out before the faculty. “We’ve designed this plane”, they explain, “based on the principles and methods you taught us. “We’ve checked our calculations rigorously, and we’re sure we’ve missed nothing. “Now. it would be a great honor to us if you would join us on its maiden flight.”

At this point, some of the professors turn white, and all of them provide various excuses for why they can’t go just now. But there is one exception, the dean of engineering smiles broadly, compliments the students, and says he’ll be happy to fly. He gets onboard the plane seating himself in the front of the plane, right behind the pilot. After strapping himself in, a reporter from the student paper comes along and asks why he alone is willing to take this ride; “Why you and no one else?” The engineering dean explains, “You see, son, I have an advantage over the other professors: Not only did I teach many of you, fine students, but I taught many of them as well.” “I know this plane is safe: There is no way it will leave the ground.”heredity cartoon

Robert Buxbaum, November 2i, 2018.  And one last. I used to teach at Michigan State University. They are fine students.

How to tell a genius from a nut.

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In my time in college, as a student, grad student, and professor, I ran into quite a few geniuses and quite a few weirdos. Most of the geniuses were weird, but most of the weirdos were not geniuses. Many geniuses drank or smoked pot, most drunks and stoners were stupid, paranoids. My problem was finding a reasonably quick way to tell the geniuses from the nuts; tell Einsteins from I’m-stoned.kennedy thought

Only quick way I found is by their friends. If someone’s friends are dullards, chances are they are too. Related to this is humility. Most real geniuses have a body of humility that can extent to extreme self-doubt. They are aware of what they don’t know, and are generally used to skepticism and having to defend their ideas. A genius will do so enthusiastically, happy to have someone listen; a non genius will bristle at tough questions, responding by bluster, bragging, name dropping, and insult. A science genius will do math, and will show you interesting math stuff just for fun, a nut will not. Nuts will use big words will have few friends you’d want to hang with. A real genius uses simple words.

Another tell, those with real knowledge are knowledgeable on what others think (there’s actually a study on this). That is, they are able to speak in the mind-set of others, pointing out the logic of the other side, and practical differences where the other side would be right. There should be a clear reason to come on one side or the other, and not just a scream of frustration that you don’t agree. The ability to see the world through others’ eyes is not a proof they are right — some visionary geniuses have been boors, but it is a tell. Besides boors are no fun to be with; they are worth avoiding if possible.

education test treeAnd what of folks who are good to talk to; decent, loyal, humble, and fun, but turn out to be not-geniuses. I’d suggest looking a little closer. At the worst, these are good friends, boon companions, and decent citizens — far more enjoyable to deal with than the boors. But if you look closer, you may find a genius in a different area — a plumbing genius, or a police genius, or a short-order cook genius. One of my some-time employees is a bouncer-genius. He works as a bouncer and has the remarkable ability to quite people down, or throw them out, without causing a fight — it’s not an easy skill. In my political work trying to become drain commissioner, I ran into a sewage genius, perhaps two. These are hard-working people that I learn from.

People make the mistake of equating genius with academia, but that’s just a very narrow slice of genius. They then compound the mistake by looking at grades. It pays to look at results and to pay respects accordingly. To quote an old joke/ story: what do you call the fellow who graduated at the bottom of his medical school class? “Doctor” He or she is a doctor. And what do you call the fellow who graduated at the bottom of his law school class? “your honor.”

Robert Buxbaum, November 27, 2017.

Forced diversity of race is racist

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Let me browse through some thoughts on efforts to address endemic racism. I’m not sure I’ll get anywhere, but you might as well enter the laboratory of my mind on the issue.

I’d like to begin with a line of the bible (why not?) “‘Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” (Lev. 19:15). This sounds good, but in college admissions, I’ve found we try to do better by showing  favoritism to the descendants of those who’ve been historically left-out. This was called affirmative action, it’s now called “diversity”.  

In 1981, when I began teaching chemical engineering at Michigan State University, our department had race-based quotas to allow easier admission to the descendants of historically-disadvantaged groups. All major universities did this at the time. The claim was that it would be temporary; it continues to this day. In our case, the target was to get 15% or so black, Hispanics and American Indians students (7 in a class of 50). We achieved this target by accepting such students with a 2.0 GPA, and not requiring a math or science background; Caucasians required 3.0 minimum, and we did require math or science. I’m not sure we helped the disadvantaged by this, either personally or professionally, but we made the administration happy. The kids seemed happy too, at least for a while. The ones we got were, by and large, bright. To make up for the lack of background we offered tutoring and adjusted grades. Some diversity students did well, others didn’t. Mostly they went into HR or management after graduation, places they could have gone without our efforts.

After some years, the Supreme court ended our quota based selection, saying it was, itself racist. They said we could still reverse-discriminate for “diversity,” though. That is, if the purpose wasn’t to address previous wrongs, but to improve the class. We changed our literature, but kept our selection methods and kept the same percentage targets as before.

This is a popular meme about racism. It makes sense to me.

This is a popular meme about racism.

The only way we monitored that we met the race-percent target was by a check-box on forms. Students reported race, and we collected this, but we didn’t check that black students look black or Hispanic students spoke Spanish. There was no check on student honesty. Anyone who checked the box got the benefits. This lack of check bread cheating at MSU and elsewhere. Senator Elizabeth Warren got easy entry into Harvard and Penn, in part by claiming to be an Indian on her forms. She has no evidence of Indian blood or culture Here’s Snopes. My sense is that our methods mostly help the crooked.

The main problem with is, I suspect, is the goal. We’ve decided to make every university department match the state’s racial breakdown. It’s a pretty goal, but it doesn’t seem like one that helps students or the state. Would it help the MSU hockey squad to force to team to racially match the state; would it help the volleyball team, or the football team?  So why assume it helps every academic department to make it’s racial makeup match the state’s. Why not let talented black students head to business or management departments before graduation. They might go further without our intervention.

This is not to say there are not racial inequalities, but I suspect that these diversity programs don’t help the students, and may actually hurt. They promote crookedness, and divert student attention from achieving excellence to maintaining victim status. Any group that isn’t loud enough in claiming victim status is robbed of the reverse-discrimination that they’ve been told they need. They’re told they can’t really compete, and many come to believe it. In several universities, we gone so far as to hire “bias referees” to protect minorities from having to defend their intellectual views in open discussion. The referee robs people of the need to think, and serves, I suspect, no one but a group of powerful politicians and administrators — people you are not supposed to criticize. On that topic, here is a video of Malcolm X talking about the danger of white liberals. Clearly he can hold his own in a debate without having a bias referee, and he makes some very good points about white liberals doing more harm than good.

Robert Buxbaum, November 5, 2017. In a related problem, black folks are arrested too often. I suggest rational drug laws. Some financial training could help too.

Black folks have no savings (poor whites too)

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The wealth of the mean American household has dropped significantly since 2007, a result of the general de-industrialization of America. It’s not that America has gotten poorer, but in the last 8 years we’ve increased the economic divide, enriching the richest few percent while leaving behind the working and bourgeoise classes. We are beginning to come back, but a particularly nasty legacy remains, especially among black families. Some 47% of black families have no liquid savings  — a far greater fraction than in 2007. The lack of savings also appears in white families (19%), and Hispanics (41%), but it’s most desperate among blacks.

College graduation rates have increased among black students, and along with the increase there has been an increase in salaries, but savings have declined. As of 2015, 22.5% of black students and 15.5% of Hispanic students had completed four years of college. This compares to 36.2% of white students, an inequality, but not a horrible one. By 2013, the average salary of a black college grad was somewhat over $1000/week, somewhat less than the average for whites, but enviable compared to the world as whole. The problem is that black workers manage to save very little compared to other ethnic groups, and compared to previous savings rates as shown by the graphic below. By 2013, the net worth of the median black family (savings, plus paid-off part of home and car) was a mere $11,000 (Pew Research Data, below), down from $19,200 six years earlier, and much lower than the net worth of white families (also down since 2007). Liquid savings among blacks are much lower — near zero — and this is just the mean. Half of all black families are doing worse.

Net worth disparity 2007 - 2011. Black folks are doing poorly and it's getting worse.

Net worth disparity 2007 – 2011. Black folks are doing poorly and it’s getting worse.

The combination of low savings and low net worth puts black folks at a distinct disadvantage to their condition six years earlier. Without savings, it is near-impossible to weather the loss of a job, or even to fix a car or pay a ticket, Surviving through a disease is basically a one-way ticket to the welfare office. Six years ago, when people saved more and prices were lower, problems like these were major annoyances. Now, a job loss or a major repair is a family disaster.

The growth of check-cashing services in black neighborhoods is a symptom, I suspect, of the lack of liquidity. A person without savings will not have a checking account. As such, he or she will not have a credit card or check cashing privileges.  The only way to cash a check will be via a for-fee service, and these tend to come at a steep cost (2-5%). People with savings accounts can cash checks essentially for free, and can usually borrow money by way of a credit card. People without savings can’t get approved. Black people and poor whites tend to use debit cards instead. They look and work like credit cards, but they incur fees upon use, and do not provide instant loans. When black folks and poor whites need quick cash, their options are the loan-shark or the pawn shop: high-cost options that take a giant toll on the family.

As mentioned above, black individuals and families have lower incomes than whites at all education levels. While racism, no-doubt plays a role, as best I can tell, the largest single cause seems to be family stability. Employed, college-educated blacks earn, on average, 95% as much as employed, college-educated whites — not great, but not bad. The real problem with black income is that black unemployment rates are higher, black education rates are lower, and single-parent families are significantly more common among blacks than among whites and Orientals. Roughly 40% of black families are single-mother, or mother+grandparent households compared to “only” 26% in the population generally. In both populations, the number of single parent households have increased dramatically in the last few years, a result I suspect of the government’s desire to help. The government gives more aid to a split-up couple than to one that stays together, but the aid brings with it long-term damage to net worth. A family with one parent will naturally have a lower-income and savings rate than a family with two. The lack of stability and savings that comes from having a single parent family, I suspect, has contributed to crime, births out-of-wedlock, and the tendency of blacks to drop out of college.

Black families don't benefit as much from college --in part a result of the choice of courses.

Black families don’t benefit much from college –in part a result of course choices, in part the result of borrowing. (Forbes, 2015).

One finds that do-gooders in the white communities want to eliminate check cashing businesses and pawn shops in a misguided desire to help the low-income neighborhoods, but the success of these companies tell me that they are needed. Though check services and pawn brokers take a nasty bite, urban life would be much worse without them, I suspect.

Another so-called solution of the do-gooders, is to tax savings and transfer the wealth to the poor. This form of wealth redistribution has been a cornerstone of the Democratic party for the last century. The idea of the tax is that it will transfer “idle wealth” from rich savers to poor folks who will spend it immediately. The problem is that great swathes of the nation don’t save at all currently; net worth is down all across the US — among white and black families both. Taxing savings will almost-certainly reduce the savings rate even further. Besides, savings are the stuff of self-determination and dreams — far more than spending, it is savings that allows a person to start a new business. One does not provide for the dreams of one group by taking them from another — particularly another group chosen to be immediate spenders. That is a route to community disaster, is seen by looking at Detroit.

As it is, many poor, inner city children do not see a path out via education. Detroit school attendance hovers around 50%, and business startups are lacking. As best inner city people can tell, the only ways out are sports, music, prostitution, crime, and the church. With higher savings rates and higher family stability, folks could start businesses, and/or take advantage of job opportunities that come along. People seem to think that wealth redistribution should help, but it just seems to reduce savings and family stability. Every effort to increase wealth redistribution only seems to make things worse in Detroit.  It sometimes seems that the only businesses in Detroit are check cashing, pawn brokers, churches, hair-salons, fast food, and medical marijuana — businesses that require little investment, but provide little community return too. Detroit has lost its manufacturing center, and now has more medical marijuana providers than groceries — a sad state of affairs.

The Check cashing services of south-eastern MI are concentrated in poor black and white neighborhoods.

The Check cashing services of south-eastern MI are concentrated in poor black and white neighborhoods.

In 2016, both presidential candidates touted major infrastructure projects, highways and the like, to help the inner city poor. In principle this can help, but I have my doubts. One basis of doubt: inner city youth do not have the training to build roads and bridges — they have barely the training to work at McDonald’s. For another thing, if the project itself isn’t needed, it becomes another form of income redistribution. There tends to be a lack of pride in doing it well, and the benefits are basically nothing. A major war could provide jobs, of course, but most sane people prefer peace. Trump has made the case for tariffs (closing off free trade) as a way to rebuild the industrial center of cities like Detroit. It’s an approach that I think has merit. He’s also suggested closing the border to low-wage, Mexican workers, and recently signed a bill that raised the minimum wage for foreign workers. This is expected to raise the price of California lettuce and NY hotel stays, but is likely to increase employment among low-skill Americans — blacks and poor whites. Small steps, I think, to solving a serious national problem.

Robert E. Buxbaum, April 21, 2017. I ran for water commissioner 2016 (Republican). I lost. I also have some infrastructure suggestions, including daylighting some rivers and adding weirs to improve water quality and stop flooding. If you like my ideas (or don’t) please provide comments.

An approach to teaching statistics to 8th graders

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There are two main obstacles students have to overcome to learn statistics: one mathematical one philosophical. The math is somewhat difficult, and will be new to a high schooler. What’s more, philosophically, it is rarely obvious what it means to discover a true pattern, or underlying cause. Nor is it obvious how to separate the general pattern from the random accident, the pattern from the variation. This philosophical confusion (cause and effect, essence and accident) is exists in the back of even in the greatest minds. Accepting and dealing with it is at the heart of the best research: seeing what is and is not captured in the formulas of the day. But it is a lot to ask of the young (or the old) who are trying to understand the statistical technique while at the same time trying to understand the subject of the statistical analysis, For young students, especially the good ones, the issue of general and specific will compound the difficulty of the experiment and of the math. Thus, I’ll try to teach statistics with a problem or two where the distinction between essential cause and random variation is uncommonly clear.

A good case to get around the philosophical issue is gambling with crooked dice. I show the class a pair of normal-looking dice and a caliper and demonstrate that the dice are not square; virtually every store-bought die is not square, so finding an uneven pair is easy. After checking my caliper, students will readily accept that these dice are crooked, and so someone who knows how it is crooked will have an unfair advantage. After enough throws, someone who knows the degree of crookedness will win more often than those who do not. Students will also accept that there is a degree of randomness in the throw, so that any pair of dice will look pretty fair if you don’t gable with them too long. I can then use statistics to see which faces show up most, and justify the whole study of statistics to deal with a world where the dice are loaded by God, and you don’t have a caliper, or any more-direct way of checking them. The underlying uneven-ness of the dice is the underlying pattern, the random part in this case is in the throw, and you want to use statistics to grasp them both.

Two important numbers to understand when trying to use statistics are the average and the standard deviation. For an honest pair of dice, you’d expect an average of 1/6 = 0.1667 for every number on the face. But throw a die a thousand times and you’ll find that hardly any of the faces show up at the average rate of 1/6. The average of all the averages will still be 1/6. We will call that grand average, 1/6 = x°-bar, and we will call the specific face average of the face Xi-bar. where i is one, two three, four, five, or six.

There is also a standard deviation — SD. This relates to how often do you expect one fact to turn up more than the next. SD = √SD2, and SD2 is defined by the following formula

SD2 = 1/n ∑(xi – x°-bar)2

Let’s pick some face of the dice, 3 say. I’ll give a value of 1 if we throw that number and 0 if we do not. For an honest pair of dice, x°-bar = 1/6, that is to say, 1 out of 6 throws will be land on the number 3, going us a value of 1, and the others won’t. In this situation, SD2 = 1/n ∑(xi – x°-bar)2 will equal 1/6 ( (1/6)2 + 5 (5/6)2 )= 1/6 (126/36) = 3.5/6 = .58333. Taking the square root, SD = 0.734. We now calculate the standard error. For honest dice, you expect that for every face, on average

SE = Xi-bar minus x°-bar = ± SD √(1/n).

By the time you’ve thrown 10,000 throws, √(1/n) = 1/100 and you expect an error on the order of 0.0073. This is to say that you expect to see each face show up between about 0.1740 and 0.1594. In point of fact, you will likely find that at least one face of your dice shows up a lot more often than this, or a lot less often. To the extent you see that, this is the extent that your dice is crooked. If you throw someone’s dice enough, you can find out how crooked they are, and you can then use this information to beat the house. That, more or less is the purpose of science, by the way: you want to beat the house — you want to live a life where you do better than you would by random chance.

As a less-mathematical way to look at the same thing — understanding statistics — I suggest we consider a crooked coin throw with only two outcomes, heads and tails. Not that I have a crooked coin, but your job as before is to figure out if the coin is crooked, and if so how crooked. This problem also appears in political polling before a major election: how do you figure out who will win between Mr Head and Ms Tail from a sampling of only a few voters. For an honest coin or an even election, on each throw, there is a 50-50 chance of head, or of Mr Head. If you do it twice, there is a 25% chance of two heads, a 25% chance of throwing two tails and a 50% chance of one of each. That’s because there are four possibilities and two ways of getting a Head and a Tail.

pascal's triangle

Pascal’s triangle

You can systematize this with a Pascal’s triangle, shown at left. Pascal’s triangle shows the various outcomes for a coin toss, and shows the ways they can be arrived at. Thus, for example, we see that, by the time you’ve thrown the coin 6 times, or polled 6 people, you’ve introduced 26 = 64 distinct outcomes, of which 20 (about 1/3) are the expected, even result: 3 heads and 3 tails. There is only 1 way to get all heads and one way to get all tails. While an honest coin is unlikely to come up all heads or tails after six throws, more often than not an honest coin will not come up with half heads. In the case above, 44 out of 64 possible outcomes describe situations with more heads than tales, or more tales than heads — with an honest coin.

Similarly, in a poll of an even election, the result will not likely come up even. This is something that confuses many political savants. The lack of an even result after relatively few throws (or phone calls) should not be used to convince us that the die is crooked, or the election has a clear winner. On the other hand there is only a 1/32 chance of getting all heads or all tails (2/64). If you call 6 people, and all claim to be for Mr Head, it is likely that Mr Head is the true favorite to a confidence of 3% = 1/32. In sports, it’s not uncommon for one side to win 6 out of 6 times. If that happens, it is a good possibility that there is a real underlying cause, e.g. that one team is really better than the other.

And now we get to how significant is significant. If you threw 4 heads and 2 tails out of 6 throws we can accept that this is not significant because there are 15 ways to get this outcome (or 30 if you also include 2 heads and 4 tail) and only 20 to get the even outcome of 3-3. But what about if you threw 5 heads and one tail? In that case the ratio is 6/20 and the odds of this being significant is better, similarly, if you called potential voters and found 5 Head supporters and 1 for Tail. What do you do? I would like to suggest you take the ratio as 12/20 — the ratio of both ways to get to this outcome to that of the greatest probability. Since 12/20 = 60%, you could say there is a 60% chance that this result is random, and a 40% chance of significance. What statisticians call this is “suggestive” at slightly over 1 standard deviation. A standard deviation, also known as σ (sigma) is a minimal standard of significance, it’s if the one tailed value is 1/2 of the most likely value. In this case, where 6 tosses come in as 5 and 1, we find the ratio to be 6/20. Since 6/20 is less than 1/2, we meet this, very minimal standard for “suggestive.” A more normative standard is when the value is 5%. Clearly 6/20 does not meet that standard, but 1/20 does; for you to conclude that the dice is likely fixed after only 6 throws, all 6 have to come up heads or tails.

From skdz. It's typical in science to say that <5% chances, p <.050 are significant. If things don't quite come out that way, you redo.

From xkcd. It’s typical in science to say that <5% chances, p< .05. If things don’t quite come out that way, you redo.

If you graph the possibilities from a large Poisson Triangle they will resemble a bell curve; in many real cases (not all) your experiential data variation will also resemble this bell curve. From a larger Poisson’s triange, or a large bell curve, you  will find that the 5% value occurs at about σ =2, that is at about twice the distance from the average as to where σ  = 1. Generally speaking, the number of observations you need is proportional to the square of the difference you are looking for. Thus, if you think there is a one-headed coin in use, it will only take 6 or seven observations; if you think the die is loaded by 10% it will take some 600 throws of that side to show it.

In many (most) experiments, you can not easily use the poisson triangle to get sigma, σ. Thus, for example, if you want to see if 8th graders are taller than 7th graders, you might measure the height of people in both classes and take an average of all the heights  but you might wonder what sigma is so you can tell if the difference is significant, or just random variation. The classic mathematical approach is to calculate sigma as the square root of the average of the square of the difference of the data from the average. Thus if the average is <h> = ∑h/N where h is the height of a student and N is the number of students, we can say that σ = √ (∑ (<h> – h)2/N). This formula is found in most books. Significance is either specified as 2 sigma, or some close variation. As convenient as this is, my preference is for this graphical version. It also show if the data is normal — an important consideration.

If you find the data is not normal, you may decide to break the data into sub-groups. E.g. if you look at heights of 7th and 8th graders and you find a lack of normal distribution, you may find you’re better off looking at the heights of the girls and boys separately. You can then compare those two subgroups to see if, perhaps, only the boys are still growing, or only the girls. One should not pick a hypothesis and then test it but collect the data first and let the data determine the analysis. This was the method of Sherlock Homes — a very worthwhile read.

Another good trick for statistics is to use a linear regression, If you are trying to show that music helps to improve concentration, try to see if more music improves it more, You want to find a linear relationship, or at lest a plausible curve relationship. Generally there is a relationship if (y – <y>)/(x-<x>) is 0.9 or so. A discredited study where the author did not use regressions, but should have, and did not report sub-groups, but should have, involved cancer and genetically modified foods. The author found cancer increased with one sub-group, and publicized that finding, but didn’t mention that cancer didn’t increase in nearby sub-groups of different doses, and decreased in a nearby sub-group. By not including the subgroups, and not doing a regression, the author mislead people for 2 years– perhaps out of a misguided attempt to help. Don’t do that.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, June 5-7, 2015. Lack of trust in statistics, or of understanding of statistical formulas should not be taken as a sign of stupidity, or a symptom of ADHD. A fine book on the misuse of statistics and its pitfalls is called “How to Lie with Statistics.” Most of the examples come from advertising.

From Princeton: dare to be dumb.

Let’s say you have a good education and a good idea you want to present to equally educated colleagues. You might think to use your finest language skills: your big words, your long sentences, and your dialectically organized, long paragraphs. A recent, Princeton University study suggests this is a route to disaster with the educated, and even more so with the un-educated. In both groups, big words don’t convince, and don’t even impress, like small words do.

Most people won't care what you know unless they know that you care.

Like this fellow, most folks aren’t impressed by fancy speeches. (cartoon by Gahan Wilson)

http://web.princeton.edu/…/Opp%20Consequences%20of%20Erudit…

People, even educated ones, want ideas presented in simple words and simple sentences. They trust such statements, and respect those who speak this way more than those who shoot high, and sometimes over their heads. Even educated people find long words and sentences confusing, and off-putting. To them, as to the less-educated, it sounds like you’re using your fancy english as a cover for lies and ignorance, while trying to claim superiority. Who knew that George W. was so smart (Al Gore?). Here’s George W. at the SMU graduation yesterday (May 18). He does well, I’d say, with mostly one-syllable words.

This is the sort of advertising that people notice -- and trust.

Lower yourself to be one of the crowd, but don’t go so far that you’re the butt of jokes.

Reading this study, I’ve come to ask why fancy language skills is so important for getting into  college, and why it adds points when writing a college paper. Asked another way, why are professors pleased by something that’s off-putting to everyone else. One thought: this is a club initiation — a jargon to show you belong to the club, or want to. Alternately, perhaps professors have gotten so used to this that it’s become their natural language. Whatever the reason, when outside of university, keep it simple (and) stupid.

Some specifics: at job interviews, claim you want to work at their company doing a job in your field. Only when dealing with professors can you claim your goal is capitalizing on your intellectual synergies, and phrase that means the same thing. Don’t say, you’ll do anything, and remember it’s OK to ask for training; poor education doesn’t hold-back American productivity.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, May 19, 2015. Here are some further thoughts on education, and some pictures of my dorm and the grad college at Princeton back in the day.