Monthly Archives: March 2013

View 765 Tuesday, March 05, 2013

Sometimes I remember the strangest things. More than fifty years ago there was a Western radio drama, Gunsmoke, starring William Conrad as Matt Dillon and Parley Bear as Chester. In one of the episodes young would-be gunfighter came to town. He announced that he was going to kill Matt Dillon in a fair fight so as to gain his reputation and make a lot of money hiring out in a range war. Dillon didn’t take him seriously, but the kid kept insisting, and finally as Dillon was coming out of the Longbranch he shouted some threat. There was gunfire. Dillon said “Sorry kid, this time I believed you.”

Norks threaten to repudiate Korean War ceasefire on 11 Mar 2013, shut down hotline at Panmunjom.

<http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130305/DA4QTUEG2.html>

Roland Dobbins

North Korea is a major threat because of the massed artillery along the border. The location of most of the guns is well known and plotted by both US and South Korean gunners and pilots.

Carpenter Avenue School, the local public school in Studio City, is well known as an exceptionally good school, and was even before it became a charter school. Given the general level of competence of schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, Carpenter certainly is exceptional, although we didn’t think it sufficiently so for our kids even though it’s only two blocks away. We sent our boys to St. Francis, but that’s another story.

The big story is that parents are gaming the system to get their children into Carpenter, falsifying their addresses so as to appear to be in the school’s district, and thus flooding the system so that people who do live in Studio City can’t get their kids in the school. The local talk radio hosts are making much of this and debating whether the parents doing this should be ashamed of themselves.

Given that the entire LA Unified School District is a fraud, taking between $7 and $8 thousand dollars per student and achieving a dropout rate greater than 40% and an illiteracy rate approaching 50%; that LAUSD permitted a teacher caught on video feeding his pupils cookies frosted with his own semen to retire rather than be fired and continues to pay his pension as he awaits trial in jail, that in ten years LAUSD has fired fewer than 50 teachers for incompetence, and is generally awful, one could make the case that the school system is a fraud, a giant con game, and questioning the ethics of those who chose to con the con men is a joke.

Of course Los Angeles isn’t alone here. The 1983 National Commission on Education concluded that “If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightly deem it an act of war.” The national school system hasn’t improved since that time. Most state budgets spend more on education than on anything else, and with a few exceptions it’s all pretty well fraudulent. If someone offered you $750,000 a year to educate 100 students, do you think you could manage to do that? Most of us certainly could, providing each student with a fully loaded iPad in the bargain. But of course that’s idle speculation. We aren’t going to reform the school system. The only chance your kids have is for you to game the system, or avoid it altogether.

Begin by making sure they can read before the go to school. By read I mean be able to read nonsense words. Any kid who can read can read “’Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and gimbel in the wabe, all mimsy were the borogroves, and the mome raths outgrabe.” Not many five or six year olds will have the foggiest notion of what the means unless you have been reading to them from Alice (or they have been reading it themselves: six year old kids can in fact read Alice, but be prepared for a lot of pesky questions about what’s going on). Any kid (of any age) who can’t read that sentence can’t read. They may be “reading at grade level” but that usually does not mean they can read. If you can read English you can read long words you do not understand (or which cannot be understood, such as deamy and precognosis). Those who can’t read those words can’t read English, and you might be astonished at how many twelve year old children can’t read them.

Many studies have shown that if you can’t read by the beginning of fourth grade, you are not likely to have any career in the technical subjects; you’ll just get too far behind before you get into high school. I suppose that is disputable – surely one can find examples for whom it was not true – but it’s true enough, given that the remedy is simple. For generations English upper and middle class children were taught to read at age 4 by nannies or their parents, and most English public schools expected the kids to be able to read when they arrived. I don’t think those kids were particularly better protoplasm than ours. But I’ve said this often enough before. If you want to know more, http://www.jerrypournelle.com/OldReading.html.

Our small discussion of correlation and causation yesterday impelled Mike Flynn, who thinks a lot about this sort of thing – he’s a quality control expert, which means he is very much concerned with advanced studies in statistical inference – to write a short essay. It may tell you more about causation and correlation than you really wanted to know, but those who actually have to deal with such matters ought to know this sort of thing at this level:

The Causes of Correlation

Regarding recent comments on correlation and causation, a few observations:

1. If X causes Y, then X and Y will be correlated IF a wide enough range of X is examined. Otherwise, it is possible for X and Y to appear uncorrelated.

2. If Y causes X, there will likewise be a correlation, if a wide enough range of Y is examined; but researchers may be fooled into supposing that it is X that causes Y.

Example: in the famous case of the Storks of Oldenburg, an excellent correlation obtained between the population of Oldenburg, Germany, during the 1930s and the number of storks observed each year. Do storks bring babies? No, babies bring storks: as the town grew, more houses were built, resulting in more chimneys, and the European stork likes to build its nest in chimneys. So, more nesting places.

3. If Z causes both X and Y, there will be a correlation between X and Y even though there is no causal connection whatsoever.

Example: in a chemical reaction low process yields (Y) was correlated with high pressure in the vessel (X). The suggestion to increase yields by lowering the pressure was met with scorn because: there was an impurity in the raw material (Z) that interfered with the reaction and lowered yields AND also caused frothing in the vessel. The standard operation procedure instructed the operator to combat frothing by increasing the pressure to hold down the foam. So low yields and high pressure were associated, but manipulating one would not change the other. Both were effects, not causes in this context.

4. If X and Y are both on a trend or cycle during the same time period, the respective time series will correlate even if there is no causal connection.

Examples:

* Columbia river salmon runs go up and down in roughly eleven year cycles. So do sunspots on the sun. Do sunspots cause salmon? Do salmon cause sunspots? Is there a lurking Z that makes salmon eager to spawn AND causes the sun to boil?

* An example I used to use in training classes. The % of women participating in the labor force (X) has been increasing smoothly since the 1880s. The % of foreign cars sold domestically (Y) was increasing from 1955 to 1990. The correlation between X and Y was in the high 90% range. Does this mean that we can save Detroit by getting women back in the kitchens? Or only that two trends will always correlate?

* If global temperatures are increasing and atmospheric CO2 is increasing during the same time frame, they will correlate.

5. Coincidence. There was a longstanding correlation between the size of the universe and the size of my suits. Space was expanding, and so was I. But if I lost weight, would the universe begin to contract? Hemlines and stock prices is another classic example.

Example: Science Can Tell If You’re A Racist Just By Looking At You http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=7407

6. The Unabomber Effect in Multiple Correlation. When the Unabomber taught math at Berkeley he said that given seven independent variables (X1,…, X7) you can fit any finite set of data (Y). It’s only a matter of finding the right coefficients. (It might not survive new data; but then you simply re-analyze and come up with a new set of coefficients and, presto, you get another fit.) This could become an enormous problem with Big Data and automated data mining and adjustment.

Actually it is already an enormous problem with Big Data and automated data mining. But you know that. Statistical dragnets can find a lot of interesting correlations. Treat them like hypotheses to be tested and you may learn something. And every now and then an unexpected correlation does lead to some real discoveries, which is why keeping careful case histories is so important to medicine.

View 765 Monday, March 04, 2013

Silicon is cheaper than iron:

Seagate to stop production of 7200RPM laptop drives –

Hi Jerry,

Here’s a break from politics, and back to technology.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/seagate-is-done-making-7200rpm-2-5-pure-hard-disk-drives/

I’m not sure I agree with their reasoning, but I did switch to Western Digital a while ago – their 7200 RPM Scorpio Black 750 GB laptop drive is my standard. I’ve dropped those into a dozen or so Mac, without a single issue or failure.

I’d had a number of Seagate drives fail outright, and then tried two of the Momentus XT’s, but my experience was rather poor they are incompatible with many whole-disk encryption solutions, and both the ones I tried were bad out of the box or failed shortly after install. Many folks at my company have had the same issue – particularly with Mac’s. It’s the wrong time of the year, but I’d award the Momentus XT a half-orchid/half-onion. Great idea, poor execution.

Still, it shows the impact of falling SSD prices. Eventually spinning disks may head the way of the dodo for laptops (but for desktop storage, magnetic is still king).

Cheers,

Doug

Way back in S-100 Bus days I said that “Silicon is cheaper than iron,” and predicted that the future of spinning metal as mass storage was limited; it would be taken over by chip-based drives. That turned out to be true, but it took a long time for it to happen. What I had not factored in was that the new computing power – faster CPU’s, faster and cheaper memory – would influence the efficiency of hard drives. Once I saw that new software making use of the new computer power was being used to guide greater accuracy in machining spinning metal, and even more to the point to make for better data separation thus increasing dramatically the amount to be stored on a hard drive, it was clear that spinning metal had a longer future than I had thought.

Moore’s Law is inexorable, though. Exponentials generally are. Of course this is not a true exponential, is an S-curve or ogive, and at some point it will level off – exactly as the hard drive technology was on an S-curve with ever rapid improvements in speed and data storage eventually levels off. We discussed S-curves in The Strategy of Technology, a book which still holds up and is still used in some military planning circles. Although the examples were all drawn from the Cold War and need to be updated, the principles remain true.

My prediction that silicon drives would obsolete spinning metal drives took a long time to come true, but it seems finally to be coming to pass.

Silicon is cheaper than iron. And that has consequences.

What is truth?

Friscos for Scientists I: “Correlation Does Not Imply Causation”

http://bigthink.com/e-pur-si-muove/friscos-for-scientists-i-correlation-does-not-imply-causation

Interesting article on overuse of statistical terminology.

-Dave

It is a well done article which points to another on Slate that I have not read. Of course correlation implies causation. It does not prove causation. It does suggest hypotheses. Hypotheses which can be falsified can make theories increasingly likely to contain truth. That’s the way science works. Of course some correlations generate theories that can’t be tested.

Obama DHS Purchases 2,700 Light-Armored Tanks to Go With Their 1.6 Billion Bullet Stockpile

Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, March 3, 2013, 9:55 PM

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/03/obama-dhs-purchases-2700-light-armored-tanks-to-go-with-their-1-6-billion-bullet-stockpile/

Which raises the question of why?  Has the Congress gone mad, or does it not know of these expenditures? Given the cuts due to sequestration, it would seem to me that equipping a Praetorian Guard capable of governing without the consent of the governed might not be so urgent as, say, Air Traffic Controllers or even TSA airport safety officers. According to this article – and I am not at all familiar with the web site –  this is a force more suitable to suppression and intimidation of popular resistance than one designed to overcome any easily foreseen terrorist threat.  Perhaps someone knows more about this?

If you haven’t seen these, they are worth looking at. We don’t know as much about the Earth/space environment as we thought we did.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/

http://www.space.com/20004-earth-radiation-belt-discovery.html

"A student used food to make an inappropriate gesture."

<http://www.ktnv.com/news/watercooler/194673111.html>

Roland Dobbins

You just can’t make this stuff up. Meanwhile, the Secretary of Homeland Security confirms that TSA agent have been cut back because of the sequester. I have not heard whether any bunny inspectors are at risk. 

Jerry,

Sifting through the wave of nonsense on the internet regarding the DHS/ICE MRAP vehicles, I found a few things.

First, the original photos of those seem to date back to 2009.

Second, the MRAP in the photos does not seem to match the exact type of the 2700+ MRAP refurbishment contract Third, there is some stuff about the DHS getting about 60 surplus MRAPs following a source selection contract, and those 60 appear to match the ones seen in the photos.

Fourth, the 2700+ refurb contract was about a year ago and was supposedly for the Army.

Of course, that’s just the result of an hour of insomniac web browsing. There may be more, but don’t believe anything that doesn’t have a better source then another alarmist "news" site. From what I could tell, this report was a nearly word for word cut-paste from a wave of identical "news" reports from mid-2012. None of which changes the fact that DHS appears to be operating at least 2 mine resistant armored personnel assault vehicles within the united states…

Still, I think people are putting 2 and 2 together and getting impending urban warfare as the sum. I personally don’t see why the DHS/ICE ought to be operating 60 or even 2 of these things, and writing "rescue" on the side is big brother doublespeak straight from Orwell’s 1984. Given the utter absence of land mines and IEDs in the 48 contiguous states and given the current "budget crisis", I figure these things ought to be sold on ebay or at the very least sold for scrap. We don’t need them and they’re expensive to run/maintain. If anyone seriously tells you that we DO need them, look closely for the jackboots and subdued swastika because they’re not in the game for our interests.

Serving officer

I suspected the story was more complicated that that web site said.  Still, it is well to stay informed in matters such as this.  As you say there is no need for security forces to have that sort of gear.  At Waco the Attorney General had to lie to the Army in order to get tanks, and the Army is not at all happy about the outcome. 

View 764 Friday, March 01, 2013

SEQUESTRATION FRIDAY IS HERE

Doom Doom Doom Doom Doom

RE: African-Americans and Education (Feb. 26)

Dear Mr. Pournelle,

I couldn’t agree more with your statements about the importance of literacy. I’m currently a student teacher for mathematics at a predominantly African-American vocational high school in Chicago, and I’ve spent every day of the past month in the same two Sophomore Geometry classes (appx. 18 students per class; about 10 in each have never shown up). For the most part, the kids are intelligent enough to grasp the concepts, and some are quite bright in terms of their calculating abilities and the questions they ask. But they all continue to drastically underperform because they cannot–or will not–interpret and employ precise language. They don’t readily recognize distinctions among different terms; they don’t retain the proper vocabulary and phrasings; they don’t process conditional statements and causal relationships; and they don’t generally display the kind of sustained organized thought that comes primarily from training in literate interpretation and expression. You practically have to squeeze it out of them, but then they go back out into the hallway and receive tons of negative reinforcement. In other words, their own linguistic "culture" is severely handicapping them in all fields.

On a similar note, I’d wager that the "culture" of boy-girl interactions that I’ve seen and had described to me, is also keeping these kids down. My co-operating teacher said he’s seen boys hit and choke girls, and they all treat it like it’s normal. I can’t imagine but that this has significant ramifications for individuals’ sense of self-worth and notions of constructive interpersonal communication.

Of course, no one can come out and say all this without being called a vile racist. Still, even while I don’t want to discount possible bases in physiology/nature, from what I’ve seen of the enormous gap between these kids’ basic intellectual capacity (as determined through several weeks of close conversation and inspection of their work) and their ability to express themselves coherently, I find myself coming down heavily on the side of nurture.

The President has said that preschool is the answer to the nation’s education problems. If so, the District of Columbia is the ideal place to experiment. The Congress has complete authority over the District, granted in the Constitution, and can set up any schools it likes with any rules it likes. Let the Department of Education propose experimental schools, including pre-schools. Let one pre-school concentrate on two factors: learning to read, and instilling some cultural factors involving discipline and learning. Most experiments (including my wife’s years as the reading teacher of last resort in the Los Angeles County Juvenile Justice System) have shown that leaning to read it is fact rewarding, and tends to produce discipline within the class. “Cool it man, we learning something here!” But use whatever system of rewards one like. Try different systems with different schools. The Congress is sovereign in the District and can try any school system it likes, or several of them. Let ten flowers bloom and see which produces results.

Of course that won’t happen.

But if pre-school is to be the answer to the current educational miasma, let it teach reading and try to do something about cultural discipline factors at an early enough age that it can make some changes. Of course that assumes that there is an “American Way” that we are all proud of, and that all children can be assimilated into the Melting Pot.

Note that it isn’t African Americans who should be the target of teaching reading and the American Culture. It should be all kids of whatever origin. The American system of education at one time was the wonder of the world. It could be again. Begin with teaching them to read in pre-school. That can be done for the vast majority of the children. Select teachers who can and will do it, and don’t continue employment of teachers who can’t do the job. That will produce long term benefits for the nation at a pretty efficient cost, even if you end up having to pay the successful teachers a hundred grand a year. Just don’t pay that to those who can’t do the job. And if it can’t be done, then end the project and try another; but we have examples to show that it can be done.

In order to soften the pain of the dreaded sequester monster which will cut 70 billion out of a 35 thousand billion dollar budget this year thus sending kids home from school, closing parks, releasing prisoners, and laying off first responders, the Congress proposed allowing the President to allocate the cuts in any way he deemed desirable. Years ago Mr. Obama said he would go through the budget with laser like precision, removing spending requests for frivolous items. This would be his chance to do it, although the story appears to be that he has rejected the power.

So we will lay off first responders and close Head Start programs while continuing to pay the Bunny Inspectors. For those who don’t know, there exist Department of Agriculture Inspectors whose job it is to attend stage magician performances to see if any pet rabbits are used in the performance; and if there are to inspect the Federal License required for keeping pet rabbits for public display. (Note that if the rabbit is killed in the act no Federal license is required; it applies only to rabbits kept as pets but displayed publicly.) Another task for the Bunny Inspectors is to see that anyone in the US keeping rabbits as pets has a Federal License if any of those rabbits are sold. The penalties for keeping rabbits for sale without a Federal License is quite severe. You can raise them for food and kill and eat them, and if you sell rabbits for food the matter is of state or local concern; it’s only the sale of pet rabbits that has to have a Federal License issued by the Department of Agriculture.

There are other activities of the Federal Government which may or may not be desirable, but surely are less urgent or valuable than some of the activities which are now to be closed by the Dread Sequester; it is not clear why the President does not want the authority to use his laser inspection to find and eradicate those expenditures.

Bunny Inspectors on Public Radio’s "The Takeaway"

FYI, I just heard a commercial for the Public Radio program "The Takeaway" stating that they will be using Federal "Bunny Inspectors" as an example of Federal spending.

John Bresnahan

Orlando, FL

John Bresnahan

Apparently others are beginning to wonder about the priorities of the activities to be ended by sequestration.

There may be other ways to save money.

‘But the GAO review found the jets were used only used about 40 percent of the time for counterterrorism since 2007, with their primary function becoming executive travel.’

<http://www.washingtonguardian.com/taken-ride-0>

Roland Dobbins

It would seem to me that the sequester would be a splendid opportunity to end some practices that were perhaps desirable during boom times, but which are now a bit expensive and no longer quite so vital?

Once that is done we can discuss the priorities of FBI agents vs. Head Start teachers.

The march of technology:

Pretty amazing aircraft

A liquid-hydrogen-powered unmanned spy plane from Boeing’s Phantom Works had a very successful test flight earlier this week, climbing a mile and a half into the sky.

<http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/03/01/boeing-phantom-eye-completes-2nd-flight/?intcmp=features#ixzz2MJ0IfnOW>

We are approaching a time when keeping up with technology through X projects is more important than inventory. The “R&D Deterrent” is an important factor in the Strategy of Technology. It is probably time for me to do a new Preface to Strategy of Technology and get the book into Kindle format. It was a Cold War book, but the principles remain true and important; perhaps more so now than when it was written in the 1960’s.