Just some thoughts about life.

[from John] Ira’s latest posting regarding statistics brings to mind my current gripe – frustration? – with the information age. Can anyone be reasonably certain that the information they possess, the information they rely on when they go to the polls is valid and current? I don’t think so. I would like to use an analogy; my grandfather lived in a small town in Minnesota that had a single weekly newspaper. When voting for those seeking national office he only had the information that paper provided. He flew by the seat of his pants – his intuition. My father, living in the same town, at a later time, had a daily paper, a daily (weekly?) Minneapolis paper and primitive radio for information so he still flew by the seat of his pants because his sources were limited. Today I fly by the seat of my pants because I am inundated with information I cannot trust.
I have come to the conclusion that the best way to handle information in the information age is to form an original hypothesis upon which to measure new information discarding some yet be willing to modify the hypothesis if new information seems valid. Keep an open mind but don’t be fooled by charlatans.
The following are my current positions on some items of national issues.

Climate Change. The earth is a very stable planet. Its outer surface and atmosphere have gone through violent, usually gradual, changes over the eons and will probably do so in the future with or without our help. It can be argued that man has or will make some impact on the climate; however, neither the severity nor extent of his impact can be shown. Climatologists design climate models based on limited long-term climatic history and recent more extensive but still incomplete information yet they purport these models explain how our climate functions today and into the future; these same climatologists cannot accurately predict next year’s hurricane season. I have little confidence in their predictions of climate warming or cooling.
Man is a very resilient creature. He lives in the tropical rain forests, in the Deserts in the cold of the Arctic. He lives and thrives everywhere. Today’s technology assuredly allows man great ability to adjust for whatever climate changes will occur when and as they occur.

Ecology. There is no question that man over the ages has had a negative impact on the ecology of our planet. However, the developed nations which have the leisure and resources are acting to rectify previous neglects and will continue to do so. There are many valid arguments for clean power and other conservational efforts. We should be directing our efforts here. We should not mix our need for protecting the ecology with climate change; it is only distracting our efforts.

Sarah Palin. I don’t know whether she would make a capable president; at the same time, I don’t know anyone else who would. Right now, she is getting exposure, which is necessary, if she were to run. From all I have heard she did a good job as she rose through the ranks. In addition, she is not a Washington insider. I reserve judgment until she actually runs.

Government. Will we survive as a democratic nation? Certainly, but the next several decades will be difficult and we will never be able to return to days of yore; nor should we. Since our founding, as we grew as an economic force, the laissez faire capitalism, which successfully made our nation great, can no longer be accepted. It has slowly been amended as our nation grew and the needs of the people forced adjustments. The momentum has picked up over the last four or five decades and in the main the changes have been beneficial. At this particular moment, we seem to be moving too fast, movement that will carry us too far toward socialism. It won’t succeed but reversing the trend and returning to a more balanced government will be painful. I suspect that a capitalistic democratic nation such as ours must always cycle - striving to reach a balance as situations change and time passes.

The following two subjects relate to the conduct of our citizens as well as our national representatives. It is important to have a position on these issues because our national leaders are often accused of immoral or unethical conduct; and, because in America personal ethical and moral standards seem to be wavering. Many feel there is no true right or wrong thus we as a people cannot judge others for their actions nor, if we carry the logic through, can we be judged for our actions evil or not. I disagree see my comment under morality.

Ethics. Ethics are the standards of conduct that permits a society to function smoothly. Ethical conduct transcends the law of the land although it must not supplant the law of the land. The principle element of ethics is trust. Can I trust my national representative; can I trust my fellow man. Once this trust breaks down the strength of our nation goes with it. Today, it seems, ethical standards in Washington are flexible. Standards are allowed to bend to justify a current issue or circumstance. I don’t trust Washington, few of us do. I still trust my fellow man.

Morality. I have always considered morality as a religious attribute; religious heritage defines moral conduct, thus a member of one religion may have different moral standards than one of another religion. Morality is a personal religious issue however; it does not exempt one from the laws. Recently I stumbled on a definition which throws me. “Morality is based on what somebody's conscience suggests is right or wrong, rather than on what rules or the law says should be done.” Can this be valid? Isn’t this a road to anarchy? I reject this definition.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND STATISTICS (Part 6)

STATISTICS OF HEALTH CARE SPENDING
Health Care reform has been a hot topic where statistics have been used to: Abuse anecdotal math to falsify the truth and truthify falsehood.

(This is the sixth of the series on misuse of statistics. For the earlier postings, click: 1-Going to St. Ives, 2-Playing Percentages, 3-Correlation and Causation, 4-Fun with the Normal Curve, 5-Global Warming.)

In a December 2009 posting, I pointed out that the map of per capita Medicare spending by county in the US looked a lot like the political division between the "Blue Counties" (Democrats, L-Minds) and the "Red Counties" (Republicans, C-Minds).

Since counties are so numerous and therefore confusing, I used Congressional Budget Office 2004 statistics of per capita Medicare spending on a statewide basis to show that the top five Highest Spending States tended to be Blue States and the top five Lowest Spending States tended to be Red States.

(My stated purpose -agenda if you like- was to indicate that Liberals consume an outsized share of the common pot of health care resources, as compared to Conservatives who take a smaller piece of the pie per capita.)

The figure above shows the CBO bar graph that orders the states by raw Medicare Spending per capita, from lowest (Utah) at the top to highest (Massachusetts) at the bottom. The box on the right is a magnification of the top and bottom of the bar graph. As indicated, the lowest spending states have consumed $4,000 to $4,800 per beneficiary. The highest spending states consumed $6,300 to $6,700 per capita. [Click on figure for a larger version.]

I consider the above to be a good, clear use of statistics. The bar graph, however, is a bit misleading. Notice that the horzontal axis does not start at $0, but rather at $3,500, which is visually misleading because it seems to show that the highest spending states consume over twice as much as the lowest spending. Actually, they consume only about 150% as much.

Lesson Learned: When viewing graphs, be very suspicious when the axes do not start at zero.

In a comment, Howard* provided a link to Hopson and Rettenmaier (NCPA) that, it seemed to him, "... finds high cost states are Louisiana, Maryland, Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, and low cost states are New York, Vermont, New Mexico, Virginia, Iowa. That’s closer to the opposite correlation."

Indeed, on page 37 of NPCA, as shown in the figure below, they do identify the ten states listed by Howard as the five "Low-Cost States" and five "High-Cost States". The NCPA study is based on the exact same Medicare data from 2004/2005. What is going on??? [Click on figure for a larger version.]

The figure above uses the CBO bar graph and shows that the NCPA list does not match at all. New York for example, is listed as a "Low-Cost State" by NCPA but, acording to the CBO bar graph, it is the third highest cost! Texas, on the other hand, that is sixth on the CBO list, indicating low cost, is listed as a "High-Cost State" by NCPA! Yikes!

Part of the answer is in the caption of the NCPA Table VII: "Summary of High- and Low-Cost States After Adjusting for Observable County Differences" Oh, this is not raw data but it has been ADJUSTED.

OK, how was it adjusted? That is not obvious without reading the whole report. They have taken the following into account: "Percent Black", Percent Hispanic", "Percent Female". Each of these factors tend to lean heavily Democratic in their voting patterns, indicating they tend to be L-Minds.

So, NCPA has adjusted the data to reduce the apparent costs in states with Democratic constituencies and effectively increase the apparent costs in states with Republican consitituencies. (Of course NCPA would say they are adjusting for clear patterns of medical need. Blacks, Hispanics and Females seem to need - or at least consume- more medical care than Males and non-Minorities on a per capita basis.)

The above adjustment could be described as reasonable and scientific. Some identifiable groups do need more health care for good reasons that are not their fault. However, NCPA has done some other adjusting that is totally absurd, tricky, and non-scientific. Read on!

Notice the header on the second column: "% of Counties in the Top Quintile". They have treated counties equally even though they vary greatly in population!

For example, I was born in Kings County (Brooklyn, NY) which has a population of 2,556,598. My professional life was spent in Tioga County (Newark Valley and Apalachin, NY) which has a population of 50,171. So, in computing that New York is a "Low-Cost State" they count Kings County and Tioga County equally, even though the ratio of their populations is over 50 to 1 !!!

Comparisons of spending for government programs should always be done based on the per capita statistics. CBO compares states and counties on a per capita basis. NCPA clearly has an agenda because they figure "Low-Spending States" on the basis of the percentage of counties in the highest and lowest quintiles. What a crock!

That is like a "50/50 Horse and Rabbit Stew, one Horse and one Rabbit".

Lesson Learned: Be very suspicious of "adjusted" data, especially when the person or group doing the "adjusting" has a particular agenda.

Ira Glickstein

*I have the highest respect for Howard's grasp of scientific matters in general, and statistics in particular. I do not fault him for being led astray by the NCPA's statistical manipulations. They were far from obvious and NCPA seems to have taken special care to hide what they did (while remaining on the right side of "truth" by revealing their machinations in the "fine print").

The Blind Side - Surprise Hit Movie

My favorite line in this movie is when Sean Tuohy (Tim McGraw) asks his wife Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock):

"Who would've thought we'd have a black son before we met a Democrat?"

Bullock portrays a southern, white, Christian mother of two, married to a rich businessman. She is a proud NRA member who packs a pistol and threatens to use it during a confrontation in the poor black Memphis community that is the original home to her adopted son, Michael Oher. He is destined to become a great right tackle for the Baltimore Ravens football team. [Click photo for a larger view of the family Christmas card]

No wonder the reviews in the liberal media were so poor AND no wonder the movie caught on and is drawing larger and larger audiences every week!

Village Voice (NY City): "Blind Side the movie peddles the most insidious kind of racism, one in which whiteys are virtuous saviors, coming to the rescue of African-Americans who become superfluous in narratives that are supposed to be about them.."

Portland Oregonian: "A facile, feel-good fable that substitutes cliché for reality at nearly every turn.."

New York Times: "..a movie made up almost entirely of turning points and yet curiously devoid of drama or suspense ... Will you be moved? Maybe, though only in the sense that “moved” can describe the experience of defensive player, overpowered by a blocker and left flat on his back with a possible concussion."

The Globe and Mail (Toronto): "A football story that deserves a penalty flag every other play for piling on the sentiment

NPR: "..The Blind Side's story is contrived, storybook sweet, credulity-straining and ... um, true."


YES - THE STORY IS TRUE!

My wife and I watched the real-life heroes of this story, Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy along with their daughter and son, today on ABC's Good Morning America after having seen the movie last evening in a packed theater.

Michael Oher was born in Memphis to a crack-adicted mother and was an effectively illiterate teen when the (Black) father of one of his friends helped him gain admittance to a Christian Academy. "Big Mike" was admitted because the football coach saw his great size and athletic ability, but he struggled with the academic side and had no place to live.

Enter Leigh Anne Tuohy (Bullock) and her businessman husband and family, who rescue him out of the cold streets and take him in, eventually adopting him. Michael's measured IQ is only 80, but she recognizes that his innate intelligence has been obscured by a low level of literacy. Leigh Anne and her son and daughter help him with school work.

Michael excels as a football player and is courted by many colleges, but his GPA is too low to qualify under NCAA rules. Leigh Anne finds a tutor and hires her despite her confession of being a Democrat. (Hence the line at the head of this posting: "Who would've thought we'd have a black son before we met a Democrat?")

With Leign Anne pressuring his teachers and school administrators, and the help of the tutor, Michael barely squeaks through with a 2.52 GPA and goes off to Ole Miss to play football. His tutor goes with him and his IQ is improved to the average range. After graduation he plays professional football for the Ravens.

The Title of the movie "Blind Side" comes from the tragic end to Joe Theismann's career in 1985 when the Redskin quarterback was "blind sided" and had his leg broken by Giants' tackle Lawrence Taylor. The movie starts with TV coverage of that event.

GO SEE THE MOVIE!

This is the true story (with minimum Hollywood distortion) of how a Conservative American family actually helped a poor but deserving young man develop his intellectual and athletic abilities and succeed in life.

While some Liberals like to talk about helping the downtrodden, they seem (to me at least) to help the less-deserving poor in return for their votes as a means to political power. They use public money to accomplish their goals.

Conservatives do not seem talk about helping the disadvantaged so much as act by setting the stage for them to help themselves if they have the innate talents, as illustrated by this true story and fine movie.

Ira Glickstein

Do Liberals Consume More Health Care than Conservatives?

The stereotypical Conservative (C-Mind) is well-off financially, attends religious services regularly, and tends to vote Republican, while the stereotype Liberal (L-Mind) is less well-off, less likely to attend religious services, and tends to vote Democratic. Of course there are many well-known exceptions, but I think reasonable people would accept these generalizations on average. One would think that C-Minds, having more disposable income, would tend to spend more on medical care than their poorer L-Mind colleagues. If one thinks that, one would be surprised by the following maps. [Click maps for larger versions.]

US Medicare health care spending by county according to the Congressional Budget Office, varied from a high of $13,900 to a low of $5200 per capita in 2005. That is an amazing ratio of over 2:1. The top map indicates spending by county, with darker shading higher spending and lighter shading lower. On a statewise basis, the people of Massachusetts and New York, for example, employ more than twice as many physicians per capita as Idaho and Utah and spend accordingly.

Winning political party according to Princeton, varied from nearly all Democratic in some counties to nearly all Republican in others in 2004. The middle map indicates voting by county, with blue shading higher Democratic and Red shading higher Republican, with shades of purple in-between. On a statewide basis, the people of Massachusetts and most parts of New York, for example, are much "bluer" than the people of Idaho and Utah.

Church or synagogue attendance according to Wikipedia, varies from over 54% for some states to below 25% for others. The lower map indicates religious attendance by state (I could not find this data by county), with Blue and Green indicating attendance below 34% and Red and Orange above 40%. The people of Massachusetts and New York are in the less religious Green zone, while those in Utah and Idaho are more religious Red and Orange.

Using political party as a proxy, it seems that C-Minds tend to be more religious, which is as expected.

However, C-Minds also spend considerably less on public-funded Medicare than L-Minds. The latter is something of a surprise because C-Minds tend to have more disposable income and many L-Minds live in relative poverty. Also, C-Minds are supposed to be more selfish and L-Minds more generous. Yet, based on the above maps, L-Minds seem to take a larger share of the pie when it comes to public-funded medical care. Is that because L-Minds tend towards physical illness? Does their health suffer from unhealthy or dangerous lifestyles? Do they tend to go to the doctor for slight illness that a C-Mind would dismiss? Does God strike the less religious with more illness? What?

Have a look at the three maps and please provide your explanations.

Ira Glickstein

PS: In a different thread, Howard suggested an interesting explanation. Namely, that specialists tend to be located in larger cities which also tend to vote Democratic. People in rural areas who need specialized medical care would therefore have to go to the nearest large city to see a specialist. At first blush, that seems a reasonable explanation. However, would not Medicare count medical expenses against the home address of the beneficiary rather than the location of his or her doctor and hospital?

Explaining Away Climategate

The video below is is a well-thought-out response to Climategate that explains the scientific meaning of "trick" and that the climate scientists were actually talking about tree ring data when they wrote "hide the decline". Please watch the video and then read my response to it.



WHERE THE VIDEO WENT RIGHT

OK, many of the points are well-taken. Rush and some of the other non-expert loudmouth blowhards are way off in their commentary and totally wrong in the details. There is no actionable evidence of "fraud", "scam", or "conspiracy". It is irresponsible to use such strong words.

WHERE THE VIDEO WENT WRONG

The linked video says the emails and computer programs are "stolen" or "hacked". But there is no evidence of that. Indeed, it is most likely they were released by an inside whistleblower who was appalled by what he saw going on and felt it his or her public duty to do someting about it.

They go after what they call "McExperts" like Rush but they ignore the real experts who have been at this for years and who have exposed important questions about the data and how it is processed.

The video paints all skeptics and "lukewarmers" with the same extremist "deniers" brush. No one who knows the facts denies the Earth has warmed by around 0.5ºC to 0.6ºC over the past century. Nor do reasonable skeptics deny that human release of sequestered carbon (coal, oil, natural gas) is partly responsible.

WHAT IS THE REAL ISSUE?

The issue is not whether it has warmed. The issue is the cause of the warming and the level of human responsibility in it.

The "alarmists" and "warmers" say the major cause is rising greenhouse gases (mainly CO2) and that humans are responsible for the great majority of the warming. They say we are near a "tipping point" and if we do not take immediate and drastic action to stop human-caused CO2 the Earth will overheat beyond our ability to correct it.

The "skeptics" and "lukewarmers" say the major cause is natural cycles of the Sun and decadal ocean oscillations and that humans are responsible for only a small percentage of the warming. They say we are far from any "tipping point" and they favor reasoned action to reduce human caused greenhouse gases.

WHO ARE THE EXPERTS ON THE SKEPTIC SIDE?

If you read the main skeptic websites, such as Watts Up With That? and Climate Audit and others, you will find reasoned science-based critique of the way temperature data is obtained and how it is processed. Even before Climategate, they showed convincing evidence that a large percentage (I say around 30%) of the apparent warming is actually due to measurement bias.

These sites publish photos of active weather stations that have been encroached by asphalt driveways and air conditioner exhausts and other artificial heat sources over the past few decades. They surveyed nearly all official US stations and found that most of them do not meet the guidelines for high quality set by NASA, being at least 100 feet (30 meters) from artificial heat sources. Indeed, many of these stations were properly located years ago, but are now in the midst of newly constructed artificial heat sources. That is convincing evidence at least some of the temperature data is biased.


WHAT IS THE REAL MEANING OF "Mike's Nature trick" and Hide the decline"

The video repeats two of the most widely circulated email excerpts, "Mike's Nature trick" and "hide the decline" and attempts to explain them away. The video repeats these two charges and then accuses the skeptics of not having anything else. Well, there is plenty more, see this and this.

Let us consider the two items the video centered on. Yes, "trick" is sometimes used in scientific literature to describe perfectly honest analysis techniques. Yes, the "hide the decline" statement was about tree ring data that is used as a proxy for surface temperatures in the past.

Why tree rings? Reliable instrumental temperature readings, taken with callibrated thermometers in widely distributed locations on the Earth, have been around only for the past century and a half. For that reason, scientists must use what they call "proxy" data, such as tree rings, which happen to grow more when it is warmer, to determine the temperatures hundreds or thousands of years ago. Well, there is a problem with some of the tree ring data. From about 1940 on, the tree rings show a decline in temperature at the same time instrumental readings have been showing an increase. OY! Either the instruments are biased or -horrors- tree rings are not a very reliable proxy, or both.

So, they used "Mike's Nature trick" (named after Michael Mann a Prof. at Penn State who used the "trick" for a paper published in the prestigious science journal Nature) which is not to plot the tree ring data after 1940. You see, if they plotted all the tree ring data as well as the instrumental data, everybody would see the tree ring data decline as the instrumental data increased. If the tree ring data is shown to be wrong from 1940 to the present, that would raise questions about the actual temperatures indicated by the tree rings hundreds of years ago.

Why the concern about tree ring reliability? Well, historical records indicate what is called the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), during which there were vinyards in northern England, Greenland was an agricultural haven, northern Newfoundland was colonized as "vinland", and the north Atlantic was up to 1.0ºC warmer than today!

Uh, oh!? If the MWP is real, then temperatures 1000 years ago were higher than temperatures now, which would make the alarmists wrong when they say the Earth has never been as warm as it is now. It turns out the tree ring data they had does not show the MWP, so it is important to preserve the reliabilty of that tree ring data. So, "hide the decline" and all will be OK.

Do you believe human reports or tree rings? But all is not OK. I believe the historical record more then the tree rings. Especially if the tree rings are not tracking instrumental temperatures now. Why are tree rings not reliable? Because tree growth is dependent upon much more than surface temperature. It depends upon rainfall, for example.

The tree ring example is sufficient, in my opinion, to throw doubt upon the claim the Earth has never been this warm. It is doubtful it is this warm mostly due to human activities. It was warmer in medieval times, prior to widescale industrialization. That is why the climate scientists used the "trick" to "hide the decline". Sometimes a "trick" really is a is a trick to hide an inconvenient truth. (As Freud said, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!")

Ira Glickstein

National Science Board Prediction: Global COOLING

The US National Science Board (part of the National Science Foundation) issued a report titled Science and the Challenges Ahead that makes six interesting science-based observations and predictions. (Three relevant paragraphs from pages 24-25 of the linked document are reproduced here. Click on image to make it larger.)

Direct quotes are indicated by numbered arrows:

1- "Human activity may be involved on an even broader scale in changing the global climate."

2- "During the last 20-30 years, world temperature has fallen ..."

3- "... there is increasing concern that man himself may be implicated, not only in the recent cooling trend but also in the warming temperatures ...

4- "... activities of the expanding human population - especially those involved with the burning of fossil fuels - raised the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, which acts as a 'greenhouse' ..."

5- "But simulataneously ... growing industrialization and the spread of agriculture introduced increasing quantities of dust into the atmosphere which reduced the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth. ... the cooling effect of the dust particles more than compensated for the warming effect of the carbon dioxide, and world temperature began to fall."

6- "Several consequences [of colder temperatures] have been observed: ... southward intrusion of sea-ice ... unusually large numbers of severe storms ... development of a calamitous drought belt extending around the world ..."

Oh, I forgot to mention, the report was issued in 1974! (Well before Climategate :^)

The more things change,

the more they remain the same!

Warming, cooling, ... whatever - it is always MAN's fault!

(And, of course, WOMAN's too :^)

Could it be NATURAL CYCLES not within Human Control?

Nope - No grant money in that!

Ira Glickstein

Climategate - Now Jon Stewart Makes it Official

Do you believe it now?

Ira Glickstein