Data Modeling the FBI

Without knowing anything about the FBI, I've speculated on why it might have had problems with its big IT project. Part of the problem, I guessed, was a culture that gave priority to the special agent and not the administrative side.

One of the fun things about my time in USDA was learning about "data modeling", which is the process of analyzing processes to pick out the key data that you need to capture in the computer. Now this was in the days of relational databases (i.e., almost 20 years ago) and I'm sure the process has progressed since. But, that won't stop me from opining about things I know nothing about; I am a blogger after all.

I picked up Ronald Kessler's book, "The Bureau" which is a history of the agency, based on his past reporting for the Post and other books on FBI issues. There I find that Hoover specified the filing system for the agency early on: case files, with the designation the reference of the law violated, the abbreviation of the office, and a sequential number (not clear whether the number is within the office or within the law and office). That gives me just enough information to go to lots of speculation.

Observations: It makes sense to file by case--after all FBI's raison d'etre was to enforce federal law, so a violation is a logical starting point. The coding makes it easy to report to the main office--file case folders by status (under investigation, referred for prosecution, closed, etc.) and just do counts by law and status--so many bank robberies, so many Mann Acts, etc. etc.

But, in a modern context it wouldn't work at all well for intelligence investigations. (The FBI may have changed their filing system, but I'll assume not.) Note that the system assumed the field office is the alpha and omega, so it is awkward to transfer a case to another office or the main office. I think starting with the violation would make it hard to investigate organized crime, drugs, or any network.

Note--plan to do some more research and post more on the subject.

Digging and Weeding in the Garden

My wife and I have a garden plot rented from Reston Association. Watching other gardeners is interesting. Often the new gardeners are very energetic in the spring, digging their beds and planting. But sometimes they poop out. It's easy enough to get enthused by spring, after the winter when the day is warm and the promise of summer is in the air. You don't remember that gardening is a commitment, that the weeds will sprout and grow as easily and more strongly than your plants, that the weather will get too hot, or too cold, that bugs will emerge as the temperature rises, in sum, that gardening can be a pain in the knees, if not the rear.

I'd parallel this to lots of initiatives, government, private, commercial, nonprofit. Because of the way people are built, when we're mobilizing to do something, it's always easy to forget the maintenance requirements on the far side.

Supreme Court Appointment

My guess is that Bush will select a woman and a Hispanic in his next two appointments to the Supreme Court.  Most likely someone named Edith and Judge Gonzales.

 

Teaching Mathematics--Brad DeLong

Economist Brad DeLong repeats the Kevin Drum critique of Diane Ravitch, then goes on to discuss the problems of getting adolescents interested in math. Lower in the blog he has a discussion of teaching math, of which this is a brief excerpt. Go here for more:

"One Hundred Interesting Math Calculations: How do you convince adolescents that there is a big long-run payoff from math? Teaching them (mine at least) that there is a huge short-run payoff from reading and a huge medium-run payoff to writing is easy. But math is harder.

1. [World War II Bomber Pilot Survival Odds]
2. [How Many Extraterrestrial Civilizations Are There?]
3. [Gravity and "Weighing the Earth"]
4. (There's 20+ more examples.)
   

Gossip from Iraq

Chris Bray has an interesting post on Cliopatria reporting discussions with soldiers back from Iraq. Chris is a historian and reservist who's been called to active duty.

As I said in comments there, the reports evoke my time in Vietnam, but I suspect there might be some bravado in the discussions that exaggerate the reality in Iraq.

Teaching Mathematics--Kevin Drum

Kevin Drum has been researching a Diane Ravitch comparison of the indices to two math books, one from 1973 and one contemporary that were used to support an assertion that modern math courses dumb down the subject. See here. I find the comments particularly fascinating. In my youth I was good at math but a teacher with an bad accent in calculus my freshman year ended any thoughts of doing it for a living. Now I've forgotten most all of the terms and can't really follow much of the discussion. ("graphing calculator"--what's that all about?)

I have to agree with the comment by an engineer--that the experience of working something by hand, not calculator, has helped him over the years by allowing him to estimate for reasonableness of result. That's an important ability, because sometimes reporters are math illiterates and pass along incredible statistics. (For example, recently the Rolling Thunder motorcycle rally was estimated at a few hundred thousand people, but any calculation of reasonableness would make it much lower.)

I can also readily believe that modern kids have harder math than I had. That's the historic pattern, every generation does a bit more than the previous. (Read a book about numeracy in early America and the Founding Fathers were lucky if they knew arithmetic.)

Global Warming--The Compensatory Principle

Robert Samuelson recently wrote on global warming in the Post. In passing he said that global warming could do good as well as harm. For some reason, the statement irks me. Possibly there's no change from the present about which that couldn't be said, at least from certain perspectives. Suppose an unseen asteroid hit the earth tomorrow at 9:05 am and completely destroyed all life on the planet. Still, that destruction would do good--it would end the suffering of many people and prevent the doing of much evil.

But on to a more serious take. Yes, grant that global warming will change much, and some of the changes will be for the good. Some land now a desert may bloom, some untolerable environments may become subtropic resorts, inland areas will become great seashores. It's entirely true that global warming will create both winners and losers.

I know more history than economics. Henry George in the 19th century wrote a book pointing out that most increases in the value of land were due to society. He argued that was moral justification for taxing land values to take back the unearned increase.

Conservative economists (almost a redundant phrase) talk of "rent-seeking" behavior. From Wikipedia:

"The phenomenon of rent-seeking was first identified in connection with monopolies by Gordon Tullock, in a paper in 1967. It takes place when an entity seeks to extract uncompensated value from others by manipulation of the economic environment -- often including regulations or other government decisions."

I'm adopting the same moralistic attitude when I say that the winners in the global warming lottery will gain unearned value, and therefore do not deserve to keep it.

In a "rational world" (an oxymoron), we would tax the winners to compensate the losers. The people in Bangladesh, the Pacific island nations, Netherlands, Miami, New Orleans, and Wall Street would be compensated for their losses by those who gain, whoever they may be. If the Australian desert blossoms and the Midwest dries up and blows away, the Aussies would compensate the Yanks.

There's precedent for this--in time of war democracies tend to tax the profits of those who supply the armies at a higher rate--a "windfall profit tax". (That's an ancient metaphor, I assume coming from the apples that you find on the ground after a fall windstorm; no one had to climb the tree to pick the fruit.)

Honey versus Vinegar, Part II

Posted yesterday on Prof. Leiter's views on the relative merits of persuasion versus yelling in the blogosphere. Robert KC Johnstone at Cliopatria blogs on the proper role of collegiality within academia. He sees it as overrated, leading to a bunch of nice people who downplay good research for getting along. He comments on this post at Inside Higher Ed :: Collegiality -- the Tenure Track's Pandora's Box, which includes 15 steps for being collegial and getting tenure. It boils down to:

"Common sense and self-control. Exercise both. Concrete manifestations of common sense and self-control require several tactics. Here are some things to try. Most of these tips are obvious..."

Johnstone sees some of the steps as advice to suck up to those in power. I have to say I'm more with Mary McKinney, the writer at Inside Higher Ed, than with Johnstone. It's an old controversy though--there are those who modify their behavior on the basis of other people's concerns and those who don't. I'm reminded of criticism of Benjamin Franklin, who might have originated the saying: if you can fake sincerity you have it made. But William James observed that if you act as if you believe something, you often come to believe it. And George Washington studied, not how to be nice to people, but how to impress them.

To quote my mother: "be nice". To quote my father: "there's more than one way to skin a cat" [and win approbation]

Civility and the Leiter Reports

Eugene Volokh at Volokh.com cites this post: Leiter Reports: On Rhetoric, "Persuasion," and Tone...or Knowing the Difference Between Hard and Easy Questions for an interesting discussion of the pros and cons of civility in blogging. To boil down the argument, Leiter says on serious questions civil argument is appropriate, but not in the blogosphere, which he believes is not a realm for persuasion.

"What always strikes me in debates about 'tone' and 'civility' is that the critics, without fail, will abandon civility and adopt a harsh tone in the presence of the views that they deem 'beyond the pale.' Invariably, it turns out that they simply draw the line somewhere else (a good example is here--see the last paragraph, and the second comment), and that what really galls them is not the fact of my harshness and dismissiveness--they are equally capable of that when it comes to, e.g., Noam Chomsky or Ralph Nader or me--but rather that it is directed at the views they've been taught to take seriously, to think are serious, the views they've been led to believe are entitled to respect, even if one disagrees."

He has a point--certainly most of the popular blogs I've seen have a lot of heat, whether from the posts or the comments. But I'd draw the line differently, at least for myself. On the one hand you have the gibes and snarky remarks; on the other you have posts that try for reason. The former are just spray off the water; the later should aim for persuasion. We may not achieve what we aim for, but as someone said somewhere if we don't aim for it we're unlikely to achieve it.

Fourth of July Legends

Humans almost always idealize their group and their bigshots. One example of that is our urge to glorify the Founding Fathers. Snopes.com has a good analysis of a recurrent urban legend here.