DaveShearon

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality

"Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality" is a great read for bloggers, but it has some interesting points more generally. 

In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.

And of course, this will apply to school choice.  I think that's what some opponents fear -- that the very act of choosing will create an undeserved perception of quality for some schools.  Here's how Mr. Shirky explains it for weblogs:

Given the ubiquity of power law distributions, asking whether there is inequality in the weblog world (or indeed almost any social system) is the wrong question, since the answer will always be yes. The question to ask is "Is the inequality fair?"

He suggests fairness in the world of weblogs is established by the low barriers to

Futures markets

I've become interested in futures markets. Thanks to Professor Ribstein for pointing to a Wall Street Journal article that contained this paragraph about Hollywood Stock Exchange:

Where the MGM executives in "Open Wide" overestimated the opening of "Legally Blonde 2" by $12 million, the HSX market's prediction was within $3 million. Warner Bros. executives overestimated "Terminator 3's" opening weekend by $28 million; HSX came within $10 million. Or take two of Hollywood's most recent shocks: The monstrous failure of "The Hulk" and the stunning success of "Fahrenheit 9/11." The HSX predictions came within about $3 million of each of their actual openings, besting all the professional models. Inexplicably, "Open Wide" ignores this phenomenon completely.

David Tufte links to this same post and says the new SpongeBob movie is going to be big.

Optimism and Schools

Chris Correa, in a comment to this post, raises the issue of optimism and schools. It's a critical issue. First, a few points:

1. Children have overwhelmingly positive attributional styles, and girls more so than boys.
2. At puberty, this optimism drops.
3. After puberty, girls (and women) rate lower on scales of optimism than boys (and men).

Here's the section on Chapter 8 from my book note:

Failure devastates us. All of us, upon experiencing failure, quit -- at least temporarily. Optimists bounce back and began trying almost immediately; defeat is temporary and achievement is assured. Pessimists, on the other hand, are defined by their failures. They are a failure, and there is no point in a failure continuing to try.

Comment: Children are natural optimists, as discussed earlier, and they sure better be in our schools. We often assure failure by such tactics as grading on the curve. We define relative success as failure. Please note that I am not arguing for low standards or namby-pamby, feel good education. I am simply making a point as to how school is experienced for many students. Is it any wonder that educators report "losing" students as they enter the later middle school years, which is approximately the same time that the natural optimism of childhood wanes. These students are suddenly unable to cope with an environment they have been in long as they can remember. How can such a failure not be a complete turn-off?

Working with Joan Girgus, and building on the work of Carol Dweck, Dr. Seligman and his staff conducted a study of 3rd-grade children from 1995 until they finished seventh grade in 1999. They found that children who began third grade with a pessimistic score on the CASQ were at risk for depression and severely-reduced academic achievement. In addition, bad life events, especially including divorce and parental turmoil, contributed to a pessimistic explanatory style. Over all, boys were significantly more depressed at all points along this age range then were girls.

In college, students with optimistic explanatory styles will outperform predictive measures such as SAT scores or high school grades. Students with pessimistic scores will under perform.

Problems with happiness?

Happy people are more likely to be bigots? Maybe. See this NY Times article. Actually, this doesn't seem inconsistent with Seligman's work on optimism and his more recent, broader book Authentic Happiness.

Thanks to Futurepundit.