Five at 8 - 11/18/09: America's greatest math teacher

Posted at 7:41 AM on November 18, 2009 by Bob Collins (13 Comments)

1) Every high school (or junior high school) math teacher in America should be using New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick's fateful decision to go for a first down late in Monday night's game against the Colts and deep in their own territory as a way to teach statistical probability. If you don't know by now that it didn't work, then keep reading this item for the math.

The math experts at Advanced NFL Stats are using formulas like this:

(0.60 * 1) + (0.40 * (1-0.53)) = 0.79 WP

And this:

(0.56 * 1.9) + ((1-0.56) * -1.8) = 0.3 EP

To come up with this conclusion: "Statistically, the better decision would be to go for it." Remember, this is football, a sport not exactly known for its fancy book learning.

Math teachers: If you still need help with the curriculum, here's more. Or you can hand it off to the philosophy teacher and go with the Boston Globe columnist Eric Wilbur's post, which basically says there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.

Either way, teach, you missed a great chance to engage the kids this week if you didn't pay attention.

2) A good place to ride out a recession: CEO of a non-profit. CBS reports salaries increased an average of 6 percent last year. It also exposes the bottom of the barrel. The Committee for Missing Kids, for example, spends only 14 percent of its budget on kids.

3) Should drunk driving be a felony if you have a kid in the car? New York is heading in that direction. Clearly the idea is to get people not to drive drunk but what makes the kid sitting next to you more important than the kid sitting next to the oncoming car that a drunk might hit?



More from the Bottoms Up file: Students placed in coed housing by their college are nearly three times as likely to binge drink as those in same-sex dorms. Porn use was also higher among the coed dorm kids, the study says.

4) What's up, Greenfield? The Star Tribune has been paying hyperlocal attention to the small Minnesota city, which is the early leader in the most dysfunctional city in Minnesota competition (if you've got a nominee, post it below). The city lost its insurance coverage when the Minnesota League of Cities raised its rates, mostly because of actions of the city council and mayor. Raucous meetings called for the mayor to resign. Last night, she did, according to the Strib. That should solve the problem, right? Let's go see:

Almost immediately the bickering resumed as council members and then audience members tried to speak at once. "Shut up," one audience member said. "You shut up," another replied. "Here we go ..." muttered a third.

5) The mammography debate. We have only a few hours to intelligently discuss this week's advisory by a government panel to change to 50 the age at which women should start having a regular mammogram. Republicans today are holding a news conference to claim it will lead to rationing (it's not like someone didn't tell you this would happen). Once it becomes a political football, Republicans will line up with age 40, Democrats will line up with age 50; and a careful medical analysis of this week's news will be lost to the way most weighty issues are considered these days -- which side is my political party on?

But there was no getting around the link to the rationing issue. Linda Leslie Martin, a cancer survivor from Mendota Heights, writes in an MPR commentary today:

I've been a proponent of President Obama's plan for health care reform. Suddenly I'm worried about what I used to consider ridiculous scare tactics concerning government decisions on who lives and dies. Now I'm not so sure they're ridiculous.

When I was first diagnosed with cancer, my daughter was 4 years old. If these new guidelines had been in place in the late 1990s, would I have lived to see her senior year in high school?

Her comments mirror those in every letter to the New York Times.

Well, here's the thing: Someone at some point in the past decided that 40 was the age women should have periodic mammograms. Was that rationing, too (That's not a rhetorical question)? The question to ask is whether there's sound medical science behind these decisions.

Go search "mammogram" on Google news. "Outraged," "worried," "upset," "rips," and "wary" are some of the words in the headline. Didn't anyone ask, "hey, who's on this panel making the recommendation?" Why, yes. But apparently just one -- Public TV:

PBS' NewsHour talked to Dr. Diana Petitti, a professor of biomedical informatics at Arizona State University. She's vice chair of the panel:

And I think part of it is because of the subtlety of the language of the task force. The task force recommended against routine screening of women starting in their 40s. What they recommended in favor of was a discussion of a woman with her physician about what age to start screening.

The recommendation has been widely misinterpreted as saying women shouldn't be screened ever in their 40s. And that, in fact, is not what the recommendation was about.

Which brings us to...

TODAY'S QUESTION

A new government study has recommended that most women not get mammograms until they reach age 50. It also suggests that women stop doing breast self-exams. What do you think of the new guidelines discouraging mammograms for women under 50?

WHAT WE'RE WORKING ON

Midmorning (9-11a.m.) - First hour: Couples struggling with infertility today have more options to find donors, thanks to the Internet. And the growth of social networking is helping many donor offspring find the truth about their genetic origins. Midmorning discusses what happens when participants in reproductive technology lose their anonymity via the Internet.

Second hour: Reinhold Niebuhr was one of the most influential, and controversial, theologians and political theorists of the 20th Century. President Obama has called him his favorite philosopher. Two scholars discuss the essence of Niebuhr's philosophy and the book "Moral Man and Immoral Society."

Midday (11 a.m. - 1 p.m.) - First hour: A listener call-in program to answer questions about the latest research on screening for breast and prostate cancer.

Second hour: Former Sen. Norm Coleman's speech at Harvard. Coleman, it would appear, is the 800-pound gorilla in the race to succeed Tim Pawlenty as governor.

Talk of the Nation (1-3 p.m.) - First hour: Political Junkie Ken Rudin talks about the buzz surrounding Sarah Palin and the week in political news.

Second: More mammograms. Medical experts answer questions about the new guidelines.

All Things Considered (3-6:30 p.m.) - After years of delay the Shubert project in Minneapolis gets an official groundbreaking for a new regional dance center. MPR's Euan Kerr will have the story.

MPR's Dan Olson takes a look at how Target Field/Transit Hub are changing the previously blighted section of downtown Minneapolis.

Former MPR reporter Martin Kaste conducts his own math class this afternoon. He'll reveal how the stimulus jobs reports are calculated.

It's November, you May graduates. You know what that means? Your first student loan repayment is due. Claudio Sanchez reports many former students don't have the cash.

And Robert Siegel talks to the curator of a new exhibit on ... parking garages.

Can a parking garage be public art?



WHY I LOVE PUBLIC RADIO

MPR's Euan Kerr did a story yesterday about linguist Arika Okrent, whose new book book explores some of the 500 she found which were developed over the last millennium. The story found its way to Vancouver, from where reader Brian Kaneen writes:

Pardon me, but there is a world of difference between an a priori language invented such as Klingon, and an a posteriori constructed one such as Esperanto! Klingon was indeed invented 'from scratch', but the wordstock of the non-ethnic inter-language Esperanto was taken from existing ethnic languages, largely on the principle of 'maximum internationality'. And their purposes were entirely different too: Klingon was largely just for entertainment and aimed at a specific interest group, while a modern rationale for the common second language Esperanto can be found in the seven points of the Prague Manifesto.

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Comments (13)

On drunk driving - I can't figure out why there is any difference in penalties for drunk driving offenses. The only is difference between killing someone, hurting someone, and just getting caught is dumb luck. If you prove you can't be responsible enough to not drink and drive you deserve jail time and you no longer deserve the priviledge of driving.

On non-profit CEO pay - A quote from the article you cited:
"They say to themselves, 'If we don't give this person $700,000, that means that the job's not important and he can't do a good job'," said Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at Georgetown University Public Policy Institute. "I mean that's the thinking, and it's appalling."
Appalling - can't argue with that. And following the link in the article to Charity Navigator you can find Mr. Kling's pay from MPR and related affiliates. It was just under $600K, which I think is down a little from the last few years if I recall the Strib rankings correctly. Hopefully the MPR staff is chipping in to take him out to lunch a few times a week during his period of hardship. Every listener, any amount!

Posted by Al | November 18, 2009 8:27 AM

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Actually, Kling's pay on charity navigator from MPR was under $400k. And, by the way, MPR got a four-star rating from charity navigator.

That's out of four stars. Do a comparison on how that stacks up with others -- including, by the way, NPR.

Posted by Bob Collins | November 18, 2009 8:32 AM

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>>which basically says there are lies, damn lies, and statistics

Charitably put, Wilbur is either innumerate or has a bad sense of humor.

Stats lets one make predictive statements about the future. He is deriding an outcome in the past. That is not the realm of statisticians, but of journalists. And historians.

There are some interesting stat results which do fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Going for 4th down more often is one (makes me wonder though when one who has been a proponent of this for a long time is Charlie Weis.....).

Another is when to pull the goalie when one goal down in a hockey game. Surprisingly, 5-6 minutes appears to be optimal. (Alex Trabek will be proud)

>>The question to ask is whether there's sound medical science behind these decisions.

I don't know the answer to that, although I suspect there was, about the 40 year rule of thumb. But there is an issue here that no one notices. The implication is that a 39 year old is significantly different in some way than a 40 year old, vis-a-vis risk. Of course, that is almost never true in such cases, and I seriously doubt it here. It is just that, someone somewhere came up with numbers that said for a 39 year old, having a mammogram is the best thing to do 48% of the time, and for a 40 year old, 51% of the time.

Actually more likely, this splitting around 50% happened a couple of years to one side, but doctors and clinicians being as they are wouldn't have appreciated (say) 43. So they rounded the guideline.

Don't kid yourself. This is how these guidelines come about.

Posted by JohnnyZoom | November 18, 2009 9:04 AM

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//from MPR and related affiliates
Once you add in the affiliates at another $236K, it is just under $600K. I asked Mr. Kling about this when he was on Midday last year and he said the rest of his pay was from APM and a foundation that supports MPR and/or APM. So whether it is $600K for his combined jobs, or $600K for 3 part-time jobs is immaterial. $350K for a part-time job is still appalling.

MPR does have a high rating and is of great value to me, which is why I am a sustaining member. But CEO compensation is out of hand in corporations and non-profits, regardless of the success of the organization. MPR is successful because of the hard work of many people. Of course this includes Mr. Kling, but I still see no reason why his compensation should be enough to pay cash for 2 houses on my block each year and have my professional salary and my wife's left over.

At the very least, this should result in a loss of tax exempt status, something I have suggested to my legislators on a couple of occassions. America's non-profits would be best served by an actual dollar value cap on executive pay in order to retain non-profit status.

Posted by Al | November 18, 2009 9:15 AM

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Most everyone's assessment of what's a fair salary is is based on what they make in their job -- which usually isn't as a CEO. that's why the comparison of whether salaries went up at non-profits last year is a good barometer of realism/unrealism.

MPR execs, as I understand it, all took substantial pay cuts last year, while make a commitment not to cut news in a period of our history that required a more informed citizenry.

What price do you put on the value of someone smart enough to make THAT decision?

Posted by Bob Collins | November 18, 2009 9:30 AM

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Apparently I don't put enough value on the ability of someone to make the difficult decision to cut their own pay to a lower, but still appallingly high, amount for the good of the organization.

My assessment of what is fair may be based on my own salary, but it also has to do with a comparison to a typical salary in the area. How many TIMES more than a typical worker does one need to be compensated?

Posted by AL | November 18, 2009 9:53 AM

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//My assessment of what is fair may be based on my own salary, but it also has to do with a comparison to a typical salary in the area.

Typical salary for what? for a locally controlled news organization that invests more in programing and isn't leading its newscasts with features on favoring ring tones?

Is there one?

Let's say -- for the sake of argument -- that Kling's salary is three times mine. I'm a blogger. How can I compare my salary to someone with an entirely different job?

Posted by Bob Collins | November 18, 2009 10:06 AM

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I'm going to step out of this argument because I have made my point. The salaries of richest people in the nation keep pulling farther and farther from the people doing the work. Certainly corporate CEO salaries lead this trend, but non-profits have a part as well, particularly given their special tax status and the missions of many to be of public good.

If you believe that these high salaries are appropriate then express that to the organizations you give to and continue giving. If not, express that with your voice and your wallet.

Posted by Al | November 18, 2009 10:42 AM

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Not an argument. A discussion.

Posted by Bob Collins | November 18, 2009 10:54 AM

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Sorry. No offense meant and none taken. I tend to get a little passionate about this topic.

Posted by Al | November 18, 2009 11:18 AM

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hi, i didn't see a comment spot for the norm coleman speech, so i'll comment here.

hey norm, please get your daniel burnham quotes right: as any card-carrying architecture grad student in chicago knows, he said, "make no little plans; they have no power to stir men's blood." Not, "dream big dreams..." this may be a small point, but i spent countless hours studying architectural history in chicago, and would move back there tomorrow if i could. and, as we all know, whether in matters of building a city anew after a fire, or tallying misconstrued ballots after an election, little things do affect final results.

Posted by amy | November 18, 2009 12:28 PM

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FAct-checking architectural history. ANOTHER reason why I love the MPR audience! Well done, Amy.

Posted by Bob Collins | November 18, 2009 1:04 PM

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With regard to Brian Kaneen's comment on the need for an international language.

As a native English speaker I would Esperanto as the future global language:) Communication should be for everyone, not just for an educational or political elite; that is how English is used at the moment.

Your readers may be interested in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2LPVcsL2k0 Dr Kvasnak teaches English at Florida Atlantic University.

A glimpse of Esperanto can be seen at http://www.lernu.net

Posted by Brian Barker | November 19, 2009 2:41 AM

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