Monthly Archives: September 2012

Genius and creativity = “a probabilistic function of quantity”

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I was recently reading a Malcolm Gladwell article about the invention of the computer mouse and came across this statistical definition of genius and creativity:

The psychologist Dean Simonton argues that this fecundity is often at the heart of what distinguishes the truly gifted. The difference between Bach and his forgotten peers isn’t necessarily that he had a better ratio of hits to misses. The difference is that the mediocre might have a dozen ideas, while Bach, in his lifetime, created more than a thousand full-fledged musical compositions. A genius is a genius, Simonton maintains, because he can put together such a staggering number of insights, ideas, theories, random observations, and unexpected connections that he almost inevitably ends up with something great. “Quality,” Simonton writes, is “a probabilistic function of quantity.”

Simonton’s point is that there is nothing neat and efficient about creativity. “The more successes there are,” he says, “the more failures there are as well”—meaning that the person who had far more ideas than the rest of us will have far more bad ideas than the rest of us, too.

To put this in graph terms: as time increases, a creative person has an increasing number of ideas, a line with positive slope. Underneath this overall line of ideas is another positive line tracking the unsuccessful ideas and below that, increasing steadily but perhaps at a slower rate, is the line of successful ideas. In other words, the more overall ideas someone has, the more failures but also the more quality ideas.

The rest of the article is about creating the right structural environment to take advantage of ideas. Most groups and organizations won’t recognize all the best ideas but innovative organizations find ways to encourage and push the good ideas to the top. Indeed, the clincher at the end of the article is that Steve Jobs, supposedly one of the best innovators America has had in recent decades, missed some opportunities as well.

A world where “the city talks back”

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Taking part in a conference in Germany about megacities, sociologist Saskia Sassen makes an interesting comment linking technology and cities:

The effects of the digital revolution shape the urban space and the access of city dwellers to their environs. The focus here is on technologies that allow us, within and with the city, to communicate with buildings and objects. “The city talks back,” says the renowned sociologist Saskia Sassen, one of the most distinguished authors who has published on the sociology of urban development and shaped the term ‘global city’. Felix Petersen, who has recently triggered a trend with his opinion platform Amen, will get together with other innovators to discuss his visions of location-based services. A brief run-down of new technologies will be presented in the “Elevator Pitches” session. Raul Krauthausen provides a new kind of access to cities by way of his Wheelmap application.

I’m intrigued by the idea “the city talks back.” This could simply refer to material objects; city residents and visitors will be able to quickly see more about buildings and objects. For example, Google is working on developing maps of building interiors. Or perhaps all buildings will be equipped with Siri-like voices that can respond to basic questions. However, I wonder how much of this is really about creating another avenue for interacting with other humans in the city. Buildings don’t “talk” – even the artificial intelligence of today has to be programmed.

More broadly, this reminds me of Simmel’s early 1900s ideas about “the stranger” in the city and the general lack of intimate relationships. Through apps and new technologies, we may have more people to “talk to” or “interact with” but are these deep urban relationships or even helpful ones? Or is this just more clutter, another category of urban stimulation that leads to a more “blase” attitude (following up with Simmel)? I suspect Sassen is right that new technology will change how we see cities and the objects and people within them but I also suspect it will have a mix of positive and negative consequences.

Let’s just hope the city talks backs in forms other than advertisements…

Activist charged for downloading millions of JSTOR articles

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Many academics use databases like JSTOR to find articles from academic journals. However, one user violated the terms of service by downloading millions of articles and is now being charged by the federal government:

Swartz, the 25-year-old executive director of Demand Progress, has a history of downloading massive data sets, both to use in research and to release public domain documents from behind paywalls. He surrendered in July 2011, remains free on bond and faces dozens of years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted.

Like last year’s original grand jury indictment on four felony counts, (.pdf) the superseding indictment (.pdf) unveiled Thursday accuses Swartz of evading MIT’s attempts to kick his laptop off the network while downloading millions of documents from JSTOR, a not-for-profit company that provides searchable, digitized copies of academic journals that are normally inaccessible to the public…

“JSTOR authorizes users to download a limited number of journal articles at a time,” according to the latest indictment. “Before being given access to JSTOR’s digital archive, each user must agree and acknowledge that they cannot download or export content from JSTOR’s computer servers with automated programs such as web robots, spiders, and scrapers. JSTOR also uses computerized measures to prevent users from downloading an unauthorized number of articles using automated techniques.”

MIT authorizes guests to use the service, which was the case with Swartz, who at the time was a fellow at Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics.

It sounds like there is some disconnect here: services like JSTOR want to maintain some control over the academic content they provide even as they exist to help researchers find printed scholarly articles. Services like JSTOR can make big money by collating journal articles and requiring libraries to pay for access. Thus, someone like Swartz could download a lot of the articles and then avoid paying for or using JSTOR down the road (though academic users are primarily paying through institutions who pass the costs along to users). But what is “a limited number of journal articles at a time”? Using an automated program is clearly out according to the terms of service but what if a team of undergraduates banded together, downloaded a similar number of articles, and pooled their downloads?

If we are indeed headed toward a world of “big data,” which presumably would include the thousands of scholarly articles published each year, we are likely in for some interesting battles in a number of areas over who gets to control, download, and access this data.

Another thought: does going to open access academic journals eliminate this issue?

A conservative fighting sprawl argues it is a Ponzi scheme

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Here is a summary of the arguments against sprawl made by conservative Chuck Marohn:

But, while my concern with sprawling growth patterns was rooted in their effect on the landscape, on the environment, and on severely compromised populations left behind, Chuck is all about the money. As Thoughts on Building Strong Towns makes quite clear, Chuck believes that sprawl is a Ponzi scheme and we the taxpayers are the ones left holding the empty bags.

In fact, the lead chapters of the book are devoted to the Ponzi thesis, whereby municipalities chase outward growth to find new tax revenue that proves insufficient when the infrastructure needs repair; so they chase even more new growth to pay for the previous round, over and over, until the pattern chokes the economic life out of the place. In Chuck’s words:

“The local unit of government benefits from the enhanced revenues associated with new growth. But it also typically assumes the long-term liability for maintaining the new infrastructure. This exchange – a near-term cash advantage for a long-term financial obligation – is one element of a Ponzi scheme.

The other is the realization that the revenue collected does not come near to covering the costs of maintaining the infrastructure.  In America, we have a ticking time bomb of unfunded liability for infrastructure maintenance . . .

We’ve done this because, as with any Ponzi scheme, new growth provides the illusion of prosperity. In the near term, revenue grows, while the corresponding maintenance obligations – which are not counted on the public balance sheet — are a generation away.”

A few thoughts about this:

1. I’ve seen this in action in suburbs and the problem becomes particularly acute when growth slows or stops or the economy runs into trouble. At these points, the revenue flow based on developer fees plus the new tax revenues from property and sales taxes slows and budgets have to be looked at more closely.

2. Infrastructure is a long-term investment, not a short-term building issue. Lots of communities face this issue: how to generate enough money to substantially fix or replace aging infrastructure? Money needs to be consistently budgeted for these issues because issuing bonds is not always a good answer.

3. I’ve wondered this before: how much of growth is driven by money versus the status that comes with being a growing community? The money from new development is clearly important but there is also prestige associated with moving forward, adding to the population, and continually adding to the tax base. Imagine this line: “a good community is a stagnant/plateaued community.” I don’t think so.

4. More broadly, this is a call for more comprehensive long-term planning in communities. This doesn’t just mean 5, 10, and 20 year projections – communities need to think how the world might change, whether they will have the resources to change course, and how open they will be to pursuing differences courses given the changing world.

A mass transit revolution in Los Angeles?

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Matt Yglesias argues that Los Angeles has turned the corner in promoting mass transit and is poised to become “America’s next great mass-transit city”:

The process started in earnest with the construction of the often-scoffed-about Red and Purple subway lines in the 1990s. This began to create the bones of a major rapid transit system. But it’s kicked into overdrive in the 21st-century thanks to the confluence of three separate incidents. First, Rep. Henry Waxman, the powerful House Democrat who represents L.A.’s Westside, went from being a NIMBY opponent of transit construction to an environmentalist booster. Second, Antonio Villaraigosa  was elected mayor in 2004. Third, in 2008, L.A. County voters passed Measure R, a ballot proposition that raised sales taxes to create a dedicated funding stream for new transit. Thanks to Measure R and Waxman, a new Expo Line connecting downtown to some of the Westside is already open, and work will begin on a “subway to the sea” beneath Beverly Hills soon. The same pool of money also finances expansion of the light rail Gold Line and the rapid-bus Orange Line while helping hold bus fares down…

Perhaps most importantly of all, the city is acting to transform the built environment to match the new infrastructure. A controversial plan to rezone the Hollywood area for more density has passed. The city has also moved to reduce the number of parking spaces developers need to provide with new projects, following the lead of the smaller adjacent cities of Santa Monica and West Hollywood. A project to reconfigure Figueroa Boulevard running south from downtown toward Exposition Park as a bike-and-pedestrian friendly byway is in the works, and pending the outcome of a November ballot initiative, a streetcar may be added to the mix. At the northern end is the massive L.A. Live complex of movie theaters, restaurants, arenas, hotels, condos, and apartments—the biggest downtown investment the city had seen in decades, constructed between 2005 and 2010. At the southern end of the corridor is the University of Southern California, which is planning to redevelop its own backyard to look a bit more like a traditional urban university village.

Los Angeles continues, like almost all American cities, to be primarily automobile oriented. But the policy shift is having a real impact on the ground. The most recent American Community Survey showed a 10.7 percent increase in the share of the metro area’s population that relies on mass transit to get to work, matched with a 3.6 percent increase in driving. And that’s before several of the key Metro projects have been completed or the waning of the recession can drive new transit-oriented development.

As work continues, people will find that Los Angeles has some attributes that make it an ideal transit city. Consultant and planner Jarrett Walker notes that the city’s long straight boulevards make it perfect for high-quality express bus service. And then, of course, there’s the weather. Something like a nine-minute wait for a bus, a 15-minute walk to your destination, or an afternoon bike ride are all more pleasant in Southern California than in a Boston winter or a sweltering Washington August. As a quirk of fate, the East Coast of the United States was settled first, so cities with large pre-automobile urban cores are clustered there. But the fundamentals of climate and terrain are more favorable to walking and transit in Los Angeles than in New York. The city could have simply stuck with tradition and stayed as the first great metropolis of the automobile era. But it’s chosen instead to embrace the goal of growing even greater, which will necessarily mean denser and less auto-focused. While the Bay Area and many Northeastern cities stagnate under the weight of oppressive zoning codes, L.A. is changing—by design—into something even bigger and better than it already is.

Three other factors I think are in Los Angeles’ favor:

1. The metropolitan region is actually denser than all others in the United States:

The nation’s most densely populated urbanized area is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, Calif., with nearly 7,000 people per square mile. The San Francisco-Oakland, Calif., area is the second most densely populated at 6,266 people per square mile, followed by San Jose, Calif. (5,820 people per square mile) and Delano, Calif. (5,483 people per square mile). The New York-Newark, N.J., area is fifth, with an overall density of 5,319 people per square mile

Mass transit works best in denser conditions when more people are within reach of mass transit stops/stations and it is more difficult to maintain and park a car. Los Angeles is rightfully known for sprawl but it is denser sprawl.

2. Los Angeles does have an earlier history of mass transit: streetcars were widely used in the early 1900s.

During the early and mid-1900?s the historic streetcar served as a popular mode of transportation along Broadway.  The Los Angeles Streetcar system was primarily operated by Pacific Electric (1901-1961) and developed into the largest trolley system in the world by the 1920?s. This breath of scale enabled residents and visitors alike to routinely traverse the Los Angeles region, and connected many of Southern California’s communities. The system operated for over half a century, and at its peak traversed over 1,100 miles of track with  900 electric trolley cars; this dense network produced a rate of public transit usage higher than San Francisco does today on a per capita basis.

For years the system was considered by many to be “the vital cog in the city’s transportation system,” and according to author Steven Ealson, provided transportation for millions who enjoyed the streetcar so much they would “ride for miles simply for fun or for transportation to places of amusement.” The demise of the streetcar began with the unprecedented development of single-family tract housing designed and built to accommodate automobiles. This pattern of development quickened during post-war housing construction, and accelerated the demise of the streetcar system as the region became dependent on private transportation.

Read more about how General Motors was involved in dismantling the streetcar system in many large cities, including LA.

3. I wonder if a larger proportions of Los Angeles residents and leaders are simply fed up with highway traffic and want to now look at different options. Remember “Carmageddon“?

h/t Instapundit

Interior designer chooses 1963 modernist home over (all?) McMansions

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I’ve written about this theme recently but here is another version: an interior designer in Houston chooses to buy and redecorate a 1963 modernist home.

Architect Preston Bolton designed this stunning Tanglewood residence in 1963, a look that appears fresh and modern today. In the spring of this year, Kristen and Lee Nix moved in, but not before she transformed the sleek abode into a comfortable home for the couple and their 2-year-old son.

“I knew right when I walked in what I wanted to do,” Kristen said. “Grass rugs, grass cloth on the walls, not a lot of color but lots of texture.”…

“I felt like the house had such good bones in it . . .  it was different with its high ceilings and clean lines.”

The mid-century modern structure provided an ideal palette for Kristen’s interior design skills, honed at the knee of her mother, designer Sheridan Williams, and via a degree in interior design from Houston Community College.

1. The dichotomy presented in the headline is strange as it sounds like this interior designer and others only really have two choices: either a McMansion or a modernist home. Both of these types of homes are a small subset of all homes constructed. I think this is probably an example of McMansion being used as shorthand for all sorts of suburban homes and a modernist home clearly stands out from this crowd.

2. I’ve argued before I don’t think most Americans would choose a modernist home over a McMansion. Does this article prove my point by suggesting it takes an interior designer, someone trained in decor, style, and design, to choose the modernist home over the average and/or bland McMansions?

3. Why no exterior shot of the entire home??

Improving the word cloud: NYT adds rates of word usage and comparisons between groups

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I’m generally not a big fan of word clouds but one of students recently pointed out to me an example from the New York Times that makes some improvements: looking at the rates of word usage at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. (Click through to see the interactive graphic.) Here is how I think this improves on a typical word cloud:

1. It doesn’t display word frequency but rather the rate of the word usage. Thus, we get an idea of how often the words were used in comparison to all the words that were said. Frequencies by themselves don’t tell you much but this helps put them into a context. (A note: I would like the graphic to include the total word usage for each convention so we have a quick idea of how many words were spoken).

2. The display also makes a comparison between the two political parties so we can see the relative word usage across two groups. This could run into the same problem as frequencies – just because one group uses the term more doesn’t necessarily mean they think it is more important – but we can start getting some clues into the differences in how Republicans and Democrats made a case for their party.

Overall, this is an improvement over the typical word cloud (make your own at wordle.net) and helps us start analyzing the tens of thousands of words spoken at the conventions. Of course, we would need a more complete analysis, probably including multiple coders, to really get at what was conveyed through the words (and that doesn’t even get at the visuals, body language, presentation).

The “most beautiful” McDonald’s in the US isn’t really in a McMansion

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I’ve seen several references to this story about the Long Island McDonald’s that is in a 1795 house. A few details about the location:

Known as the Denton House, its bones date back to 1795, when it was constructed as a farm house by one Joseph Denton, a descendent of the founder of the village of Hempstead. In 1860, it was given a Georgian makeover, complete with gingerbread ornamentation, and throughout the 1900?s, found commercial use as a funeral home and a series of restaurants.

By 1986, it was abandoned and on the verge of falling down.

McDonalds purchased the property with the intention of tearing it down and replacing it with a standard McDonald’s restaurant. Thank God for the citizens of the New Hyde Park, who worked to secure landmark status for the building in 1987.

McDonald’s had no choice but to restore the property and work within the parameters of the landmarks commission, which ultimately resulted in their most beautiful restaurant in America (if you know of a better example, please let me know).

This is interesting in itself. However, I was also intrigued by another link to the original story that dubbed this Long Island McDonald’s the “McMansion of the Day.” Perhaps this is simply a play on words: it is a McDonald’s in a mansion so it cleverly could be called a McMansion. It wouldn’t be the first McDonald’s to earn the term; an Arkansas McDonald’s was also dubbed a McMansion.

But, perhaps this is an intentional use of the word McMansion with the typical meaning of a new, large, ugly house in the midst of suburban sprawl. If so, this is the wrong use. Yes, this particular McDonald’s is in the middle of suburban strip malls. However, this is truly a historic house, one that acquired landmark status. McDonald’s renovated the interior for their purposes but it still retains the appearance of an older mansion. People may not like that McDonald’s was able to do this to an older home but it is not really a McMansion in the typical understanding: it is not a new building, it was not originally mass produced (and McDonald’s changes probably weren’t mass reproduced in their other restaurants), and it doesn’t look ugly as the McDonald’s sign above the front door is pretty understated.

Latinos and the “religion” of the American Dream

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A new poll suggests Latinos are optimistic about the American Dream:

The poll, which surveyed 887 likely Latino voters, found that 73 percent believe that their families will achieve the American Dream, compared to only 7 percent who don’t think they’ll attain the American Dream.

“When they come to this country, they are like someone who has converted to another religion,” said Vincent Parrillo, a professor of sociology at William Paterson University, about the immigrant experience in the U.S. “They are a little more devout than those who are born here.”…

The Fox News Latino poll also found that Latinos believe the next generation of Latinos in the United States will be better off than they are today.

About 74 percent of those surveyed said that life will be better than today, while only 13 percent believe it will be worse and 3 percent said it will be the same, the poll states.

I’m intrigued by the link between the American Dream and religion. Does the American Dream really function like a religion in Durkheimian terms, as an ideology about ourselves that helps bring us together and helps provide social cohesion? There may even be rituals associated with it such as buying a home, going to college, and seeing your children get ahead. If we look at the words used at the recent Republican and Democratic National Conventions, both invoked the phrase “American Dream” with Republicans doing so at a slightly higher rate. Since we have freedom of religion and thus a variety of different beliefs and unbeliefs plus a fairly multicultural society with many subcultures and backgrounds, is the American Dream what truly unites Americans?

Sociologist on bigger issues facing Chicago schools: poverty, demographics, segregation

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There has been a lot of commentary about unions in the wake of the Chicago Teacher’s Union strike. But, sociologist Pedro Noguera argues there are three bigger issues that will trouble the Chicago schools and the city of Chicago long after the strike is settled:

President Obama, the teacher unions and all of the other reformers out there would do well to focus more attention on the three huge, interrelated issues that pose the biggest threat to public education and American society generally. These are complex issues that will not be resolved by any contract settlement the warring parties reach in Chicago—but they cannot be avoided if we are to fix what truly ails our public schools…

  1. Youth poverty—Since 2008, poverty rates for children have soared. Nationally, 1 out of 4 children comes from a family with incomes that fall below the poverty line, and 1 out of 7 children lives in a state of food emergency, meaning they frequently go without adequate nutrition. The impact of poverty on schools and on child development is most severe in cities and in states such as Michigan, California and Arizona. Increasingly, public schools are all that remains of the safety net for poor children, and with funding for education being cut back in almost all states, the safety net is falling apart.
  2. Changing demographics—Already in nine states, the majority of school age children are from minority backgrounds. The number of states with majority minority populations will steadily increase in the years ahead even if the influx of immigrants continues to slow due to higher birth rates among Latinos. As the ethnic composition of schools continues to change it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain public support for school funding. Voters don’t seem to understand that today’s school children will be responsible for supporting an aging, largely white population during their retirement years. Economists project that it takes at least three workers to support one retiree who is financially dependent on social security. Since 2010 we have fallen below that critical threshold. Will a less educated, poorer, multiracial workforce be able or be willing to take care of an aging white population?
  3. Growing segregation—According to the Civil Rights Project based at UCLA, 44 percent of schools in the United States are comprised almost exclusively of minority students. Latinos and blacks, the two largest minority groups, attend schools more segregated today than during the civil rights movement forty years ago. Two of every five African-American and Latino students attend intensely segregated schools. Segregation is most severe in Western states, including California—not in the South, as many people believe, and increasingly, most non-white schools are segregated by poverty as well as race. Given that dropout rates and failure tends to be highest in the schools where poor children are concentrated, how will the next generation of young people be prepared to solve the problems they will inherit?

I’m glad a sociologist writes about these; we need the big picture in mind, not just the immediate issues of contracts. There are certain things that can be done in school yet there are a number of other factors in society that also affect schools, children, parents, and neighborhoods. Schools are one lever by which we can affect society but not the only one.

Of course, tackling these issues would require going far beyond schools and instead look at the changes that threaten a number of American big cities. Issues like these are not new and have been at least several decades in the making. Would major candidates, say those running for President, be willing to tackle these three issues? Thus far, it is easier to stick to the ideas of education reform…