Author Archives: legallysociable

Should college be marketed as the best four years of life?

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John J. Miller points out that the idea that college should be the best four years of one’s life, brought to his attention by a University of Michigan mailer, is an odd goal.

I tend to agree – and have a few thoughts about this:

1. This is a terrible setup for the rest of life. If students think that life is downhill after college (which is implied with sayings like this), then this could turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Perhaps it suggests that the college life (or at least its lifestyle) should be extended before one has to “get real” and pursue more adult goals. Adult life certainly is different than college life – but this idea suggests it is the peak of life and adult life, in comparison, is lacking.

2. How does this work for students who find that college is not the best four years of their life? The college experience does not appeal to everyone nor is it perfect. If you were not thrilled with everything in college, should you feel guilt? Remorse? Did you miss something? College is not just a fun time – it is a period of transition from being a teenager to being an adult and this can be a difficult process.

3. When did this shift from college being preparation to college being “an experience” happen? Which is the more important goal, particularly for a society that hopes to have productive and learned citizens? At the same time, if one is paying $20-50k a year for college, it had better be a good experience…

Race as a lesser factor in forming friendships on Facebook

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A new study in the American Journal of Sociology finds that a shared racial identity was less important than several other factors when making friends on Facebook:

“Sociologists have long maintained that race is the strongest predictor of whether two Americans will socialize,” said Andreas Wimmer, the study’s lead author and a sociologist at UCLA…

In fact, the strongest attraction turned out to be plain, old-fashioned social pressure. For the average student, the tendency to reciprocate a friendly overture proved to be seven times stronger than the attraction of a shared racial background, the researchers found…

Other mechanisms that proved stronger than same-race preference included having attended an elite prep school (twice as strong), hailing from a state with a particularly distinctive identity such as Illinois or Hawaii (up to two-and-a-half times stronger) and sharing an ethnic background (up to three times stronger).

Even such routine facts of college life as sharing a major or a dorm often proved at least as strong, if not stronger, than race in drawing together potential friends, the researchers found.

Interesting findings – perhaps Facebook is a new world or younger generations don’t pay as much attention to race.

Additionally, it is interesting to read about the methodology of the study which took place at a school where 97% of students had Facebook profiles and the sociologists measured friendships in terms of photo tagging (and not who were actually listed as “friends”).

A couple of questions I have: is behavior on Facebook and choosing friends reflective of actual social patterns in the real world? Is there a selection issue going on here  – not all students or people of this age use Facebook so are college students who use Facebook already more likely to form cross-racial friendships?

Suburbs and cities in the 2010 elections

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Joel Kotkin argues that suburbs are the primary battleground in the 2010 elections and Democrats are behind because they are trying to push urban strategies:

In America, the dominant geography continues to be suburbia – home to at least 60 percent of the population and probably more than that portion of the electorate. Roughly 220 congressional districts, or more than half the nation’s 435, are predominately suburban, according to a 2005 Congressional Quarterly study. This is likely to only increase in the next decade, as Millennials begin en masse to enter their 30s and move to the periphery.

Nationally, suburban approval for the Democrats has dropped to 39 percent this year, from 48 percent two years ago. Disapproval for President Barack Obama is also high — nearly 48 percent of suburbanites disapprove, compared to only 35 percent of urbanites. Even Obama’s strong support among minority suburbanites, a fast-growing group, has declined substantially.

Kotkin suggests two particular sets of ideas are behind this: suburbanites are not happy with the economic problems and Obama has pushed a more urban agenda (including suggesting that sprawl is not desirable).

Kotkin is on to something about a different political culture in suburbia. Numerous scholars have pointed this out: suburbs are not necessarily Republican but they do have unique concerns including not just keeping their homes but having them increase in values, desiring a more prosperous life for themselves and their children, keeping “threats” at bay, and limiting taxes. It can be tough to sell large changes to suburbanites when they feel that their money or resources are being taken away and used for other people. The political shift in America began in earnest in the 1960s as the growing number of suburbanites began to overwhelm concerns from other areas.

Though Kotkin suggests Obama has a more urban agenda, I think he hardly has strongly pushed for city life or city concerns. Even with the economic crisis, the primary focus has still be on the middle class (and perhaps some on the working class). Obama’s ideas about sprawl are not unusual, particularly among policymakers and academics. Perhaps voters tie Obama himself to the city with his Chicago mansion and seemingly strong ties to Chicago political operators?

But this shift toward the suburbs applies to both political parties: America is a suburban nation. And that suburbia is growing more and more diverse.

Considering “polls gone wild”

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The Associated Press released a story yesterday with this headline: “Polls gone wild: Political gripes in Internet age.” It is an interesting read about the role polls have played in the 2010 election season and I have a few interpretations regarding the story.

1. The griping of politicians about polls does not often seem to be based on the methodology of the poll. Rather, I think the politicians are trying to curry favor with supporters and voters who are also suspicious of polls. I would guess many Americans are suspicious of polls because they think they can be manipulated (which is true) and then throw out all poll results (when there are methods that make the polls better or worse). Some of this could be dealt with by dealing with innumeracy and educating citizens about how good polls are done.

2. There is a claim that earlier polls affect later polls and elections and that overall, polls help determine election outcomes. Are there studies that prove this? Or is this just more smoke and mirrors from politicians?

3. If there are charges to be made about manipulation, it sounds like the political campaigns are manipulating the figures more than the reputable polling firms which are aiming to be statistically sound.

4. Stories like this remind me of the genius of RealClearPolitics.com where multiple polls about the same races are put side by side. If one doesn’t trust polls as much, just look at how polls compare over time. The more reputable companies show generally similar results over time. Basing news stories and campaign literature on just one poll may look silly in a few years with all of these companies producing numerous polls on almost a daily basis.

Still issues regarding welfare and poverty to be solved

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Even though the welfare debate in America has been limited recently (or perhaps people think it was a relic of the Clinton presidency), several new books have been published challenging the idea that there are not problems still to be solved. One of the books found that those who were once on welfare but then took jobs did not come out ahead:

But Stretched Thin challenges this supposed success story. Even in the prosperous economy of the late 1990s, it shows, finding a job was not usually a ticket out of poverty. Co-authors Sandra Morgen, an anthropologist, and Joan Acker, a sociologist, both at the University of Oregon, and Jill Weigt, a sociologist at California State University, San Marcos, surveyed more than 900 people, most of them white single mothers, who were taken off the rolls in Oregon or denied welfare benefits in early 1998. They found that more than half — 55 percent — wound up taking jobs that paid wages at or below the poverty line. Two years later, the authors found, nearly half still had family incomes below the poverty line.

If the goal of the welfare reform was to help people move permanently out of poverty, these books suggest there is a lot more work to do. And now with more Americans living in poverty, this could be the time to start working on the complex set of challenges.

What to do with a sociology PhD: become the father of the hedge fund

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A common question arises regarding sociology degrees: what can you do with that? The man behind the hedge fund, Alfred Winslow Jones, held a sociology PhD from Columbia University before going on to becoming a financial writer and inventor:

In fact, by the time the article hit the newsstands, Jones was already well in the process of setting up his own investment firm, A. W. Jones & Co. While reporting on the latest investment strategies, Jones had begun to contemplate a new approach, one that would include selling short some stocks in a portfolio as a way to protect against the market’s uncertainties.

Such a portfolio, Jones would explain to his investors, was a “hedged” fund..

In 1941, Jones received a sociology doctorate from Columbia University. For his research, he interviewed 1,705 residents of Akron, Ohio about their attitudes toward corporations and property. He found that, despite local labor unrest and political tensions, Akron was not divided rigidly along class lines. His dissertation was published as a book titled Life, Liberty, and Property, which became a much-used text in sociology circles…

Landau highlighted Jones as the man who had started this trend, noting however that the sociology Ph.D. “actually seems to be more interested in things other than finance,” including finding self-improvement alternatives to welfare and organizing a Reverse Peace Corps to bring foreigners to work with poor Americans. Jones was quoted complaining that “too many men don’t want to do something after they make money.” Many of Jones’s early investors, Landau wrote, were scholars, social workers and others whom Jones had met over the years and was trying to free from financial concerns.

Sounds like an interesting life. It would be fascinating to hear Jones talk about how his PhD in sociology helped push him toward his financial inventions and actions. Was it something about the way sociology views the world that helped him develop the idea of the “hedged fund”? Perhaps sociology gave him some unique insights into the operation of economic markets. Additionally, it sounds like Jones had some sociological thoughts about what one should do with an accumulated fortune: it should be put toward new social ideas and goals.

The presence of error in statistics as illustrated by basketball predictions

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TrueHoop has an interesting paragraph from this afternoon illustrating how there is always error in even complicated statistical models:

A Laker fan wrings his hands over the fact that advanced stats prefer the Heat and LeBron James to the Lakers and Kobe Bryant. It’s pitched as an intuition vs. machine debate, but I don’t see the stats movement that way at all. Instead, I think everyone agrees the only contest that matters takes place in June. In the meantime, the question is, in clumsily predicting what will happen then (and stats or no, all such predictions are clumsy) do you want to use all of the best available information, or not? That’s the debate about stats in the NBA, if there still is one.

By suggesting that predictions are clumsy, Abbott is highlighting an important fact about statistics and statistical analysis: there is always some room for error. Even with the best statistical models, there is always a chance that a different outcome could result. There are anomalies that pop up, such as a player who has an unexpected breakout year or a young star who suffers an unfortunate injury early in the season. Or perhaps an issue like “chemistry,” something that I imagine is difficult to model, plays a role. The better the model, meaning the better the input data and the better the statistical techniques, the more accurate the predictions.

But in the short term, there are plenty of analysts (and fans) who want some way to think about the outcome of the 2010-2011 NBA season. Some predictions are simply made on intuition and basketball knowledge. Other predictions are made based on some statistical model. But all of these predictions will serve as talking points during the NBA season to help provide some overarching framework to understand the game by game results. Ultimately, as Gregg Easterbrook has pointed out in his TMQ column during the NFL off-season, many of the predictions are wrong – though the makers of the predictions are not often punished for poor results.

Why American road sign lettering will change: better readability

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The Infrastructurist sums up the research behind the change to federal policies about road sign lettering. Road signs in coming years will need to be changed to move away from all CAPS in order to improve readability, particularly at night:

The shift reflects years of research into how drivers—particularly the elderly—react to road signs. In the late 1990s researchers at Penn State’s Pennsylvania Transportation Institute compared traditional highway signs to those with mixed-case Clearview lettering. They sat people age 65 to 83 in the front seat of a Ford Probe and approached a sign until the person could read it, repeating the tests with various fonts in both daytime and night.

The results, as the name Clearview suggests, were clear. Mixed-font Clearview was readable from roughly 440 feet away, whereas typical all-cap lettering was readable only at a distance of 384 feet. By expanding the interior spaces of certain letters, Clearview also reduced halanation—the process by which letters blur together late at night. In darkness Clearview became readable at 387 feet, against 331 for the standard highway font style.

All told the researchers found a 16 percent increase in readability with Clearview. On a typical 55 m.p.h. highway this translates into “two more seconds to read and respond to a sign,” they concluded in a 1998 report.

While this will cost money in the short term, it should lead to an improved driving experience. But it is also interesting how an issue like this can become fodder for political debates about how much money the government should be spending.

Debunking the myth of poisoned candy

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Amidst an argument about how the supervision of Halloween activities due to fear has spread to other arenas, sociologist Joel Best is mentioned as an expert who every year tries to remind people that poisoned candy is not a threat to children:

Take “stranger danger,” the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the “Bewitched” and “Brady Bunch” costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.

That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger’s Halloween candy. (Oh, yes, he concedes, there was once a Texas boy poisoned by a Pixie Stix. But his dad did it for the insurance money. He was executed.)

There is little or no evidence for this problem – and yet the stories continue. This might be considered an “invented social problem,” a situation where people fear something that doesn’t really exist. In contrast, many people are trying to get people to recognize valid social problems, like poverty or fighting certain kinds of cancer.

I wonder if this fear about candy is linked to general fears that suburbanites have about their neighbors and outside forces that might affect them.

A new book considers the “Hipster”

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A new and short guide to the Hipster has been published: What Was the Hipster: A Sociological Investigation. One writer gives a concise guide to when the term came into popular usage:

According to a panel convened by n+1 last year at the New School, the term “hipster” re-entered the contemporary lexicon in or about 1999 (it had earlier been used interchangeably with “hepcat” in the Beat era), with the arrival of modish young men in trucker hats on Bedford Avenue.

This seems to be one of those buzz words that is difficult to define exactly. And what percentage of hipsters live on college campuses?

The book title also seems to suggest that hipsters have already had their time. If this is the case, what is next?