Category Archives: Sociology

One problem with e-voting: roll-off

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This Newsweek piece explores how unknown Alvin Greene might have won the Democratic Senate primary. While some have alleged fraud at the voting booth, the issue of “roll-off” is a more reasonable explanation.

Roll-off describes a process originally found in paper ballots where voters cast less votes toward the end of the ballot. This can be exacerbated if voters don’t recognize names – perhaps in those races like local judges, forest preserve commissioners, township officials, and more. Between the Greene race and the one listed above it, for education superintendent, there was only a 10% drop in votes cast. Newsweek says political analysts consider this a low roll-off figure for a race that garnered little public attention.

But there was another step with the e-voting machine: when a user submitts a ballot, the machine passes on a warning if all the races are not voted for. If a user saw the warning and hadn’t voted in the Democratic Senate primary, they then might have just picked the first name, Greene’s, as he was the first candidate listed based on alphabetical order.

Summary: by asking voters to double-check their input, the machine may be skewing voting results as voters just want the warnings to go away and vote for the most accessible candidate.

As local governments consider purchasing e-voting machines, this is an issue to consider.

Searching for skilled factory workers

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The New York Times reports on a problem for some factories: finding workers that have enough skills to operate more complicated machinery. An anecdote from a company outside Cleveland illustrates the issue:

All candidates at Ben Venue must pass a basic skills test showing they can read and understand math at a ninth-grade level. A significant portion of recent applicants failed, and the company has been disappointed by the quality of graduates from local training programs. It is now struggling to fill 100 positions.

“You would think in tough economic times that you would have your pick of people,” said Thomas J. Murphy, chief executive of Ben Venue.

Many factory jobs today aren’t just manual labor jobs. An education is not just for office jobs; it is helpful or required for most sectors of the economy.

Soccer taking off in America?

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Bill Simmons, aka the Sports Guy over at ESPN, writes in his latest column that he finally believes soccer is taking off in America (see Questions #19 and 20). This is a common debate, particularly at World Cup time: have Americans finally latched on to the “world’s game”?

Simmons develops several arguments, which I summarize here:

1. Many fans weren’t just excited about Landon Donovan scoring during injury time against Algeria – more understood what it meant.

2. The US performance in this World Cup brought Americans together and there are not too many other athletes or teams that can do this.

3. Moments like this make big impressions on young children who then carry their fervor into their adult life.

4. Media and technology now make it easier to access soccer.

In summary, Simmons writes:

Soccer is no longer taking off. It’s here. Those celebratory YouTube videos that started popping up in the 24 hours after Donovan’s goal…tapped into a collective American sports experience unlike anything since Lake Placid….Those clips choked me up. Those clips gave me goosebumps. Those clips made me think, “I forget this sometimes, but I’m glad I live in the United States of America.”

It is interesting that Simmons says this now. He says he knows what cynics would say: people have been saying this for years.

I think he is right in one sense: more Americans do now seem interested in soccer. TV ratings have been good, particularly for the US matches. ESPN has carried every game and its easy to find highlights and commentary on many outlets. Americans like rooting with each other for Americans – this is what happens in the Olympics in four-year cycles and that typically includes sports no one watches between Olympics. There are few moments that bring Americans together for a common purpose and sporting events like the World Cup are rare. Additionally, the US now has a reasonable soccer league, MLS, that has developed into a decent feeder league for First Division European leagues.

In another sense, Simmons is making a strange argument. What does it mean to say that “soccer is here”? Is it now a top-three American sport? Of course not. It may have already eclipsed hockey (check out the consistent broadcasts and ratings on Spanish-language TV) but it would need sustained interest, not just four year spurts, to come close to football, basketball, and baseball. The YouTube videos Simmons writes about of Americans celebrating Donovan’s goals (successfully edited together here) are positive; but they are just a small sample. In fact, most of these videos feature middle to upper class white males sitting in a bar when they should be at work. We are nowhere near national holiday status for big matches.

The whole discussion about whether “soccer is here” is tedious. America is a big country: we have lots of room for lots of sports. In reality, there are still just a few sporting events that draw national attention from the casual fan or even disinterested people. The Super Bowl is the best example while the NBA Finals, World Series, and Olympics lag behind.

Soccer doesn’t have to be as big as it is in other nations to be considered “here” but it does have to be a consistent draw in person and on television. Perhaps by the next World Cup, MLS will be thriving (increased attendance, more players headed to Europe) and the soccer generation who have filled youth leagues for decades will be older and more attentive. Perhaps not.

But if one is truly a fan of sports and competition, it’s hard not to get interested in the World Cup. In addition to national pride on the line, it features the world’s best players and a truly international cast.

The land of fake businessmen

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Atlantic’s Mitch Moxley reports on a Chinese business practice: hiring fake businessmen to help craft an image. Part of the job:

As we waited for the ceremony to begin, a foreman standing beside me barked at workers still visible on the construction site. They scurried behind the scaffolding.

“Are you the boss?” I asked him.

He looked at me quizzically. “You’re the boss.”

Actually, Ernie was the boss. After a brief introduction, “Director” Ernie delivered his speech before the hundred or so people in attendance. He boasted about the company’s long list of international clients and emphasized how happy we were to be working on such an important project. When the speech was over, confetti blasted over the stage, fireworks popped above the dusty field beside us, and Ernie posed for a photo with the mayor.

If this is common practice, couldn’t some companies lose face (rather than build their image) when others point out or find out that their businessmen are really fakes?

An odd subtext: the requirements for the job included “a fair complexion and a suit.” The fake businessmen are there to indicate that the Chinese company has connections. A “darker complexion and a suit” doesn’t fit the bill for connections? Perhaps a “darker complexion, a suit, and an American accent”?

Quick Review: One Day

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Over this past weekend, I read One Day by David Nicholls. This book is a love story told over a 20 year span. The twist: the author checks in with each member of the couple one day each year (the anniversary of their first meeting). The book has garnered a number of positive reviews.

My quick thoughts:

1. It is a story that would translate easily into a movie.

2. I don’t know if the characters are likable. They are young and idealistic when they first meet, not so much so later on after more life experiences. They are generally self-indulgent. Lots of drinking among both characters – a sign of their troubled lives or a reflection of contemporary life in the United Kingdom?

3. I like the idea of checking in once a year. Their lives gradually change and the story doesn’t get bogged down in extended scenes.

4. My wife and I disagreed about whether we enjoyed the book. She did not enjoy it, as “90% of the book involved the protagonists being miserable and/or drunk.” I think this book is like much adult fiction: it is more “realistic” or at least presents a strong contrast between miserable life alone and wonderful life together. Therefore, my wife finds reading a book like this unpleasant – she doesn’t want to spend that much time dwelling on the worse parts of life. Additionally, she felt that the author betrayed the reader at the end.  I, on the other hand, think misery is a common part of life and therefore should be explored in books, movies, music, etc. However, I do think much adult fiction today is melodramatic in its presentation of tough times.

5. *SPOILER ALERT*

Though it has the twist of checking in once a year, it seems like a fairly common story line. Two people meet and then experience difficulties over the years before meeting up again (though it is more complicated than this). This seems to be a kind of story our culture enjoys: love overcoming obstacles, even if these obstacles are self-imposed by the participants.

Overall: a good choice for light (not really fun but not exactly addressing deeper issues in life) yet engaging weekend-away reading. A modern classic? No.

Discovering fake randomness

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In the midst of a story involving fake data generated for DailyKos by the polling firm, Research 2000, TechDirt summarizes how exactly it was discovered that Research 2000 was faking the data. Several statisticians approached Kos after seeing some irregularities in cross-tab (table) data. The summary and the original analysis on DailyKos are fascinating: even truly random data follows certain parameters. One takeaway: faking random data is a lot harder than it looks. Another takeaway (for me at least): statistics can be both useful and enjoyable.

The three issues as summarized on DailyKos:

Issue one: astronomically low odds that both male and female figures would both be even or odd numbers.

In one respect, however, the numbers for M and F do not differ: if one is even, so is the other, and likewise for odd. Given that the M and F results usually differ, knowing that say 43% of M were favorable (Fav) to Obama gives essentially no clue as to whether say 59% or say 60% of F would be. Thus knowing whether M Fav is even or odd tells us essentially nothing about whether F Fav would be even or odd.

Issue two: the margin between favorability and unfavorability ratings did not display enough variance. If the polls were truly working with random samples, there would be broader range of values.

What little variation there was in the difference of those cross-tab margins seemed to happen slowly over many weeks, not like the week-to-week random jitter expected for real statistics.

Issue three: the changes in favorability ratings from week to week were too random. In most polls like this that track week to week, the most common result is no change. Research 2000 results had too many changes from week to week – often small changes, a percent either way.

For each individual issue, the odds are quite low that each would arise with truly random data. Put all three together happening with the same data and the odds are even lower.

Besides issues regarding integrity of data collection (and it becomes clearer why many people harbor a distrust toward polls and statistics), this is a great example of statistical detective work. Too often, many of us see numbers and quickly trust them (or distrust them). In reality, it takes just a little work to dig deeper into figures to discover what exactly is being measured and how it is being measured. The “what” and “how” matter tremendously as they can radically alter the interpretation of the data. Citizens and journalists need some of these abilities to decipher all the numbers we encounter on a daily basis.

Blood gadgets

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Many consumers don’t ask, and presumably often don’t care, how their newly purchased products came to be. Certain products have drawn attention, such as “blood diamonds” (accompanied by a preachy Hollywood film by the same name) or Nike shoes made by sweatshop laborers.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof draws attention to another set of consumer goods: high-tech gadgets including cell phones. These devices often include hard to obtain minerals, such as tantalum which is found in Congo. There are some activists who are planning to bring attention to this by taking their argument to tech companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Intel:

A humorous new video taunting Apple and PC computers alike goes online this weekend on YouTube, with hopes that it will go viral. Put together by a group of Hollywood actors, it’s a spoof on the famous “I’m a Mac”/”I’m a PC” ad and suggests that both are sometimes built from conflict minerals.

“Guess we have some things in common after all,” Mac admits.

Stay tuned. A strong-enough consumer/activist push will likely lead to these companies pledging to use responsible materials.

Also: one wonders how this decades-long situation in mineral-rich Congo might inform decision-making regarding recent finds of vast amounts of valuable minerals in Afghanistan.

54 years ago: Federal interstates are born

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On June 29, 1956, President Eisenhower signed the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956. This legislation, though immediately about infrastructure, had a tremendous impact on American life. Many of the interstate highways of today were built with this money.

These roads have produced a number of changes:

-Suburbanization. People could now easily travel from suburbs to the city center. By the 1960s, many businesses were also locating headquarters along suburban highway exits.

-The American love of the car. This already existed before Federal Interstates but it was enhanced by these well-maintained roads. Now, the average American could drive farther and more safely. From this point on, money for public transportation would always be limited compared to funds for roads.

-Shipping. Many goods today are carried by trucks. Cheap roads coupled with cheap gasoline helps keep Wal-Marts and McDonald’s stocked and cheap.

-Urban renewal. A number of big city neighborhoods were bulldozed to make way for new highways. Recently, some cities have reversed these trends by removing highways and establishing parks and public spaces. Two notable and beautiful examples: the Big Dig in Boston and the Embarcadero in San Francisco.

-Aesthetics. Many of these roads are about brute efficiency: moving the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. To many, these highways scar the landscape. But they can often take on a beauty of their own, particularly in complicated interchanges.

-Small town life all but disappeared. With the rise of suburbs and highways rerouting traffic around small communities, rural populations dwindled.

-A fast-food approach to life. Not only does food have to be obtained quickly so one can get back on the road, signs need to be larger to be legible at 65 MPH, cars need to be larger to survive the occasional highway accident, travelers need built-in DVD players to be entertained, and so on.

Prior to the signing of this act, local governments and states had begun to cobble together a highway system. The City of Chicago had been planning for a local highway system for years but did not begin construction until after World War II. Pennsylvania had a turnpike (now I-76) and Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois had started roads that would create an interstate toll road. Robert Moses had begun a system in New York City.

But this law helped build and codify a system that is still going strong today.

Winning vs. a country’s culture

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Brazilian coach Carlos Caetano Bledorn “Dunga” Verri has had a successful World Cup run thus far: four matches and four pretty easy wins. For many national coaches, this would lead to general praise from the media and fans.

But not in Brazil. Dunga has been playing with a more defensive-minded system, particularly compared to the attacking-with-flair Brazilian teams of past decades. A quick description of the battle Dunga has been fighting:

Then there were the fans, who almost always favor the spectacular and revel in the nation’s tradition of breathtaking open-field play.

Brazil has always been about offense, offense, offense. It has the deepest pool of talent in which to select a team. Its players pride themselves on creativity.

Even some of the  country’s former stars, such as Carlos Alberto, captain of Brazil’s 1970 team, have blasted Dunga:

“I am not confident in this group because our national team do not play Brazilian football…I’m talking about movement and use of the ball. We have good defenders, but the midfielders: if you ask Brazilian kids, who are our midfielders, they shrug their shoulders.”

So if Brazil wins a sixth World Cup title, what then? Will the country celebrate in the same way or will it be considered a less-than-great title? Sports fans can be an interesting lot, particularly when they are used to winning.

“The Triumphant Decline of the WASP”

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A NY Times opinion piece from Harvard law professor Noah Feldman makes this argument: “The decline of the Protestant elite is actually its greatest triumph.” Feldman explores the changes in the Supreme Court (the appointment of Kagan would make it 6 Catholics, 3 Jews) and Princeton (“As late as 1958, the year of the “dirty bicker” in which Jews were conspicuously excluded from its eating clubs, Princeton could fairly have been seen as a redoubt of all-male Protestant privilege).

So what changed? Feldman provides some reasons: “the anti-aristocratic ideals of the Constitution,” education was an important defining trait for WASPs so opening up universities was a big step, and the American value of fair play. The result:

Together, these social beliefs in equality undercut the impulse toward exclusive privilege that every successful group indulges on occasion. A handful of exceptions for admission to societies, clubs and colleges — trivial in and of themselves — helped break down barriers more broadly. This was not just a case of an elite looking outside itself for rejuvenation: the inclusiveness of the last 50 years has been the product of sincerely held ideals put into action.

These may be accurate reasons. But they seem to ignore the historical context: something happened in the 1960s that changed institutions like Ivy League schools and led to a very different looking Supreme Court. In that decade, the Civil Rights Movement plus an explosion in higher education for the burgeoning US population plus higher rates of immigration from non-European locales plus cultural change (rock ‘n’ roll, television, more open questioning of authority, etc.), changed, or at least began to change, the socioeconomic status of WASPs.