Dan Erwin

Predictive Algorithms Actually Start Out as Historians

Historians are a lot better explainers than algorithmaticians. (Is there such a word? If not, I just made it up.) Let me argue my case.

Harvard’s Jill Lepore, one of the most fascinating and truly humorous historical writers, has superb explanatory insight on algorithmic prediction. That’s not a surprise. She approaches history from perspectives that have never crossed this historian’s mind--and does it with a lot of verve. She’s one of the few with a steady hand when the rest of us are lurching around with churning stomachs about artificial intelligence and moronic politicians.

With two talkative algorithmic geniuses in my own family, a son-in-law from Harvard and a recently minted Carnegie-Mellon data-scientist grandson, with whom I spend hours listening and making sense of their conversations, Lepore is an absolute delight at simplifying algorithmic insight.

She regularly seems to have the ability to condense an entire discipline, the whole shebang into a single readable paragraph. Here’s the first paragraph from her New Yorker article, entitled simply “Unforeseen.” Prophecy is a mug’s game. But then, lately, most of us are mugs. 2018 was a banner year for the art of prediction, which is not to say the science, because there really is no science of prediction. Predictive algorithms start out as historians: they study historical data to detect patterns. Then they become prophets: they devise mathematical formulas that explain the pattern, test the formulas against historical data withheld for the purpose, and use the formulas to make predictions about the future. That’s why Amazon, Google, Facebook, and everyone else are collecting your data to feed to their algorithms: they want to turn your past into your future.

How Social Science Sneaks Up on All of Us

For many people in business and politics, social science doesn’t appear particularly impressive. Its relevance for practice and the nitty-gritty of business may seem doubtful. But the fact of the matter is that social science impacts reality in profound ways that most never see, never think about or are even willing to believe—at least when first faced with the facts. Social science, however, profoundly influences how we think about ourselves, how we think about our world and how we act. And that’s true whether or not a given theory is right or wrong.

Ferraro, Pfeffer and Sutton devote a paper on economics’ language and assumptions, showing how social science drives our perspective on economics. I was reminded of their study when I read the latest blog by Roger Martin on How to win the argument with Milton Friedman. Martin notes that the argument that the trade-offs between shareholders and the rest of society, the particularly framing of Friedman’s argument, has won the last 50 years. It is, he writes, a very clever way of setting up his argument, but won’t stand up to scrutiny. And he sets out to debunk the framing. Of course, it drives some of his readers nuts, but that’s ...

Is Where You Are More Important Than Who You Are?

 

The Purpose of College Is to Make You Uncomfortable

Is 'empathetically correct' the new politically correct?

Over dinner with some long-time friends, we were discussing the difficulty their grandson, a recent engineering grad, was having finding a job. Knowing that the religious school he attended was certainly not noted for engineering, I asked why he hadn’t gone to the University of Minnesota. At the “U” he would have gotten a far better engineering education, paid much less tuition and accessed the U’s magnificent engineering career network.  

 

“He wasn’t comfortable” with the University, his grandmother responded. Without thinking, I blurted out that I thought the purpose of college was to make the student “uncomfortable.” They were silent for a moment, then broke out into laughter, and agreed fully with my conclusion.

Disturbing the personal status quo
So I was both intrigued and delighted by a blog from Karen Swallow Prior in The Atlantic declaring that “Empathetically Correct” Is the New Politically Correct. Prior’s got her finger on a very important subject. It’s not an oversimplification to suggest that empathy is all about making people comfortable, not disturbing their status quo.

The recent list of those having to back out of commencement speeches because it would make the grads uncomfortable is...

On Target: Zakaria's Sarah Lawrence Commencement Address

It’s obvious, says Fareed Zakaria, that the conventional wisdom regarding a college degree is that a student should major in computer science, code at night, start a company, and take it public. Or, if you want to branch out, you could major in mechanical engineering.

What you’re not supposed to do is get a liberal arts education.

So here’s Zakaria, speaking at the quintessential liberal arts school, Sarah Lawrence College. What he has to say is dead center, and particularly for those who can think beyond their first job. Because his speech is “tl;dr” (too long; didn’t read), I intend to lay out the relevant excerpts. Zakaria clearly and obviously rejects the conventional wisdom on college education. But as I’ve argued in the past, never trust conventional wisdom without a very, very thorough analysis. In short, following in the path of conventional wisdom is not going to take you very far. But I’ve added an explanatory note at the end of this blog, illuminating the non-liberal arts grad.

Zakaria’s bio and the background for the speech may be necessary to set the stage. . . .

The Hidden Side of the SAT

When David Coleman took over the College Board, home of the SAT, he did so with an awareness of the many criticisms leveled at their testing programs. He was especially interested in what MIT's Les Perelman had to say about the testing. Prof. Perelman is primary author of the first hypertext technical writing handbook, The Mayfield Guide to Technical and Scientific Writing. He has published articles on technical communication, computers and writing, the history of rhetoric, sociolinguistic theory, and medieval literature. Perelman's article in the LA Times on an earlier version of the SAT, New SAT: Write Long, Badly and Prosper is a must-read.  

It's fairly well-known that the SAT meaningfully predicts a student's first-year college grade point average. As one psychologist writes, that is "an astonishing achievement that can't be ignored." 

But what few seem to recognize is that SAT scores are as much a reflection of family income as they are of a student's knowledge. The College Board openly shared this chart comparing SAT scores with family income in Sunday's NYTimes Magazine.

Colleges deal with this information in different ways. Some no longer ...

Outside the Mainstream

"Outside the Mainstream” regularly brings articles, columns and research that challenge conventional thinking. The past two weeks have provided a deluge of challenges to conventional commitments and thinking, many of which should be taken very seriously.

Is there such a thing as “honest graft,” can we learn from annoying workers and are we little more than “puppets of our biochemistry?” These are questions from outside the mainstream everyday life.

Jonathan Rauch, The Case for Corruption: Why Washington needs more honest graft is not only spellbinding, but also absolutely correct in its recognition that we’ve gone too far in our demands for transparency and the removal of earmarks. A classic case of unintended consequences, Rauch points out that “regular order” has been replaced by “regular chaos.” “Public ultimatums supplanted private negotiations, games of chicken replaced mutual back-scratching, and bumptious Republican House members took to dictating terms to their putative leadership.” As Rauch argues, loyalty gets you only so far, and ideology is divisive. Political machines need to exist and they need to work. . . .Earnest campaigns to take the politics out of politics ...

Smart Dad with Smart Kid

"The 'State of Hockey' is. . . excessive." Anyone who reads enough to compare cultural values in the Western world is aware that we in the States are not known for our moderation. That was best illustrated by a comment of a lead character in the British espionage series, MI-5. In one episode he commented regarding the chaos in Iraq Middle East that he'd be glad when "the US Military could find no more countries to invade."

I've often been smitten by holding a similar attitude toward the complete lack of any sense of long-term priorities or moderation in the attitudes toward local sports and the public schools, whether grade school or college. So I thought the lead commentary in today's Star Tribune on the role of hockey in Minnesota was both daring and long overdue. It also elicited a huge guffaw with the final statement.

The extended comment, written by Dale Vaillancourt, a young father from the middle class suburb of Burnsville, paid attention to the fact that Minnesota is a hockey crazy state. He was quick to say that he enjoyed watching "two evenly matched teams battle it out on the ice. If there's some brutal checking or a fight. . . even better." Obviously, Vaillancourt is also a sports guru. He just completed his 12th American Birkebeiner ...

Outside the Mainstream

To a significant degree much creative and innovative thinking is a rejection of conventional knowledge. Indeed, a strategic orientation to creativity may target conventional wisdom as a fundamental tactic. Outside the Mainstream will regularly bring articles, columns and research that challenges the conventional.

Adam Grant, 5 Myths About Introverts and Extraverts at Work Get ready to be challenged. Grant shoots down a number of old chestnuts built primarily on the MBTI. Long overdue, his research deals with how the two styles approach matters as diverse as networking, public speaking, relationships and even sales. So you won't want to forget the ambiverts in the middle of the continuum. This will curdle some stomachs.

Susan Dominus, How to Get a Job with a Philosophy Degree. I've been holding this for February, about when graduating seniors start to get really serious about their job hunt. The recommendations don't just apply to philosophy. And this is not just for seniors, but also for their parents. Maybe we need to learn not to be totally focused on ...

Erwin: Six for the Growth-Oriented

A plethora of highly useful insight, challenges to convention and new data makes these a must-read. 

Andrew McAfee. Big Data's Biggest Challenge: Convincing People Not to Trust Their Judgment slipped through the cracks in December. But McAfee, Associate Director of the Center for Digital Business at the MIT Sloan School of Management, studies the ways information technology affects businesses and business as a whole. This article is a classic take-down of the so-called expert. It teaches you that expertise in one area certainly doesn't mean that you're an expert in big data. Teaching people not to trust their judgment is a losing battle. But it needs to be fought. McAfee is one of those smart guys with the urge to impose order on chaos. Superb how-to. It's a keeper.

Laura Pappano. Learning to Think Differently. Now at the Center for Women at Wellesley, Pappano is at it again. The award-winning journalist writes in education, social issues, politics and gender and inevitably makes you think--often differently. But this article tells you how to do it. It shows a non-creative how to get creative. Most significantly, it warns that if you...

Intellectually Curious? A Potpourri of Insights for the End of the Year

The Eavesdropper: Saving the lost art of conversation. Sherry Turkle, MIT’s digital psychologist, (an academic interested in the relationship between humans and machines) has an enlightening interview with Atlantic’s Megan Garber. Conversation is messy, full of pauses, interruptions and topic changes, she admits. So Turkle and Garber take us on a tour through a local Apple stores, noting that everybody’s talking, but nobody’s talking about anything except what’s on the machines—to prove her point. My protégé recently responded quite affirmatively to my comment that techies are usually the poorest conversationalists in an organization, especially when compared with folk in, say. . . marketing. But I have no complaints. Their inadequacies brought in big consulting bucks. In her new book she’s going to “out” herself as a “partisan of conversation.” Why do you think that’s actually important? I can give you a pot full of reasons.

In a formal recant, Ross Douthat gives us Confessions of a Columnist. I suspect he’s taking a tip from David Brooks’ paean for humility. Douthat intrigues us with several important big mistakes which he made in 2013. He told us, in effect, that he’s a poor predictor. . .