This blog summarizes papers published on Economic History in major academic journals. The industrial revolution series includes an interesting post on why the industrial revolution happened in the North and not the South. An article by Earle and Ronald (1980) argues that it was because of the monoculture agriculture (just one crop) in the north, cheap labour was available for industry.
We all love the Schoolhouse Rock video, “How a bill becomes a law” but with the recent passage of the health care bill we are reminded that the theory can get a little more nuanced in practice. NPR’s On The Media has an updated version.
The government’s Energy Star program to label products that are more energy efficient was in the news recently (and there are a lot of different products that have the label). The New York Times ran a story on how auditors, when asked by congress, submitted 20 fake and often ridiculous products to be approved for the stickers many environmentally aware people look for when they buy appliances like refrigerators (an AP report is also available).
GAO obtained Energy Star certifications for 15 bogus products, including a gas-powered alarm clock. – (GAO, 2010)
This Energy Star poster now takes a somewhat sinister (Orwellian) cast.
This study highlights the lesson that while we want to be environmentally aware, we must always remain skeptical of claims pushed by manufacturers, even if they are supported by government certification. It also highlights an excellent application of the concept of checks and balances. One branch of government (congress) checks up on others (EPA and DOE who run the Energy Star program are part of the executive branch) and the others are forced to improve.
Normal distribution with 95% unshaded. Adapted from Wikimedia Commons.
A discussion of statistical significance is probably a bit above middle school level, but I’m posting a note here because it is a reminder about the importance of statistics. In fact, students will hear about confidence intervals when they hear about the margin of error of polls in the news and the “significant” benefits of new drugs. Indeed, if you think about it, the development of formal thinking skills during adolescence should make it easier for students to see the world from a more probabilistic perspective, noticing the shades of grey that surround issues, rather that the more black and white, deterministic, point of view young idealists tend to have. At any rate, statistics are important in life but, according to a Science Magazine article, many scientists are not using them correctly.
One key error is in understanding the term “statistically significant”. When Ronald A. Fisher came up with the concept he arbitrarily chose 95% as the cutoff to test if an experiment worked. The arbitrariness is one part of the problem, 95% still means there is one chance in twenty that the experiment failed and with all the scientists conducting experiments, that’s a lot of unrecognized failed experiments.
But the big problem is the fact that people conflate statistical significance and actual significance. Just because there is a statistically significant correlation between eating apples and acne, does not mean that it’s actually important. It could be that this result predicts that one person in ten million will get acne from eating apples, but is that enough reason to stop eating apples?
It is a fascinating article that deals with a number of other erroneous uses of statistics, but I’ve just spent more time on this post than I’d planned (it was supposed to be a short note). So I’d be willing to bet that there is a statistically significant correlation between my interest in an issue and the length of the post (and no correlation with the amount of time I intended to spend on the post).
I asked the question, “What is peace?” on a test and the answers were beautiful to see. Peace is more than the absence of war, my students have internalized that concept, but what else? One student said that they really had no idea about what to put for that question and just put whatever came to mind. Many of them say it’s also the absence of fear. I did not ask if they thought that we lived in a peaceful country (at least according to their own definition) but I think I will probably ask that question when we go over the test.
The other frequent answer revolved around the idea that peace also means freedom, particularly freedom of expression. That certainly was a common theme when they researched human rights activists.
The Examiner, last week, had an article on a Montessori Peace Project in Uganda. US support is run by Carolyn Kambich for the Victoria Montessori School in Entebbe. A few of our students, who are fundraising for the project as a part of their cycle project, got a mention in the article by Ms. Kambich.
The legacy of racial and gender discrimination persists (like segregated proms in Mississippi). Attitudes are, slowly changing over the course of generations, but it’s a really slow change. Even today, men make more than women for doing the same jobs. Mariko Chang’s recent paper on the wealth gap between black women and everyone else, has some fascinating statistics and graphs showing the current disparities in income (how much money people make) and wealth (how much stuff they have (assets minus their debts)).
An interesting question for students to consider after looking at the graph is why exactly are there these disparities. This may also be a good focus for a Socratic Dialogue.
