Results for “Tests” 823 found
Does Professor Quality Matter?
That's the title of the new lead article (gated) in the Journal of Political Economy, by Scott E. Carrell and James E. West, and here is the answer:
In primary and secondary education, measures of teacher quality are often based on contemporaneous student performance on standard-ized achievement tests. In the postsecondary environment, scores on student evaluations of professors are typically used to measure teaching quality. We possess unique data that allow us to measure relative student performance in mandatory follow-on classes. We compare metrics that capture these three different notions of instructional quality and present evidence that professors who excel at promoting contemporaneous student achievement teach in ways that improve their student evaluations but harm the follow-on achievement of their students in more advanced classes.
I found this to be an impressive piece of research. Here is one summary sentence:
The overall pattern of the results shows that students of less experienced and less qualified professors perform significantly better in the contemporaneous course being taught. In contrast, the students of more experienced and more highly qualified introductory professors perform significantly better in the follow-on courses.
Here is an ungated version, it may or may not be exactly the same.
The 1964 Civil Rights Act in the 21st Century
Rand Paul's remarks about the 1964 Civil Rights Act brought forth lots of talk about libertarians and lunch counters but almost no discussion of how the Civil Rights Act actually works in the twenty-first century. Yesterday provided a nice reminder.
I won't comment on Lewis v. City of Chicago directly because it was decided on technical matters (the Supreme Court ruled that black firefighters in Chicago did not miss a deadline to argue that a test disproportionately hurt their chances of employment). The underlying facts, however, are of interest not because they are especially unusual but because they are common. From Fire Law:
The case, Lewis v. Chicago, involved alleged discrimination against African American applicants for the Chicago Fire Department who took a test in 1995.
The department set a passing score of 64 on the exam. Applicants who scored at least 64 but below 89 were informed that they passed the test, but would probably not be hired given the number of candidates who scored 89 or above. [26,000 applied and there were only a few hundred jobs, AT] Applicants scoring 89 and above were classified as “well qualified”.
The majority of “well-qualified” applicants were white. Only 11 percent were black…
The trial court sided with the black applicants, and ordered the city to hire 132 randomly selected African American applicants who scored above 64. The court also ordered the city to divide backpay owed among the rest of the black applicants.
White, Asian and Hispanic applicants who also scored above 64 but below the 89 standard were not offered employment or backpay.
Perhaps you are wondering about the tests? You would be hard pressed to find any obvious racial bias. I haven't found the Chicago test online but you can find similar tests from New York (also the subject of lawsuits) here. Here is a sample questions from New York.
Nowadays the Chicago fire department simply gives everyone an easy test and then they hire randomly.
The economic effects of disenfranchisement
Via Chris Blattman, here is a newish paper by Suresh Naidu, on how disenfranchisement translated into inferior economic outcomes for African-Americans:
This paper estimates the political and economic effects of the 19th century disenfranchisement of black citizens in the U.S. South. Using adjacent county-pairs that straddle state boundaries, I rst examine the effect of voting restrictions on political competition. I find that poll taxes and literacy tests each lowered overall electoral turnout by 10-23% and increased the Democratic vote share in national elections by 5%-10%. Second, employing newly collected data on schooling inputs, I show that disenfranchisement reduced the teacher-child and teacher-student ratio in black schools. Finally, I develop a model of suffrage restriction and redistribution in a 2-factor economy with occupational choice to generate sufficient statistics for welfare analysis of the incidence of black disenfranchisement. Consistent with the model, disenfranchised counties experienced a 7% increase in land and farm values per decade, despite a 4% fall in the black population share. The estimated factor market responses suggest that black labor bore a collective loss from disenfranchisement equivalent to at least 13% of annual income, much of which was transferred to landowners.
Here is Naidu's home page. Where did he end up getting a job?
Gattaca University
From the NYTimes, Berkeley will give its students genetic tests.
…this year’s incoming freshmen at the University of California, Berkeley, will get something quite different: a cotton swab on which they can, if they choose, send in a DNA sample.
The university said it would analyze the samples, from inside students’ cheeks, for three genes that help regulate the ability to metabolize alcohol, lactose and folates.
Those genes were chosen not because they indicate serious health risks but because students with certain genetic markers may be able to lead healthier lives by drinking less, avoiding dairy products or eating more leafy green vegetables.
Don't be surprised if this is soon canceled.
Fairtest
Tim Harford gives his stamp of approval to randomized trials:
What is missing is the political demand for tests of what really works. Too many policies on education, welfare and criminal justice are just so much homeopathy: cute-sounding stories about what works leaning more on faith than on evidence. Politicians and civil servants, faced with some fancy new idea, should get into the habit of asking for a proper randomised trial. And we, as citizens, should be equally demanding….
We’ve had FairTrade coffee – what about FairTest policies? Most voters don’t know much about randomisation or trial protocols, but they’ll know when they see the FairTest logo that a policy has had a proper, scientific test to see if it works.
Small steps toward a better world
In Hawaii, Kaiser Permanente has started a pilot project that churn through its database of patient data to predict which patients might need which tests – and then sends individuals email alerts suggesting they come in for a test or checkup. It's the same sort of technology that Netflix uses to recommend movies. And the Cleveland Clinic has teamed up with Microsoft to bring self-monitoring tools to patients managing chronic diseases, successfully engaging them in better health behaviors without expensive visits to the hospital.
Here is more, via Steve Silberman. How much of the health care cost-saving revolution will occur in the hands of the individual patient?
If you could know only one statistic about an alien civilization
Adam asks:
If you were offered a true statistic about an alien civilization, but only one, what would it be?
How about the real rate of return on capital? The risk premium? The percentage of the population which dies in war each year? Those are what come to mind right away. What else? Ideally you might want a cognitive measure, but their performance on human IQ tests probably would not be useful information. How about "what percentage of our knowledge of mathematics do they also have?" Furthermore, I would not assume they "look like the aliens you see on TV" and would consider a biological statistic (which one?) which expressed what kind of life forms they would count as.
What would you choose?
The elasticity of natural disaster deaths with respect to income
Matt Kahn has a good paper (and here) on this topic:
Using a new data set on annual deaths from disasters in 57 nations from 1980 to 2002, this paper tests several hypotheses concerning natural disaster mitigation. While richer nations do not experience fewer natural disaster events than poorer nations, richer nations do suffer less death from disaster. Economic development provides implicit insurance against nature’s shocks. Democracies and nations with higher quality institutions suffer less death from natural disaster. The results are relevant for judging the incidence of a Global Warming induced increase in the count of natural disaster shocks.
Sentences to ponder
The topic is consumer protests over price hikes for eBooks and here is one response:
“The sense of entitlement of the American consumer is absolutely astonishing,” said Douglas Preston, whose novel “Impact” reached as high as No. 4 on The New York Times’s hardcover fiction best-seller list earlier this month. “It’s the Wal-Mart mentality, which in my view is very unhealthy for our country. It’s this notion of not wanting to pay the real price of something.”
Here is the article; I giggled when I read that. Here is a short biography of Douglas Preston.
Assorted links
1. New talk of principal writedowns.
2. How do women bargain differently?
3. It's hard to aid Haiti without infrastructure.
4. The Institute for Unethical Studies.
5. Good account of Haiti, before and now.
6. Turing tests, in a Chicago theatre.
The AP critique of the stimulus
There is apparently a new study, from the AP, suggesting that the transportation spending of the stimulus has not succeeded in creating jobs. The study now seems to have "legs," as here is lengthy NYT coverage. Through some email forwarded to me, I have the impression (my apologies if I am wrong) that they are not circulating copies of the study for perusal. Instead, the study has been reviewed by some economists, who seem to approve of it. No one else is allowed to judge. Does anyone have a copy of the original study? Will the AP send me a copy? The NYT piece — which seems to be written by the AP by the way — does not link to the study. The AP won't link to their own study, or so at least it seems.
Loyal MR readers will know that I have been critical of most of the stimulus program. Still, phantom studies should not be receiving serious media attention. It's time for the AP to put up or shut up.
Comments are open, as is my email, I would like to see a copy of the study.
Addendum: from Matt Apuzzo, at the AP:
"Matthew/Tyler:
If either of you would like to chat about the AP's analysis, I'm happy
to provide you the sources of our data and walk you through the
statistical tests we conducted. Nothing we did is a secret, but there's
no actual "study" to provide you, like there is in academia. The
professors reviewed some spreadsheets and statistical tests, talked
methodology, made suggestions on other tests to run, and overall made
sure we weren't reading things incorrectly. All of this feedback
ultimately contributed to our final conclusion, but there's no executive
summary.
Give a call, I'm happy to help.
-Matt"
What do you all think?
Markets in everything China fact of the day
Wanted: One live-in protester, $146 a month, no days off.
When the managers of a Beijing restaurant marked for demolition were too busy to fight it, they posted an Internet ad and hired a stranger to stay there around the clock. The job seems to be a first for China, where frenzied urban construction has led to violent evictions, protests and even suicide.
Huddled on a makeshift bed in the trash-strewn, freezing restaurant, Lu Daren said he once worked for a demolition crew and understands their tactics.
"I'm tired," the 46-year-old said Thursday, after a long night of fending off the latest visit from what he suspects were hired thugs by the landlord. "Tired, tired, tired." He stays – wrapped in blankets, reading the newspaper or writing idle poetry, occasionally taking short walks_ because he thinks the restaurateurs have been treated unfairly.
The full story is here and I thank Daniel Lippman for the pointer.
How worried should we be about the deficit?
There have been many posts on this topic lately, start with Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong if you need to catch up. Today I have a few simple points:
1. Even if "it is fine to borrow more" is the most likely scenario, it is not the only scenario. Let's take a page from Marty Weitzman on climate change. The worst-case scenarios matter too, because they can be very, very bad. We need to think probabilistically about this issue.
2. Are there current intelligent discussions of the implied interest rate volatility embedded in current options prices? If we are looking for market tests, why not start there? Focusing on the point estimate of the market interest rate(s) discourages you from thinking probabilistically.
3. I know less about Belgium but I am not reassured by Krugman's point that "Italy can do it." I and many other observers consider Italy's economy to be a basket case which will only get worse. Nor is Japan in a satisfactory place, economically speaking.
4. Krugman writes: "Belgium is politically weak because of the linguistic divide; Italy is
politically weak because it’s Italy. If these countries can run up
debts of more than 100 percent of GDP without being destroyed by bond
vigilantes, so can we."
I would interpret this evidence differently. A high deficit often is an unfavorable symptom of bad politics, even if you think the high deficit is economically OK on its own terms. It's a sign that you have dysfunctional institutions and decision-making procedures, as indeed they do in Belgium and Italy. I believe that the not-always-swift American voter in fact understands high deficits — correctly — in this light. They don't hold theories about "crowding out," rather they sense something in the house must be rotten. And so they rail against deficits, as do some of their elected representatives. It's a more justified reaction than the pure economics alone can illuminate.
When water regularly overflows from your toilet, you want the toilet fixed, whether or not the water is doing harm.
Caplan on Education
How much does increasing college-going rates matter to our economy and society?
Caplan: College attendance, in my view, is usually a drain on our economy and society. Encouraging talented people to spend many years in wasteful status contests deprives the economy of millions of man-years of output. If this were really an "investment," of course, it might be worth it. But I see little connection between the skills that students acquire in college and the skills they'll need later in life.
Much more here, including answers from Charles Murray, Richard Vedder and others. Hat tip to Arnold Kling.
Yglesias channels his inner Robin Hanson
Matt Yglesias offers wisdom on cutting health care spending.
Still, though waste is a huge element of our insurance spending, insurance-related waste is a relatively small portion of the overall waste–about 14 percent. The biggest chunk of excess spending we’re involved with is spending on “outpatient care.” We pay doctors more than other people do, our doctors order more tests than other doctors do, our tests are more expensive than other people’s tests, and we have many more relatively expensive specialists and relatively few relatively cheap GPs. And we have nothing to show for it.
The prospects for changing this, however, don’t look great to me. People don’t like insurance companies. Taking them on is popular. And nevertheless we see how difficult it is to really hurt their interests. Now imagine taking on the doctor lobby. More money is at stake. And doctors have a much better public image. And doctors and there families are a much bigger voting block than insurance executives and their families. And on top of that, people have a very strong mistaken intuition that getting lots of tests and seeing lots of specialists is in their interests.