Out of my hat

Temperatures have actually be above freezing during the daytime for the past couple here in my little corner of the Upper Midwest. I’m a fan, personally; winter was great, I loved all the snowstorms that I didn’t have to drive through, but it’s about time for it to be over IMO. On the other hand, I was chatting with some folks the other night who were hoping that spring would hold off for another n weeks so that they could get their skiing / skating / gloating about going somewhere warm in. So by that token, I should probably be hoping for at least a mild case of winter to continue until mid-March.

Still excited about planning my Mathematics of Electoral Politics course for the summer. I’m still trying to narrow down the discussion topics to a manageable list. Here’s what I’m considering so far:

• Descriptive statistics (this includes some basic probability)
• Voting systems (types, properties, a discussion of Arrow and maybe Gibbard-Satterthwaite)
• Power indices in weighted voting systems
• Fair division methods (where “fair” can mean “equal” — cake-cutting problems and such — or “proportional” — like the apportionment of representatives in a congress)
• Maybe some basic game theory?
• Critical thinking, logical fallacies
• The principles of cryptography, with application to electronic voting

It’s the last three topics on that list that I’m a bit dubious about. Game theory’s interesting, but I’m not entirely sure how to tie it into the main theme of the course. Critical thinking would be damned useful, and mesh well with the statistics and the crypto, but I’d probably need to find another textbook for it. And I’m afraid that the crypto might just be a little too esoteric for a non-technical audience.

The other thing is that I’ve got twenty-four two-hour session to work with here, which probably includes the final exam. Ambition is well and good, but there’s a finite amount of material that I’ll be capable of cramming in to such a timeframe.

I’m reading the transcript from some CNN show last night, where the host (Dobbs) had a spirited debate with one of his guests (Glassman) about the offshoring of jobs by big American companies. Glassman, who sees this as a good sign, capitalism in action, frequently repeats that “trade benefits both sides”. Therefore, America must (axiomatically!) be benefitting from the outsourcing.

My economics background isn’t great, so I can’t argue with his axiom; nor, really do I want to. I agree. Trade does benefit both sides. What I have a problem with here is how he defines the sides. According to him, big American companies profitting is good for America. The sides in this particular trade are American firms on one side, and foreign labour on the other. Explain to me how this benefits the American workers who get laid off?

“The economy” is an abstraction. It’s a collection of statistics concerning the flow of wealth, productivity, and such things. Saying that “the economy is healthy” says something about statistics; it doesn’t necessarily say anything about people.

Thematically related to last night’s long ‘un: The Poor Man has a brief essay on the standard model of political reporting.

If you weren’t snickering by halfway through, then all I can say is that you haven’t read enough physics.

One of the few things that I’m really excited about in my life right now is a course I’m going to be teaching this summer (May-June). I know, you’re probably saying that if I have to look ahead to May for things that I’m excited about then my life is really sad. And maybe it is. So shut up.

Anyhow.

Officially, the course is in “finite mathematics”; it’s purpose is to fulfill the requirement that all students must take a math course, while recognising that for some students algebra, calculus and all of those good things are unwelcome, impractical, and sometimes inimical. A consequence of this is that it’s generally the only math course these students will take at my Urban Commuter Campus, and so there’s no strict list of things that must be taught. There’s a standard textbook, but the book in question sort of wanders all over the map and so doesn’t really restrict the instructor’s freedom — my freedom — in selecting topics.

So I’m turning it into a course about mathematics and politics. The timing’s perfect, it being an election year and all. I can talk about statistics and how to read them; I can talk about voting systems, their various strengths and drawbacks; I can talk about fair division and apportionment and measures of political power. And all of it’s accessible with only a small amount of mathematics background.

One topic I’m debating introducing is the debate surrounding electronic voting machines. I’m a bit leery not because it’s a controversial area; from the technical standpoint, there’s nothing controversial about it at all, and that’s where I’d be coming from. It’s more a case of not being sure that explaining the basics of cryptography and computer security to the class is a wise idea. But even if the mathematics is somewhat trickier, there’s enough conceptual material there that I think it would make a good topic for a couple of days of lectures/discussions.

Which brings me to what I thought was going to be the point of this entry. NPR had some people on the other day talking about voting mechanisms… the usual sorts of things, really. Different voting machines, whether there should be a paper audit trail, voting on the internet, things like this. And one of the guests made some comment to the effect of, the only real alternatives to paper printouts of votes would require some heavy mathematics, and we don’t want to put into place a system that you have to be a Ph.D to understand.

I have a couple of problems with this statement.

First of all, no, you don’t need to be a Ph.D to understand how cryptography works. I learned about RSA in my first-term algebra course as an undergraduate. Thousands and thousands of working programmers understand the requirements of computer security and at least somewhat how the standard algorithms work to satisfy them. Math isn’t impenetrable, folks; it takes thought and work, sure, but so do most things.

And secondly, why the hell should “not everyone can understand it” be a criterion for rejecting a perfectly valid proposal? The tax code in this country is sufficiently Byzantine that legions of professionals make their living interpreting it for everyday folks. I’m sure most people driving their cars don’t really know how the internal combustion engine really works, or for that matter how the Reed-Solomon codes that render a CD playable even with minor damage to the surface work. People deal with technologies and systems that they don’t really understand every day.

That being said, I think that if there is going to be a good solution for electronic voting then it’s going to have to be open-source. The flip-side to the last paragraph is that, if you want to know how it works, then you should be able to find out. Security through obscurity isn’t security at all, merely the appearance of security.

Specificity in search terms is always good.

For instance, if one was looking for an enlarger for a darkroom, you might think that just going to eBay and typing “enlarger” into the search box would be sufficient. After all, what other kinds of enlargers are there?

I’ll give you a moment to think about that question. If you, like me, couldn’t come up with anything then I invite you to try the search yourself.

If I ever manage to Break the Chains for good, I think Freecell is one of the only Windows programs that I would really miss. Of course, even if I went Windows-free, I’d still own a deck of cards, so I suppose it’s not much of a barrier.

When playing Freecell, there are often situations where no obvious tactic will be immediately helpful. In such circumstances, Dr. Matt’s Prescription (*) is, simply, to increase the amount of order in the Freecell universe. I don’t know if it really helps things — it seems to, sometimes, but that might just be the confirmation bias talking — but it at least makes one feel useful.

I think it’s possible that the lesson can be applied to real life as well: when there’s nothing to do that will obviously advance your goals, then act in a way that furthers the general good. It might not actually mean much, but at least you’re contributing.

(*): I know, I’m not really that kind of doctor. Your point?

Well, it’s been over a month since I made the leap from OS X 10.2 to 10.3, and I finally decided to get rid of the “Previous System 1″ folder.

I don’t really need the diskspace, since my drive is still more than half-empty. I just noticed that when I was trying to open TextEdit, it gave me a choice which one I wanted to use. TextEdit is pretty innocuous, but it’s not a mistake I’d want made with any of the other applications. And so.

Upon emptying the trash, I’ve discovered that there were over a hundred thousand files in that folder. Impressive.

Have I mentioned how much I love the Toronto Star editorial page?

Carol Goar has an article today regarding a U of T study that purports to measure the value of the institution in terms of return-on-investment. Goar’s point is that, as well as the university seems to do, both the methodology and the underlying assumptions of the story are suspect.

I’m an academic and therefore probably biased in this respect, but I have to say that I think Goar’s point is well taken. Mainstream economics concerns itself principally with money: how it’s earned, how it’s spent. Money is nice to work with because it’s measurable and discrete and, most of all, numerical. That’s important from the point of view of establishing economics on a scientific basis, because physics and chemistry, particularly, are highly amenable to numerical descriptions. There was (is) a strong current of thought that says that science should be quantitative: numerical data, mathematical relationships.

Now I’m not knocking mathematics here; I admire the fact that my discipline has proven so useful to the natural and social sciences. At the same time, reducing everything to numbers tends to miss the point, and that’s clearest in the science of economics. The value of an education is based on the increase in one’s expected earnings? The value of the environment can be measured by how mch it would cost to clean it up… or worse, just ignored altogether?

Intangibles are hard for clasical economics to work with, and so — the technique that kick-started physics as a numerical science — they get simplified out of the models. If economics was a science of money, that would be fine. As a social science — the science of human choice, to paraphrase my old econ professor’s slogans — I think that the essence gets lost very quickly.

Separatism: it’s not just for les habitants anymore.

The Western Canada Concept is apparently a twenty-plus-year-old separatist group for western Canada; they feel that the four provinces west of Ontario, together with the territories, should secede from confederation. Assuming it’s all right with the citizens, of course.

Their basic raison d’être (if you’ll forgive the use of the dreaded Other Official Language) is laid out here. Their stated principles are really quite astounding; they include:

• An end to immigration to preserve our environment, culture and stability.
• Equal rights for all, with no special status for any race, or ethnic origin.
• Preservation of our Christian culture and European heritage.

I’m sorry, but am I the only one who sees a certain level of fuzzy thought in any group that simultaneously maintains all three of these precepts?

There’s something almost tragic about some of the rhetoric on the site; for instance, when they make the point that every majour political movement for change has come from the West. The point being, apparently, that had the reformers had their day then all of Canada’s problems would have been fixed. But they weren’t given a fair shake, and so at this point we might as well just end it all.

I guess I just don’t agree. I don’t think that Canada is past hope, and I don’t really think that life in a “free West” would be as pastoral as they party’s website paints it. (For one thing, I’m wondering if the party founders have taken a really close look at Vancouver lately.) Canada without the West would certainly be a poorer thing, but so would the West without the rest of Canada.

While reading an interesting discussion thread at Ruy Teixeira’s Donkey Rising, I came across a commenter who used the word “vaselated” in reference to the voting record of a candidate. I believe that this is the best new word I’ve seen all month.

I mean, OK, it’s pretty clear that the individual meant to say “vaccilated”: drifted back and forth between different positions, never strongly committing themselves to a point of view. I’m not entirely sure that this is really a legitimate criticism of a politician — it’s either vaccilate or become an ideologue, after all, and out experience with the latter breed recently has made me question their value. But I’m certainly willing to entertain the argument.

It’s the conflation with “vaseline”, though, that really does it for me. Not just drifting back and forth, but squirming, slipping from viewpoint to viewpoint, petroleum-jelly-coated body twisting and turning. Any attempts to pin the individual down would just slide right off!

I’m not saying that this is true for the pol in question; really, I don’t know enough about his voting record to say. But it’s just an evocative non-word that I had to point it out.