Hacking Open Education, Take 2
Hewlett Hack Day last Friday was an energetic stone soup affair. Erhardt Graeff, Andrew Magliozzi and I planned it with Amar and Nathaniel from Berkman, and Josh Gay. Erhardt emcee’d the event, and Meredith Beaton, Una Lee, Becca Nesson, and Matthew Battles all helped make it happen. Some 40 people attended over the course of the day.
The past two days had seen the development of two dozen project ideas, many of them hackable, by the Hewlett grantees. We spent the first hour condensing those and some new proposed hacks down to 10 that seemed compelling and doable. People self-selected into groups to tackle these (in hindsight: we should have set a max team size of ~6). 7 projects were attempted, and 6 produced a hack – a pitch or minimum product that could inspire others to move it forward. At the end of the day, everyone gave 2-minute pitches to a panel of judges (a schoolteacher, a highschool student, and two berkman staff) who reviewed the results for hackability and near-term usefulness for OER.
Result: two new github repositories, a ‘Learning metacognition via Poker‘ course up on P2PU, a mobile app for ‘Free Pencils’, a hackable version of FreeRice for standardized test problems, a plan for a high-profile annual OER Awards, a wireframe for a cleaner student portfolio platform, a new OER WikiProject on Wikipedia, and a draft design for Octocat a variation on github for OER materials. The PokOER concept drew the most attention – almost ten team members and three different ideas merged – and many hackers agreed they would love to take a P2P course on the topic. And a hack to make it easy to generate your own Mozilla-friendly badges made partial progress, including testing and filing helpful bugs against the badges API.
The Free Pencils and OER Awards projects won judges’ awards’. They were specific and partly implemented (Becca garnered the admiration of all for producing a working prototype in 4 hours), and addressing particular needs raised in the brainstorming the day before. Their hackers have free passes to the Open Ed conference in Vancouver, thanks to sponsorship by hackday participant David Wiley.
Genre-Mapping Books
An exploration of book styles via Book Country. It gets more exciting once you zoom in once.
But it all seems rather arbitrary. Zooming and panning don’t work as well as you might wish on a a real map… does the background topography mean anything? and it’s not clear who is tagging the books, or where that raw data is.
At any rate, reflecting on this odd type of map with four half-dimensions projected onto a plane: we need names for families of abstract maps for structuring knowledge. Then perhaps we’ll start to get somewhere.
J. B. S. Haldane on Statistical Fraud
From Haldane‘s 1941 essay in Eureka #6 on “The Faking of Genetical Results“, reproduced here with appropriate corrections and hyperlinks.
MY FATHER published a number of papers on blood analysis. In the proofs of one of them the following sentence, or something very like it, occurred: “
Unless the blood is very thoroughly faked, it will be found that duplicate determinations rarely agree.” Every biochemist will sympathise with this opinion. I may add that the verb “to lake,” when applied to blood, means to break up the corpuscles so that it becomes transparent.
In genetical work also, duplicates rarely agree unless they are faked. Thus I may mate two brother black mice, both sons of a black father and a white mother, with two white sisters, and one will beget 10 black and 15 white young; the other 15 black and 10 white. To the ingenuous biologist this appears to be a bad agreement. A mathematician will tell him that where the same ratio of black to white is expected in each family, so large a discrepancy (though how best to compare discrepancies is not obvious) will occur in about 26 percent of all cases. If the mathematician is a rigorist he will say the same thing a little more accurately in a great many more words.
A biologist who has no mathematical knowledge, and, what is vastly more serious, no scientific honour, will be tempted to fake his results, and say that he got 12 black and 13 white in one family, and 13 black and 12 white in the other. The temptation is generally more subtle. In one of a number of families where equality is expected he gets 19 black and 6 white mice. It looks much more like a ratio of 3 black to 1 white. How is he to explain it? Wasn’t that the cage whose door once seemed to be insecurely fastened? Perhaps the female got out for a while or some other mouse got in. Anyway he had better reject the family. The total gives a better fit to expectation if he does so, by the way. Our poor friend has forgotten the binomial theorem. A study of the expansion of (1+x/2)25 would have shown him that as bad a fit or worse would be obtained with a probability of 122753 x 2-23, or .0146. There is nothing at all surprising in getting one family as aberrant as this in a set of 20. But he is now on a slippery slope.
He gets his Ph.D. He wants a fellowship, and time is short. But he has been reading Nature and noticed two letters* to that journal of which I was joint author, in which I might appear to have hinted at faking by my genetical colleagues. Thoroughly alarmed, he goes to a venal mathematician. Cambridge is full of mathematicians who have been so corrupted by quantum mechanics that they use series which are clearly divergent, and not even proved to be summable. Interrupting such a one in the midst of an orgy of Bhabha and benzedrine, our villain asks for a treatise on faking.
“I am trying to reconcile
Milne,
Born and
Dirac, not to mention some facts which don’t seem to agree with any of them, or with Eddington,” replies the debauchee, “and I feel discontinuous in every interval; but here goes.
“I suppose you know the hypothesis you want to prove. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to grow a few mice or flies or parrots or cucumbers or whatever you’re supposed to be working on, to see if your hypothesis is anywhere near the facts. Suppose in a given series of families you expect to get four classes of hedgehogs or whatnot with frequencies p1, p2, p3, p4, and your total is S, I shouldn’t advise you to say you got just Sp1, Sp2, Sp3 and Sp4, or even the nearest whole number. Here is what you’d better do. Say you got A1, A2, A3 and A4, and evaluate
Your 
has three degrees of freedom. That is to say you can say you got A1 red, A2 green and A3 blue hedgehogs. But you will then have to say you got S–A1–A2–A3 purple ones. Hence the expected value of is 3, and its standard error is 
; so choose your A‘s so as to give a anywhere between 1 and 6. This is called faking of the first order. It isn’t really necessary. You might have 
, 
, 
and A1=9, A2=A3=3, A4=1. The probability of getting this is 
, which is only just under .04. However, it looks better not to get the exact numbers expected, and if you do it on a population of hundreds or thousands you may be caught out.
“Your second order faking is the same sort of thing. Supposing your total is made up of n families, and you say the rth consisted of ar1, ar2, ar3, ar4 members of the four classes, sr in all: you take
and sum for all values of r. Your total ought to be somewhere near 3n. The standard error is 
, and it’s better to be too high than too low. A chap called Moewus in Berlin who counted different types of algae (or so he said), got such a magnificent agreement between observed and theoretical results, that if every member of the human race had repeated his work once a month for 1012 years, they might expect as good a fit on one occasion (though not with great confidence). So Moewus certainly hadn’t done any second order faking. Of course I don’t suggest that he did any faking at all. He may have run into one of those theoretically possible miracles, like the monkey typing out the text of Hamlet by mere luck. But I shouldn’t have a miracle like that in your fellowship dissertation.
“There is also third order faking. The 4n different components of should be distributed round their mean in the proper way. That is to say, not merely their mean, but their mean square, cube and so on, should be near the expected values (but not too near). But I shouldn’t worry too much about the higher orders. The only examiner who is likely to spot that you haven’t done them is Haldane, and he’ll probably be interned as a Red before you send your thesis in. Of course you might get R. A. Fisher, which would be quite as bad. So if you are worried about it you’d better come back and see me later.”
Man is an orderly animal. He finds it very hard to imitate the disorder of nature. In fact the situation is the exact opposite of what the reader of Paley‘s Evidences might expect. But the problem is an interesting one, because it raises in a sharp and concrete way the question of what is meant by randomness, a question which, I believe, has not been fully worked out. The number of independent numerical criteria of randomness which can be applied increases with the number of observations, but much more slowly, perhaps as its logarithm. The criteria now in use have been developed to search for excessive irregularity, that is to say, unduly bad fit between observation and hypothesis. It does not follow that they are so well adapted to a search for an unduly good fit. Here, I believe, is a real problem for students of probability. Its solution might lead to a better set of axioms for that very far from rigorous but none the less fascinating branch of mathematics.
* see U. Philip and J. B. S. Haldane (1939). Nature, 143, p. 334. and
Hans Grüneberg and J. B. S. Haldane (1940). Nature, 145, p. 704.
Two closing comments by T. W. Körner, who found Haldane’s essay worth reprinting in his brilliant textbook on Fourier analysis:
“The reluctance of the scientific community to accept the possibility of fraud is illustrated by the fact that Moewus was still cited in the literature (and even spoken of as a possible Nobel prize winner) until 1953. However, no one else ever succeeded in repeating his experiments…
Unfortunately the statistical war against fraud is now over and the cheaters have won. The kind of tests proposed by Haldane depended on the fact that ‘higher order faking’ required a great deal of computational work. The invention and accessibility of the computer means that the computational work involved has ceased to be a problem for the dishonest scientist. In the physical and biological sciences the possibility that others will attempt to replicate experiments may act as a sufficient deterrent but in purely statistical subjects like sociology and experimental psychology the poblems raised by potential fraud have still to be faced.”
On building a global network, and collaborative fundraising
Wikimedia has recently been discussing how and why we fundraise, and how we determine where to direct the stream of visitors to our shared global websites when we ask for donations. In particular, two years ago we directed visitors to over 10 chapters who then each processed their donations directly; this was cut back to only 4 of the larger chapters last year, with clearer standards for accountability and financial transparency for those groups.
A few months ago our eloquent executive director, Sue Gardner, began a detailed consultation on the aptly named Meta-wiki to discuss ways to improve this process, which has grown organically over the past five years. She is publicly drafting and annotating her own recommendations to the Board, which will be presented to us in a few weeks’ time. Since this is such a transprent process, we have already had preliminary discussion at our last board meeting, resulting in a letter varying slightly with the draft recommendations at that point. An annual community-wide finance summit, organized this year by the French chapter, was held last weekend in Paris, and these discussions occupied much of the agenda there.
My fellow Trustee and Wikimedia Treasurer, Stu West, recently published and later summarized his personal views on these matters.
I would characterize this view as “centralize all donation-processing”: he feels the global Foundation can gain economies of scale, and economies of specialization, by processing all donations centrally in the US, and then distributing funds back out to Chapters and other groups around the world — enough to offset the loss of tax-deductibility and other advantages to local processing. (choices of where to distribute, and donor relationship management, would still be made in a communal fashion.)
My own personal view is to “decentralize where excellence and desire meet“: I feel we should support decentralized processing by all highly competent groups with demonstrated skills in these fundraising matters, where they have some local benefit or other reason to process donors directly, and where they decide to take on that challenge. The skills involved are not trivial; some will not develop them, others have no local incentives to do so, still others may not want the extra work entailed. This include competence (and legal ability) to redistribute surplus funds raised to projects around the world, through whatever global allocation/prioritization process we build together. Decentralization of this donor and fundraising work may lose some economies of centralization, but it will gain many others: including direct financial advantages in some regions (tax deduction, matching), and ensuring that we have redundancy of relevant expertise across our movement.
I repost below the comment (copyedited for clarity) that I left on his blog:
I interpret our Board letter in the opposite (positive) sense to Stu’s summary on his blog. I believe that at least some Chapters should payment process, because in some cases we already see that it offers a net benefit for the movement. And I think that any chapter that is sufficiently mature — skilled in dealing with donations, efficient in its work, meets a high standard of financial accountability, and has a history of supporting community-driven dissemination targets — and *wants* to payment-process for banner-driven donations, should be able to do so.
By this description (and reflecting on your four points above), such chapters, before they could process payments from sitewide-banner campaigns, would first have to be:
- Already processing payments locally, managing their national messaging in sitewide campaigns, complying with local financial regulations, and handling donor relations. (They would already be processing payments from local email and media campaigns)
- Efficient in their financial work; so that this would not be significant additional time and money on top of their normal operations
- Demonstrably skilled in their financial work, and able to meet strict standards maintained by the Foundation and the movement as a whole.
- Lacking in a sense of entitlement, and participating in community-led allocation work to identify and support impactful work worldwide
This would be a limited set of large, respected Chapters. It would not be a natural step in chapter growth, and only those with a financial and donor-focused bent would be in a position to pursue it (or to implement it efficiently). Other options exist now and will only grow for smaller chapters. Some chapters will be founded in countries with strict financial laws that make it too difficult to distribute funds outside the country.
Enabling groups to grow in areas where they have demonstrated excellence and foresight is consistent with our culture of empowerment; and having more than one body competent to do any significant task is consistent with our culture of decentralization.
Naming and familiarizing the unknown
Phoebe wrote a lovely essay recently about the unknown on her phlog. She reflected on the many uncertainties in recent complex discussions in the Wikimedia universe.
It reminded me that gaining familiarity with the unknown, and an ability to grapple with unknowns without losing all direction or perspective, is a most valuable skill.
We would ideally be able to highlight large areas that are unknown, to label them, to include them as variables in even larger equations and balanced. Indeed, we should be able to derive some of their properties befor they are understood in fine detail.
Moving from working only with known quantities to working with unknowns was an essential stepping stone towards developing most of modern mathematics, and much scientific reasoning. This may apply no less to areas of social and civic growth.
SOPA, PIPA votes delayed, bills sent back for revision
SOPA author Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) and Senate majority lead Harry Reid (D-NV) both issued statements today that they would be delaying votes on SOPA and PIPA. Rep. Smith says “we need to revisit the approach on how best to address the problem“; Senator Reid will send the bill back to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and hopes to “reach a compromise in the coming weeks“.
It looks like those 18 Senators have their work cut out for them. Few of them have indicated they have any understanding of how the bills are dangerously broken.
PS: Clay Shirky has a brilliant TED talk about the bills online.
SOPA – PIPA math: 61% >> 28%
Three cheers for participatory democracy! The percentage of stated opposition to SOPA and PIPA in Congress changed dramatically over the past two days, from 28% to 61%. [If you count people who are “leaning No”, by ProPublica’s estimate, this goes up to 69%.]
How many politicians announced they would be co-sponsoring or otherwise outright supporting SOPA/PIPA on Wednesday? By our count: Zero.
Update: Harry Reid releases Dems in the Senate to vote against PIPA if their conscience demands. And Chris Dodd, former Senator and current MPAA Chairman, just called for a summit between Internet and traditional ‘content’ companies, convened by the White House, to reach a compromise. (He hasn’t yet realized that major content companies today are Internet companies.)
We are experiencing the growth of social unity and a certain moral sense across the Web, among people who have found something wonderful, worth defending with all their heart. This is a small piece; it is thrilling to be part of it. I hope you feel it too.
Blackout Wednesday wrapup #3: impact edition
Over a dozen Congressmen have changed or clarified their position on PIPA and SOPA over the course of the past 36 hours, towards opposing the bills. This includes six senators and two representatives who had previously been co-sponsors or solid supporters of the relevant bill in their chamber. Many more who formerly were neutral about the bills or leaning towards opposing them, are now calling them “misguided”, saying they will “cause more harm than good”, “harm free speech rights”, “weaken freedom of expression on the Internet”, and would “harm Internet innovation and jobs”. Most agree that the bills as written “need to be stopped”. It seems that some of them have looked at the bills with a magnifying glass for the first time.
Senator Boozman summarizes: “Over the past few weeks, the chorus of concerns over Congressional efforts to address online piracy has intensified“. A week ago it looked like there might be a straight 60-vote approval of PIPA in the Senate; now it is losing suppoters by the hour, and may have a hard time getting majority support; making it unlikely to make it to a vote at all.
Blackout impact
Politico and others suggest that much of this movement was a direct result of the strong online statement made by the EFF, Reddit, Google, Wikipedia, and others – and the protest organized by those groups to express their views to every representative and senator in the country. Wikipedia produced a ‘find your local representative’ widget, to ensure that we encouraged readers to call their representatives directly; Google simply encouraged signing a petition.
Once the blackout launched, it trended worldwide on Twitter, with hashtags such as #factswithoutwikipedia, #SOPAstrike and #wikipediablackout. At one point, according to Trendistic, #wikipediablackout was used in 1% of all tweets. Hotspots claims that SOPA (and #SOPA) has accounted for a quarter-million tweets an hour since then.
The EFF reports that by 5pm, over 250,000 1 million people had contacted their representatives through the EFF blacklist site. Wikipedia reports roughly 160 million people have seen their blackout page, and eight million of those have looked up their elected representatives’ contact information through its tool. (No word on how many made contact; if there is a dropoff rate similar to the first clickthrough, then that would make another 400,000 contacts.) Google reports gathering 4.5 million signatures on its petition.
Statements today from members of Congress:
Senators noting their disapproval of PIPA yesterday and today: (those who switched away from previously indicated support are listed in bold)
- Mark Begich (D-AK)
I oppose PIPA…Online piracy needs to be addressed, but the current form of the bill isn’t the proper way to do it.
- Roy Blunt (R-MO) @RoyBlunt
I strongly oppose sanctioning Americans’ right to free speech in any medium, including over the internet. #SOPA #PIPA
- John Boozman (R-AR) [facebook]
Over the past few weeks, the chorus of concerns over Congressional efforts to address online piracy has intensified… I intend to withdraw my support for the Protect IP Act. I will have my name removed as a co-sponsor of the bill and plan to vote against it…
- Scott Brown (R-MA) @ScottBrownMA
I’m going to vote no, the Internet is too important to our economy …
- Jim DeMint (R-SC) @JimDeMint
I support intellectual property rights, but I oppose SOPA & PIPA. They’re misguided bills that will cause more harm than good.
- Orrin Hatch (R-UT) [thehill] @OrrinHatch
That’s why I will not only vote against moving the bill forward next week but also remove my cosponsorship of the bill. #utpol #tcot #PIPA
- Jim Inhofe (R-OK) [facebook]
SOPA is the wrong response from the US Congress. (also now opposes PIPA)
- Johanns (R-NE) [ journalstar]
- Mark Kirk (R-IL) [kirk]
Freedom of speech is an inalienable right granted to each and every American, and the Internet has become the primary tool with which we utilize this right… This extreme measure stifles First Amendment rights and Internet innovation.
- Jeff Merkley (D-OR) @SenJeffMerkley
Thanks for all the calls, emails, and tweets. I will be opposing #SOPA and #PIPA. We can’t endanger an open internet.
- Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) [adn]
The bill raises serious concerns about our civil liberties. That’s why next week I plan to oppose the current PIPA bill.
- Marco Rubio (R-FL) @marcorubio
After hearing from people with legit concerns, have withdraw support for #PIPA. Let’s take time to do it right. http://t.co/9fFMRgOU #SOPA:
Senators who changed from support, to advocating a delay in voting for revision and reconsideration:
- Ben Cardin (D-MD)
- John Cornyn (R-TX) @JohnCornyn
SOPA: better to get this done right rather than fast and wrong… the potential impact of this legislation is too far-reaching to ram it through Congress.
- Charles Grassley, (R-AL)
Since the mark-up, we have increasingly heard from a large number of constituents and other stakeholders with vocal about possible unintended consequences of the proposed legislation, including breaches in cybersecurity, damaging the integrity of the Internet, costly and burdensome litigation, and dilution of First Amendment rights…
- Robert Menendez (D-NJ) @SenatorMenendez
#NJ: I hear your concerns re: #PIPA loud & clear & share in these concerns. I’m working to ensure critical changes are made to the bill.
House Representatives stating disapproval or opposition: (those switching away from previously indicated support or cosponsorship again in bold, but this was harder to ascertain):
- Akin (R-MO)
Copyrights must be protected, but not at this cost. Open internet and free speech!
- Baldwin (D-WI)
I do not believe it is the responsibility of Internet service providers to become the police of the Internet.
- Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) @RepGusBilirakis
Piracy should be prosecuted, but I have deep concerns about SOPA’s effect on free speech rights and am opposed to it in its current form.
- Blumenauer (D-OR)
Rep. Blumenauer’s website joined the blackout for an hour: Today I am joining the millions of Americans who are standing with the world’s most innovative websites against the proposed censorship of PIPA and SOPA
- Bruce Braley (D-IA) @BruceBraley
I’ve heard you. I strongly oppose #SOPA. http://t.co/iM2MsbiA
- Courtney (D-CT)
SOPA as it exists today… should be scrapped entirely. An axe instead of a scalpel, this bill would unacceptably and fundamentally change the architecture of the internet.
- DeFazio (D-OR) [facebook]
Wikipedia, Craigslist and others are dark today to bring attention to the atrocious SOPA bill that will take away freedom on the internet.
- DeGette
I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to contact me about SOPA… Without serious changes I’m not convinced SOPA effectively solves the issue and am concerned about the implications it would have for online innovation.
- Keith Ellison (D-MN) @keithellison
#SOPA would harm internet innovation and jobs. Better ways to fight piracy.
- Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) @JeffFortenberry
I oppose #SOPA–it would disrupt the structural integrity of the internet
- Jeff Flake (R-AZ) @JeffFlake
I oppose #SOPA because I’m concerned it will restrict free speech.
- Cory Gardner (R-CO) @repcorygardner
online piracy is a real issue but we must maintain a free & open internet #opposeSOPA #endpiracynotliberty
- Gosar (R-AZ)
- Graves (R-GA)
We’re getting a bunch of questions this morning about the ‘Stop Online Piracy Act.’ I wanted to let you know that I oppose the bill.
- Grijalva (D-AZ)
This legislation has moved beyond protecting legitimate intellectual property rights and is now headed down a path that would let companies decide what you get to view online.
- Tim Holden (R-PA)
An open Internet requires that we find a better approach that is acceptable to all sides. [politicspa]
- Holt (D-NJ)
- Honda (D-CA) [politico]
The bills as currently constructed, with overbroad definitions, will do much more harm than good, hurting the very people they are supposed to protect.
- Hultgren (R-IL) @RepHultgren
Given the widespread coverage the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has received, I want to let you know that I oppose it in its current form.
- Inhofe (R-OK)
- Steve Israel (D-NY) @RepSteveIsrael
I oppose #SOPA. We must protect innovation without weakening free expression on the Internet.
- Darrell Issa (R-CA) @DarrellIssa
83 Internet pioneers: #SOPA & #PIPA would destroy web #DNS system as we know it. LETTER: http://t.co/nfx0SAy6 #SOPA #stopSOPA #PIPA
- Lynn Jenkins (R-KS) @RepLynnJenkins
I do not support SOPA, will fight against any efforts to advance it, and will vote against it if it comes to the floor. …
- Kinzinger (R-IL) [facebook]
the way these bills are currently written does not ensure an open and free internet and that is not something I can support.
- Latham (R-IA)
I oppose SOPA or any bill abridging freedom of speech.
- Lee (D-CA)
SOPA in its current form is far too close to internet censorship, something I strongly oppose.
- Marchant (R-TX)
- Jim Matheson (D-UT) @RepJimMatheson
Oppose SOPA and PIPA; online piracy is a serious issue, but these bills are not the way to go. Complicated issue…
- McCotter (R-MI)
- McDermott (D-WA) [facebook]
I’ve heard from many of you about the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA). We need to do something about online piracy, but this bill is not the right way to do it.
- Patrick McHenry (R-NC) @PatrickMcHenry
I oppose #SOPA in its current form and have signed on as an original co-sponsor of the #OPEN Act. Check out …
- Mike Michaud (D-ME) @RepMikeMichaud
#SOPA need to be stopped. Speak out and make sure Congress hears you. http://t.co/W1sso3uG
- Jim Moran (D-VA) @Jim_Moran
I oppose #SOPA. Keep the internet open.
- Nugent (R-FL)
I’ve gotten a lot of calls from people today urging me to oppose SOPA (or PIPA, as the Senate companion bill is called). I do oppose the bill as it’s currently written.
- Pascrell Jr (D-NJ)
- Price (D-NC)
I am opposed to the proposed SOPA bill… Today’s ‘black-out’ campaigns by Google, Wikipedia and other major websites echo the voices of the many constituents I’ve heard from.
- Chellie Pingree (D-ME) @chelliepingree
So many contacting me today outraged with #SOPA and I couldn’t agree more. #mepolitics
- David Price (D-NC) @RepDavidEPrice
Release: Price Opposes #SOPA, Calls on Congress to Protect Open Internet http://t.co/fPqmflT1 #ncpol
- Ben Quayle (R-AZ) [politico]
- Dennis Ross (R-FL)
“I believe #SOPA is dead.”
- Tim Ryan (D-OH) @RepTimRyan
Web piracy is a an issue that should be dealt with, but I oppose #SOPA bc it does too much harm to innovation & speech @eff @boingboing
- Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) @JanSchakowsky
Thank you all for the many calls today to #StopSOPA! I want you to know that I oppose #SOPA & will vote against it #p2
- John Shimkus (R-IL) @RepShimkus
We can protect intellection property through anti-piracy legislation w/o censoring free speech or stifling innovation. #SOPA is not the way.
- Adam Smith (D-WA) [adamsmith]
these measures, if enacted, would place unacceptable limitations on the accessibility of online information and content, impose undue burdens on small and innovative websites and applications, and would not be the most effective way to curtail overseas illegal piracy and theft of intellectual property.
- Lee Terry (R-NE) [omaha.com]
SOPA, as currently drafted, isn’t the solution.
- Joe Walsh (R-IL) @RepJoeWalsh
Thank God twitter isn’t blocked today so I can tell you that I refuse to vote for #SOPA. #uncensored #StopSOPA
- Yarmuth (D-KY)
Thanks for your calls and emails this morning. I am opposed to #SOPA.
- Yoder (R-KS)
A doff of the hat : Much of this data comes from or was confirmed through ProPublica‘s excellent timeline of public statements by Congressmen about SOPA and PIPA.
Electron: 0.5Mev… Proton: 1Gev… Higgs: 125Gev?
An example of deep understanding vs. casual understanding:
Matt Strassler provides an eloquent, balanced summary of what we have recently learned about a possible Higgs particle (or particles). He notes that recent data have simplified the possible answers to an important question, there are a limited number of possibilities left, and we can find an answer among those possibilities within the next year. He offers a useful diagram of what we know and don’t know, as it has changed over the past year — the most significant change is the broad realm of possibilities we can now exclude, leaving a small gap to be explored further:
In a related post he noted both the hints in recent data that suggest there could be a single Standard-Model Higgs particle, but also some of the contrary evidence: cross-sections of the data which should show the same signal but do not, or hints that there might be something more complicated going on.
In contrast, Phil Gibbs of viXra (an alternative to arXiv.org requiring no peer vetting) offers a deceptively neat faux distribution of observations, optimistically combining data from different experiments and suggesting the result likely corresponds to a single Higgs-like particle massing around 125Gev. Note how more jargon is used here, and less historical perspective; with a focus on coming up with The Answer, rather than providing a broad picture.
Then there are physicists who take this opportunity to promote their own pet theories, quickly publishing preprints that suggest those theories predicted this all along — subtlely modifying their past work to hone in on the remaining possible energies for a Higgs particle.
Strassler’s approach is universally useful. It teaches others about this particular experiment, about the field of particle physics, and about how to do science.
Gibbs’s approach is a quick hack, of temporary value in the current discussion, but gives a limited understanding of the state of research and may give the wrong idea about how to analyse and interpret research.
Scientists trying to ride the coattails of a pending discovery often have received no new information about whether their ideas are right or wrong. To show their work in the best light, they misstate the current understanding of their own field, give students a harmful model to follow, and damage the public understanding of what science does and how to understand it… in addition to possibly promoting ideas that are simply wrong.
Paramilitary police protocols in the US : context and consequences
Update: BoingBoing has a lovely interview with one of the students who was sprayed by the police.
He also notes with compassion that aggressive police are a symptom of a system we have deliberately chosen as a society. He references past phases of the public-police social contract, and notes that brutal treatment of students by police
a) isn’t new (it was common in the 1960’s before being toned down), and
b) isn’t a matter of a few bad actors like Lt. John Pike
We need to recognize the systemic problems everywhere in the US, now filtering onto university campuses, and address them at their heart.
That said, we still have clear
legal standards for when it is and is not appropriate to pepper spray civilians in the course of policing. In prisons, riots, or public squares,
precedent suggests it can not reasonably be used on seated or immobile protesters.
Pike violated federal law in his use of
excessive force, and is
unlikely to be protected by the qualified immunity sometimes granted to officers. Since a number of the students sprayed were injured, some still hospitalized the next day, and this use of pepper spray is usually considered to ‘exceed reasonable bounds’, Pike and his department face significant legal challenges. They will almost certainly try to settle any claims out of court.
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The 99%
This pair of single topic blogs are excellent and to the point:
Worldwide: the top 1% of household wealth/personal income starts at roughly $10M/$100K (though the available data are weak, and neither is measured consistently).
Many in the top 10% feel as though they are in the top 1%, thanks to the same effect that causes people of all backgrounds to underestimate the imbalance of wealth distribution.
The Metamovement
Read this solid post by Umair Haque on the rise of the metamovement in our global society. This is a movement of movements that we are seeing develop unbidden, transcending national, cultural, and social norms across the world.
The opposite of a filter bubble, this directly taps into a universal need for agency and our newfound capacity to cooperate by the millions.
Hat tip to the perceptive Priya Parker.
Studying patterns
For the past few years, I have been tracking patterns and ways to measure them. In some easily reproducible settings, like small-group social engagements, short-timeframe teamwork, and the like, patterns are much more useful than individual events at determining how things work out. Especially when the desired outcome is patterned, and real-life outcomes usually are (“make sure everyone leaves happy”, “come up with a solution that addresses everyone’s personal use case well enough”), focusing on natural patterns rather than linear ones* provides for better rules of thumb, and a clearer understanding of why things happen.
Indeed, most common wisdom about why things happen – how causality works, what comes first and what comes next – is simply a version of the post hoc fallacy: if two things happen near eachother, one caused the other. You can see this most eloquently in the history of many sciences. We continue to make this class of mistakes most quantitatively in abuses of statistics today. But the more prominent arena for this sort of thinking is in everyday life – the way we talk and write, the words we use to explain important events to ourselves.
If you look at almost any significant and complex world problem, you will find that both laymen and experts enjoy breaking things down into linear patterns, and choosing a small number to claim as the “key” factors in making or unmaking some change. Climate change, economic collapses, political standoffs.
In my observation, it is rare for there to be much truth in ascribing impact to any small set of such factors. Yet most people I know will, in at least some areas where we lack solid repeatable data, suggest otherwise.
After running some experiments in this area, I am keen on writing something more formal about this, including some language, metrics, and toy examples for working with patterns. I have found a close attention to patterns to be of tremendous personal use, and expect it will come to be so in larger collaborations as well. If you have run across relevant work in this area, or writings on pattern of any sort – human, biological, artistic, mathematical, or other – I should like to hear about it.
* Linear or “single factor” patterns are the simplest kind; and in many if not all cases one could describe all more complex patterns in terms of the interction of linear patterns. However we can usually evaluate a set of natural, more complex patterns with reasonably low error. Forcing a guess at their decomposition into linear ones and at what those linear factors are, and composing those guesses together, is often far more incomplete or uncertain.
A time to learn
Today I decided to test my capacity to focus on language for a while. It has been some time since I absorbed a lot of language in one sitting — back when I was browsing the English dictionary for various arbitrary competitions; and then again briefly when I learned the Chinese radicals and elementary characters.
So I picked up my available Hebrew, Arabic, and Farsi texts (only one of the latter, but a beautiful one) and sat down to work. I find it much more interesting to pick up the family in some sort of synch, since there are always interesting patterns to observe at a higher level, while engaging in fairly repetitive work. writing practice. We’ll see how far this gets.
| Current progress |
| Hebrew |
30%, 25% |
| Arabic |
5%, 20% |
| Farsi |
8% |
DC earthquake devastation
A heady 8 5.8 on the Richter Scale (via j mckinley and usgs).
Dylan M v. Google : what to do when you are erased online
Dylan M. (@thomasmonopoly) is a real person from New York. He writes a bit of music, has a personal website, and generally uses a lot of Google services. Whoops — or at least he did, until he was G!unpersoned last week.
A week ago, Dylan had an active Google Profile, a Gmail account, and his website was set up through Google Sites. Then, for an unspecified Terms of Service violation, all of these were suspended or deleted. Google reps did not specify which, nor did they explain the TOS violation to him.
Here is his initial raging post to a community help forum on Jul 16; a followup the next day. Customer service, such as it is, has not been kind. Here are two examples of a “deserved what you got” mentality. (If you’re a true customer-focused org, noon ever deserves a bad experience!) On the other hand, here is a lovely note from Google social czar Vic Gundotra, just the sort of thing everyone wants to hear: “You bet on Google. We owe you better. I’m investigating.” (update: DM reports getting a call from VG on July 25, with more info to come)
Naturally, Dylan wanted to know why he was banned. (Even more naturally, he wanted a copy of his email and addressbook, and some minimal duration of email forwarding.)
What’s happening here
Since the US Post Office has given up on providing digital mail and addresses for people, we have all lost most of the civil rights that used to apply to our mailing address — the right to maintain an address over time, the right to a system of mail delivery that could not be spied on by other citizens…
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Magnificent: Museum of Modern Math
Launching next year in the Big Red Topological Sphere: a Museum devoted to the Queen of the Sciences and supported by local New York organizations and by Google. Learn about the Musem of Mathematics and what they have planned:
momath.org
