Brown v. Board of Education

Fifty-seven years ago today, a unanimous Supreme Court of the United States ruled that "separate but equal" schools are inherently unequal and violate the equal protection of the laws provided by the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Let us celebrate.

Freedom Riders Documentary

The documentary on the 1961 freedom riders shown last night on public television revealed to the current generation the heroism of an earlier generation who fought to make this a better country for all Americans.

The documentary also showed the level of organized violence by the Klan and others, in collusion with law enforcement officials in Alabama and Mississippi. It took intervention by the federal government to protect citizens against state governments in the south in those days.

Governor Patterson of Alabama and Governor Barnett of Mississippi, like Arkansas Governor Faubus before them, paid no attention to decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justification of "states' rights" was nothing more than a defense of the right of states to oppress a significant percentage of their own citizens and to deny them the rights of all Americans. It was a deplorable time in our national history. North Carolina under Governor Terry Sanford was, by comparison to Alabama and Mississippi, an outpost of freedom.

Let us never forget.

Remember Gary Hart and the Seven Dwarfs?

In 1988, there was an open primary for presidential nomination in both parties.

Among democrats, the leading candidate at the outset was Gary Hart of Colorado, pursued by seven other democrats. The press began calling the field "Gary Hart and the Seven Dwarfs," the implication being that the other candidates were lightweights

Who were the other candidates? Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and eventually Secretary of the Interior under President Clinton; Senator Joe Biden of Delaware, currently Vice President of the United States; former Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts; Reverend Jesse Jackson of South Carolina (and Chicago); Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, later Vice President under President Clinton and winner of the popular vote in 2000; Representative Dick Gephardt of Missouri; Senator Paul Simon of Illinois. Not a very lightweight field, after all.

Now we have the Republican field for 2011. Three more putative candidates withdrew over the weekend. So far, it looks like there may not be seven contenders for the Republican nomination this year.

Pundits keep seeking an explanation. I hope they succeed.

Freedom Riders

Fifty years ago, May 4, 1961, seven blacks and six whites left Washington, DC in two commercial buses enroute to the deep south. Their aim: to challenge segregation of facilities used in interstate transportation.

Monday night, May 16, 2011 at 9:00 pm, Public Television will broadcast a documentary about the event.

These young people showed remarkable courage and their peaceful, non-violent challenge transformed America.

We should all be grateful.

I strongly recommend everyone view the film.

Governing is Prediction

My last post called attention to W. Edwards Deming's observation that management is prediction.

This is true of government as well.

Ideally, both elected officials and civil servants would take into account during policy deliberations some prediction of the effects of the policies. But how can the public follow the issues and know what are the intended or probable outcomes of government measures?

We have prognosticators. Pundits. Professional explainers and predictors. Some write for newspapers and magazines and some talk on television. Surely the most influential of these pundits are the ones whose punditry is most accurate, right?

Not Exactly.

Recently a group of scholars in Public Policy at Hamilton University decided to examine the accuracy of prognostications by professional prognosticators, with interesting results.

This was not a ground breaking study. A more comprehensive twenty-year study of political and economic forecasting was summarized by Philip Tetlock in his book Expert Political Judgment. Tetlock's study was based on predictions by 284 experts on political and economic trends, and a subsequent analysis of the accuracy of the predictions. His findings:

-Extrapolation using mathematical models does better than human prediction
-Education and popularity increase the predictors' confidence but not their accuracy
-Prognosticators overpredict change and underpredict the status quo
-Extremists predict worse than moderates
-Some people predict better than others, even outside their area of expertise

The Hamilton study was more limited in time and scope, but focused on contemporary prognosticators. The most accurate prognosticator in their study was Paul Krugman of the New York Times. The least accurate was Cal Thomas. In general, they found that liberals were better prognosticators, especially if they had no law degree.

Management is Prediction

"The theory of knowledge helps us to understand that management in any form is prediction."

-W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics

Other Deming observations:

Knowledge is built on theory;

Use of Data requires prediction;

There is no true measurement without an operational definition;

Information is not knowledge.

Oh, That's Just a Theory!

It's often the case that people unfamiliar with or resistant to scientific undertakings dismiss peer-reviewed research by saying: "that's just a theory." As if it were an unsupported guess.

I have even said something like that myself: "I have a theory" about something. What I mean to say is, "I have a hypothesis."

A hypothesis is more than a guess. It is a supposition based on familiarity with the subject, experience, or deep thought. A proper hypothesis must be testable.

The point of testing a hypothesis is to disprove it. No hypothesis can be proven. It can only be disproven. If a proper test fails to disprove a hypothesis, the next step is to try another test. Collect more data. Give the problem more thought. Examine whether we have a case of coincidence or one of cause and effect.

Then take all the data collected, observations made, and develop a theory. The theory must be compatible with all the observed data. The theory should also be testable. If the tests fail to disprove the theory, then it may be adopted as the best explanation available, but no theory can ever be proven. It is the job of scientists to reexamine accepted theory in light of new knowledge, new methods of measurement and observation.

Theory is the best you get. There is never final certainty.

Silence on the Line Explained

Blogger has been down the last couple of days. I need to do a couple of new posts to catch up.