William M. Briggs, Statistician

What is the one thing that will anger a journalist faster than anything else?

Telling him that he is not important.

Last night Governor Sarah Palin said, “I am not going to Washington to seek [journalists’] good opinion.” No line could be more calculated to set off a flurry of fluster and flummery among the elite media. This means war.

She should have done what the other guy did and coddled reporters, sweet-talked them, gave them the precious gift of “access”.

Obama was more savvy. And lo, He gathered them—every major “non-biased” journalist in the country—and brought them on his victory tour of Europe. He gave them then and gives them now minute-by-minute access to his Grand Personage.

Obama’s master move, however, was to tell the media exactly what it wants to hear: “You guys are smart. You know what is right. Your ideas are important.”

See, what happens is something like this. A newly fledged reporter starts covering events. She writes down what has happened at some function so that others can read about it. The events and functions are important, so the reporter begins to feel that she is important. As time passes and more events are covered, our journalist begins to second guess the actions of those on whom she reports. She supports some of those actions, and disapproves of others. The temptation to interdict between the truly important people and her audience becomes overwhelming and she gives in. She begins to editorialize, to selectively include and exclude, and finally to advocate.

Because reporters cover weighty, influential, and serious matters they come to believe that they themselves are weighty, influential, and serious.

The fallacy is obvious.

The reason the media is now so apoplectic in its uncivilized, sexist, and ridiculous attacks on Governor Palin is because of just one thing. Petulance.

The main stream media is having a tantrum. They want to be told again that they are as important as they think they are. They are livid that anybody could not see this and they won’t stop screaming until they get their way.

Is it any wonder, then, that more and more people are switching them off and turning to alternatives?

Around the 4th of July, here in the States, there is a tendency for official weather forecasts to show a probability of precipitation that is lower than it should be. It rains more than the forecasters guess.

The same thing inverted happens around December 25th (the Federally Recognized Holiday That Shall Not Be Named): the forecasts tend to give too high a probability of precipitation. It snows less than the forecasters guess.

This phenomena is well recognized in meteorology where it has long gone by the name of wishcasting: it is also found in many other areas of life, which I’ll talk about below. Wishcasting describes the tendency of the forecaster to tilt his guess toward the outcome which he would like to see, or toward the outcome he knows his viewers would like to see.

Good weather forecasters, obviously, are aware of this tendency and do their best to lessen its influence. But even the best of them tend to get excited when a big storm is on its way, these being matters of great and evident importance, and sometimes issue forecasts which exaggerate the chance of severe weather. Still, the influence of wishcasting is small among professionals, mostly because of the routine evaluation of forecast performance and criticism of peers. People like to pick on weather forecasters, but among any professional group, I have not found any to be better or more reliable than the National Weather Service.

Before we go further, let me answer an objection which might have occurred to you. Why not exaggerate the probability of a storm causing damage since “it’s better to be safe than sorry”? To do this takes the decision out of the hands of person who will experience the storm and puts it into the hands of the forecaster. And that is the wrong thing to do: the forecaster does not know better than his audience what decisions are best. Every person in the path of a storm knows what losses he will face if a storm hits, and how much it will cost him to protect. If people are routinely given exaggerated forecasts, then they will pay the cost of protecting more than they should, and those costs are not insignificant (how much money is being lost by the shops of New Orleans from the protracted evacuation?). You cannot use the forecast as a tool to warn people of dangers which are unimportant to them. It will make them less likely to believe forecasters when real dangers arise. The lesson of Chicken Little is pertinent.

While the Weather Service forecasters do a great job, this is not so among reporters who routinely wildly overstate potential dangers, even when that danger has passed. Anybody who watched television coverage of hurricane Gustav could attest to this. We saw fearless reporter Geraldo Rivera standing in the streets of New Orleans holding a small aneomometer shouting, “There’s a 60 miles per hour, Bob! Wait! A 61!” He bravely leaned into the stiff breeze and held his ground to bring us this breaking news. Of course, anybody who has driven a car and stuck their hand out the window will know that a 60 MPH wind is hardly life threatening.

Well, reporters shading the truth, embroidering facts, neglecting pertinent information, and at times outright lying is by now of no surprise. People have learned to “divide by 10″ any statement issued from a newsroom, so journalists cause less harm than they would if they were taken at face value.

Wishcasting is by no means restricted to weather predictions. I’ll ask you right now, who will be elected president: McCain or Obama? It is difficult to remove the prejudices you have for one candidate or the other and give a good guess. If you love McCain, you are likely to increase the chance of him winning. If you fear Obama’s promised tax increases, that might increase your guess of the chance of him winning if you are naturally pessimistic. To carefully sift through all the evidence and arrive at an unemotional prediction is extremely difficult.

Gamblers often wishcast. “Red hasn’t come up if seven spins, so it’s more likely to now.” Part of this reasoning is due to misunderstanding or not knowing the rules of probability that govern simple games, but part is also due to the desire for the outcome. Wishcasting is prevalent in environmental circles. So much so, that an “activist” who doesn’t embellish is a oddity. Brokers, financial planners, stock pickers, and similar professionals are no less prone to wishcasting.

Wishcasting is somewhat different than the experimenter effect, although there is some overlap. The experimenter effect is when a scientist (or group of them), consciously or not, set up a model to demonstrate the effect they were looking for. A common example is a drug trial. One group is given a new drug, the other an old one or a placebo. If the patients are evaluated by a physician who knows which patient got which drug, it is likely the effects of the new drug will be exaggerated. This phenomena is so well known that the government mandates blinding of medical trials. This is where the physician who evaluates the patients has no idea which treatment the patient has received.

Michael Crichton, physician and author, in testimony to congress, gave an example of this:

It’s 1991, I am flying home from Germany, sitting next to a man who is almost in tears, he is so upset. He’s a physician involved in an FDA study of a new drug. It’s a double-blind study involving four separate teams—one plans the study, another administers the drug to patients, a third assesses the effect on patients, and a fourth analyzes results. The teams do not know each other, and are prohibited from personal contact of any sort, on peril of contaminating the results. This man had been sitting in the Frankfurt airport, innocently chatting with another man, when they discovered to their mutual horror they are on two different teams studying the same drug. They were required to report their encounter to the FDA. And my companion was now waiting to see if the FDA would declare their multi-year, multi-million dollar study invalid because of this chance contact.

His point in this testimony was to show that researchers in global warming are nowhere near as careful as their colleagues in medicine:

[T]he protocols of climate science appear considerably more relaxed. In climate science, it’s permissible for raw data to be “touched,” or modified, by many hands. Gaps in temperature and proxy records are filled in. Suspect values are deleted because a scientist deems them erroneous. A researcher may elect to use parts of existing records, ignoring other parts. But the fact that the data has been modified in so many ways inevitably raises the question of whether the results of a given study are wholly or partially caused by the modifications themselves…

…[A]ny study where a single team plans the research, carries it out, supervises the analysis, and writes their own final report, carries a very high risk of undetected bias. That risk, for example, would automatically preclude the validity of the results of a similarly structured study that tested the efficacy of a drug.

Wishcasting meets the experimenter effect when the results from a non-blinded experiment are exaggerated to “raise awareness” of the potential horrors that await us if we do not heed the experimenters. Sometimes this exaggeration is done on purpose, as with the weather forecaster who feels his viewers would be “better safe than sorry”, and sometimes the overstatement is unconscious because the forecaster has not recognized his limitations. Scientists often feel they are special and able to avoid the frailties that plague the rest of us, but of course, they cannot; they are still human.

It is nearly impossible to disentangle experimenter effect from wishcasting in any situation, nor can we easily identify the constituent facts and their relevance used by a forecaster in producing his forecast. To do so essentially means producing a rival forecast and is a laborious process.

What we can do (this is my line of country) is to check how good the actual performance of a forecast is. If the forecast routinely fails, we can say something has gone wrong. Just what requires more work: was it bad data, mistaken theory, wishcasting, or something else? If the forecast routinely fails, we are rational to suspect it will fail in the future, and that the theories said to underly the forecast might be false. If the forecast fails, we are also right to question the motives of the forecaster, because it is these motives that influence the presence or amount of wishcasting.

These cautions do not just apply to weather or climate forecasts, but in all areas where routine predictions are made. Could you be making more money in your stock portfolio or office football pool, for example? Generally, wishcasting takes places when forecasting complex systems, like the weather, climate, or any area involving human behavior. It’s much less likely in simple situations, like how much this electron will move under a certain applied force, or what will happen when these two chemicals are mixed. But we’ll save complexity for another day.

Gustav is weakening and steering to the west of the Big Easy.

The Air Force regularly sends in its “hurricane hunter” aircraft, and the last observation of about a hour ago showed central winds “generously described” at 100 knots, and those probably falling. The National Hurricane Center reports that the AF plane didn’t even find an eye wall, though radar reports an open (therefore weaker one) over the south.

The forecasters also report “WATER VAPOR IMAGERY ALSO SUGGESTS A DRY INTRUSION AND A RESTRICTION OF THE UPPER-LEVEL OUTFLOW OVER THE SOUTHERN PORTION OF THE HURRICANE.” What that means in English is that the storm will very probably get weaker. (We—I used to be a National Weather Service forecaster—always had to type forecasts in all upper case. This is a throwback to teletypewriter days.)

“ALSO THE CLOUD PATTERN HAS BECOME A BIT MORE RAGGED ON GEOSTATIONARY SATELLITE PICTURES. BASED ON CURRENT TRENDS AND THE PROXIMITY TO THE COAST…NO SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN STRENGTH APPEARS LIKELY PRIOR TO LANDFALL.” That one doesn’t need any translation.

Make no mistake, however. Gustav is still a big storm and those in his path should get out of his way. It will absolutely cause damage and cost a lot of people a lot of money.

But the wide-spread death and destruction so avidly hoped for by the radical left (see two posts ago) Michael Moore, Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler, inter alia now seems unlikely.

What a sad day!

The weather also spoils the media’s fun. You could almost feel the anticipation and eagerness in the news rooms yesterday. Reporters irresponsibly echoed New Orleans’ mayor’s foolish statement calling Gustav the “storm of the century.” This kind of idiotic hyperbole, while typical, is easy to spot, so why does the media regularly give it so much play?

I just turned on the news and they showed a reporter, ridiculously overdressed in rain gear that would hold back a flood, giving his best effort. He shouted in the microphone, held his hat as the breeze and drizzle assaulted him. What a trooper.

I thought it would be fun to compile a list of self-important celebrities who promise to move to Canada/England/Russia etc. when McCain wins the election. If anybody knows of any that I’ve forgotten, drop me an email at celebrity@wmbriggs.com and I’ll add them. Please include a verifiable link. More on this in a moment.

You might recall quite a few actors, actresses and sundry entertainers made similar promises to emigrate when Bush won his second term. Not one of them did what they promised they would do. I even remember getting an email from a pal of mine when Bush was elected stating that “George Bush is not my president!” He didn’t move either.

Problem is, this time I could only find two celebrities who say they’ll move when McCain wins. Just two! I even found one C-lister who promised to shift countries if Obama won (Stephen Baldwin)!

This, and other evidence, leads me to believe that McCain will win this fall. If the celebrity left can’t work up enough moral dudgeon to oppose McCain, then little stands in his way (except the press, of course).

Anyway, here’s the list (last updated 31 August 2008).

Conan the Barbarian was asked “What is best in life.” Arnie’s response: “To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of their women.”

Mike Royko, no conservative and man whose writing I admire deeply, talked of his love of John Wayne, the admiration then as now seen to be an embarrassment among the elite. Royko said that he was standing on the armrests of his chair and hollering encouragement when, in True Grit, one-eyed Wayne faced evil Ned Pepper and two of his henchmen across a glen and yelled “Fill your hand you son-of-a-bitch!”

Admiral William “Bull” Halsey said that his life “reached a climax” when the dejected Japanese foreign minister Mamoru Shigemitsu signed the treaty of surrender aboard the battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay 1945.

All of these men, real or approximate, took pleasure in the defeat of their enemies, real or adopted. I was with you Mike. I still jump on the couch when I see Wayne’s shocked look at Pepper’s last taunt (”Pretty bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!”). I admit to feeling part of Halsey’s pride. I can understand the surge of joy when victory is gained over the bad guys. This, after all, has driven the entire career of the Governator.

So are these emotions any different than those espoused by anti-American movie-maker Michael Moore who recently said that because a major hurricane is soon to hit the American coast, there was “proof there is a God in Heaven”?

See, Moore doesn’t want the Republican convention to pass without interruption and he delights in the idea that external events might force a suspension or cancellation in the GOP’s gathering.

Like a lot of his ilk, though, Moore would have his victory at the expense of hundreds or thousands of innocents, something John Wayne or Halsey would never have countenanced. Moore must have figured out his comments were asinine because he later added he hoped “nobody gets hurt” when the hurricane hits. This is nonsense, of course, because it is only the deadly destructive power of the storm that causes it to be of note in the first place. Even if nobody is physically injured, the storm will still cost everybody in its path a packet. Only a fool or an idiot doesn’t realize this. Moore knew what he was wishing for. He knew what would happen.

Moore is a member of the “Victory at Any Cost” club of the left. Whatever has to be said or done in order to gain power is acceptable. Because once in power, these elites reason, all will be put right. Utopia is just around the corner! And nobody or nothing should be allowed to stand in their way.

Update. I’ve been browsing the blogs to find out about Palin. Most fascinating of all is that fact that everybody is comparing here to Obama and not to Biden. Like I said below, people seem confused about who is actually the presidential candidate. It’s either fear, or people are tacitly admitting Obama’s experience.

Put it this way. Palin and Obama are about the same age (two years difference). Palin has served two years as Governor, Obama two years as Senator. They each had smaller, even similar, jobs before coming to their current one. Obama was an activist and organizer and Palin a city council member and mayor.

Of course, Obama spent about three-quarters of his senatorial service running for president, not actually serving as senator, where the majority of his votes were “NV”, or “No Vote.”

Palin served all of her time as governor, governing. And by all accounts accomplished quite a lot.

By any measure, Palin is better qualified for President than is Obama.

Which is why it is strange the only complaint heard so far against Palin is her “lack of experience” when she has more than Obama (especially on energy and oil).

Don’t forget, too, that we are selecting between McCain and Obama, not Palin and Obama. But you wouldn’t guess that by the commentary so far.

We can ask the Obama camp, why so nervous? I smell fear (I have a large, sensitive nose). Their reaction to Palin is an over-reaction.

Palin might turn out to be less than hoped for, but it’s unlikely. We’ll see when she debates plagiarist Biden.

I was charmed by the way she named her youngest son and impressed by the way she courted Hilary supporters.

Part II of the leadership comparison of McCain and Obama

How much of the President of the United States’ job has been in the capacity of Commander in Chief?

To start—but in no way to finish—answering this question, consider this (difficult) picture:

This charts all major military activity of the USA since its birth in 1776. Only wars and conflicts of importance are included; that is, not every use of military force if plotted. For example, Commodore Perry’s mission to Japan, while vastly influential, is not included. The Boxer Rebellion, because it directly used a minimal number of troops, was of tremendous consequence, and so is presented.

The political parties in power at the times of the conflicts are shaded (red for Republican; blue for Democrat; green for Whig; purple for Democrat-Republican; and yellow for Federalist or none). For example, Democrat presidents presided over the beginning of the First and Second World Wars, the Cold War, Korean War, and Vietnam War. Republican presidents were there for the start of the Civil War, Grenada Invasion and both Gulf Wars.

Different wars and conflicts are colored variously, and the lengths of the activities are shown. There has only been one period in American history without major conflict: from roughly 1819 to 1831. Two men were President during this time: James Monroe (1817-1825) and John Qunicy Adams (1825-1829; both were Democratic-Republicans). Of these two men, only Adams did not govern the White House during a time of major military conflict (Monroe managed wars earlier in his administration).

Thus, of the 43 presidents so far, 42 of them had direct command over significant military events. Obviously, the military is in use even when not engaged with the enemy. Presidents regulate the military strategically and tactically, for example as a deterrent. A current instance is the placement of missile-defense batteries in Poland to annoy Russia. And the military cannot spring into action suddenly without adequate training and support in times of peace, tasks which require significant interaction.

Whether or not any conflict on this list was preventable or abhorrent or necessary or just, all of human history suggests it is rational to believe conflict and wars will happen in the future. There is no evidence to suggest otherwise. All this implies the obvious: the president must have adequate capabilities as Commander in Chief as it is very likely he will have to exercise these duties. The stated desires of the occupant of the White House also do not correlate with the occurrence of conflict.

It is true that only Congress has the power to declare outright war. Therefore, you might argue, the President’s role in warmaking is limited. But it is also only Congress who has the power to pass the budget: they control the purse strings. to be consistent you would also have the say the President’s domestic role is similarly limited.

To say that these powers belong to Congress obviously does not, and has not as history has shown, lessened the powers the President has and will have in guiding policy, both foreign and domestic.

Lastly, Obama’s own view on the subject are seen at the end of this video:

Don’t forget to see today’s post, which continues this one

Barack Obama served 143 days in the senate and no days in the military before he began his run for president. John McCain served 26 years in the senate and 22 years in the military before he began his campaign. (These numbers are from Roger Kimball’s blog.)

There are some immediate problems with these numbers. The “143 days” came about this way

From the time Barack Obama was sworn in as a United States Senator, to the time he announced he was forming a Presidential exploratory Committee, he logged 143 days of experience in the Senate.

That’s how many days the Senate was actually in session and working.

The one single Senate committee that he headed never even met — once.

After 143 days of work experience, Obama believed he was ready to be Commander In Chief, Leader of the Free World, and fill the shoes of Abraham Lincoln, FDR, JFK and Ronald Reagan.

But during the 26 years McCain was a senator, the upper house was not in session continually, so to be fair we would have to only count the number of days the senate was actually in session over those years. This is unnecessary, because we all know that government and political business does not stop just because the gavel sounds. Therefore, we should give Obama, just as we are giving McCain, full credit for his time in service, which is to say 3.5 years since his swearing in as a senator in January of 2005. He still gets 0 years (or days) for military service. We also have to, since we gave it to Obama, award McCain his extra half year for the first part of 2008.

Let’s put that in table form for easier comparison:

Which is to say, McCain has about 14 times as much experience as Obama. However, this still isn’t an entirely fair comparison because McCain, who is 26 years older than Obama, has had a greater chance of gaining time on the job. To make the match up commensurable, we have to adjust for age.

Obama has had about 26 years opportunity to gain career knowledge (we don’t count the first 20 years of life for either man). McCain has had 50, or about twice as much time. So let’s redo the table dividing by the total amount of time available, which gives us the fraction of experience to available time. I’ll then multiply by 100 to turn the number into a percentage. We also have to be careful to note that when McCain was serving as a senator, he obviously could not serve in the military, and vice versa. For example, the amount of time McCain could have served in the senate was 50-22=28 years, of which he spent 26.

The conclusion is that McCain spent nearly all his time in direct training for the position of Commander in Chief, and Obama has spent about a little less than one-seventh of his.

You could argue for the inclusion of Obama’s time spent in other activities, such as the 3.5 years when he served on the eight-person Chicago-based Woods Fund “Poverty” Board with terrorist bomber William Ayers (whose reward for calling for the killing of his fellow Americans was to be made distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois-Chicago). But most people aren’t anxious to bring attention to this service. However, in the spirit of generosity, let’s award him the full time. That ups Obama’s experience percentage to 27%.

Also, Obama served on the Illinois state legislature, which affirmatively counts as government experience. He served 7 years there, but that time overlapped entirely the time he spent sitting next to, but certainly never approving of or chatting with, radical leftist Ayers. The final table is (remembering again, that when Obama was in the State house, he could not be in the senate, etc.):

Thus, even in a generous counting, McCain still has more than twice as much experience as Obama.

This analysis assumes that any government service counts for gaining experience to the position of Commander in Chief, but surely direct military experience should be weighted at least slightly higher. I do not attempt such calculations.

Update. Thanks to LarryA who notes “Senator McCain was sworn into the Senate for the first time on Jan 6, 1987, 21.6 years ago, not 26.5 years ago as stated in the article. He was elected to the House four years before that, but the article is comparing Senate experience.” So the tables above should be changed from “Senate” to “Congress”.

“Zombie attacks to increase due to global warming” rang the headline on this blog seven moons ago. So said eminent zombiologist and scientist Dr Harrister, BS, MS, PhD, OMGWAG.

Who would have guessed that Bob Hope was ahead of us all?

I’ll tell you who! Pepsodent! With irium!

Thanks to Rob Avrech for reminding us of Hope’s wisdom.

Quick Quiz: what do you call an exceptionally nervous busybody who perpetually overestimates risk and on whose lips are forever the phrase, “Something must be done!”

Answer: That person is an activist—activism is a manner of life which nowadays can even be proclaimed a profession.

What, then, do we call somebody who rationally attempts to quantify risk and who soberly (on most days of the week) weighs his options and sometimes proposes that the best course of action is no action at all?

That person is an inactivist.

Isn’t that a great name? I love it! But I didn’t think of it. Frank Bi, who runs a site called The Journal of Inactivism, did.

Old Frank’s intent is that the label be taken ironically. To him, an inactivist is to be despised. Let me tell you something about irony, Frank. There’s an art to it that few possess; its use requires a rare talent. I sometimes flatter myself that I can successfully wield this heavy sword, but I fail nearly every time, as regular readers of this blog can attest.

And so have you failed, Frank, but do not despair. We can rescue your neologism and put it to good use. It can lead a second life of good service.

Thus, I counsel that we adopt the moniker “climate inactivist” at once. Just look what it has going for it.

“Climate skeptic”, a term many favor, is apt to be misleading. I, for example, am not skeptical that there is a climate. Inactivist, however, neatly captures and succinctly describes the attitude of many of us.

We, who do not deny that mankind influences climate, even sometimes harmfully, but who reckon that our uncertainty in the mechanisms of the hideously complex global climate system and the imprecision its forecasts, coupled with the glut of extravagant and ridiculous claims of evils that await us, are not strong enough evidence to yet warrant government-imposed mandatory taxes and regulation. We, who do not deny that that day might come, and who do not discourage voluntary and personal actions. We propose to take no action until our certainty is much stronger.

We propose to be inactive—we are inactivists.

This proposal will be voted upon at the next secret meeting.

Incidentally, to take us on a tangent to an unexpected dimension, Scott Kurtz presents the evil Statistician Magician! (I don’t have a cape.)