Ricci v. DeStefano

In the Supreme Court case Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven, Conn. fire department instituted a test to determine which firefighters would get promotions. After no black or Hispanic firefighters scored well enough to be eligible for promotions, the department, worried that they could be sued for racial discrimination, threw out the results of the test. Of course, now white firefighters sued them saying that they were being discriminated against, because the the decision to throw out the results was made based on racial factors. The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of the white firefighters.

This case brings up saveral interesting issues. One issue, of course, is whether standardized tests such as the one used in this case are a good way to select job candidates. My general opinion on this question is that although standardized tests are obviously not the solution in every case, they do tend to get an undeserved bad rap. Yes, standardized tests can be biased, and they are clearly an imperfect measure of qualifications. But the appropriate comparison is not with some perfect system, it's with whatever the alternative is. And there are plenty of common selection methods that produce far more inequality and discrimination than any test (and are just as questionable with regards to relevance) yet are rarely controversial. For example:

1. Many employers find new employees based on referrals from current employees - i.e. a current employee knows someone who would be a good fit for the company, and refers them. Of course, for most employers, the set of acquaintances of current employees is not even close to a representative sample of the entire population, and obviously there is no necessary correlation between being friends with a current employee and being qualified for the job. Even in the absence of a formal referral sytem, there are lots of jobs that are filled based on personal connections, and this critique could apply to all of them.

2. Many jobs require a college degree, and employers tend to value degrees from more prestigious schools more than degrees from less prestigious schools. Of course, whether you get a college degree (and where) depends on lots of factors, including where you grew up, whether your parents could afford to send you to college, etc., only some of which have relevance to whatever job you are applying for. And paying for college is a huge barrier for lower-income families. (One common critique of standardized tests like the SAT is that it favors people who can afford expensive test preparation. Which is a higher barrier: spending a few weeks and a few hundred dollars on a test preparation course, or spending four to six years and tens of thousands of dollars on a college education?)

In fact, it seems to me that standardized tests have the potential to mitigate some of these problems. A standardized test can be tailored to the requirements of a particular job, and it can be re-tested, adjusted, and fine-tuned to offer whatever balance is desired between racial balance, screening value, and any other relevant factors. In fact, by bypassing other "screening barriers" such as personal connections and subjective judgments, if a set of effective, general-purpose tests were to be developed, that would have the potential to go a long way toward mitigating racial and socioeconomic disparities.

Of course, this is not a panacea: not all jobs can be easily measured by a test. But for those that can be, it seems that designing an effective test is a much more tractable problem than say, equalizing access to elite schools or giving poor people opportunities to form personal connections with potential future employers.

But as for the Ricci v. DeStefano case, it's actually not clear what effect it will have on the use of testing. Superficially, the decision was in favor of testing (the decision effectively said that the test results should have been kept.) But what it also does is place employers who use tests in a catch-22 situation. If the test comes up with racially disparate results, they have no way to avoid a lawsuit - if they throw out the tests they will get sued by one side, if they keep them they will get sued by the other. So this might end up discouraging employers from using the tests.

(The court opinion said that throwing out the tests would have been okay if there were a "strong basis in evidence" that the city would in fact have been held liable, but that the city failed to meet this standard. But this still doesn't solve the problem - it essentially boils down to saying that an employer can be held liable for failing to be good enough at guessing how the courts will rule. And that's a hard thing to do - just look at how many 5-4 Supreme Court decisions there are.)

It's also still unclear exactly what employers are allowed to do. My understanding is that in this particular case the employer said "We'll be using this test to decide who gets promoted." Suppose that instead, the employer said "We're going to give you all this test, we haven't decided yet what we're going to do with the results." And then they had done the same thing as they did before. Would that have been okay? Or does the decision force employers to pre-commit as to what they are going to do with the test before they give it? If so, it seems like that might hinder development of more effective tests, because employers can't fine-tune the tests once they've been given out. (Although my understanding is that there are firms that do this test design, and they would pre-test the test on people outside the employer. So employers might use this method prior to giving it to their own employees or prospective employees.)

And finally, does the decision apply just to standardized tests, or to any method of avoiding racial discrimination? If the latter, then it seems that since any active attempt to avoid racial discrimination (e.g. against minorities) by definition implies trying to hire more minorities than otherwise, then it could be classified as "reverse discrimination" using exactly the same argument as the white firefighters made. And of course id they don't make that effort, then they're violating their duty to avoid discrimination against minorities. So how are employers possibly supposed to satisfy all their obligations under the law?

This week at Amtgard

Today at Amtgard I ran a kid's quest. I hadn't been planning on doing it, but what happened was that there were some kids there and they told me they wanted to "fight the evil ogre." Of course there wasn't any evil ogre before, but there was one now. So I left the base in order to "scout out" the area (i.e. hide the evil ogre's treasure for the kids to find.) The kids said they had a "map" that told them where the ogre was, and that they would "turn me into a crab" so the enemies wouldn't notice me. It took a while to hide all the stuff, so when I came back I said that I was delayed because "it's kind of hard to read a map if you're a crab." The first half of the quest was mostly the kids running around everywhere except where I hid the stuff, making stuff up as they went along. They said their "map" told them where the ogre's "secret weapons" were, but they kept changing their story about where the "secret weapons" were, and never actually found any "secret weapons." (Remember that it was just me and the kids; there were no actual players playing monsters.) Eventually they went over to the area where I hid the stuff. I hid four small pouches and one big bag, and said that the pouches contained the "fire gem," "air gem," "earth gem," and "water gem." They found all the gems except the "air gem" but couldn't find the last one. One of the kids said that maybe the last gem was in the ogre's "main treasure hoard." Of course I knew that I hid it on the ground in the wooded area, but I went to the place I thought I remembered hiding it and it wasn't there. Eventually they found the bag (the "main treasure hoard") and the fourth pouch was in there! (Someone must have been walking through the path in the back of the woods, saw the bag and the pouch, and assumed that the pouch belonged in the bag and so put it there.) At the end I took the ogre mask, put some armor on, and said that the armor was cursed and transformed me into the ogre. Of course they defeated the "ogre" and we all went back to town (the pavilion.) They looked at the treasure and saw lots of potions. I told themthat I had a "magical device that could detect the power of the potions" (i.e. my iPhone, which has an app on it that displays a fake "meter" that you can control by pressing a hidden button) They actually recognized the "magical device" as an iPhone, but went along with it anyway. Overall it was a very fun day, and Colleen rewarded me by giving me a "mithril armor" relic.

Weight Watchers

I joined Weight Watchers this week. Weight Watchers is a weight loss program that works in an interesting way. Each food is assigned a "point value" based on its calorie content, fiber, and grams of fat. Higher calories and fat mean more points. You have a maximum quota of points based on your weight, age, height, sex, and activity level. Then you keep track of all the foods you eat and try to stay under the point level. There is also a list of "healthy eating options" that you are supposed to have. These include fruits and vegetables, healthy oils, and lean protein. Lean protein was one thing that I thought that it would be hard for me to find because I don't like meat, but it turns out that lots of places have chicken that I can eat. Another thing is that there is a list of "filling foods" that have a low "enegy density" (i.e. number of calories per gram.) These are good to eat because they fill you up without lots of calories. As it turns out, 94% fat free, butterless popcorn is a filling food.

Another interesting thing is that it also mentions "fat-free cheese." I had no idea such a thing existed, but if it does, it would help me cut a lot of fat out of my diet.

By the way, an article in Wired magazine (it's about the sixth result on google for "weight watchers" offers the following explanation for Weight Watchers' success: it turns weight loss into a game, similar to computer role-playing games. For example:

- The "point system" where each food costs a certain number of points is similar to systems in games where you spend "points" to cast spells or use special powers.

- There are rewards you get when you reach certain milestones (like losing 5% of your body weight.) This is like in computer games where you can go up in level or get rewards by accomplishing objectives.

- The first ten weeks they give you one "book" a week, which slowly introduces you to new features of the plan. For example the week 1 book just talks about eating healthy and introduces the point system for food, and later books give advice on things like eating out and exercising more. This is similar to computer games where each level introduces more features.

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The only problem with Weight Watchers so far is that there is no official iPhone app for it. There are lots of unofficial apps but those only have a very limited set of features. For example the app I am using now just lets you put in foods and point values and track them (and also lets you calculate point values from nutrition data). It doesn't keep track of any of the "healthy eating" items, and doesn't have the list of filling foods. So I still have to carry around the physical book for that. It seems so 20th century.

More updates coming...

Sorry about the lack of updates recently. I'm going to be ging on a family reunion this weekend though, and I will be sure to blog all about it when I get back!

Graduation Information

Graduation information is as follows:

Gemstone Citation Ceremony:

Wednesday, May 20, 4:30 PM (parking starts at 4:00 PM)
Memorial Chapel
No tickets required

Main Commencement Ceremony:

Thursday, May 21, 7:00 PM (students arrive at 5:45 PM)
Comcast Center
Tickets required - I have tickets for myself + 7 guests

College of CMPS Ceremony:

Friday, May 22, 9:00 AM
Reckord Armory
No tickets required

Amtgard News #5: Feast of Fools

First of all, my prediction of "exciting combat action" at the University of Maryland was recently proven correct.

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Anyway, I went to Feast of Fools, a big Amtgard camping even in Hagerstown last weekend. It lasted from Friday to Monday.

I got there around Friday at 8:00 PM and spent the next hour or so setting up the tent. Some of the poles were broken so we had to tape spare arrow shafts to the poles. We knew this in advance and brought 4 spare arrow shafts to use for this purpose - and it turned out we ended up having to use all of them. Fortunately, we had selected a camp location right next to the security tent, so a security guy helped us set it up by illuminating the area with his flashlight.

The rest of Friday was mostly hanging out in the tavern and fighting on the "ditch field." That was fun except that during one of the battles, while I was fighting someone on the other side, one of my opponent's teammates ran at me at full speed and stabbed me in the side with about a 6 foot long spear. As I write this I can still feel the spot where it hit.

Saturday was the day with most of the action. The first event I participated in was the "Triwizard Tournament." In this tournament, three spellcasters stand at the corner of an equilateral triangle 80 feet on a side. Their goal is to retrieve an object located at the center and bring it back to their corner, and hold it there for 30 seconds (though in practice this turned into the wizards fighting each other and the last one alive wins). However, one of the contestants was high enough level to have Finger of Death (kills any target within 50 feet) and Extension (doubles range of the spell), and could cast each of these twice, so he could just kill both the enemies right off the bat. There was no effective way to defend against this, since casting a protection spell or running 80 feet to charge him both take much longer than casting Extension/Finger of Death. (In battlegames, spells like Finger of Death can be cast a limited number of times "per game", as opposed to most spells which are weaker but are either "per life" or unlimited casts, so that balances them out. A general problem with wizard tournaments is that there's only one "life" in a given round, and everything, including per-game limited spells, resets between rounds. This means that per-game spells tend to dominate the game in wizard tournaments.)

Fortunately I got to play a wizard again as an "evil sorcerer" in a kid's quest. I assumed it would be really easy to kill the kids since I could run faster than them so I could just stay out of their range, but I was wrong. It was about 5 on 1, and a couple of the kids had bows, so they could shoot me while I was trying to cast my spells! Also another kid wanted to play a wizard and be on my team. However, Celwyn said it would be a better idea for him to be on the good guys' team because, as she said, "you said you were going to make spells up? If you cast at us we won't know what the spells are, but he (talking about me, the evil sorcerer) is a really good role-player so he'll be able to make the spells do something." That quest was a lot of fun.

I also participated in three battlegames, and played an archer in all of them. One was a "cone battle." In this battle there are five cones set up across the field. If one team gets two people on each cone they score a point and everything resets. This game was fun and competitive, and I scored lots of kills with my arrows. Several people afterward complimented me on my archery skills.

The second game was a "king of the hill" game. In this game the two teams try to hold a central point for as long as they can. What happened this time was that the other team wiped us out in the first round of fighting. When you die, you can come back to life after 5 minutes (reduced to 2.5 because of the relatively small number of people playing). The rules say that you can delay coming back to life after your count is completed, but most of the other people on the team didn't know that, so they all kept coming back to life one or two at a time and getting slaughtered by the other team. I tried to explain to the team that coming back all at once would be a better idea, but they refused saying that "our goal is to have fun, not to win." Of course, in my opinion, coming to life one at a time, being backed up against your base by a wall of 10 enemies, and being killed within 15 seconds after you come alive every time wasn't much fun either.

The third battlegame was a "defend the castle" game, and just like the previous game, my team had about 10 people on it. However the other team had about 30 people on it. So we tried to defend the castle but got slaughtered pretty easily. The reeve then said that our base is now on the outside, theirs is now on the inside, and we should try to retake the castle. Since it was clear that the match was not even close, the reeve basically said that everyone can stop keeping track of their lives, they can all respawn in 30 seconds, and just have fun killing each other. So that's basically what we did until everyone got tired of playing.

Then there was feast, and after the feast I had to go to a "Belted Family Meeting." Now, you're probably wondering what that is. The story is this: A few months ago, Gailwind Blackfoot (a.k.a. Colleen) aske to take me on as her "man-at-arms". This is kind of like a mentor-student relationship, and she gives me tasks like writing quests, learning the rules and the corpora, and making weapons and equipment. There are also other "family" relationships, like a knight can take a squire. And these all form a whole lineage, kind of like a real life family tree. This was my first belted family meeting so I was kind of embarrased that not only did I not know who was in my belted family, some of the people were people I knew from before (like Yoshi) and I didn't even know they were in my belted family. When they were explaining to me what a belted family was, I pulled out a pen and paper and started trying to draw our "family tree," but Colleen told me that I could do that later.

On Sunday there wasn't a whole lot of fighting going on due to the excessive heat (I think it was almost 100 degrees), except for a couple tournaments. In fact there was so much heat that they had to send out "water bearers" to bring water to the participants so they would stay hydrated and they wouldn't pass out from the heat or anything. I didn't have anything else to do so I volunteered to be a water bearer. Our head medic even said that we should tell the players that that they had to either drink the ater (or pour it over their heads to cool themselves off) or they would be taken off the field.

Academics: Part 4 of 5: "Chaos Theory"

My next post is about a very interesting class:

Chaos Theory with Denny Gulick

You're probably wondering what we actually learn about in "chaos theory." The math behind chaos theory has to do mostly with iterated function systems. Meaning, if you have a function f(x) and an initial value x_0, then if you form the sequence x_1 = f(x_0), x_2 = f(x_1), x_3 = f(x_2) etc. you can look at properties of this sequence - whether it converges to one value, osciallates between two or more values, goes off to infinity, etc. Even simple functions like the logistic map (f(x) = kx(1-x) for a constant k) can produce very complicated behavior.

One interesting project we are doing is reading one of a selection of articles on applications of chaos theory, and writing a 1-2 page discussion of it. The article I chose is titled "Chaos on the Trading Floor" and is about the use of chaos theory to model the stock market. I imagine this is particularly relevant given the ongoing financial crisis.

Ironically, the use of mathematical techniques to model the stock market may have actually contributed to the financial crisis. According to Paul Krugman's book "The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008," with the development of these techniques came the rise of hedge funds, which try to take advantage of statistical patterns in the stock market by making highly leveraged bets. This means for example that a hedge fund might start with $50 million in capital, then sell short (i.e. borrow and then sell) $950 million worth of one stock so they can buy $1 billion worth of another stock. This means that if the second stock goes up by 5%, they've doubled their money. Of course if it goes the other way around, then they lose all their money - and the people who they borrowed the original $950 million worth of stock from also lose money, because they're going to have a hard time getting their stock back. This kind of "ripple effect" was part of what made the financial crisis so severe.