Saturday, August 15, 2009
Graduate Student Social
This was a time for all the graduate students to get together. They had pizza an they even got cheese sticks for me. (They remembered that I didn't like pizza with sauce because I ran into the same situation during the visit day before). The cool thing was they just installed a new Wii video game system in the graduate student lounge. They had also sent out an email before asking what Wii video games people like to play because they had to decide which video games they should get to put in the room. One interesting thing I noticed was that there were also several people there from the State Farm insurance company. I didn't know why they were there - were they trying to sell us insurance? As it turned out the reason was that State Farm donated the money to buy the Wii. How that got started I have no idea.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Events coming up
Now that I am in my apartment in Illinois, I got a sheet indicating that there are several events coming up on campus. I will blog about them after they happen.
The schedule is as follows:
August 14 - Pizza night with other graduate students
August 16 - "Fun Night" sponsored by International Student and Scholar Services
August 17-21 - Meetings with faculty advisors & get signed up for classes
August 23 - QUAD Day: Learn about student organizations and entertainment available on campus
August 24 - First day of classes!
August 28 - "Meet and Greet BBQ" with faculty, staff, and other students in CS Department
The schedule is as follows:
August 14 - Pizza night with other graduate students
August 16 - "Fun Night" sponsored by International Student and Scholar Services
August 17-21 - Meetings with faculty advisors & get signed up for classes
August 23 - QUAD Day: Learn about student organizations and entertainment available on campus
August 24 - First day of classes!
August 28 - "Meet and Greet BBQ" with faculty, staff, and other students in CS Department
Monday, August 3, 2009
My last day at Amtgard (for now...)
Sunday was my last day at Amtgard before I move out to Illinois. It was also the last day of the current reign period, so we had a coronation, and it was a joint coronation with Bandit Flats East, a park in Delaware. So we had to drive all the way out to Delaware to go to the coronation.
As usual, I ran the kid's quest for the day. My plan was to do a quest based on Greek mythology. The way it was going to work was that there was going to be a series of events where they had to "prove themselves" to the gods in order to get items that would enable them to defeat the evil Minotaur. There were different events based on each god's theme - for example a weapon making tutorial for Hephaestus, an arts and crafts project for Athena, and so on. My original plan was also to spice it up by telling them some of the myths. The problem with this is that most Greek myths are not very kid-friendly, because they involve sex, revenge killing, or both. But I did identify several that were. One that I was planning to use was the story of the contest between Athena and Poseidon. (I think this is a humorous one because it is similar to the modern practice of selling naming rights to sports stadiums, except that they were selling naming rights to a city. In fact there is a Capitol Steps song, a parody of "This Land Is Your Land," that speculates that states will have to begin selling naming rights in order to cover their budget deficits, resulting in states with names like "Okla-Home Depot", "New Texaco", and "North Toyota." Apparently the Greeks had the same idea thousands of years earlier.)
When I got there things did not go out as well as planned. First of all there was a major rainstorm which trapped us in the pavilion. Also, the person who was supposed to help me in the quest, our monarch Perdita, got stuck in traffic and was going to be late. I started the quest anyway, but it was difficult because without an adult to help me, it was hard to get the kids to sit down long enough to listen to the instructions. We finished the arts and crafts and weapon making parts at about 2:00, and we learned that at 4:00 we would have to leave to go to a different site for feast. At about this time I called Perdita to find out where she was. As it turned out she was in Delaware near the park, but got lost because of construction. I gave the phone to someone there who gave her directions. Unfortunately when she got there she was busy with other business and couldn't help in the quest. Fortunately I got someone else to help. Since we were running short on time I had to rush through the rest of the events. I quickly abandoned the idea of telling them the myths when it was clear that after being stuck under the pavilion they just wanted to get up, run around, and fight. At the end, I told them that they had killed the minotaur, and was going to be rewarded with gems, but that robbers had stolen them. I played the robber and when they tried to attack me, I said "you'll never get these gems" and tossed them into a bush as they killed me. What I didn't realize was that the bush had prickly leaves, but fortunately they were able to get the gems out without any cuts. Then I gave them the prizes and let them keep the weapons they had made.
We then went over to feast, which was at a local SPCA office. The only problem with getting there was that only one person knew how to get there, so he had to get out in front an everyone else followed them like a caravan. Of course about half of us had access to GPS (either an in car device or a phone) so if they told us the address we would be able to find it, but they didn't know the address just how to get there. Fortuantely we all arrived without incident. There was a feast and then they gave out awards, of which I received several. There was going to be an auctio nbut it was cancelled due to lack of time and because everyone had to go home.
As usual, I ran the kid's quest for the day. My plan was to do a quest based on Greek mythology. The way it was going to work was that there was going to be a series of events where they had to "prove themselves" to the gods in order to get items that would enable them to defeat the evil Minotaur. There were different events based on each god's theme - for example a weapon making tutorial for Hephaestus, an arts and crafts project for Athena, and so on. My original plan was also to spice it up by telling them some of the myths. The problem with this is that most Greek myths are not very kid-friendly, because they involve sex, revenge killing, or both. But I did identify several that were. One that I was planning to use was the story of the contest between Athena and Poseidon. (I think this is a humorous one because it is similar to the modern practice of selling naming rights to sports stadiums, except that they were selling naming rights to a city. In fact there is a Capitol Steps song, a parody of "This Land Is Your Land," that speculates that states will have to begin selling naming rights in order to cover their budget deficits, resulting in states with names like "Okla-Home Depot", "New Texaco", and "North Toyota." Apparently the Greeks had the same idea thousands of years earlier.)
When I got there things did not go out as well as planned. First of all there was a major rainstorm which trapped us in the pavilion. Also, the person who was supposed to help me in the quest, our monarch Perdita, got stuck in traffic and was going to be late. I started the quest anyway, but it was difficult because without an adult to help me, it was hard to get the kids to sit down long enough to listen to the instructions. We finished the arts and crafts and weapon making parts at about 2:00, and we learned that at 4:00 we would have to leave to go to a different site for feast. At about this time I called Perdita to find out where she was. As it turned out she was in Delaware near the park, but got lost because of construction. I gave the phone to someone there who gave her directions. Unfortunately when she got there she was busy with other business and couldn't help in the quest. Fortunately I got someone else to help. Since we were running short on time I had to rush through the rest of the events. I quickly abandoned the idea of telling them the myths when it was clear that after being stuck under the pavilion they just wanted to get up, run around, and fight. At the end, I told them that they had killed the minotaur, and was going to be rewarded with gems, but that robbers had stolen them. I played the robber and when they tried to attack me, I said "you'll never get these gems" and tossed them into a bush as they killed me. What I didn't realize was that the bush had prickly leaves, but fortunately they were able to get the gems out without any cuts. Then I gave them the prizes and let them keep the weapons they had made.
We then went over to feast, which was at a local SPCA office. The only problem with getting there was that only one person knew how to get there, so he had to get out in front an everyone else followed them like a caravan. Of course about half of us had access to GPS (either an in car device or a phone) so if they told us the address we would be able to find it, but they didn't know the address just how to get there. Fortuantely we all arrived without incident. There was a feast and then they gave out awards, of which I received several. There was going to be an auctio nbut it was cancelled due to lack of time and because everyone had to go home.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
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 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?
Saturday, June 27, 2009
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.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
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 "energy 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.
=======
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.
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.
=======
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.
Monday, June 15, 2009
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!
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