The Good Old Days

In sharing his memories of a friend who passed away recently, Swarup writes about his own father's tenure as the Head Master of a village school:

It seems that those days some of the students would not come to school during busy farming days. Apparently, the first Head Master would go to the farms and persuade the farmers to send the students to school.

I'm now reading the biography of Prof. K.S. Krishnan, and early in the book, the authors -- D.C.V. Mallik and S. Chatterjee -- write about the American Mission College, Madurai, that Krishnan attended after finishing high school in 1914:

...[Rev. Zumbro, Principal, American Mission College] used the age-old method of sending 'beaters' to the city and the nearby villages to announce the vacancy of seats. When people gathered in response to the loud beating of the drums, they were treated to a persuasive speech, originally prepared by Zumbro, that extolled the virtues of modern higher education and how American College was the place where this was readily available.

A Quick Note

While it has always been nice to see people becoming "followers" of this blog using the "Friend Connect" feature in the side bar, I never quite figured this feature out. I mean, aside from allowing one to declare one's interest in a blog (which I have done at several places), it didn't seem to do much else. Now, it turns out even Google is not quite clear what to do with it, and the company has announced that it's killing this tool. I don't know if this is of any consequence to anyone, but I just wanted to note that it'll soon be gone forever.

FWIW, I have set up a Google+ page for Nanopolitan. I don't foresee any (special) activity there -- I just wanted to claim the name +Nanopolitan before someone else did.

Links

1. B. Aravind Kumar: A Question of Ratings. "As many as 44 universities were bracketed under ‘C'. [... It is likely that many of the 44 deemed-to-be universities could be reverted to college status again."

2. Christopher Shea: Fraud Scandal Fuels Debate Over Practices of Social Psychology. "Even legitimate researchers cut corners, some admit."

3. Emily Ramshaw and Ryan Murphy: Payments to Doctors by Pharmaceutical Companies Raise Issues of Conflicts. "Dr. Stanley Self, a part-time psychiatrist at Texas’ state-run Rusk psychiatric hospital, earns $166,000 a year from the state. He also earned at least $145,000 from drug companies in 2009-10, largely for speaking engagements. ..."

4. Noah Smith: Niall Ferguson does not know what "Western Civilization" means. "... By "Western," Niall Ferguson is not referring to a geographic region, a political system, an economic system, or a religion. He is not even referring to a specific set of countries. He is referring to a set of people; people who have pale pinkish skin, fine wavy hair, and prominent eye ridges. By "Western," Niall Ferguson means "white people." Asian Americans may have American passports, Ferguson thinks, but civilizationally speaking they are permanent foreigners. ..."

5. Andrew Hill: Inside McKinsey. "The world’s most prestigious consultancy prides itself on its intellectual prowess and ethical standards. But this year, an insider trading scandal surrounding former McKinsey luminaries has left staff and alumni reeling"

A Perfect Terrorist

A chilling profile of David Headley (the guy who scouted the targets of 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai) by ProPublica's Sebastian Rotella. About an hour or so, over at PBS Video.

Economic Efficiency

From Cosma Shalizi's fable on Pareto optimality and economic efficiency:

And so, in yet another triumph, the market mechanism has allocated a scarce resource, viz., the turkey, to its most efficient use, viz., being turned into artificial shit. What makes this the most efficient use of the scarce resource? Why, simply that it goes to the user who will pay the highest price for it. This is all that economic efficiency amounts to. It is not about meeting demand, but meeting effective demand, demand backed by purchasing power.

Video Links

1. A neat video on the Montessori method: Superwoman was already here! [via Christopher Shea]

2. Errol Morris: The Umbrella Man: "On the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Errol Morris explores the story behind the one man seen standing under an open black umbrella at the site."

3. A TEDx talk by Jay Smooth: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race [see also this shorter video How to tell people they sound racist].

4. Oh, what the heck. Here's Kolaveri. It has traveled as far as Salman Rushdie and Mark Liberman.

Mental Health Break

Jazz loving cows:

Link via the wonderful The Kid Should See This, where you'll find this longer version.

Department of "Awesome-if-true": 37 % of those who got through JEE didn't use "specialized coaching'"

A good catch by commenter Raj:

Candidates appearing for JEE prepare either through “self study” or through “specialized teaching (other)”. Data (Table A8) for JEE 2011 shows that 295618 out of 468280 (63.1%) have prepared using “self study”. Out of the 13196 candidates who qualified, 4912 (37.22%) have used the “self study” mode.

What are the odds that the sociological data collected by JEE is just deceptive fluff? [And, yes, this probably means the income effect is tainted as well].

Stats for JEE-2011: Income Effect

Just skimmed through the report on JEE-2011. It has all kinds of sociological data (though not fine-grained enough for us to perform our own analysis). Here's an interesting set of data on the candidates' parental income.

According to parental income

Table A13 shows the zone wise distribution of candidates according to annual income of parents. Out of the 468280 candidates who appeared, 146882 (31.36%) had a parental income of less than 1 Lakh. 195220 candidates (41.69%) had a parental income between 1-3 Lakhs. Another 19.3% have a parental income between 3-6 Lakhs, while 4.87% have parental income between 6-10 Lakhs. 12520 candidates (2.67%) have parental income exceeding 10 Lakhs. The percentages for qualified candidates for the five slabs of parental income are 17.1%, 31.7%, 30.47%, 11.86% and 8.86% respectively. The income slabs used in JEE 2010 data analysis was more or less similar. However it is observed that a large percentage of appeared as well as qualified candidates belong to the low to middle income groups.

The report doesn't tease out the implications on the income effect on JEE outcomes, but we certainly can. When we do that, we find a clear trend:

Income	No. of JEE Takers	No. of JEE Qualifieds	Pass %
Less than 1 lakh	146882	2258	1.54
1-3 lakhs	195220	4183	2.14
3-6 lakhs	90560	4021	4.44
6-10 lakhs	22835	1565	6.85
More than 10 lakhs	12520	1169	9.34
Total	468280	13196	2.82

In other words, a candidate from the top income slab is 6 times more likely to get through JEE than one from the lowest slab. This advantage is "only" 4 times when the comparison group is from the second lowest slab (which also has the largest number of candidates).

Website of the IIT System

In an interesting move, the IITs have come together to create a website for the entire system. And they have made a good start by populating it with all kinds of interesting documents of historical / archival value.

This page has reports of various IIT-related committees, right from the famous Sarkar Committee Report (which prepared a blueprint of sorts for the IITs) all the way to the infamous Kakodkar Committee report (which we had a chance to discuss sometime ago).

All in all, a good initiative with a great potential as a must-visit site for all things IIT.

* * *

This page features reports on the entrance exams conducted by the IITs in the years 2010 and 2011. The reports on JEE 2010 and 2011) are worth checking out!

Quotes

"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides."
--John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

From Brad DeLong's post:

* * *

Here's a juicy put-down, found in Paul Krugman's post:

"He’s a stupid person’s idea of what a smart person sounds like."
--Ezra Klein (about someone called Dick Armey)

"Can Well Behaved Women Make (Academic) History?"

Female Science Professor in The Chronicle: Can Well-Behaved Women Make (Academic) History?:

... [In responding to sexist slights] my tendency [is] to react in a calm, polite way, perhaps with a bit of humor or gentle sarcasm. Except in extreme cases, I prefer not to respond to insulting remarks with anger, and I try to move on with the research, teaching, or service task at hand.

It is important to note that I do not let every offensive remark pass without comment. For example, if I am serving on a hiring or awards committee, I speak up when I hear colleagues make derogatory or unfair comments about female (or any) candidates. The comments I tend to ignore are the ones directed at me, when I have to make a choice about how to respond in the context of my work environment.

My choice to react calmly and politely stems from several sources, including my personality (I dislike confrontation and argument) and my belief that this approach has been effective for me over the years.

This response from a law prof is seems appropriate: "... if you are regularly subjected to comments like the one you described ('You are only here because we needed a woman on the committee"), as well as the denigrating remarks you have heard directed at other women, then your department - and perhaps your college or university - has a legal problem that is waiting to blow up."

Library as a Social Hub: What about the Books?

I'm not sure how many will agree with this rant about where some of the university libraries (in this specific case, it's the one in New Castle) are headed; I find it difficult, for example, to even see his point about research skills being all about negotiating through musty / dusty old shelves. But there are some good bits:

The place, when busy, now often feels like a cross between an airport, Disney World, a social services drop-in centre and a primary school. Management no longer sees it as a centre of learning, a place set apart to provide the student with resources for study and research, but rather as a transient, exploitable ‘space’, an extension of the full-on uni experience, with added books, to be moulded to whatever ‘lifestyle’ the management thinks students find attractive or will demand. But the worst was yet to come.

This summer, management started removing books. The reasoning was explained in a loop heralding ‘Phase 1 of the great transformation’ that played endlessly on a TV at the library exit: ‘Welcome back to your refurbished Robinson Library. You asked, we listened... We have moved loads of shelving to make room for more study spaces. We’ve shifted crate-loads of the less-used stock to provide more light, more room and a more comfortable space to study in. And created a greater variety of study areas. Choose the one that best suits your work-style!’ And the final picture — empty chairs with the words ‘Now that Phase 1 is all done, we are just waiting for you to fill the empty spaces!’ Phase 2, it promises for 2012, will continue this noble mission.

The Social Graph?

It's neither social nor a graph. So argues Maciej Ceglowski, founder of Pinboard.com. It's heavygoing at first, but patience pays! Here's something from the second part that shines:

Social networks exist to sell you crap. The icky feeling you get when your friend starts to talk to you about Amway, or when you spot someone passing out business cards at a birthday party, is the entire driving force behind a site like Facebook.

Because their collection methods are kind of primitive, these sites have to coax you into doing as much of your social interaction as possible while logged in, so they can see it. It's as if an ad agency built a nationwide chain of pubs and night clubs in the hopes that people would spend all their time there, rigging the place with microphones and cameras to keep abreast of the latest trends (and staffing it, of course, with that Mormon bartender).

We're used to talking about how disturbing this in the context of privacy, but it's worth pointing out how weirdly unsocial it is, too. How are you supposed to feel at home when you know a place is full of one-way mirrors?

We have a name for the kind of person who collects a detailed, permanent dossier on everyone they interact with, with the intent of using it to manipulate others for personal advantage - we call that person a sociopath. And both Google and Facebook have gone deep into stalker territory with their attempts to track our every action. ...

Prejudice against Ugliness

Jon Stewart's The Daily Show tackles the economics of prejudice against ugly people.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Ugly People Prejudice
www.thedailyshow.com
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