miscellaneous factZ

Several years ago I read Michael Kremer’s article entitled “Randomized Evaluations of Educational Programs in Developing Countries: Some Lessons” in the 2003 AER Papers and Proceedings issue (jstor link). This brief article reviewed some of the recent results of evaluating the effects of various different programs on educational outcomes in the developing world. What particularly caught my eye was this paragraph summarizing a teacher incentive program in Kenya:

Some parent-run school committees in the area provide gifts to teachers whose students perform well. Glewwe et al (2002a) evaluate a program that provided prizes to teachers in schools that performed well on exams and had low dropout rates. In theory, this type of incentive could lead teachers either to increase effort or, alternatively, to teach to the test. Empirically, teachers responded to the program not by increasing attendance, but by increasing prep sessions designed to prepare students for exams. Consistent with a model in which teachers responded to the program primarily by increasing effort devoted to manipulating test scores, rather than by increasing effort at stimulating long-term learning, test scores for pupils who had been part of the program initially increased but then fell back to levels similar to the comparison group at the end of the program. [p. 104, emphasis added]

This provides a nice ‘real-world’ example of exactly what can go wrong when providing incentives in a multi-task situation — that is one where the ‘agent’ (here the teacher) performs multiple tasks not all of which can be monitored equally. As such it should make us wary of the current trend to ever more performance-based reward structures in everything from schooling to health-care.

I’ve just posted some early stage notes on models related to ‘Complex Systems’ with a particular eye towards those dealing with self-ordered criticality.

The Open Rights Group, which I helped found, celebrated its second birthday today. Long may it prosper, promoting and protecting digital rights in a digital age.

2.10. Robustness Principle

TCP implementations will follow a general principle of robustness: be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others.

Source:

• rfc793: specification for TCP
• date: 1981
• editor: Jon Postel
• url: http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/docs/rfc/rfc793.txt

About a week ago I finally got around to converting from .doc to html some of my more substantial essays from my schooldays. They’re up at http://www.rufuspollock.org/nonfiction/ and you can find more or less substantial pieces on the Vietnam War, the decline of the Liberal Party in Great Britain in the early 20th century, the school as institution, Italy in the late 19th century and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita.

He is supposed to determine whether Britain is still functioning on the basis of whether or not the Today programme is still broadcasting. If it isn’t he has to retrieve from his safe the PM’s letter instructing him to: 1. Put himself under the command of the USA, if it is still there. 2. Make his way to Austrailia, if it is still there. 3. Get on with it and take out Moscow. 4. Use his own judgement.

Source: p. 17 of LRB 2002-08-08 in a review by R.W.Johnson of Percy Cradock’s Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World and Peter Hennessy’s The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War.

Stare into the fridge in a zen-like manner and contemplate what you might possibly tolerate.

Architecture

Functionally can split into layers:

1. Remote repository communication
2. Read/write export data format
3. GUI

Data Design and XML/RDF Format

Remarks

1. Can make day schedule as compositions of todo items ??? (thing is they are kind of trivial …..). NO this is the way to do it. What to provide interface when it is like that …..?
2. This is getting TOO complicated …..

Fields/Values

A while ago I was at a conference with a bunch of people and we were standing around in the lobby of the hotel waiting to set off for supper. From arrival of the first of us to actual departure took about half an hour. First a couple of those who were supposed to be coming hadn’t turned up so a posse went off to search for them. Next no-one had yet agreed where to go so a whole discussion ensued as to what kind of food was wanted, what was the price range and who had the local knowledge suited to making quality/price recommendations. Finally by the time this had got resolved and the two people originally missing had been located some of those orginally present had wandered off to the bar to check email via wifi and grab a drink. Prising them loose took another five mintues. But eventually we did set off — half an hour late mind you.

The whole experience and many others like it suggested to me the proposition which, with immodesty or hestitation, I will christen a law: The time taken by a group to reach a decision or commence an activity is proportional to the square of the number of members of the group. While coined on the basis of casual observation I’d be interested to know if there was any work in the literature to back it up ….

Philosophy lives with a permanently open horizon, leaving unsettled many basic questions regarding morality and mortality. Most people, and all societies, need settled answers to those questions.

Mark Lilla, NYRB 2004-10-21, p.59, col. 4.