Super Crunchers (29 page)

Neural networks and greyhound racing:
Hsinchun Chen et al., “Expert Prediction, Symbolic Learning, and Neural Networks: An Experiment on Greyhound Racing,” 9
IEEE Expert
21 (Dec. 1994).

Epagogix revealed:
Malcolm Gladwell, “The Formula,”
New Yorker
, Oct. 16, 2006.

Lulu scores book titles:
Misty Harris, “Anyone Who Says You Can't Judge a Book by Its Cover Isn't Trying Hard Enough,”
Windsor Star
, Dec. 17, 2005, http://www.canada.com/windsorstar/features/onlineextras/story.htm?id= 35711d6b-f13e-47d9-aa23-7eaa12bc8846.

What makes a law review article likely to be cited?:
Ian Ayres and Fredrick E. Vars, “Determinants of Citations to Articles in Elite Law Reviews,” 29
J. Legal Stud.
427, 433–34 (2000).

Just stick the right formula in:
Indigo Girls, “Least Complicated,” on
Swamp Ophelia
(1994).

Robert Frost on walls:
Robert Frost famously wrote, “Something there is that doesn't love a wall/That wants it down.” Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”(1915).

Library of Alexandria several times over on the Internet:
Kevin Kelly, “Scan this Book!”
N.Y. Times Magazine
, May 14, 2006, p. 43.

Ubiquitous surveillance:
A. Michael Froomkin, “The Death of Privacy,” 52
Stan. L. Rev.
1461 (2000).

Nanotechnological advances:
George Elvin, “The Coming Age of Nanosensors,”
Nanotech\Buzz
, http://www.nanotechbuzz.com/50226711/the_ coming_age_of_nanosensors.php.

Smart dust:
Gregor Wolbring, “The Choice Is Yours: Smart Dust,”
Innovation
Watch
, Dec. 15, 2006, http://www.innovationwatch.com/choiceisyours/choiceis yours.2006.12.15.htm.

CHAPTER 7

Ms. Daniel's lesson:
Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner, “The Pet Goat,” in
Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1
(1997). See also Daniel Radosh, “The Pet Goat Approach,”
New Yorker
, Jul. 26, 2004.

The goat story on the silver screen:
Fahrenheit 9/11
(Sony Pictures 2004); Daniel Radosh, “The Pet Goat Approach,”
New Yorker
, Jul. 26, 2004.

The controversy over Direct Instruction:
W. C. Becker, “Direct Instruction: A Twenty Year Review,” in
Designs for Excellence in Education: The
Legacy of B. F. Skinner
(R. P. West and L. A. Hamerlynck, eds., 1992), pp. 71–112;G. L. Adams and S. Engelmann,
Research on Direct Instruction: 25 Years beyond DIS
TAR
(1996); Am. Fed. Teachers,
Direct Instruction
(1998); American Institutes for Research, Comprehensive School Reform Quality Center,
CSRQ Center
Report on Elementary School Comprehensive School Reform Models
(2006), http:// www.csrq.org/documents/CSRQCenterCombinedReport_Web11-03-06.pdf; Jean Piaget,
Adaptation and Intelligence: Organic Selection and Phenocopy
(1980); Linda B. Stebbins et al.,
Education as Experimentation: A Planned Variation Model
Volume IV-A An Evaluation of Project Follow Through
(1977); Sanjay Baht, “A New Way of Judging How Well Schools Are Doing,”
Seattle Times
, Aug. 2, 2005; Ted Hershberg et al., “The Revelations of Value-Added,”
School Administrator
, Dec. 2004; Siegfried Engelmann,
War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse
(1992); David Glenn, “No Classroom Left Unstudied,”
The Chronicle of Higher Education
, May 28, 2004; Richard Nadler, “Failing Grade,”
Nat'l Rev
., Jun. 1, 1998; Am. Fed. Teachers,
Building on the Best, Learning from What Works: Six Promising
Schoolwide Reform Programs
(1998); B. Gunn et al., “The Efficacy of Supplemental Instruction in Decoding Skills for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students in Early Elementary School,” 34
J. Special Ed
. 90 (2000); B. Gunn et al., “Supplemental Instruction in Decoding Skills for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students in Early Elementary School: A Follow-Up,” 36
J. Special Ed
. 69 (2002).

Some samples of Engelmann's work:
G. L. Adams and S. Engelmann,
Research on Direct Instruction: 25 Years beyond DISTAR
(1996); Siegfried Engelmann,
War Against the Schools' Academic Child Abuse
(1992). See also Daniel Radosh, “The Pet Goat Approach,”
New Yorker
, Jul. 26, 2004.

Piaget's child-centered approach:
Jean Piaget,
Adaptation and Intelligence:
Organic Selection and Phenocopy
(1980).

Project Follow Through:
Bonnie Grossen (ed.), “Overview: The Story Behind Project Follow Through,”
Effective School Practices
, 15:1, Winter 1995–96, http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~adiep/ft/grossen.htm.

DI wins hands down:
Richard Nadler, “Failing Grade,”
Nat'l Rev
., Jun. 1, 1998, http://www.nationalreview.com/01jun98/nadler060198.htm.

Recent studies support DI:
Am. Fed. Teachers,
Building on the Best, Learning from What Works: Six Promising Schoolwide Reform Programs
(1998); B. Gunn et al., “The Efficacy of Supplemental Instruction in Decoding Skills for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students in Early Elementary School,” 34
J. Special Ed
. 90 (2000);B. Gunn et al., “Supplemental Instruction in Decoding Skills for Hispanic and Non-Hispanic Students in Early Elementary School: A Follow-Up,” 36
J. Special
Ed
. 69 (2002); Angela M. Przychodzin, “The Research Base for Direct Instruction in Mathematics,” SRA/McGraw-Hill, https://www.sraonline.com/download/ DI/Research/Mathematics/research_base_for%20di_math.pdf.

The Arundel DI experiment:
“A Direct Challenge,”
Ed. Week
, Mar. 17, 1999, http://www.zigsite.com/DirectChallenge.htm; Martin A. Kozloff et al.,
Direct Instruction in Education
, Jan. 1999, http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/diarti cle.htm; Nat'l Inst. Direct Instruction, http://www.nifdi.org; Daniel Radosh, “The Pet Goat Approach,”
New Yorker
, Jul. 26, 2004.

The Michigan study:
L. Schweinhart et al., “Child-Initiated Activities in Early Childhood Programs May Help Prevent Delinquency,” 1
Early Child. Res. Q
. 303–312 (1986). A larger proportion of the students who were taught using DI were male and were more likely to stay in state. These students might have been arrested more often in Michigan not because of DI but because men are more likely to commit crime and because people who were arrested out of state were not considered in the analysis. See also Paulette E. Mills et al., “Early Exposure to Direct Instruction and Subsequent Juvenile Delinquency: A Prospective Examination,” 69
Exceptional Child
, 85–96 (2002) (finding no impact of Direct Instruction on subsequent juvenile delinquency).

The Bush administration approach:
Daniel Radosh, “The Pet Goat Approach,”
New Yorker
, Jul. 26, 2004; U.S. Dep't of Ed., What Works Clearinghouse, http://www.whatworks.ed.gov/; Southwest Ed. Dev. Lab., “What Does a Balanced Approach Mean?” http://www.sedl.org/reading/topics/bal anced.htm.

“Scientifically based” programs:
The term was first found in the 1990s, promoting funding for “scientifically based” education research.

The president's support of DI:
In “The Pet Goat Approach,” Daniel Radosh speculated about a less pristine motive for our president's support of the Direct Instruction curriculum, which is published by McGraw-Hill: “[I]t's easy to imagine one of [Michael] Moore's hallmark montages, spinning circumstantial evidence into a conspirational web: a sepia-toned photograph from the thirties of, say, Prescott Bush and James McGraw, Jr., palling around on Florida's Jupiter Island; a film clip from the eighties of Harold McGraw, Jr., joining the advisory panel of Barbara Bush's literacy foundation; Harold McGraw III posing with President George W. Bush as part of his transition team; and, to tie it all together, former McGraw-Hill executive vice-president John Negroponte being sworn in as the new Ambassador to Iraq.” Daniel Radosh, “The Pet Goat Approach,”
New
Yorker
, Jul. 26, 2004.

Loan decisions by the numbers:
Peter Chalos, “The Superior Performance of Loan Review Committee,” 68
J. Comm. Bank Lending
60 (1985).

Disabling discretion:
The value of disabling discretion isn't just for the other guy. When we make snap judgments, we sometimes lose control of unconscious influences that can seep into our decision-making process. See generally Malcolm Gladwell,
Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
(2005). A few years ago, I collected information on how people tipped cab drivers in New Haven. Ian Ayres et al., “To Insure Prejudice: Racial Disparities in Taxicab Tipping,” 114
Yale L. J.
1613 (2005). A disheartening finding was that passengers tipped minority drivers about a third less than white drivers providing the same-quality service. At first, I was pretty sure that I didn't tip minorities less because with very rare exceptions I always tip 20 percent. When I took a closer look at the data, however, I found that a lot of the passenger discrimination came from a seemingly innocuous source. Cab passengers like to round the total amount that they pay to a round number. We've all had the experience. Just before your cab arrives the fare clicks over to $7. Think fast. Do you leave $8 or $9? We suspect that passengers are often called upon to make a quick decision about whether to round up or down. Even people who think that they are hard-wired 20 percent tippers may find that unconscious factors influence this rounding decision. In my study, passengers were much more likely to round up with white drivers and more likely to round down with minority drivers. Suddenly, I'm not so confident that “I
certainly
don't discriminate.” I'm more of a discretionary tipper than I had ever imagined.

Decline of physician status:
Kevin Patterson, “What Doctors Don't Know (Almost Everything),”
N.Y. Times Magazine
, May 5, 2002, p. 74.

Along Came Polly:
A trailer with quotation viewable at http://www. apple.com/trailers/universal/along_came_polly/medium.htm.

Lies, damn lies:
This phrase was popularized in the U.S. by Mark Twain, but is attributed to English statesman Benjamin Disraeli.

Pain points:
Harrah's prediction of customer pain points was discussed in Chapter 1. See also Christopher Caggiano, “Show Me the Loyalty,”
CMO
Magazine
, Oct. 2004.

Virtual redlining in insurance?:
Disclosure: I was a paid economics expert for minority plaintiffs in this case (as well as in other cases bringing similar claims).
Owens v. Nationwide Mutual Ins. Co.,
No. Civ. 3:03-CV-1184-H, 2005 WL 1837959 (N.D. Tex. Aug. 2, 2005) (holding that even if its use of credit scores had a disparate impact on minorities, Nationwide had legitimate, race-neutral business reasons for using credit scores). See also
Powell v. American General
Finance, Inc.,
310 F. Supp. 2d 481 (N.D.N.Y. 2004).

Justice O'Connor urging “race-neutral means to increase minority participation”:
Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena,
515 U.S. 200, 238 (1995);
City of
Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co.,
488 U.S. 469, 507 (1989).

Veterans' virtual records disappeared:
David Stout and Tom Zeller, Jr., “Vast Data Cache About Veterans Has Been Stolen,”
N.Y. Times,
May 23, 2006, p. A1.

Fidelity laptop stolen:
Jennifer Levitz and John Hechinger, “Laptops Prove Weakest Link in Data Security,”
Wall St. J.,
Mar. 24, 2006, p. B1.

AOL user information released:
Saul Hansell, “AOL Removes Search Data on Vast Group of Web Users,”
N.Y. Times
, Aug. 8, 2006, p. C4.

Frost's definition of home:
Robert Frost, “The Death of the Hired Man,” in
North of Boston
(1914).

The end of anonymity:
Jed Rubenfeld, “Privacy's End” (working paper October 2006).

New facial recognition innovations:
Anick Jesdanun, “Facial-ID Tech and Humans Seen as Key to Better Photo Search, But Privacy Concerns Raised,” Associated Press, Dec. 28, 2006.

179: Gattaca
's vision of genetic predestination:
The Science Show, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2001/262366.htm.

Google's mission statement:
Google Corporate Information: Company Overview, http://www.google.com/corporate/.

Americans don't protect their privacy:
Bob Sullivan, “Privacy Under Attack, But Does Anybody Care?” MSNBC, Oct. 17, 2006, http://www.msnbc. msn.com/id/15221095/.

Mary Rosh criticizes Ayres and Donohue:
Tim Lambert, Mary Rosh's Blog, http://timlambert.org/2003/01/maryrosh/.

Lott's claims on guns and crime:
John Lott,
More Guns, Less Crime
(2000).

Ayres and Donohue response article to Lott:
Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue III, “Shooting Down the ‘More Guns, Less Crime' Hypothesis,” 55
Stanford L. Rev.
1193 (2003); Ian Ayres and John J. Donohue III, “The Latest Misfires in Support of the ‘More Guns, Less Crime' Hypothesis,” 55
Stanford L.
Rev.
1371 (2003).

More questions about John Lott:
Tim Lambert has been tireless in researching and pursuing several Lott-related questions. http://timlambert.org/lott/. For a good summary of the Mary Rosh controversy see Julian Sanchez, “The Mystery of Mary Rosh,” ReasonOnline, May 2003, http://www.reason.com/news/show/28771.htm.

Senator Craig cites Lott:
146 Cong. Rec. S349 (daily ed. Feb. 7, 2000) (statement of Sen. Craig).