Community Messageboard: I think HDI is more accurate than nothing, though it certainly needs some fine tuning. by Joel

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I think HDI is more accurate than nothing, though it certainly needs some fine tuning. Joel Send a noteboard - 10/02/2010 11:03:08 AM

It's sort of like the weather, you can make some good SWAGs (Scientific Wild Arse Guess) but your margin for error curtails accuracy and long term prediciton isn't possible, except in very broad sweeps which will occassionally be wrong anyway. I would argue, that as most people are reasonable, the simple existence of multiple major political factions and idealogies is proof that you can't compare these things very well. You can show strong indicators, but if there is still strong debate on something it's because you can't prove it.

Ideally, we're making progress, and I think HDI is a step in the right direction.

Obviously specific areas of each countries policy can be compared directly, but how should we compare overall effectiveness of all policies?

By any means that produces sufficient accuracy to legitimately talk about differences, if that does not exist at this time, then you don't do it. I can want to know chemical composition of the moon's surface is, but that doesn't mean that if all I have for data is is it's mass and distance I can't twiddle with those numbers and get a result, then justify it's validity by pointing out there was no other method around. And this isn't a ludicrous example, knowing those two things, Earth's own makeup, and the general laws of physics and chemistry I could produce a pretty good guess, but probably not enough to justify selling it to an aluminum mining company who was thinking of buying a different moon or asteroid instead. Weird example, but it fits the model.

Oh, indeed, thus we were able to say, "it's rock, not green cheese" a long while before we could take samples. Again, accurate as far as it goes, just not very precise, but still better than nothing because more informed than nothing.

HDI isn't perfect, but it still seems like the best method for now because it uses real and verifiable data from multiple areas in non-random and unbiased ways, without becoming a laundry list that spends so much time collecting so much data on so many aspects of life that there's never a chance to actually analyze it.

Well, there's an old quip about how you'll know you've found the right theory when the math is smooth and elegant... unfortunetly there are dozens of systems where that simply isn't true, like the weather, or ecology, or humans behavior. I don't expect it to be perfect, I just expect people not to try to use it for things it's insufficient to discuss. As another absurd example, the HDI is not well suited to predict what type of vehicle will be purchased this year, but could predict within a reasonable margin, what the average amount of money spent on vehicles would be, of course in that case, using the HDI is redundant where PPP or GDPpc will probably give a truer value, because while SOL might range fairly close to HDI, car purchases are not likely to be heavily weighted by EI or LE on anything approaching the degree of money.

Again agreed, but I don't think I've tried to make any predictions or conclusions nearly that narrow. In fact, and once again, the biggest disparity between the US and most of the developed world (Scandinavia in particular) is life expectancy; PPP GDP/capita and education are fairly close (in the latter case they're wrongly treated as identical. ) That's a lot easier to measure with both precision and accuracy; HDI merely introduces factors that elevate the US to the top 15 instead of the top 40 or 50.

Note also that the three factors measured are added to produce a final rating; if I have three numbers that are 99% accurate and add them together, how much extra imprecision can I POSSIBLY introduce? If ALL of them are off by 0.9% (the maximum, since we know their accurate down to a precision of 1%) and in the same direction, the final result will be off by a maximum 2.7%, which isn't much (and rather unlikely regardless, though still possible. )

I'm leery of saying we know they are accurate to 1%, just because the methods of gatheirng the data are not standard nor are they techincally gathering the same data on EI - comparing different degrees, different languages, etc. When I said earlier that these are tricky to compare that was sort of Isaac-speak for 'impossible, futile, unlikely to be comparable any meaningful and accurate way'. Also, I'd say 2.7% is a pretty big inaccuracy for comparing the various western nations since they all scored within that range of each other, also while margin for error is roughly bell-curvey, with most samples likely to hold near the middle, the whole point is that it is only accurate to that range, and really the fringe values are still highly likely. Remember, the margin isn't 2.7 in a case like that, but plus or minus 2.7, meaning 5.4, and inside that the nature of guassian curve sis that most results will lie inside a few points in the middle, which still exceeds the size of the 'western bracket' if I may coin a term. I'd be willing to bet if you averaged all the top countries, then plotted all 30 or so of them, say one dot for each country and each year for the last decade, you'd probably find yourself staring at bell curve. Which would indicate what? That the measurements to that level of accuracy are basically random on account of the error.

That's always a good way to check if a measurement really is accurate to a certain level, plot a chunk and see if it's distribution follows that when it shouldn't if accurate. If you plot a bunch of LE's in a high bracket, and there distribution isn't follwoing the obvious (slow upward trend from year to year) but start conforming to a bell curve or flat random walk, then you're trying to squeeze more accuracy out of something than is actually there to be had. I'd want to run the numbers for say the top 25 countries for the last decade but I do have a pretty good eyeball for these things and it looks like a hazy gaussian curve will result.

To the Bat Graphing Calculator!

Certainly 1.5% (the difference between our HDI and Norways) is well within the margin of error (and you are of course right that it's ±2.7; my bad. ) However, the Scandinavian countries have CONSISTENTLY done better than the US over the last eight years (hence the skeptics snarky remark) very close to the decade span you suggest. Yes, it's possible to flip a coin and have it land with the same face eight times (in fact, according to the idiots calling the Super Bowl, the NFC has won the toss for the last dozen years, though that's not really the same as saying it came up heads twelve times straight. ) It's increasingly unlikely the longer you do it though. You may get a bell curve out of that plot, but if the location of each country on that curve is always the same it seems safe to say their relationship along each curve is correct; after that we're just debating how great the disparities really are.

The real question with HDI keeps coming back to whether an impartial 1/3 waiting is valid, which we can debate, but there are legitimate and real reasons for that, and any alternative without some basis would only make it more rather than less inaccurate.

Well, ironically I think when one decides to use these factors, instead of weighting PPP/GDPpc as more, you might get more accurate results using less. It is (as it should be) a log (though the coefficient is definetly debatable and additional terms are likely warranted) but because life expectancy and education are so tied to wealth, you might not even need it in there except as a small correction factor. Because I'd bet that earnings vs education or LE probably follow a log curve themselves and likely you can get a more accurate curve that way. Sort of like our atmosphere and gravity thing, escape velocity becomes more important that total mass for retention, so short of just using cash per capita by itself, education and LE take on the forms of escape velocity, likely making inclusion of wealth a bit redundant as a primary factor.

I'm inclined to agree, especially after taking a closer look at the data (not that I'm suddenly an expert after a couple nights online, but I do know more than I did because you prompted me to look deeper. ) Certainly Australia would agree.

You do realize though, I assume, that we'd end up with an index that measures EVEN MORE how "Scandinavian" a country is, right?

Again, since EI is essentially a wash in the developed world (being treated as 99% for all of it) the only thing keep the US in the top 20 (and Norway on top instead of Australia) is PPP GDP/capita. Take it out of the mix and the only thing we're comparing in the developed world is life expectancy, and whether due to social programs or things like gun control and sex ed (which also tend to be more prevalent in socialist countries, not that I'm taking a position on either here) the US comes up short there.

But let's set that aside, because we're probably not going to get anywhere debating its overall validity. We know the relationship between PPP GDP/capita and life expectancy is generally proportional, so the question is whether higher levels of the latter relative to the rest of the developed world justifies lower levels of the former.

Well, another source of error, we know genetics plays a pretty sizaeable role in LE, China for instance probably will have a skewed LE down the road because of the higher percentage of males who live shorter and do so by a pretty notewrothy percent of the avg LE. Since genes (race) is a fairly noteable factor in LE (or so I'm told) and those are hardly even vaguely evenly distributed even in the US let alone anywhere else, you get another noteworthy skew where someone might score higher, and whilke that higher score is legit, it doesn't really show up as a relevant justification for political policies, except maybe the ethnic cleansing and genocide sort.

In a country with Americas genetic diversity I'm not sure how much of a factor that plays. For that matter, I'm not sure Chinas issue is a genetic one; they have long actively selected for males (post pregnancy) and I suspect that's what does it. Particularly given that Japans genes are fairly close to theirs and they have one of the highest life expectancies in the world (though once again, that may be partly due to some post pregnancy tampering as well. ) I also think this is an area where GDP/capita plays a significant role, maybe not in the fully developed world (though there are a lot more people living on the street and/or going hungry in non-socialists states than socialist ones) but in China in particular one reason male children are preferred is because they don't get pregnant and much of the population is already at the margins of their food supply.

That sounds an awful lot like supplying marginal returns at the high end of income at the cost of a lot more sickness and death at the low end. Again we're back to the Xbox analogy; in America, China or Angola every Xbox purchased is that much less money for vaccines, and vice versa, as you noted. Where the priority lies often depends on things like whether one has the means to purchase BOTH or NEITHER. I think a pretty strong argument can be made, however, that the country as a whole (rather than a given impoverished or wealthy individual) benefits more from immunizing 100 people on the street than from an Xbox purchase (see: riots. )

I'm a big believer in all major policy and expenditure being subject to analysis to find the loose curve of diminsihing returns. Obviously, spending 300 million to vaccinate the country and prevent an estimated 1 million deaths is a good deal. SPending 3 billion to save 10,000 lives? That's trickier, and the justification is gonna be humanitarian and a quick 'well, the research values involved will give us additional hidden returns too' spend 30 billion to save 10 lives? Not a chance, not even if it were 10 little kiddies and I knew that 30 billion was the exact amount of money to be spent buying X-boxes. Anyway, that's what luxury taxes are for, in the capitalist model you can encourage chairity and discourage frivolous purchases by making the one deductible and the other a bit more expensivee, just a bit though, punitive luxury taxes can hurt more than help when too high.

Taxes in general and luxury taxes in particular are not typically regarded as "capitalist" y'know.

That is a dangerous mindset though, IMHO, because, while I'm sure you don't mean it that way, it boils down to putting a price on human life. "Even if it were 10 little kiddies and I knew that 30 billion was the exact amount of money to be spent buying X-boxes. " It ALWAYS comes down to that. I don't have an Xbox (I learned my lesson console obsolescence with Atari and Coleco) but still can't imagine having one would improve my quality of life as much as BEING ALIVE improves that of ten kids. And I don't think giving America 300,000,000 Xboxes would either. You can't put a price on human life (and I quite literally thank God for that) but Microsofts initial price for an Xbox was $299.99. That's the difference: I can and do live without an Xbox; I can't live without life. Further, I don't think a country would benefit as much from an Xbox in every pot as it would from 10 more workers, thinkers, creators. What if one of those kids is the next Bill Gates; where does THAT leave the analogy...?

I do believe in marginal returns studies on expenditures by any organization, government or otherwise, but I don't think this comparison is appropriate. If you want to compare food stamps vs. "free" vaccination that's a different matter, but comparing life saving medical care to an admitted luxury doesn't work, IMHO, however we scale the ratio.

I think an example is education, contrary to what I may have implied, I'm a big believer in it, but I don't like this emphasis on ever shrinking classes. Half the size of a class, double your cost, and you don't double your results. Some subjects, you don't get virtually any improvementm whereas a math class, smaller tends to be much better dollar for dollar than say, a history lecture. These are pretty standardized and should be subject to meaningful and fairly accurate comparison. You should be able to extract the ideal class size for a given course, then the school, with their relatively small numbers, can make a choice (with handy advice from above compiled by statistcians) about what their cut off size should be to break classes into an additional section. If 27 turns out to be the ideal HS bio class size, and they have 115 students needing to take it, then they can decide to have 4 or 5 classes based on their circumstances, i.e. Mr. Johnson is a real good bio teacher, we'll slot him for 32 students, and give the others 28 each. Or their teachers are maybe a bit below the norm, so they make 5 classes of 23 instead, etc...

I tend to feel all gov't spending should be subject to that sort of diminishing return analysis and come budget time congress shouldn't be weighing in on funding much more than to say 'well, we've got X and Y, each asking for Z and we have 2Z, looks like we'll get a a bit better return from X, but there's a 3% margin of error, so while 1.01 Z and .99Z seem the ideal funding levels, let's go with 1.02 and .98 instead' rephrased in politcal bickering speak of course. Not to imply putting a limit on their powers, but to pressure them to conform to that, because that gives us best results. Nothing the government does is frivilous (or is supposed to be) so every thing on the budget is important and we should be comparing as best we can, maybe we will get better results moving 10% funding from military to schools, maybe we'd be better shifting 10% of higher ed funding to military in the form of GI Bills. Maybe too hevay a luxury tax on Xboxes and such increases stress and lowers LE, all these things, in countries with hundreds of millions of people, should be subjectable to analysis - but not by social scientists, it may be a real science, but I don't consider most of it's practioners to be real scientists, most are mathemetically inept and many have a bad habit of pushing their own desires into their results, way more than other fields. You'd be better off nationalizing healthcare, eliminating medical insurance, and then re-employing all the actuaries to study it. Ironically that's probably the best way to actually reduce government spending by annexing private business.

Social scientists have the training within their fields, but, as already noted, it's a popular fallback position for would be engineers broken by the math requirements. The education example is good one; ironically, I was just recently talking to someone about a Scandinavian city firing some teachers because they sought to INCREASE class size to more efficient levels. Despite the fact they were already at between 25-30 students (the same levels often considered the extreme upper limit of efficiency here. ) You have to balance the frequent need for one on one interaction against the need to educate as many students as possible with finite resources. One of the reasons experts in their field don't always make the best educators in that field is because different people have different learning strengths, and part of what education degrees provide (theoretically... ) is the various tools needed to reach different students. Some of us can just absorb an equation thrown out on a chalkboard, but that doesn't help the kids who think spatially, or visually, or orally, the techniques that work for each of those may not work for any of the others, so you need a teacher who knows them all.

I do think the kind of actuarial analysis you're suggesting is an excellent idea, but to do it you're going to have to make social and physical sciences equally rewarding so that you don't have so many people making the latter their second choice of profession when they can't perform in the first. In terms of education in particular, I'm also reminded UT has a corollary to the old saw:

"The limit of engineering as GPA approaches zero is business; the limit of BUSINESS as GPA approaches zero is education. "

Personally, I think it's past time the country that coined the phrase "you get what you pay for" applied it to public education, because an uneducated electorate is its own worst enemy.

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This message last edited by Joel on 10/02/2010 at 11:05:01 AM

Edit 1 by Joel on 10/02/2010 at 11:05:01 AM

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Why bipartisanship can't work: the expert view Roland00 - 01/02/2010 11:34:58 PM 864 Views

And a personal comment Roland00 - 01/02/2010 11:39:28 PM 599 Views

Re: And a personal comment everynametaken - 02/02/2010 01:16:53 AM 555 Views

Who's to say YOU really know what's happening in Washington, though? Aemon - 02/02/2010 01:41:20 AM 631 Views

*thumbs up* *NM* Ghavrel - 02/02/2010 01:50:45 AM 222 Views

Or should I say...

? *NM* Ghavrel - 02/02/2010 01:51:03 AM 245 Views

I Don't watch tv

Roland00 - 02/02/2010 02:29:53 AM 592 Views

not to mention those who mistake knowledge for understanding random thoughts - 02/02/2010 10:41:14 PM 444 Views

Even so. Joel - 05/02/2010 05:45:54 AM 469 Views

Like the NYT? random thoughts - 05/02/2010 02:12:36 PM 502 Views

I don't believe the Times has ever conceded bias. Joel - 05/02/2010 06:03:02 PM 524 Views

and neither does Fox so I am not sure that matters random thoughts - 05/02/2010 06:40:15 PM 566 Views

Note that I didn't mention Fox (or anyone, for that matter. ) Joel - 05/02/2010 07:13:31 PM 498 Views

PBS is biased random thoughts - 05/02/2010 07:21:14 PM 470 Views

You're entitled to believe that. Joel - 05/02/2010 07:31:07 PM 600 Views

PBS has an obvious yet undeclared bias so does NPR random thoughts - 09/02/2010 04:47:53 AM 433 Views

Even were that true (which I dispute) my statement stands. Joel - 09/02/2010 09:50:36 AM 545 Views

so they wouldn't be biased becuas it could hurt them but you still argue republicans attack them random thoughts - 09/02/2010 02:19:53 PM 507 Views

Sometimes the truth hurts, though it doesn't hurt PBS. Joel - 10/02/2010 10:15:13 AM 592 Views

We have been for some time. Joel - 02/02/2010 03:31:10 AM 497 Views

I don't think that's the case Isaac - 03/02/2010 02:59:50 PM 476 Views

Universal healthcare was the primary plank in Clintons '92 platform. Joel - 04/02/2010 10:02:18 AM 460 Views

That does not mean his bare plurality was an endorsement of National Healthcare Isaac - 04/02/2010 02:09:32 PM 589 Views

I don't think he won by default, and that was his primary issue. Joel - 05/02/2010 08:09:50 AM 602 Views

Re: I don't think he won by default, and that was his primary issue. Isaac - 05/02/2010 03:52:23 PM 558 Views

[insert witty subject line here] Joel - 06/02/2010 02:15:21 AM 588 Views

Let me break this into multiple replies here Isaac - 06/02/2010 07:45:36 PM 568 Views

'K Joel - 08/02/2010 01:22:12 PM 551 Views

Probably time to go into 'summary mode' Isaac - 08/02/2010 07:34:55 PM 580 Views

Again, we're back to "how would you prefer to do it?" Joel - 09/02/2010 09:42:51 AM 605 Views

Any way that works, which currently probably is none Isaac - 09/02/2010 06:12:41 PM 544 Views

I think HDI is more accurate than nothing, though it certainly needs some fine tuning. Joel - 10/02/2010 11:03:08 AM 595 Views

Sorry for the delay... Isaac - 12/02/2010 11:40:21 PM 685 Views

NP, life happens.

Joel - 15/02/2010 02:06:55 PM 680 Views

I'll play a bigger age card since it was my third election to vote in and he won because of Perot random thoughts - 05/02/2010 05:57:04 PM 482 Views

Let's put it another way: Why did Dems nominate him instead of, say, Gephardt? Joel - 06/02/2010 02:22:04 AM 553 Views

you don't get mandates from primaries random thoughts - 08/02/2010 02:12:29 PM 452 Views

No, but end of the day more people wanted healthcare than didn't. Joel - 08/02/2010 03:09:31 PM 464 Views

everyone want health care they just don't want congress runnig it random thoughts - 09/02/2010 04:56:44 AM 502 Views

Whom do you prefer? Joel - 09/02/2010 10:07:39 AM 524 Views

Sorry not a big fan of socialism I hear it big over in Europe though random thoughts - 09/02/2010 02:23:55 PM 425 Views

In other words you prefer the system we have; thanks for admitting it.

Joel - 10/02/2010 10:05:38 AM 484 Views

I prefer Thomas Woods Jr's description of bipartisanship Cannoli - 02/02/2010 02:49:06 AM 485 Views

If only someone had stood up on 8 December, 1941 and said, "hey, you're not supposed to do stuff!" Joel - 02/02/2010 03:28:38 AM 634 Views

you're making a good job taking things out of context, Joel AgentOrange - 03/02/2010 12:47:57 PM 453 Views

Don't speak in absolutes and I won't read absolutes. Joel - 04/02/2010 10:08:43 AM 470 Views

Some qualifiers can be left unsaid for a clearer message. Or better delivery

AgentOrange - 04/02/2010 10:26:56 AM 453 Views

Qualifiers are clarifying by nature. Joel - 04/02/2010 10:49:06 AM 586 Views

huh. That does make sense. I know malpractice is a big weight on the the system in the US. AgentOrange - 04/02/2010 11:58:37 AM 422 Views

Perhaps, but it's hardly the greatest weight, or even in the top three, IMHO. Joel - 05/02/2010 05:44:49 AM 573 Views

Pearl Harbor would never have happened to a classically liberal nation Cannoli - 05/02/2010 01:33:56 AM 477 Views

Maybe; Billy Mitchell might debate that were he alive. Joel - 05/02/2010 05:34:54 AM 590 Views

Wow - that was a dumb statement even for you! SilverWarder - 05/02/2010 04:22:59 PM 657 Views

I do generally agree, but I think the Washington Naval Conference is too often overlooked. Joel - 06/02/2010 02:33:51 AM 594 Views

Some information and a question JasonD - 02/03/2010 05:49:20 AM 994 Views

Politicians and pundits should stop calling things that happened in the last decade "unprecedented" Joel - 02/02/2010 03:23:27 AM 647 Views

Or the democratic party has shifted so far to to the left they can't even get all of the dems random thoughts - 02/02/2010 02:39:14 PM 455 Views

You didn't hear all the whining when Bush was in charge with a Republican Congress? Dannymac - 02/02/2010 08:50:05 PM 473 Views

I there was plenty of whining going on random thoughts - 02/02/2010 10:36:56 PM 399 Views

Is this you conceding that the GOP is being obstructionist? Joel - 08/02/2010 01:43:04 PM 430 Views

I agree they are obstructing the libs from doing whatever they want random thoughts - 08/02/2010 02:19:13 PM 359 Views

They've tried including Republicans in drafting bills. Joel - 08/02/2010 03:08:17 PM 516 Views

tyring to pcik off one republican is not including republicans random thoughts - 09/02/2010 05:03:44 AM 465 Views

So we've gone from "stop being secretive" to "no public meetings" eh? Joel - 09/02/2010 11:59:50 AM 473 Views

well it was your guy who was up in arms about private meetings random thoughts - 09/02/2010 02:29:34 PM 452 Views

Was it? I don't recall any Dem complaining about private meeting on healthcare. Joel - 10/02/2010 09:44:56 AM 605 Views

most liberals seem to foretting the "rhetoric" that Obama used to get elected random thoughts - 13/02/2010 06:54:34 AM 444 Views

Um... sorry, man....

Joel - 10/02/2010 11:06:22 AM 638 Views

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<quote id="79887">
<quote id="79715">It's sort of like the weather, you can make some good SWAGs (Scientific Wild Arse Guess) but your margin for error curtails accuracy and long term prediciton isn't possible, except in very broad sweeps which will occassionally be wrong anyway. I would argue, that as most people are reasonable, the simple existence of multiple major political factions and idealogies is proof that you can't compare these things very well. You can show strong indicators, but if there is still strong debate on something it's because you can't prove it.</quote>
Ideally, we're making progress, and I think HDI is a step in the right direction.
<quote id="79715"><quote id="79589">Obviously specific areas of each countries policy can be compared directly, but how should we compare overall effectiveness of all policies? </quote>
By any means that produces sufficient accuracy to legitimately talk about differences, if that does not exist at this time, then you don't do it. I can want to know chemical composition of the moon's surface is, but that doesn't mean that if all I have for data is is it's mass and distance I can't twiddle with those numbers and get a result, then justify it's validity by pointing out there was no other method around. And this isn't a ludicrous example, knowing those two things, Earth's own makeup, and the general laws of physics and chemistry I could produce a pretty good guess, but probably not enough to justify selling it to an aluminum mining company who was thinking of buying a different moon or asteroid instead. Weird example, but it fits the model.</quote>
Oh, indeed, thus we were able to say, "it's rock, not green cheese" a long while before we could take samples.  Again, accurate as far as it goes, just not very precise, but still better than nothing because more informed than nothing.
<quote id="79715"><quote id="79589">HDI isn't perfect, but it still seems like the best method for now because it uses real and verifiable data from multiple areas in non-random and unbiased ways, without becoming a laundry list that spends so much time collecting so much data on so many aspects of life that there's never a chance to actually analyze it. </quote>
Well, there's an old quip about how you'll know you've found the right theory when the math is smooth and elegant... unfortunetly there are dozens of systems where that simply isn't true, like the weather, or ecology, or humans behavior. I don't expect it to be perfect, I just expect people not to try to use it for things it's insufficient to discuss. As another absurd example, the HDI is not well suited to predict what type of vehicle will be purchased this year, but could predict within a reasonable margin, what the average amount of money spent on vehicles would be, of course in that case, using the HDI is redundant where PPP or GDPpc will probably give a truer value, because while SOL might range fairly close to HDI, car purchases are not likely to be heavily weighted by EI or LE on anything approaching the degree of money.</quote>
Again agreed, but I don't think I've tried to make any predictions or conclusions nearly that narrow.  In fact, and once again, the biggest disparity between the US and most of the developed world (Scandinavia in particular) is life expectancy; PPP GDP/capita and education are fairly close (in the latter case they're wrongly treated as identical. ) That's a lot easier to measure with both precision and accuracy; HDI merely introduces factors that elevate the US to the top 15 instead of the top 40 or 50.
<quote id="79715"><quote id="79589">Note also that the three factors measured are added to produce a final rating; if I have three numbers that are 99% accurate and add them together, how much extra imprecision can I POSSIBLY introduce?  If ALL of them are off by 0.9% (the maximum, since we know their accurate down to a precision of 1%) and in the same direction, the final result will be off by a maximum 2.7%, which isn't much (and rather unlikely regardless, though still possible. ) </quote>
I'm leery of saying we know they are accurate to 1%, just because the methods of gatheirng the data are not standard nor are they techincally gathering the same data on EI - comparing different degrees, different languages, etc. When I said earlier that these are tricky to compare that was sort of Isaac-speak for 'impossible, futile, unlikely to be comparable any meaningful and accurate way'. Also, I'd say 2.7% is a pretty big inaccuracy for comparing the various western nations since they all scored within that range of each other, also while margin for error is roughly bell-curvey, with most samples likely to hold near the middle, the whole point is that it is only accurate to that range, and really the fringe values are still highly likely. Remember, the margin isn't 2.7 in a case like that, but plus or minus 2.7, meaning 5.4, and inside that the nature of guassian curve sis that most results will lie inside a few points in the middle, which still exceeds the size of the 'western bracket' if I may coin a term. I'd be willing to bet if you averaged all the top countries, then plotted all 30 or so of them, say one dot for each country and each year for the last decade, you'd probably find yourself staring at bell curve. Which would indicate what? That the measurements to that level of accuracy are basically random on account of the error.

That's always a good way to check if a measurement really is accurate to a certain level, plot a chunk and see if it's distribution follows that when it shouldn't if accurate. If you plot a bunch of LE's in a high bracket, and there distribution isn't follwoing the obvious (slow upward trend from year to year) but start conforming to a bell curve or flat random walk, then you're trying to squeeze more accuracy out of something than is actually there to be had. I'd want to run the numbers for say the top 25 countries for the last decade but I do have a pretty good eyeball for these things and it looks like a hazy gaussian curve will result.</quote>

To the Bat Graphing Calculator! :P Certainly 1.5% (the difference between our HDI and Norways) is well within the margin of error (and you are of course right that it's ±2.7; my bad. ) However, the Scandinavian countries have CONSISTENTLY done better than the US over the last eight years (hence the skeptics snarky remark) very close to the decade span you suggest.  Yes, it's possible to flip a coin and have it land with the same face eight times (in fact, according to the idiots calling the Super Bowl, the NFC has won the toss for the last dozen years, though that's not really the same as saying it came up heads twelve times straight. ) It's increasingly unlikely the longer you do it though.  You may get a bell curve out of that plot, but if the location of each country on that curve is always the same it seems safe to say their relationship along each curve is correct; after that we're just debating how great the disparities really are.

<quote id="79715"><quote id="79589">The real question with HDI keeps coming back to whether an impartial 1/3 waiting is valid, which we can debate, but there are legitimate and real reasons for that, and any alternative without some basis would only make it more rather than less inaccurate.</quote>
Well, ironically I think when one decides to use these factors, instead of weighting PPP/GDPpc as more, you might get more accurate results using less. It is (as it should be) a log (though the coefficient is definetly debatable and additional terms are likely warranted) but because life expectancy and education are so tied to wealth, you might not even need it in there except as a small correction factor. Because I'd bet that earnings vs education or LE probably follow a log curve themselves and likely you can get a more accurate curve that way. Sort of like our atmosphere and gravity thing, escape velocity becomes more important that total mass for retention, so short of just using cash per capita by itself, education and LE take on the forms of escape velocity, likely making inclusion of wealth a bit redundant as a primary factor.</quote>
I'm inclined to agree, especially after taking a closer look at the data (not that I'm suddenly an expert after a couple nights online, but I do know more than I did because you prompted me to look deeper. ) Certainly Australia would agree. :P You do realize though, I assume, that we'd end up with an index that measures EVEN MORE how "Scandinavian" a country is, right? ;) Again, since EI is essentially a wash in the developed world (being treated as 99% for all of it) the only thing keep the US in the top 20 (and Norway on top instead of Australia) is PPP GDP/capita.  Take it out of the mix and the only thing we're comparing in the developed world is life expectancy, and whether due to social programs or things like gun control and sex ed (which also tend to be more prevalent in socialist countries, not that I'm taking a position on either here) the US comes up short there.
<quote id="79715"><quote id="79589">But let's set that aside, because we're probably not going to get anywhere debating its overall validity.  We know the relationship between PPP GDP/capita and life expectancy is generally proportional, so the question is whether higher levels of the latter relative to the rest of the developed world justifies lower levels of the former.</quote>
Well, another source of error, we know genetics plays a pretty sizaeable role in LE, China for instance probably will have a skewed LE down the road because of the higher percentage of males who live shorter and do so by a pretty notewrothy percent of the avg LE. Since genes (race) is a fairly noteable factor in LE (or so I'm told) and those are hardly even vaguely evenly distributed even in the US let alone anywhere else, you get another noteworthy skew where someone might score higher, and whilke that higher score is legit, it doesn't really show up as a relevant justification for political policies, except maybe the ethnic cleansing and genocide sort.</quote>
In a country with Americas genetic diversity I'm not sure how much of a factor that plays.  For that matter, I'm not sure Chinas issue is a genetic one; they have long actively selected for males (post pregnancy) and I suspect that's what does it.  Particularly given that Japans genes are fairly close to theirs and they have one of the highest life expectancies in the world (though once again, that may be partly due to some post pregnancy tampering as well. ) I also think this is an area where GDP/capita plays a significant role, maybe not in the fully developed world (though there are a lot more people living on the street and/or going hungry in non-socialists states than socialist ones) but in China in particular one reason male children are preferred is because they don't get pregnant and much of the population is already at the margins of their food supply.
<quote id="79715"><quote id="79589">That sounds an awful lot like supplying marginal returns at the high end of income at the cost of a lot more sickness and death at the low end.  Again we're back to the Xbox analogy; in America, China or Angola every Xbox purchased is that much less money for vaccines, and vice versa, as you noted.  Where the priority lies often depends on things like whether one has the means to purchase BOTH or NEITHER.  I think a pretty strong argument can be made, however, that the country as a whole (rather than a given impoverished or wealthy individual) benefits more from immunizing 100 people on the street than from an Xbox purchase (see: riots. )</quote>
I'm a big believer in all major policy and expenditure being subject to analysis to find the loose curve of diminsihing returns. Obviously, spending 300 million to vaccinate the country and prevent an estimated 1 million deaths is a good deal. SPending 3 billion to save 10,000 lives? That's trickier, and the justification is gonna be humanitarian and a quick 'well, the research values involved will give us additional hidden returns too' spend 30 billion to save 10 lives? Not a chance, not even if it were 10 little kiddies and I knew that 30 billion was the exact amount of money to be spent buying X-boxes. Anyway, that's what luxury taxes are for, in the capitalist model you can encourage chairity and discourage frivolous purchases by making the one deductible and the other a bit more expensivee, just a bit though, punitive luxury taxes can hurt more than help when too high.</quote>
Taxes in general and luxury taxes in particular are not typically regarded as "capitalist" y'know. ;) That is a dangerous mindset though, IMHO, because, while I'm sure you don't mean it that way, it boils down to putting a price on human life.  "Even if it were 10 little kiddies and I knew that 30 billion was the exact amount of money to be spent buying X-boxes. " It ALWAYS comes down to that.  I don't have an Xbox (I learned my lesson console obsolescence with Atari and Coleco) but still can't imagine having one would improve my quality of life as much as BEING ALIVE improves that of ten kids.  And I don't think giving America 300,000,000 Xboxes would either.  You can't put a price on human life (and I quite literally thank God for that) but Microsofts initial price for an Xbox was $299.99.  That's the difference: I can and do live without an Xbox; I can't live without life.  Further, I don't think a country would benefit as much from an Xbox in every pot as it would from 10 more workers, thinkers, creators.  What if one of those kids is the next Bill Gates; where does THAT leave the analogy...?

I do believe in marginal returns studies on expenditures by any organization, government or otherwise, but I don't think this comparison is appropriate.  If you want to compare food stamps vs. "free" vaccination that's a different matter, but comparing life saving medical care to an admitted luxury doesn't work, IMHO, however we scale the ratio.
<quote id="79715">I think an example is education, contrary to what I may have implied, I'm a big believer in it, but I don't like this emphasis on ever shrinking classes. Half the size of a class, double your cost, and you don't double your results. Some subjects, you don't get virtually any improvementm whereas a math class, smaller tends to be much better dollar for dollar than say, a history lecture. These are pretty standardized and should be subject to meaningful and fairly accurate comparison. You should be able to extract the ideal class size for a given course, then the school, with their relatively small numbers, can make a choice (with handy advice from above compiled by statistcians) about what their cut off size should be to break classes into an additional section. If 27 turns out to be the ideal HS bio class size, and they have 115 students needing to take it, then they can decide to have 4 or 5 classes based on their circumstances, i.e. Mr. Johnson is a real good bio teacher, we'll slot him for 32 students, and give the others 28 each. Or their teachers are maybe a bit below the norm, so they make 5 classes of 23 instead, etc...

I tend to feel all gov't spending should be subject to that sort of diminishing return analysis and come budget time congress shouldn't be weighing in on funding much more than to say 'well, we've got X and Y, each asking for Z and we have 2Z, looks like we'll get a a bit better return from X, but there's a 3% margin of error, so while 1.01 Z and .99Z seem the ideal funding levels, let's go with 1.02 and .98 instead' rephrased in politcal bickering speak of course. Not to imply putting a limit on their powers, but to pressure them to conform to that, because that gives us best results. Nothing the government does is frivilous (or is supposed to be) so every thing on the budget is important and we should be comparing as best we can, maybe we will get better results moving 10% funding from military to schools, maybe we'd be better shifting 10% of higher ed funding to military in the form of GI Bills. Maybe too hevay a luxury tax on Xboxes and such increases stress and lowers LE, all these things, in countries with hundreds of millions of people, should be subjectable to analysis - but not by social scientists, it may be a real science, but I don't consider most of it's practioners to be real scientists, most are mathemetically inept and many have a bad habit of pushing their own desires into their results, way more than other fields. You'd be better off nationalizing healthcare, eliminating medical insurance, and then re-employing all the actuaries to study it. Ironically that's probably the best way to actually reduce government spending by annexing private business.  </quote>
Social scientists have the training within their fields, but, as already noted, it's a popular fallback position for would be engineers broken by the math requirements.  The education example is good one; ironically, I was just recently talking to someone about a Scandinavian city firing some teachers because they sought to INCREASE class size to more efficient levels.  Despite the fact they were already at between 25-30 students (the same levels often considered the extreme upper limit of efficiency here. ) You have to balance the frequent need for one on one interaction against the need to educate as many students as possible with finite resources.  One of the reasons experts in their field don't always make the best educators in that field is because different people have different learning strengths, and part of what education degrees provide (theoretically... ) is the various tools needed to reach different students.  Some of us can just absorb an equation thrown out on a chalkboard, but that doesn't help the kids who think spatially, or visually, or orally, the techniques that work for each of those may not work for any of the others, so you need a teacher who knows them all.

I do think the kind of actuarial analysis you're suggesting is an excellent idea, but to do it you're going to have to make social and physical sciences equally rewarding so that you don't have so many people making the latter their second choice of profession when they can't perform in the first.  In terms of education in particular, I'm also reminded UT has a corollary to the old saw:

"The limit of engineering as GPA approaches zero is business; the limit of BUSINESS as GPA approaches zero is education. "

Personally, I think it's past time the country that coined the phrase "you get what you pay for" applied it to public education, because an uneducated electorate is its own worst enemy.
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