Preach it!

There's a scene in Bill Maher's Religulous where he goes to a trucker chapel, and the people are very kind and accepting of him, and pray for him in a very tender, loving way. As he leaves, he says, "thank you for being Christlike, and not just Christian."

I was raised in an evangelical/fundamentalist household. I have known some truly wonderful Christians, who, I think, "get" what Jesus was trying to say/do. But most of them are assholes, same as everyone else, but they are even worse, because they actually believe that there is an ultimate reality, and they know what it is.

If you read the Bible honestly and objectively (i.e. not with the guidance of someone telling you what this and that means--twisting words to match established values and behaviors of the West), what you see is this:

• Judaism is a violent and imperialistic religion--luckily, Jewish culture encourages arguing with the text, so usually they don't manifest these traits (I don't think Israel has anything to do with Judaism)
• Jesus was a pretty nice guy who cribbed a lot from Buddha (there are some scholars who think that trade routes might have brought Buddhist ideas into the Middle East by the time Jesus was alive, which might explain the similarities). He was against sexism, classism, fundamentalism, and--yes--capitalism. He was a hippie.
• Paul is a fucking asshole who took the ideas of a peace-loving lunatic and turned them into a product to be sold to the Gentiles, and who added a lot of his own ideas to the pot (i.e. returning sexism and intolerance). This is not really surprising since, if the story of his origins is to be believed, this is a guy who had no problem rounding people up and selling them to the Romans to be used as lion fodder for entertainment.
• Peter did a massive power-grab after Jesus' death, ultimately building a hierarchical system that would have made Jesus vomit. (This is one of the reasons that the Gnostics and early Catholics didn't get along--but the problem was solved with the wholesale extermination of the Gnostics.)
• Most of the Bible is ignored by Christians.

I think that religion is fascinating, because it's so clearly crazy, but with years and repetition, it becomes the default way of thinking. I think it is incredibly dangerous, not just because of teachings I don't agree with, but that it, like all belief systems, is unable to admit when it isn't working. It is bad for the same reason that communism or Libertarianism is bad. It isn't pragmatic, and simplifies complex problems down to platitudes that can be written on one hand with magic marker. Belief systems are dangerous, but good luck convincing people that they need to think very carefully about each problem that life or governance presents and start from a blank slate with goals and objectives... People don't have that kind of time.

Amen. Whenever the police act in an inappropriate manner, we need to nail their asses to the wall.

When I'm king, there will be a new law making it illegal to violate the public's trust. Politician taking bribes? That's a hanging. Spitting in the food while working at a restaurant? That's a hanging. Police brutality/theft/rape/torture/sending out pictures of a mutilated teenage girl? You better believe that's a hanging.

Society doesn't work when the people we give control over aspects of our lives aren't worthy of our trust.

Amen. I didn't take any stats until I was doing my master's either, and the learning curve was steep, but before my first class was over, I was virtually shouting to anyone who would listen, "Hey! Do you know about statistics???" That should be the primary mathematics taught from high school on. It is applicable to everything.

I look back on all the math I had in high school, and I think, "Okay, I use geometry every time I build or repair something, I use trig every time I... launch rockets at the moon... or something... I use calc... Shit, what is calc even for?" I think that if we replaced a lot of those kind of physics-related math classes with stats, people wouldn't give up on math so soon, and they'd also learn to be more critical thinkers about the world.

How could anyone ever claim it was useless???

Thank you.

I often point out that almost every cellphone I've ever had did more on paper than the iPhone. The reason I love my iPhone, though, is that it actually does the things it says it does on paper, and does them with an ease that makes you likely to do them.

This. Oh, God, this.

I do a lot of statistics for my research. Do you know what has become my work computer? A MacBook Air. I run my IRT software on Windows XP via VMware Fusion. And it works great.

I'm typing this now on a Mac Pro that I bought when I thought that I needed a really powerful computer for all my powerful computing. No. I did not.

I've been telling people for the last few years to just hold on to whatever computer they have. There is virtually nothing that normal people do that is benefited by more horsepower these days.

Still... The iPad is way too expensive for what it is.

I use Macs for everything these days, have several iPods (contrary to what everyone claims, I can't seem to get them to die, so I end up accumulating them), and I'm constantly attached to my iPhone.

But I have to agree. For $500, I could get a perfectly serviceable netbook. I would be interested in the iPad if it were $199. Otherwise, I have a MacBook Air as my work machine, and I have the iPhone. The former does everything; the latter does everything I want when out and about. I just don't understand where the iPad is even supposed to go. I don't get it.

I'm a prof., and I can attest to everything the parent said.

I can also attest to everything the OP said. I know, because I, like the submitter, screwed it all up. I thought my friends who were "working for free" at internships were crazy. They all got jobs--usually the same job they were doing for free--immediately after graduating. Me? No. I did not. I graduated in the top 10% of my class and am bilingual, but I couldn't get a job. This went on for years (I was working crap jobs), until I figured out that, although I think the business world is lazy as shit in that they refuse to train people anymore (I live in Japan; the companies here hire smart kids and turn them into whatever they need), that's the way it is. The problem was me, not them.

So I looked at my academic record and realized that the only people who cared about it were other academics, and that the way out was through. I went back to school, and here I am: a prof. at a very prestigious university. But I got here by paying a lot of money and working for free for years and years. --I just don't think there is any way around that anymore. The "entry level position" is a myth.

I tell all my students to get internships now. I tell them how I ended up standing before them. I like my job, don't get me wrong, but I ended up here because I didn't do the things I needed to do to go anywhere else.

There is a fundamental lie that we tell young people: Go to college and you will get a good job. That just is not true. I have a close friend who dropped out of high school and is a very successful developer. He's very, very smart, and wears that lack of even a diploma as a badge of honor. But he got where he is today by working a lot of terrible jobs--starting by building PCs at a Mom & Pop white box shop in a strip mall--and honing his skills. It took a long time. It always takes a long time.

I'd like to add something to the parent's point, though. The "go to college, get a good job" is a cum hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy (i.e. correlation does not imply causation). In the old days, only the idle rich could go to university, and they were largely finishing schools. That's why we still have total bullshit like literature degrees at 4 year institutions (I like books, but getting a 4-year degree in book reports is nuts). So those people didn't need jobs, or might be installed at the family business as some titular boss when they finished. However, if you were a really smart cookie from the lower classes, you might be able to go to university on scholarship. You might earn your way in. Once in, you were suddenly rubbing elbows with the ruling class, and one of your mates was virtually guaranteed to talk his dad into hiring you. Even if that didn't happen, when you graduated, someone would hire you because, "OMG you have a degree???" This is because they were rare. They are not rare anymore. It would be different if you went to an Ivy League school--that would at least get you an interview--but you didn't (that's the other thing I've learned since being "in the industry"--name value is everything; there's almost no point in going to a school that is not well-known--I work with a complete moron, but he went to the same Ivy League school as our boss, so he's in).

So here's what you're looking at: You have no experience, no name value, and you don't know anyone. You have a random bachelor's just like everybody else. You are not getting a "real" job anytime soon. You're not. It's not going to happen. The sooner you make peace with that, the better. You need to get some experience, and that is going to mean doing it for free, probably. I'm sorry, but it's true.

Good luck.

A well-designed survey would have been born as an open-answer one first, administered, and the resultant data categorized into constrained responses. Then it would have been given again and checked for reliability. There would probably be some manner of factor analysis done at this point to identify patterns in the responses (make sure that items that should be similar are similar, etc.). Then you give it again and make sure that the factors or paths look the same. Then you'd give it for real. Each time, though, you'd need a unique sample.

Virtually no one does this, though, for obvious reasons.

So what you were working with there was a poorly-developed survey.

Thanks for answering the fellow's question.

Regarding your student, she may be able to salvage a big of her reputation with Nvivo. I try to keep my personal research clean and quantitative, but I have advised on projects where messy, open-ended data was necessary. I don't actually know how to use it, but a colleague of mine did a presentation on it, and it seemed to offer a neat way to at least be organized in one's interpretation of messy data.

N=1, but I've had a Behringer 8-channel as my home recording mixer for 10 years now, and it's been a total champ. I've been amazed at what a great deal it is.

This, in all honesty, is the worst survey I have ever seen, and I work with language teachers.

Not only are you setting yourself up for selection bias (as many others have pointed out), you've got all these free-answer text boxes all over it. Have you given any thought whatsoever to what you're going to do with the "data" that you get from this instrument?

Things like network speed should be in set categories. Satisfaction should be on a Likert scale, and should be broken down into aspects of interest (satisfaction with upload, download, etc.). The ISPs should be on a drop-down menu, not free answer (you'll need to include an "Other"). ZIP and City should be in separate fields (how are you going to parse those?--yes, it can be done, BUT WHY???).

Your question about maximum upload and download speed and limit and favorite color... Son, you make me want to stab out my eyes with a fork. What are you asking with that question? Whatever it is, it should be several questions with constrained responses.

One of the cardinal rules of survey design is that it should be quick and easy for people to fill out. Do the hard work for them, and let them just tick boxes. If you don't, they won't take it and all you'll get is data skewed toward people who--like you--actually care enough to type up a bunch of thoughts. I care about broadband, but even I am not interested in blathering away into a text box.

Pray tell, what "statistical purposes" would my email address be used for? Last I knew, principal components analysis only took numeric data... Same for cluster analysis. "This will only be used for magical statistics that use email addresses as variables... Or if we want to drop a line and say hi." Please.

You are setting yourself up for a world of hurt. You will need to go through with Nvivo or something to categorize all the garbage you get from this, and even if you present results, all you're really going to be presenting is "here is some stuff that people said." I have no time for listening to results of surveys like that. It's softheaded gibberish.

You are lucky you're not a student in my research practicum. There's no way I'd sign off on this as a research instrument.

Hear hear!

My private business is jumping out of a dark alley, bashing your head in with a rock, and stealing your wallet, so you can probably understand how much *I* hate regulation!!!

Thanks for the "behind the scenes" on this.

I'm an academic, and whenever I read a paper that makes me go "erm?", I get ahold of someone who knows that person and ask "Does this guy know what he's talking about?" Or, sometimes it's actually an old buddy of mine and I get ahold of them and say, "soo... About that study..." and usually they'll be all, "you know what? I don't even want to talk about it. By the time I made all the changes they asked for, I wasn't even sure it was my study anymore."

What really upsets me about science reporting, is that it forgets that the people doing these things are just people. Like the whole "climategate" thing that showed--shock of all shocks--that scientists quibble. That doesn't discredit them; that's the whole point of the scientific process. And yet, when all the researchers on a specific topic agree on some broad findings--regardless of the details they might not feel have been hashed out to their satisfaction--we really ought to listen.

And that, right there, is why we don't need to listen to this guy. There isn't broad agreement, and, more importantly, as a guy also in the psych world, um... "Conclusively" is just plain not a word I accept in the literature. We deal in human data, which is messy as all hell. We do our best, and given enough time, find useful things about people, but it's never "conclusive." At absolute best, we get "suggestive."

Yes, everything you're upset about is the product of the "same people."

It's funny, no matter what political nutjob I talk to--on the left or on the right--they always seem to think that there is some group of the "same people" who are directly responsible for everything they don't agree with.

1984 only happens when people ask for it. Why does the TSA waste all our time with security theater? Because we (well, not me) asked for it. We said, "Boo-hoo! 19 crazy assholes crashed some planes! Search my crevices for safety!!!" and the government complied. Why are we saddled with credit card debt (well, I'm not)? Because people said, "Boo-hoo! I want a 60-inch HDTV, but I don't have a job! Charge me many times over the purchase price so I can get one now!!!" and the private banks complied. Why did we have to bail out the banks? Because if they failed, the entire US economy would have crumbled, leading to people (well, me too) crying, "Boo-hoo! We don't want to have a couple really bad decades while we rebuild! Take our shared resources and give them to assholes!" and the government complied. And the UK? Do not even get me started. They've gotten themselves so worked up over imaginary child molesters that you can't even take a picture in public because you might whack off to any of the kids in it.

There isn't some shadowy elite doing this to us; we're doing it to ourselves. That's the fundamental problem with democracy and capitalism. People, despite being really great individually, are complete morons as a group. Your attitude seems to want to claim the benefits of these systems as "because of me" and the drawbacks as "because of other people; probably the Illuminati or something." The real hero and real culprit are aspects of what you see in the mirror.

I use and even sometimes teach factor analysis, item response theory (Rasch and multiparameter), structural equation modeling (okay, so most of those are flavors of the same thing), as well as a whole host of other statistical analyses. But as I prepare to go back to grad school for a PhD, and therefore need the GRE again, I'm struck--yet again--how absolute shit I am at arithmetic. Questions that require me to just manipulate variables around are no problem, but if they throw an actual value in there, and I have to work on that with scratch paper, I have to be REEEEALLY slow and careful, because I make more stupid arithmetic errors than anyone I know.

I also joke (but not joking, really) that I can't count. I'll count something 3 times and come up with a different number. I'm terrible. Terrible.

Writing code in R is easier for me than the multiplication table.

However, as an applied linguist, I also know quite a bit about another cognitive activity, and I think I've noticed a pattern. When I'm learning a new language, I tear through the grammar and make very few mistakes. But vocabulary? It's here and then it's gone. I study the same words over and over and over again, and they just don't stick. It's embarrassing.

So what do these two things have in common? Working in code, moving variables around, and human language grammar are all procedural knowledge. They are "processing"-intensive. Numbers, the multiplication table, and vocabulary are all stored, static knowledge. They are memory-intensive. So if I'm bad at those things, perhaps we would expect that I would also have a terrible memory, right.

Guess what? I live by lists and notes to myself. I have a memory like a sieve. I first started doing this with my research--taking detailed notes on everything I did--because I once realized when I was done prepping, carrying out, and interpreting a particularly labor-intensive analysis of some of my data, that I had just done it the previous weekend, and just... forgot. Luckily, my findings were the same both times. Sometimes I find things that I've written to myself and I have no recollection of writing them, but I know my handwriting, so I just do what they say. Seriously. I'm like the guy from Memento.

So at the heart of this whole "math anxiety" thing, I think, we might just have different cognitive styles at work here. I'm a university researcher. I'm not dumb. I've turned out fine, by doing the things I'm bad at in a way that takes advantage of things I'm good at. You know, like everyone does all the time. What might make people anxious about math is that--and this is coming from a professional tester (what do you think "item response theory" is for?)--we assess it in a very one-dimensional way that does not "bias for best" (a saying in the testing community--design tests that allow the examinee to show off their best, because that's what we're really interested in).

In the US, at least, we have a really flawed way of teaching and assessing math skills--one which, I think, leads a lot of people to quit because they think they can't do it, or that it's boring. Math is no more boring than stirring a bowl, and everyone loves cake. It's just a means to an end, but we never get the actual cake in the school system, so people get all worried about stirring and finally just end up buying cake from the store and saying "wow, you must be really good at stirring"--when the pros use machines for that crap.

So, to sum up, I don't actually think we have an "anxiety" problem. People are anxious because they think they suck at math. They think they suck at math because they suck at math. But sucking at math might be due to totally benign cognitive style differences that are easily routed around. --If we can fix our pedagogical and assessment approaches to math education, I think you'll see this "anxiety" disappear, and find that most people can handle math-intensive tasks if they are presented them in a better, and more realistic, way.