Friday, January 24, 2003
Thursday, January 23, 2003
Squeals on Wheels?
Today's (23 October) Dear Abby column is more interesting than usual. Read the letter for the full details; here's the adumbrated version. The letter writer has a friend with muscular dystrophy. He is mostly paralyzed and could die any time. Yet, like most men, he still has sexual needs. The letter writer arranged for his friend to have a date with a female "escort" -- yes, that kind of escort -- and the encounter apparently went quite well. But the man's parents (who care for him) were appalled, and they have banned the writer from seeing his friend. Now, this is interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First, like all libertarians, I think prostitution should be legalized. But I don't think prostitution is a "good thing." In general, I think it's a poor personal choice. I support legalization because (a) I think prohibition creates even greater harms, and (b) I am unwilling to substitute my personal moral judgment for that of another competent adult. Here, however, we have one of the rare cases in which I think prostitution is not just tolerable, but actually desirable. Abby gets it exactly right in her response:It is wrong for a person in control to project his or her own moral values on another adult who is dependent. For parents to confine an adult child, to prevent that person from having relationships, and to discourage that person from living life as fully as possible is to me both cruel and ignorant. I would only hope that someone in your community who understands this could intercede and explain to Kent's parents that there is room for nontraditional relationships in cases like this one.Second, there is a twist in the story that I left out above: when the writer contacted the escort service and explained the situation, the manager offered the escort's services for *free*. Does that mean this wasn't prostitution after all, because the price charged was zero? From a legal standpoint, I suspect this encounter was totally legit, unless the escort herself was still paid and the money came out of the business's general revenues. However, my understanding is that escort services usually handle only the "date" portion of an escort's business; the prostitution, if any, is left as a transaction strictly between the escort and her customer (so that the escort service is shielded legally). I think this case highlights the arbitrariness of a law that bans certain acts of sex simply because money is involved. What if, hypothetically, the escort service had not offered the service for free, but had instead offered a discount? Would it matter how big the discount was? In this case, it's hard for me to find a relevant moral distinction between sex for free and sex for a nominal payment. But perhaps I'm being misled by the fact that I think prostitution is desirable in this situation anyway. I'd like to hear someone who is opposed to prostitution make the case for a meaningful distinction.
Glengarry Glen Ross
Eugene is excited about this list of name frequencies collected by the Census. I think it’s pretty cool, too. But in looking at it closely, I noticed something slightly misleading about it: alternate spellings of the same name are listed separately. Naturally, I noticed this because I looked up my own name in the list. “Glen” is the 188th most common male name in the U.S., at 0.094% of the male population. But “Glenn” is the 117th most common male name, at 0.167% of the male population. Adding these together, they constitute 0.261% of the male population, making Glen/Glenn the 68th most common male name (between Bruce and Brandon). Of course, that’s assuming that all the other names are distinct. But if we combine Shawn (92nd) and Sean (94th), we find that Shawn/Sean comes in 42nd.And then there’s the problem of nicknames or related names. William comes in 5th, Billy comes in 73rd, and Bill 159th. Combining them, they jump past Michael (4th). But that’s not accounting for all the Mikes out there.
Since this is Census data, I assume that seeming nicknames might be the actual names on birth certificates. So arguably, these are not people with the same name after all. But on the other hand, many of the people categorized under the standard names may go by the nicknames. Given the subjectivity of deciding what constitutes the “same” name, I can’t fault the Census for taking the objective spelling-only approach.
Wednesday, January 22, 2003
A Request for Bad Statistics
For an MBA course I’m teaching this semester, I will be giving a lecture on the use and abuse of numbers and statistics, and also a lecture on the use and abuse of tables and figures. I plan to structure both lectures in “greatest misses” format – using examples of people employing numbers and figures in bogus or misleading ways. If you’ve read Darrell Huff’s book _How to Lie With Statistics_, you know the kind of thing I’m talking about; unfortunately, Huff’s examples are rather dated, and I’m looking for more recent ones. I have lots of old examples in my head, but I really prefer documented cases – “I saw an article one time that said…” isn’t good enough.So, I’m hoping to solicit my readers’ assistance. If you know of any good examples of numbers/stats/tables/figures being used badly, please send me an email. I need full references or webpage locations if at all possible. I’m looking for examples in various categories, including:
• Confusion of mean and median (or mean and mode, or mode and median). For example, it’s often observed that the average (i.e., mean) time it takes a woman to conceive a child is several months, but most women (i.e., the mode) conceive much more quickly – within a couple of months. The average is higher because of a small number of women who take a really long time to conceive.
• Confusion of absolute numbers with changes in numbers, or confusion of changes in numbers with percent changes in numbers. For example, during the 2000 election season I recall hearing that Houston’s air quality had actually gotten worse than L.A.’s – but it turned out that while Houston’s had gotten worse over time (compared to Houston before) and L.A.’s had gotten better (compared to L.A. before), L.A.’s air quality was still worse than Houston’s.
• Providing figures that are meaningless without a figure for comparison. For example, saying that some very high percentage (say, X%) of all traffic fatalities involve people not wearing seatbelts, without telling us what percentage of *all* drivers wear seatbelts. (If that figure were also X%, we might conclude that seatbelts have no effect!)
• Creating a pie chart that leaves out the “other” category. For example, showing a pie chart with market shares for only the top four firms in an industry, even though together they constitute only a fraction of the market.
• Creating a line graph that does not show a trend over time, but instead connects unlike things. (“What’s this big jump in the line show? Oh, it shows the jump in GDP you get when you go from Mexico to Japan.”)
This is not a comprehensive list, of course. I’d appreciate any ideas or contributions you have.
Monday, January 20, 2003
My Chickens Come Home to Roost
So when I moved to a new apartment back in July, I was excited by the prospect of a new telephone number that might actually spell something. The Pacific Bell customer service representative gave me three choices of phone number, and some back-of-the-envelope scribblings revealed that one of them was 761-AUTO. I thought that was reasonably cool, so I picked it.I'd had the number for about two days before I left town for a week-long seminar. I came home to an answering machine with about 30 messages -- all people wanting to advertise their cars in Auto Trader Magazine, which apparently had the number before I did. Some of the callers were pretty steamed about my failure to get back to them. "What the FUCK, man," said one of them, "why don't you people pick up your FUCKing phone???" As message after message rolled out of my machine, Olivia laughed her ass off at my expense -- since I had, of course, brought this on myself. Shortly thereafter, I called Pac Bell and got my phone number changed. End of story… or so I thought.
Last week I received a form letter from Pacific Bell -- now SBC Pacific Bell, and soon to be just SBC -- informing me that, due to my poor payment history, certain restrictions were being placed on my account: I must pay all bills within 15 (not 30) days, and I can't run up more than $200 in charges without special permission. How strange, I thought. I knew I'd occasionally paid a bill a day or two late, but hardly often enough to justify a deadbeat classification. So I went looking through my old bills and online banking records. It took a while to figure out, but I finally realized that Pacific Bell hadn't received one of my online payments, even though my bank said it had cleared. I'd continued to pay the additional monthly charges, but the amount due on my September bill continued to hang around for three months, seemingly unpaid, and presumably lousing up my credit. And what, you ask, happened to that errant payment? Turns out that after getting the 761-AUTO number changed, I'd never altered the account number in my online banking settings. Somehow the phone company still managed to register my subsequent payments, but that first payment under my new (post-AUTO) number got lost in the vortex.
I tried to sort all this out on the phone, but I still have to get documentation from my bank to prove the payment was actually made. Once I straighten things out with the phone company, I suppose I'll have to contact the credit agencies, too. And to top it all off, my current phone number doesn't spell a damned thing -- too many 1's and 0's, I'm afraid.
Sunday, January 19, 2003
Mutatis Mutandis
Mark Kleiman makes a plea to libertarians and libertarian-leaning folk to flee the Republicans and join forces with the Democrats: "And when Glenn Reynolds … figures out that, while most Democrats take anti-libertarian positions with some discomfort, and largely out of perceived political necessity, the current Republican crew is deeply and abidingly anti-libertarian in the personal sphere and not really opposed to corporatism in the economic sphere, I'll be happy to welcome him as well."Aye, but here's the rub: the current Democratic crew is deeply and abidingly anti-libertarian in the economic sphere and not really opposed to paternalism in the personal sphere. Much as I like Mark, he himself provides a nice example of the latter point - consider, for example, his opposition to the notion that "the blamelessness of the tempter follows from the responsibility of the tempted." Summary version: I persuade you to eat one more jelly doughnut, and you do so, to the detriment of your waistline. According to Mark's theory, I may be partially to blame for your eventual heart attack, especially if I'm a big bad corporation. Mark is not a politician, of course, but we all know how this kind of position gets translated into policy when the Democrats have their way.
Not that the Republicans are any great shakes. Fact is, neither party is abidingly libertarian, and neither can be relied upon to defend liberty even in the areas where we expect them to. Republicans are supposed to be for free enterprise, and then Bush supports the steel tariff. Democrats are supposed to be for freedom of expression, and then Bill Clinton signs the Communications Decency Act. Mr. Hobson, what horses do you have for rent today?
Friday, January 17, 2003
Dead Horses, Alive and Kickin’
As a New Year’s resolution, D-squared has posted a list of propositions (scroll down a bit) that are so “bleedin’ obvious” that he refuses to get drawn into another pointless debate about any of them. Now, on the one hand, I’m highly sympathetic to the notion that some arguments just aren’t worth having. It irks the hell out of me when someone suggests that I’m narrow-minded because I’m no longer willing to consider the possibility that communism might really be superior to capitalism. I considered it once… and rejected it. I considered it again... and rejected it. I considered it umpteen more times… and rejected it. How many times must I perform this exercise before I can be considered open-minded? My brain-time is better spent considering the dozens of other propositions on which I’m as yet undecided.Nonetheless, I can’t help but be shocked by some of the things D-squared considers “obvious.” Not probably true, or even very likely true, or true if you give it lots of careful thought, but “obvious.” Let me pick just three of D’s proposition and see if I can clear the very low hurdle of non-obviousness.
“That people making employment decisions are for the most part (probably unconsciously) racist in the way in which they make those decisions.” Wow. It’s one thing to say that racism still exists, that there exist some people whose decisions are motivated mostly by racism, or that most everyone harbors some amount of residual racism. But this is supposed to be a general proposition about “people making employment decisions,” and the claim is that they are *for the most part* racist. That’s an incredibly damning statement about an incredibly large and diverse group of people.
“That college admissions have never in the history of the world reflected ‘ability’ in the abstract, even if such a metaphysically dubious quality were to exist and that nor [sic] will they ever in the future, whatever happens to government policy.” Hmm. Okay, college admissions are indeed based on a variety of merit-irrelevant matters, such as race, geography, celebrity, alumni parentage, and so on. But in addition to these criteria, standardized test scores and GPAs are also used. And while these are far from perfect measures of ability, they do bear some correlation to ability, no? And if that’s the case, then college admissions almost assuredly “reflect” ability to some degree. Do a regression of college admissions for any selective university, with race, gender, parentage, etc., plus GPA and SAT scores as the explanatory variables; I’ll bet that the coefficient on GPA or SAT or both is positive and statistically significant.
“That the transatlantic slave trade was the moral responsibility of those who profited the most from it, and that it was the proximate cause of the American Civil War.” Okay, I’ll buy the first half, but as for the second… well, let me put it this way: the transatlantic slave trade ended (at least for the U.S.) in 1808. After that, most new slaves were the children of old slaves. The Civil War began in 1861. Are we using the same definition of the word “proximate”?
Enough. Suffice it to say that there’s a barrel of non-obviousness in virtually every one of D’s propositions -- even on the handful I agree with (in whole or in part).
The Anal Film Critic
I thought I had the whole Disney Dalmatian movie nomenclature straight. The original 1961 animated movie was called “One Hundred and One Dalmatians.” The 1996 live-action version with Glenn Close was called “101 Dalmatians.” And, just to confirm the alphabetic v. numeric distinction, they made a live-action sequel called “102 Dalmatians.” I figured if they ever made an animated sequel, it would be called “One Hundred and Two Dalmatians.” But now Disney’s just released a straight-to-video animated flick called “101 Dalmatians II.” And after doing a little poking around, I discovered that they’ve given the original 1961 animated version an alternative title, “101 Dalmatians,” which is indistinguishable from the 1996 live-action title. (I haven’t figured out when this renaming took place.)Am I the only one who’s bothered by this kind of inconsistency and confusion? Is anyone else still bothered by the fact there’s a movie called “Rambo III” when there was never a movie called “Rambo” or “Rambo II”? And am I myself being inconsistent when I grouse about Stephen Spielberg’s having renamed “Raiders of the Lost Ark” as “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark” to achieve retroactive consistency with the subsequent Indiana Jones movies?
Wednesday, January 15, 2003
More on Statistical Injustice
A reader responds to my post below about false positives: “That's why you test each positive at least one more time - the odds for a double-false positive are extreme. … Of course universal testing generates false positives. The idea that one test alone is sufficient for punishment is ludicrous.”Absolutely correct, though I’m often amazed at how often ludicrous laws get passed by legislatures and school boards. (I’m thinking specifically of the southern state that passed a law setting the value of pi at 3.14.) I wouldn’t be at all surprised to hear that school districts with across-the-board drug testing suspended athletes immediately upon their getting a positive test result. Does anyone out there know the standard practice?
Also, testing a second time shrinks the problem substantially, but does not eliminate it. By my calculations (and using Brad DeLong’s hypothetical numbers again), someone who gets two positive test results in a row still has an 8% chance of not having the disease. That’s about one person in every twelve. Also, my calculations are based on the assumption that the two tests’ results are independent events, which may not be the case – it might be that the false positive is triggered by the presence of a particular protein in your blood, for instance. (I’m not a doctor or a biologist, so I don’t want to make too strong a claim here, but it seems reasonable to think that false negatives and false positives are caused by something, and that something may be related to your physiology.) Fortunately, there may exist alternative tests for the same condition, as my reader observes elsewhere in his email, and such alternatives may be both more accurate and more likely to constitute an independent event.
Uh ... Did I Just Score?
Last week I celebrated this blog's 2000th post. Earlier today, the counter was somewhere in the 2100s or 2200s, I think. But as of a few minutes ago, the counter stood at 3270! (That's an exclamation point, not a factorial sign.) What's going on? I'm thinking this must be a glitch in the counter.UPDATE: Apparently I did score. A couple of readers let me know that my post on Raelians was linked by Instapundit. I'm thinking I probably owe thanks to Julian, who linked the same post on his much-higher-traffic blog. (Higher traffic than my blog, that is, not higher than Instapundit!)
Tuesday, January 14, 2003
Statistical Injustice
Brad DeLong has an ongoing series of One Hundred Interesting Mathematical Computations on his website. Two of the most recent jumped out at me.First, in OHIMC #10, he describes the letter-switching paradox that I mentioned in a previous post. And unlike the website I cited that time for explanation (because I was too lazy to describe the whole problem and its solution), he gets the moral of the story right.
Second, in OHIMC #9, he describes the false-positive problem that arises in the context of tests for disease. The bottom line is that even if you test positive for a disease, there is actually a surprisingly high chance that you don't have it. The reason, in a nutshell, is that for most diseases - even ones considered epidemics - the vast majority of the population does not have it. As a result, even a small false-positive rate will result in a very large absolute number of people testing positive even though they are disease-free. Even if the test correctly identifies all people who have the disease, they are likely to be a small group compared to those who were false positives. (If this doesn't make sense, go to DeLong's site and follow the math.)
What DeLong doesn't mention is that the false-positive problem is most acute when someone takes a test for a disease without having any particular reason to think he might have it. If there is some a priori reason for thinking you have the disease (e.g., the test is for HIV, and you've been having lots of promiscuous unprotected sex and sharing needles), then the problem is not as severe, though it still exists. I think this is especially relevant in the context of proposals to, for instance, test all school athletes for steroids or drug use. Quite aside from the legal and ethical problems related to invasion of privacy, policies like these will almost assuredly punish far more innocent students than guilty ones. Taking DeLong's sample numbers, but replacing "disease" with "drug use," testing 10,000 athletes would lead to the punishment of 49 drug-users and 199 non-drug users. Of course, DeLong's numbers are only hypothetical; if a larger percentage of the whole athlete population used drugs than in the example, the disparity would not be as severe. But the qualitative result will be the same: lots of innocents getting punished.
Thus, the notion of "probable cause" has statistical as well as legal value. Restricting drug and steroid tests to those students who have evinced other signs of use would at least reduce, though not eliminate, the disparity in punishments meted out. Across-the-board testing is not just a procedural injustice; it also leads to greater substantive injustice.
Monday, January 13, 2003
Those Wacky Raelians
So the Raelians -- you know, the religious cult that claims to have created the first human clone -- believe that scientifically advanced extra-terrestrials manipulated DNA in order to create all life in Earth. Wow, that's really crazy. Don't they realize that life, along with everything else in heaven and earth, was actually created in just seven days by an omniscient, omnipotent being, who later had a mortal son, who died, was buried, rose from the dead, and ascended to heaven?Saturday, January 11, 2003
Putting Prostitution Back On the Street Where It Belongs
According to a news story I heard on the radio (I couldn't find any articles about it online), the Royal Viking Hotel in Los Angeles is in trouble for allegedly "facilitating" prostitution and other criminal activities. The city council has decided it's time to crack down on the hotel, so they are forcing it - by means of a court to injunction - to stop selling condoms, stop renting rooms for fewer than 12 hours at a time, and stop renting rooms for less than $25 a day.Wow. Just for the fun of it, let's even suppose you think that outlawing sex between consenting adults when money is involved is a good idea. Let's count how many different ways this injunction gets it wrong.
1. The injunction against condoms punishes only those prostitutes and clients who want to have *safe* sex. This might deter some prostitutes and clients from having sex, but only by encouraging the rest to have sex more dangerously. At best, this part of the injunction will have no effect because prostitutes will just bring their condoms with them. Meanwhile, the regular customers who just want to have sex (with no money involved) will also be deprived of the convenience of buying condoms at the hotel.
2. The prohibition on renting rooms for fewer than 12 hours at a time punishes plenty of people who aren't prostitutes or their clients, such as truck drivers who just need a few hours sleep, or young couples who'd rather not have sex in their parents' homes. Similarly, the prohibition on renting rooms for less than $25 per day is just a price floor, which hurts anyone looking for a cheap place to spend the night.
3. The last two restrictions combined raise the cost of doing business in private - but not the cost of doing so in back alleys, parking lots, and other public places. One of the main arguments that people have against legal prostitution is the potential exposure of children and other sensitive persons to seedy sexual transactions in public places. In that case, does it make sense to discourage prostitutes from taking their business indoors?
I can't think of a more foolhardy approach to fighting prostitution. It encourages exactly those aspects of the business that people finds most objectionable - specifically, spreading disease and conducting private affairs in public spaces. And it does this while punishing law-abiding citizens who want a cheap place to sleep or (why not?) have sex.
Thursday, January 09, 2003
"Ha Ha, Made You Look" Advertising
When TV networks started putting a nearly transparent network logo in the lower righthand corner during programs, I was actually in favor of it. When I'm channel surfing, I like to know what channel I've surfed onto. And if I'm catching the end of a previous show before the show I intend to watch, it's nice to know I'm in the right place.But then, as anyone who's watched TV in the last two years knows, the logos started growing, traded their transparency for vivid colors, acquired moving graphics, and began adding advertisements for other shows. I figure it won't be long before they develop intelligence and apply for membership in the UN.
The latest travesty: I was watching Law & Order on TNT, and the whole bottom fifth of the screen suddenly turned blue. The words "STORM WARNING!" scrolled across the screen from right to left, and I stopped what I was doing to find out if we were in for another windstorm like the one we had last week, which caused numerous homes to lose power for more than 48 hours. "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night," it continued, "the TNT broadcast of THE PERFECT STORM, starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg!" What's next - using the Emergency Broadcast System to alert us about changes in the primetime line-up?
Wednesday, January 08, 2003
It's Creepy and It's Kooky, Macro Economy!
With respect to the proposals in GWB's new economic "stimulus" plan, some critics have commented on the oddness of proposing long-term solutions to short-term problems. Senator Ted Kennedy's reaction (quoted in this Reuters story) is typical: "To use the need for an immediate economic stimulus as an excuse to enact costly new permanent tax breaks for the wealthy is a cynical and disheartening ploy," said Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.The critics are correct from the perspective of old-school Keynesian fiscal policy. The recommended fiscal policy response to a slumping economy usually involves one-time spending increases or tax deductions, not "permanent" changes in the tax code. But guess what: using fiscal policy to deal with macroeconomic cycles is a poor idea anyway. It is incredibly, almost insurmountably difficult to get the size and timing of legislative responses to correspond to the ups and downs of the economy. By the time it's apparent that a fiscal policy response would have been helpful, the window has most likely closed. Current spending increases and tax reductions will have little or no impact on current unemployment rates. Their primary impact will likely be months down the road, when the economy might already have recovered on its own.
So if you want to judge the wisdom of new tax and spending proposals, short-run economic performance is not the correct measure. The appropriate criterion is the probable effect on *long-run* economic growth. And in that regard, GWB's proposals move us in pretty much the right direction, as some Cato scholars argue here, *assuming* they are eventually accompanied by spending cuts. That's a big assumption, unfortunately. Of course, most of GWB's supporters are casting their praise of his proposals in terms of the slumping economy because that's what people are concerned about right now. (But note that all the real praise from the Cato scholars is in terms of "growth," despite the misleading headline about "stimulus.")
As an aside, it's worth noting that the word "permanent" doesn't really mean much in this context anyway. In what sense is any legislation really permanent? Unless there is some kind of supermajority requirement for changing it, as is the case with constitutional provisions, all it takes to reverse a "permanent" law passed by a majority is another law passed by another majority. Short of passing a constitutional amendment, the 2003 Congress and president are utterly incapable of placing binding constraints on any future Congress and president - even if they are the very same people. Calling a tax cut or another change in the law "permanent" has all the power of making a wish with your fingers crossed. Those of us who favor tax cuts will just have to hope that future legislators are willing to stick with them.
Tuesday, January 07, 2003
Monday, January 06, 2003
Movable Type
While driving home today, I saw an SUV with two huge stickers in its back window, both in huge Gothic type. The one on the left read, "Holy Spirit Fueled," and the other read, "Powered by Jesus." I couldn't help wondering what kind of mileage they were getting, and whether they were using 87, 89, or 93 octane Jesus. And then I wondered if there might be a more spiritual interpretation, like a modern-day version of the Hanukkah story: while driving home from Vegas a few years ago, they realized they had only enough gasoline left for one more mile, and yet that gasoline miraculously allowed the car to travel the eight miles down the interstate to the nearest gas station.Seriously, though, I'm curious as to the motivation behind these and most other bumper stickers. Are there people whose political and religious viewpoints are influenced by the messages they see plastered on strangers' vehicles? I'm reminded of an article in The Onion's _Our Dumb Century_ from 1973: "Bumper Sticker Industry Applauds Roe v. Wade Decision." The final paragraph of the article pretty much says it all: "The historic ruling means bumper-sticker creators will dictate the terms of America's abortion dialogue in the coming years. Said [Bumper-Sticker Manufacturers of America President Karl] Steinholz, 'This debate has now moved out of the courts and onto the bumpers of cars, where it belongs.'"
I suspect, as my sister suggested to me, that no one really thinks they'll change anyone's mind with a bumper sticker, and therefore most bumper stickers are just expressions of belief - commonly, the belief that "I'm better than you." Still, there are some bumper stickers I do enjoy, typically ones designed for the entertainment (as opposed to moral and political education) of other drivers. Many of these make fun of other bumper stickers, "Jeez if you love Honkus" being the classic. "Nuke the whales" was funny once, but is now tired. That's the problem, of course; the humor may be gone, but the bumper sticker lingers on.
Sunday, January 05, 2003
The Origin of Theses
In the process of researching the alcohol industry, I unexpectedly ran across the origin of the economics profession's favorite proverb, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." It began in the pre-Prohibition days, when manufacturers of alcohol could, and often did, sell their wares directly to customers. This practice is now forbidden by post-Prohibition federal and state laws that effectively mandate a three-tier alcohol industry in which distributors must stand between manufacturers and retailers. According to a 1997 story (not available online without payment) from the Orange County Register,The purpose of these laws was to eliminate predatory turn-of-the-century marketing such as that practiced by "tied houses" - distiller-owned taverns that offered salt pork or free sandwiches to induce working men to visit and drink. The sobriety and wages lost to this "tied-house evil" spawned the phrase, "There's no such thing as a free lunch. "An interesting story, despite the highly questionable use of the word "predatory."
Friday, January 03, 2003
Regifting
According to this Reuters story, the Christmas shopping season may be "extended" this year because of the unexpectedly large number of people who gave gift certificates. Tell me about it. When I was in Restoration Hardware about a week before Christmas, I overheard an employee ask her manager if it was okay for a customer to use a gift certificate to buy… another gift certificate. (The answer was yes.)
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