More on Grade Inflation

Reader Lucas Wyman notes a specific example of how grade inflation has helped to drain resources from science and math:

Last fall, I found a course description book being thrown away in a stack of books by a retiring faculty member. The catalogue was from 1983 (the year I was born), and it contained a great many interesting surprises. The mathematics department offered a second course in logic which covered model-theoretic results and set theory, a course in point set topology, a course in algebraic topology, one in complex analysis, measure theory at the undergraduate level (now considered graduate), several courses in theoretical computer science, and what is now two classes in abstract algebra was only one class. I asked my faculty advisor why there had been such a change (he started in 1986), and this was his explanation (paraphrased from memory and condensed substantially from several conversations):

"At the time we had almost 400 majors in the department with nearly 150 of them in pure math, but now we have about 300 majors with 50 in pure math. Changes in the [state] teacher requirements (for high school) forced us to restructure the algebra class since a decent course would be too hard for most HS teachers. The reason that we lost students is both that a lot of bright people went into computer science, and our program was considered too hard, so that people started going to easier majors. As we were forced to stop running courses, people began to come back because the program requirements became easier, and it's been sort of a spiral down since."

Seems to jibe pretty well with your experience and intuition...

Yep. The really difficult part, from the perspective of a professor who'd like to reverse the trend, is that you cannot make the change unilaterally. If you started grading your classes harder than others, you would just be punishing those students who took your course instead of someone else's -- and probably reducing your future class sizes. In addition, you'd probably be lowering your evaluations relative to other instructors. I think this situation has many features of the classic prisoners' dilemma.

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The Invisible Foot Strikes Again

Mark Kleiman provides a comprehensive breakdown of the issues raised by the OMB's threat to give the DEA only a small budget increase because of its gross inefficacy. But I prefer Amy’s quick-and-dirty bottom line:

So remember folks, if you're a totally ineffective government agency doing a job that shouldn't be done in the first place, you might only get a small amount of extra money, like say a few million dollars.

And that, of course, is what happens when government works *well*. The usual rule for bureaucracies is the worse you do, the more funding you get.

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Not Making the Grade

This article about grade inflation struck a chord with me, since I have to deal with grade inflation on a daily basis. The following observation rang especially true:

Unfortunately, grade inflation is not costless. One consequence is that students are discouraged from taking science courses, where the nature of the subject matter has held down grade inflation, in favor of those in the humanities, where it is rampant. Over time, this has caused universities to drain resources from science programs.

Now, I don't know if it's actually true that resources have been drained from science programs (has there been a study?), but it definitely fits with my intuition and personal observation. Some disciplines, including my own, have a greater inherent resistance to grade inflation than others. It's easier to mark someone down for a clear error in math or graphing than to mark someone down for awkwardness (though not actual grammar errors) in writing. When there are some answers that are clearly right or wrong, not just a matter of opinion, grading standards are not as difficult to maintain.

Not surprisingly, the average grades are lower in economics and physics than any other department at my university (or so I've been told). And the students undoubtedly react by avoiding courses in subjects where the grading is known to be harder. If universities respond at all to the ebb and flow of student demand - and I think they do, though not with the speed and efficiency of for-profit organizations - then it's inevitable that resources will flow from the harder to the easier departments, other things equal. Of course, the other-things-equal assumption is important; if firms recognize the value of a good education in science and math, they will offer higher wages for students so educated, and that should increase the demand for the appropriate majors. Unfortunately, not all students are so far-sighted, and in any case, the grade differential still biases the selection of majors. Some students on the margin, who would have picked a math or science major if the grading were comparable, will choose the touchy-feely majors instead. So much the worse for them - and the rest of us.

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Return of the Muse

One of my favorite websites, Free-Market.Net, has risen from the ashes. After the demise of its parent company, the Henry Hazlitt Foundation, I wasn't sure Free-Market.Net would find a home - but fortunately, the International Society for Individual Society has rescued it. And as though to mark the occasion, they've resumed the Free-Market.Net Personal Update service, which until December 2002 had emailed me a daily list of web links on issues I specified. That service was my source for many blog topics, and I've been hurting for inspiration since then. I'm so pleased it's back!

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People Who Live in Glass Vaticans…

Good news -- the Vatican has given the thumbs-up to Harry Potter. The best part is the following quotation from Vatican spokesman Peter Fleetwood:

I don't think that any of us grew up without the *imaginary* world of fairies, magicians, *angels* and witches.

The emphasis is mine, of course.

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On a Lighter Note

Gene Healy provides a knee-slappingly funny deconstruction of smoking bans, as well as a pants-wettingly clever rejoinder to his critics. The short version: Smoking is cool. Dweebs and sissies who can’t handle the smoky atmosphere and stinky clothes lobby for laws that make it easier for them to hang out with cool people.

I, like Gene, am one of those non-smokers who has tried and failed to pick up the habit -- but who still recognizes the coolness of smoking. Its self-destructiveness, its “air of futility and tragedy” as Gene puts it, does not make smoking uncool -- on the contrary, the danger is precisely the allure. The people who would redefine smoking as “uncool” remind me of the elementary school teachers who tried to convince us that “Reading Is Cool!” and “Math Is Cool!” What a crock. Reading and math are useful, indispensable in fact, and (for some) interesting. But reading is not cool unless it’s Ken Kesey or J. D. Salinger; math is not cool unless you’re taking book. Point being, “cool” is not a universal word for anything good or desirable. It’s a specific attribute of things that, fairly often, are fun laced with some degree of danger. Trying to convince people otherwise is a good way to identify yourself as, not merely a dweeb or sissy, but someone who doesn’t even quite understand modern American slang.

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Federal Department of Lying to Your Kids

According to the Drug Czar… okay, hold on for a minute, I can't finish that sentence without inserting a quick rant. Doesn't the Constitution of the United States forbid the granting of titles of nobility? And is not "Czar" a title of nobility? Yeah, I know, "Czar" isn't the man's real title. It's really "Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy." But nobody calls him that. And the fact that a government official in the American democracy is regularly referred to as a Russian monarch should give us pause, don't you think?

Back to the top. According to the Drug Czar, it's a good idea to lie to your kids about drugs -- specifically, about your own past use of drugs. I think Amy's take on this is exactly right, so I won't belabor it. I will, however, point out a couple of misleading claims in Czar John Walters's comments.

First, he says that parents who smoked marijuana "should warn their children that the dope being peddled today is much more potent than what the older generation smoked." While that's true, it erroneously implies that people who smoke now are getting more high than before, whereas in fact the evidence indicates that marijuana smokers seem to aim for a "target" level of intoxication, and now it just takes less weed to get there than it did before. (I found that out from Mark Kleiman's blog a few weeks or months ago, though his archives don't seem to be operative at the moment.)

Second, Walters says that "of the 6 million Americans undergoing drug treatment today, about 60 percent are marijuana-dependent." Notice the clever wording. He does *not* say that 60 percent of people undergoing drug treatment are undergoing treatment for marijuana. What the statistic really shows is that, for every ten people undergoing treatment for *some* drug, six of them also use marijuana. This is not surprising -- someone who uses crack might very well like weed, too. But the crack, not the weed, is most likely the reason they're in treatment.

I disagree with the Czar's notion that lying to and misleading your children is a good policy. But I'll give him this much credit: at least he's leading by example.

UPDATE: Mark kindly sent me the link to his comments on marijuana potency. Aside from the point above (that pot smokers seem to aim for a target high), it also turns out that Walters's factual claim about the potency per ounce is also bogus, for reasons Mark explains.

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Insert Monkey Pun Here: More on Evolution and Recommendations

Mark refers to the Texas Tech biology professor Michael Dini as a “fool” for his no-recommendations-for-creationists policy. That’s harsh. Mark himself admits that this policy might be appropriate if applied only to biology majors: “After all, you probably wouldn't recommend someone for graduate work in physics who insisted that Newtonian mechanics was ‘just a theory’ and held out for the Aristotelian theory of motion.” His complaint, then, must be based on the judgment – a factual judgment, I submit – about whether evolution is relevant in the practice of medicine. I tend to agree with Mark that it probably is not. But then again, Paul Orwin (quoted here by Eugene) points out some plausible connections between evolution and medicine – or at least between evolution and medical research. Even if one doesn’t agree with Orwin’s or Dini’s arguments, they hardly strike me as “foolish.” Honest, intelligent people can disagree here.

Mark puts the issue in terms of compelling recommendation-seekers to say something they don’t believe: “Handicapping someone in applying to medical school because he won't say something he thinks is false is mean and stupid, just as kicking a kid out of Scouting because he won't pretend to a belief in a Higher Power is mean and stupid.” Perhaps this is a reason for Prof. Dini not to make his policy public, lest students just give him the answer they know he wants to hear. But the honesty concern cuts both ways: if the professor truly believes – for whatever reason – that a student is not qualified, it is disingenuous for him to write a letter indicating otherwise.

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"I Cannot Recommend Her More Highly..."

Eugene discusses the fascinating case of a biology professor at Texas Tech who refuses to write recommendations for students who reject the theory of evolution. The case raises questions relating both to law and to academic ethics, and Eugene presents excellent arguments on both sides of both issues. Nonetheless, my strong inclination is to defend the professor’s discretion. Let’s set aside the issue of evolution versus creation, and just look at what it means to write a recommendation.

As a professor, I have to write recommendations fairly often, and it’s not a simple process. When you do it, you’re putting your name and reputation behind someone, saying to others that you think this person is honest, credible, and possessed of the necessary skills or talents for the position he seeks. (Unless, of course, it’s a *bad* recommendation – more on that below.) Writing a recommendation involves, to some degree or another, putting one’s own credibility on the line, and it necessarily involves the exercise of judgment.

Thus, writing a recommendation is not just another requirement of the job, like grading papers or having office hours. It’s making a statement about one’s own beliefs and judgment. Although it would be unacceptable for a professor to say (as one of my sister’s unfortunately said) that he will never write any recommendations at all, there has to be a very wide margin of discretion. To require someone to recommend someone whom they do not deem worthy is to remove all meaning from the word “recommendation.”

I think there is also a relevant practical consideration: there is no way to require that a recommendation be “fair.” As anyone who’s ever written or read a recommendation can attest, it is easy enough to damn a candidate with faint praise. For that matter, the letter writer could just use heavy and uninspiring language, so that the letter is less likely to have a positive impact. It’s rather like trying to compel an actor to perform the role of Hamlet – if he really isn’t inspired by the role, there’s no way to assure a good performance. Requiring professors to write recommendations seems likely to encourage them to write less-than-glowing letters for students who are better off asking someone else.

These considerations hold true even if the particular professor’s judgment is compromised in some way. In the present case, I think the professor is probably correct to doubt the scientific-mindedness of biology students willing to ignore the incredible array of evidence supporting evolution. On the other hand, he is likely mistaken that one’s perspective on evolution has much to do with one’s effectiveness in the medical profession. Yet that is his judgment, and judgment cannot truly be compelled. A policy that requires professors to write recommendations even when their convictions tell them otherwise will either (a) result in weak recommendations not worth having, or (b) result in strong-but-insincere recommendations that diminish the persuasive power of sincere recommendations.

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What Would Jesus Smoke?

Once again, the Office of National Drug Control Policy spent millions of dollars of your money to spread drug war propaganda during the Superbowl.

In one ad, “Ghost Train,” a man on a subway is haunted by ghosts of people killed in the crossfire of the drug war. Why are they harassing this well-dressed commuter? Because he bought drugs (the ghosts explain) and the drug dealers were fighting over drug money. In another ad, “Ghost Office,” a little girl killed in a bomb blast gives a guilt trip to a businesswoman who bought drugs – because the money ended up in the hands of terrorists. Both ads end with the message, “Drug Money Supports Terrible Things.”

This is something like punching holes in your neighbor’s gas line, and then blaming the explosion on your neighbor’s filthy cigarette habit.

There should be a parody of these ads that puts the blame where it really belongs. In the new version of the ads, when the commuter and businesswoman ask why the ghosts are blaming them, the ghosts should respond: “Because you’re a member of Congress, and you voted for the war on drugs. Your laws created huge black-market profits that lead to violence and death.” The ads should end with the message, “The War on Drugs is a War on People.”

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Linguistic Cosmos and Taxis

Eugene takes on the language police, and for the most part I agree with him. Language is, as Eugene argues, a “grown order” that evolves over time. New usages emerge and old ones die, in response to the real needs of real language users. Trying to freeze the language in place -- or worse yet, turn back the clock to some earlier version of the language -- is a pointless and (to the rest of us) annoying endeavor.

But I do have a nit to pick, as I think Eugene’s criticism goes too far. He says:

Linguistic prescriptivism (dictionarymakers recording what they think should be the usage, not what is the usage), is a "made order" -- a judgment of a small group of people selected for the purpose of rendering their judgment. Made orders are sometimes useful, for instance in the setting of technical standards. But as to language, I think the grown order approach is far more likely to yield a language that is genuinely responsive to users' needs than the made order approach.

Yes, grown orders (also known as spontaneous orders) are generally more responsive than made orders. But does any form of linguistic prescriptivism necessarily fall in the latter category? Unless the prescriptivists actually attempt to enforce their standards on the rest of us in the manner of the French Academy, the power of the prescriptivists to influence the language is dependent on the willingness of other speakers to follow their lead. In other words, the prescriptivists' admonitions have their place within the grown order of language. If you want a real example of a made order in language, try Esperanto.

Consider the analogy with the free market, another type of spontaneous order. The defining characteristic of this order is *not* the absence of hierarchy or deliberate organization; otherwise, we’d have to conclude that the existence of firms violates the principles of the market. The defining characteristic of the market order is the absence of an overarching authority with the ability to command specific outcomes. Within this decentralized framework, influential people and organizations may work to achieve specific outcomes on a voluntary basis. The linguistic prescriptivists are analogous to the managers of a firm who, upon observing a new competitor that claims to make a better mousetrap, stubbornly insist that the old-fashioned mousetrap is superior. And maybe they’re right; the real test is in the mousetrap-buying choices of consumers. Likewise, in language, the test of the prescriptivists’ prescriptions is their staying power.

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My Small Place in the Blogosphere

I find this amusing. I've created a couple of charts showing the number of hits on this website for each day and week since it creation. See if you can guess when I got linked by Instapundit.

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Milton's Paradise Folded, Spindled, and Mutilated

Radley posted this quotation from Milton Friedman almost a week ago, but it's evergreen. And here's the graphic version.

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And Who Says Accidental Gun Deaths Are All Bad?

I heard on the radio this afternoon that a man in Virginia (I think) accidentally shot and killed himself while trying to beat his dog to death with the butt of his shotgun.

UPDATE: And here's the link, courtesy of Eugene.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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).

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