No one cared about my spreadsheets • Hacker News Board

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#181

Post by cafxx » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:52 AM UTC

> The most novel feature of my return to education calculations was that I tried to count everything that matters. I took the countless papers that start with the standard return estimates and tweak them with one novel complication. Then I merged all the tweaks that seemed convincing to me to get final policy-relevant numbers.

(emphasis mine, highlighting in the author's own words enough wiggle room to potentially undermine for the purposes of general policy whatever number comes out of said estimates; if you pick and choose the conditions, you can get any arbitrary value as an estimate; I'm not arguing his estimate is not valid, it very likely is - but only under the author's choice of values)

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#182

Post by xyzzyz » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:53 AM UTC

overgrownzygote wrote: post #153

lelandbatey wrote: post #73

Well, if you're going to throw down the gauntlet like that Mr. Caplan, how can I resist! I began by actually looking at this authors spreadsheets, then looking at their claims, and ultimately, I downloaded a copy of their book[0] to review what that book says. So here's the info: The fundamental claim of the book is that currently, the "western education model" is not (really) about skill accumulation or increasing t…

Figured someone who has read the book might see this and be able to answer a question — to what extent is Caplan’s critique of the U.S.-model of widespread-ish resource-intensive higher education tied and the credentialing problem it “solves,” and how much is a critique of higher education in toto? I can certainly get on board with the former, and if that’s Caplan’s argument, I might have to add his book to my readin…

It's more like, "university is good for most individual who actually complete it, but in aggregate, it is a net loss to the society, both when people pay their own way, and even more so when society subsidizes it".

If that doesn't make sense to you, imagine an alternate universe, where employers greatly value completing the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail, Pacific Crest Trails, and other great American hiking trails. People who hike through entirety of one or more of them are highly valued on the job market, as this clearly shows that they have patience, grit, spatial ability, following through with commitments to the very end etc. In that alternate universe, we'd have entire industry of check points on the trails, with proctors ensuring that people actually dutifully hike the entire thing without cheating, and issuing diplomas of completion at the finish line. A good number of people greatly enjoy hiking, so they'd love to be able to hike non stop for a few years. Many others couldn't care less about hiking, but will still somewhat enjoy their time on the trail, thanks to people they meet there, and unique experiences they have. Others will slog through, despising the entire exercise, but persisting because it will look good on their resume.

In all, people who do finish the trails will clearly benefit, but only through the virtue of existence of people who do not finish them, not through anything inherent to the things they learn or experience on the trails themselves. If everyone finished the trails, the society would not be better off compared to the scenario where nobody finished the trails. In fact it would probably be worse off, because we'd have millions of people spending years of their life on useless activity (notwithstanding some small percent of them enjoying it). Caplan argues that in our society, college is kinda like the trails.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#183

Post by _y5hn » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:57 AM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #104

sgdjgkeirj wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. Caplan makes a huge deal about the fact that a students that drops out one semester before finishing the degree takes a huge penalty to their salary. This is what he calls the “sheep skin effect”. He claims that because such a student gets almost all of the education, their penalty must correspond to the signaling component. But this is where his math runs against common sense. If you are an emp…

Ah, but if Caplan's signaling hypothesis is true, it creates an arbitrage opportunity. I'm thinking hypothetically and in broad terms. Take that N-1 dropout. If that person is worth more to a business than their market wage, then a savvy business person would have a profit motive to hire them for more than their market wage, but less than their known value, resulting in a win for the worker and the employer. A big en…

Maybe the researcher should start successful businesses on their own to capitalize on their ideas?

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#184

Post by debaserab2 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 5:57 AM UTC

chasil wrote: post #102

taeric wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not even sure what you are suggesting, to be honest. My point was that if you want scores to improve, you will have to pay more. Pretty much period. You don't get improvement, at any level, for free. Certainly not by cutting funding. Keeping the same level of funding will at best tread water. Likely, the area will fall, though. And I certainly wouldn't be comfortable pushing that outcome.

Management talent makes more happen for less. That's what we expect, as industrial management moved our industry offshore. Education has no right of excusal. Perform.

Why would anyone who has the talent to "make more happen for less" stay in education considering the abysmal pay?

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#185

Post by BeetleB » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 6:00 AM UTC

tomrod wrote: post #115

butwhywhyoh wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are providing zero evidence that there is any value to your experience about reading a clever comment comparing Brownian motion and the stock market. Not even qualitatively. You are already an incredibly rare person who would equate such things, so I think it's very odd that you think this concept could apply to the general population. The cherry on top is you haven't even read the book or looked at the spreadshe…

When conclusions are far outside reality, one must question the process and axioms from which it was generated. Reasoning from false premises can be strongly supported analytically.

But that's the complaint: People aren't finding flaws with the premises. They are simply asserting that the premises are false.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#186

Post by xyzzyz » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 6:02 AM UTC

henrikschroder wrote: post #179

xyzzyz wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Given all of this, it is much easier to calculate if an education is "worth it" or not than in the US market, because you can look at average salary progression in different fields to do a pretty good estimate of whether or not you'll repay your student loan before retirement. It's harder than you think. You also need to take into account probability of actually finishing the degree vs dropping out (which depends o…

> The entire subject of this conversation, Caplan's spreadsheet, is exactly his attempt to estimate all of that. Yes, but what I'm saying is that I don't care! People don't care! If you make your educational decisions based on optimizing the rat-race and delaying gratification in favour of some future calculated benefit, you're also the kind of person who has no idea what to do with it when you get there! My counter-…

That only begs another question: if the point of education is not learning things and building human capital, but rather play and self-expression, why do we put on the charade of classes and exams? If play and self-expression is so important for young adults, why would anyone think that college as it actually exists is the best way for them to get it? Why does the state subsidize college education, instead of private businesses, which offer 4 year programs specifically designed to allow attendees have lives full of fun and joy, without stressing them with memorizing of useless (to them) facts that they'll permanently forget as soon as they leave the examination room? I mean, I have a lot of good ideas for a 4 year self-actualization program, why won't government give people non-dischargeable $100k+ loans to attend it?

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#187

Post by tsimionescu » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 6:07 AM UTC

donohoe wrote: post #91

civilized wrote: post #6

Just my dumb opinion here, but... there's something extremely implausible on its face about the idea that a sufficiently complex spreadsheet could calculate the difference in value generated from kids going to school versus kids not going to school. If people could be convinced that this was something more than a castle in the sky, maybe it would get more attention. I imagine a bunch of academics put their fingers to…

You could just look at the data in the spreadsheet instead of speculating? I kinda think this is exactly part of the point he is making.

If someone said they came up with a spreadsheet that quantitatively proves that Homer's Odyssey is a worse piece of art than the Mona Lisa, would you go through their quantitative analysis, or simply dismiss their argument on the face of it?

Education's value to society and the individual is inherently unquantifiable with today's tools. Maybe someday we will have a mathematical model of the human mind and a theory of socio-economics that can actually handle such things, but we are extremely far from anything of the sort.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#188

Post by whatshisface » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 6:09 AM UTC

oehpr wrote: post #137

civilized wrote: post #6

Just my dumb opinion here, but... there's something extremely implausible on its face about the idea that a sufficiently complex spreadsheet could calculate the difference in value generated from kids going to school versus kids not going to school. If people could be convinced that this was something more than a castle in the sky, maybe it would get more attention. I imagine a bunch of academics put their fingers to…

I was just thinking. I remember being part of online community for a game (starsector, if you're interested) and a user had taken it upon themselves to create effectiveness measurements for the weapons in the vanilla game and in mods. To do this, they created a spreadsheet that mapped out damage per second, range, energy cost, points to use... ect. Numbered them all together, and ranked them with each other. Personal…

Doesn't asking that Caplan spend one second longer on his calculations automatically rule out everything else that anyone has ever said about the subject?

That's the most interesting part of this for me - nobody's saying "you're missing some important factors, and let's add them." People are saying, "I don't know that you included all the factors, so I am going to go back to reading opinion columnists for whom 'factor' is not a word."

Has everyone thought about the fact that the alternative to spreadsheets is policymakers putting their hands on their hips and saying, "Yep, $30k sounds about right for this month?"

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#189

Post by ask_b123 » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 6:09 AM UTC

stevemk14ebr wrote: post #143

jdminhbg wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the spreadsheet showed education was a net positive, would Caplan accept this and rewrite the book Caplan is definitely the type of person who would either rewrite on not write the book in that case. But this an implausible question anyway, because it’s not like you get this far into a project without an idea of what the evidence is telling you, waiting to press a button and out if it’s actually Good or Bad.

> either rewrite on not write the book in that case Your comment doesn't actually answer anything lol - he would - or wouldn't and you say both

The parent is saying that if the data pointed otherwise he would either:

- rewrite the book or

- not have written the book to begin with.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#190

Post by tsimionescu » Thu, Feb 17, 2022, 6:10 AM UTC

SllX wrote: post #8

civilized wrote: post #6

Just my dumb opinion here, but... there's something extremely implausible on its face about the idea that a sufficiently complex spreadsheet could calculate the difference in value generated from kids going to school versus kids not going to school. If people could be convinced that this was something more than a castle in the sky, maybe it would get more attention. I imagine a bunch of academics put their fingers to…

Well, is it calculable? If yes, then a sufficiently complex spreadsheet ought to be able to do the job. However with no auditing, we don’t know whether Brian’s did, or even approached the level of complexity needed to in his calculations. He tried to bring math to a subject that is typically argued through rhetoric and that’s respectable enough.

No, why would you expect something like "the value of education" to be calculable? Do you think the value of art is calculable?

Sure, in some vague far away future where we can predict human behavior through maths, it is probably possible, though likely forever intractable. But we are so obviously too far from that for it to be worthwhile to check a spreadsheet.