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No one cared about my spreadsheets

econlib.org

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Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#111

Post by sudosysgen »

burrows wrote: post #101
Demiurge wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if it were a recipe for a functional fusion reactor?

Would I rather spend money on scholarships for poor children or buy the recipe for a functional net-positive fusion reactor from aliens? How much recipe does each of my dollars get? I’d give away all of my current net worth and take out a loan for $1 million from loan sharks and give that away too for a functional fusion reactor recipe, pending some questions about whether they will be able to sell the recipe again,…

I know this is besides the point but even if we didn't have the materials, just knowing what materials we lack and that they are possible is monumental and would be worth tens of billions of dollars.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#112

Post by butwhywhyoh »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #77

In another HN post recently a commenter said something about the stock market, and they invoked an image of people collecting money from Brownian movement. It struck me that comment was excellent and insightful, and was only possible because both the commenter and myself were once taught something that neither of us uses in our day jobs, and may never have learned through any normal self-driven persuit. The more I he…

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 spreadsheet, which is precisely the authors point. You are one of the many people who heard something about the book, made assumptions about it, and then decided the book must be ignorant. Bravo!

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#113

Post by onos »

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…

Just want to point out that this challenge seems to be that the whole field / approach is unlikely to work. Perhaps. Still, presumably some of those challenging him specifically are in the field and they should be expected to explain why the math he carried out was wrong.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#114

Post by chasil »

taeric wrote: post #95
chasil wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our high school scores for English and math were 30.1% and 25.9%. We had Iowa towns that were in the 90%s. No, I cannot compare them, you are right, these people were exactly where they should have been. Is this sentiment perhaps a bit biased, especially for what I am paying. (Yes, I live in one of the most affordable places in the U.S.)

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.

What I would say to your assertion is this.

I am the last person, hired in 2000, that has stayed with our division/site within our company, who enjoys what they do (Oracle DBA).

Everyone hired since has been gone within 3 years.

We are hiring the wrong people, and I'm starting to quietly state that fact. We need to hire people with an appreciation of computing history, specifically with a desire to learn VMS and OS2200.

In the same way, education needs to hire the "dedicated long-haulers."

These people are probably not in their 20s. Maybe, but likely not.

They need to proselytize, and they need to be efficient.

I acknowledge that such people do not come cheap, but they are the point of the infrastructure.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#115

Post by tomrod »

butwhywhyoh wrote: post #112
Brian_K_White wrote: post #77

In another HN post recently a commenter said something about the stock market, and they invoked an image of people collecting money from Brownian movement. It struck me that comment was excellent and insightful, and was only possible because both the commenter and myself were once taught something that neither of us uses in our day jobs, and may never have learned through any normal self-driven persuit. The more I he…

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.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#116

Post by butwhywhyoh »

analog31 wrote: post #66

Honestly I haven't read the book or checked the spreadsheets, but neither of them answer the question: Are the findings true? Are they of value? To make an analogy, we don't go back to Maxwell's writings or his calculations to figure out if his electromagnetic theory is true (within its domain of applicability). If no other scientific work were ever connected to Maxwell's, we still wouldn't know if it's true, or at l…

You're going to be very disappointed to find out that physics is nothing at all like social sciences.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#117

Post by civilized »

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.

Or you could.

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#119

Post by tonto »

Havoc wrote: post #10

If you want people to look at your work (of any sort) it has to be at least marginally reader approachable. Novel thinking wrapped in a huge ball of spreadsheets isn’t that. Per authors own words it takes whole day author guided tour to get through it.

these days, research papers have figures and tables that automatically generated with knitr/R or similar systems. that is the future. can spreadsheets do that?

Re: No one cared about my spreadsheets

#120

Post by henrikschroder »

nickff wrote: post #54
Brian_K_White wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably because any attempt to even reduce the topic to a spreadsheet is a case of "not even wrong". When someone says that they proved that say, studying art doesn't matter, with math, you don't bother arguing with their math.

> "Probably because any attempt to even reduce the topic to a spreadsheet is a case of "not even wrong"." But he didn't reduce it to a spreadsheet, he wrote a very thorough book. > "When someone says that they proved that say, studying art doesn't matter, with math, you don't bother arguing with their math." I am not sure what you think Caplan says. His book is mostly about the signalling and human capital models of…

> His book is mostly about the signalling and human capital models of education. The vast majority of post-secondary students say they attend post-secondary education in order to increase their future earnings

So what about the partying, making friends for life, and learning to be an adult?

What about care-free student life as a carrot to incentivise young adults to go into careers that might not be good for them personally, but good for society?

Or how about letting people have careers that are personally fulfilling, but not economically productive?

Taking a year abroad to study in the middle of whatever university education you're in is a financially stupid decision. And yet, one I recommend every single student to do, because it's fun.

A million years ago when I was nearing the end of high school, we all talked about which university educations were financially the best, and worst. Which educations "paid for themselves", and which ones didn't. Everyone knew. And then we all picked whatever we personally liked and thought we would enjoy working with in the future.

Caplan might be 100% right. And also 100% irrelevant.

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