The advantage of making papers harder to understand

When I was a college student, a professor of logic once asked us to write a brief paper on a specified topic, which I no longer remember.  I do remember that I didn’t understand the question that we were supposed to address and had no clue what to write.  So I carried out an experiment.  I wrote something such that each sentence appeared to make sense, but so that the paper did not make any sense when taken as a whole.  (Think “Sarah Palin’s speeches” but with crisper logic.)  My experiment was successful as far as I was concerned.  I got a “B.”  My conjecture is that it would have taken the professor too much time to see through my lack of logic, and it was easier to give it a reasonable grade.  (Warning to current students:  do not try this approach with me.)

In today’s Boston Globe, there is a brief article entitled  “You’d sound smarter if you wrote less clearly.” It’s about David Hakes, an economics professor, who simplified a complex argument in mathematical economics.  Hakes explained, ”We managed to reduce the equations in the paper to six. At this stage the paper was perfectly clear and was written at a level so that it could reach a broad audience.”   When the paper was rejected for being “self evident”, Hakes and his co-author decided to make his work less readable and much more complex mathematically, with no added value.  Hakes later wrote ”I personally could no longer understand the paper.”  It was now acceptable to the referees and published.

Hakes’ point extends to Operations Research and other fields that rely on mathematics.    Referees often do not like simplicity because it may make a paper sound “obvious”, and no referee wants to accept a paper that is obvious.  Mathematical complexity usually seems unobvious, and makes the paper more palatable.

As a referee, I have sometimes asked for a substantive revision of a complex paper if I came up with a much simpler version.  For example, I once asked  an 80 page paper to be shortened to around 15 pages, with no loss of content.   But simplifying a paper is, in general, very difficult and is not the task of a referee.  The unfortunate truth is that authors really can increase their odds of publication by making their papers unnecessarily complex.

Congressman Joe Wilson is a liar

Joe Wilson managed to go from obscurity to fame by violating the decorum of the Congress.  He was also able to raise a $1 million for his bad behavior.  (So did his opponent in the upcoming primary.)  He is also a liar.

The lie was not his calling Barack Obama a liar.  Wilson apparently believed that Obama was lying when Obama said that his plan would not cover illegal immigrants.  Rather, Wilson was just being stupid and ignorant given that Obama’s statement was largely true, as reported by factcheck.org.  (One can quibble with Obama’s statement, but that hardly makes Obama a liar.)

Wilson’s lie was when he claimed “[I] let my emotions get the best of me on the critical issue of health care.”  To be honest, I can’t prove that Wilson was lying.  I just believe it to be true.  Conceivably, Joe Wilson has the impulse-control of a 4 year old, and shouted out his insult to the President in one of the most inappropriate venues imaginable just because he could not control himself. I doubt that this is the case.  More likely, Wilson planned to shout out that Obama was a liar, and was just waiting for a moment to do so.  What Wilson did not know was (1) his behavior was uncivil, boorish, and totally unacceptable, and (2) his behavior would be rewarded anyway.   It’s a very sad commentary on our politics that so many are quick to defend such bad behavior.

Japan’s prominent O.R. Ph.D.

As reported in the INFORMS news, the current prime minister of Japan, Yukio Hatoyama,  completed his Ph.D. in Operations Research at Stanford in 1976.   He worked under the supervision of Gerald Lieberman on markov repair models.   His 1977 paper

“Markov maintenance models with control of queue”, Journal of Operations Research Society in Japan 20, 164-181

is available online.

He also co-authored a 1984 book entitled “Stochastic models in reliability theory”.

We all hope that the prime minister is successful in repairing the Japanese economy in a reliable manner.

By the way, I started my Ph.D. at Stanford in the semester after Dr. Hatoyama left the department.  So, I never met him, but wish that I had.

Using Operations Research to improve hospital efficiencies

There is a great article that promotes the use of Operations Research in hospitals that was printed in the Boston Globe this week.  (Actually, it promotes Operations Management rather than O.R.)  Eugene Litvak of Boston University  has worked with Cincinnati Children’s hospital to improve “patient flow” resulting in a far better utilization of their resources.  Litvak’s improvement was comparable to an increase in 100 hospital beds, which in turn was comparable to a savings of $100 million per year.  The hospital was initially resistant to change, as are most hospitals.  But they are very pleased with the results.

Anyone who has experienced a hospital knows that there are often long waits both by patients and staff.   It is an environment that could use lots of O.R. help.  Dr. Michael Long, one of Litvak’s collaborators, put it well.

In some respects, Eugene [a Russian immigrant] was right at home [in dealing with U.S. hospitals].  It reminded him of the way things are done in Russia.

A revolutionary device for taking notes

Recently I heard of a new product called “SmartPen.”  It’s manufactured by LiveScribe.  As far as I can tell, it is a totally revolutionary product for taking notes. You can write notes into a note book and record the audio of what is happening at the same time.  Later, when you click on a word in your written notes, it will replay the audio that was recorded, starting five seconds before the word was written in your notes.  So, if you take notes during a lecture, you can instantly play back any part of the lecture that you want by just clicking on a word.

Here is a detailed blog entry from an MIT undergraduate named Michael Snively.  He writes:  “This pen, hands down, is the most amazing and potentially beneficial note-taking tool I’ve ever seen in my life.”

I haven’t used the product, but plan on buying one for my daughter, who will be starting college this coming fall.

On making games between friends more even

Suppose friends of unequal ability play games on a regular basis.  How can one make the games fair?  A classic approach comes from golf.  Each person subtracts his or her handicap from the score.  In principle this evens up the game.

Here is an alternative approach.  Suppose that A plays B and that A is typically 10 strokes better than B.   So, the first game, the discount for player B is set to 10.  That is, B is permitted to subtract 10 from his score.  If B wins the game, the discount is reset to 9.  If A wins, the discount is reset to 11.   In the long run, A and B win approximately the same number of games, regardless of their relative skills.

This strategy applies to any game that is determined by a final score that is played by friends who want to even the odds.

A personal note on healthcare costs

A little over a year ago, I felt very mild chest pains.  At the time, the issue is whether I should have it checked out or not.  I was advised to go to MGH Emergency.   Eighteen hours later and after $7,000 of medical expenses incurred (paid by my insurance), I was released.  They had found nothing wrong.  However, they told me that their “heart stress test” had not been sufficiently rigorous and advised me to have another at another large cost.  I did take a second test, and nothing wrong was found.

I was pleased that I received such good and thorough attention, but it suggested to me that our health care system is out of control.  It was a close call as to whether I was going to have it checked out.  This would have led to a cost of $0.   Having it checked out cost more than $7,000.  Shouldn’t there have been something in between, something that involved one or two tests only, followed by monitoring of the situation?  I know that if I had been required to pay for 10% of the costs, I would not have requested this first class treatment.

I don’t know what the solution is.  But it appears to me that healthcare costs are out of control, and they are only going to get worse.

David Brooks, on why CEOs need O.R.

In today’s New York Times David Brooks wrote an op-ed on the characteristics of good CEOs (“In Praise of Dullness”).

“The traits that correlated most powerfully with success were attention to detail, persistence, efficiency, analytic thoroughness and the ability to work long hours. … What mattered was emotional stability and, most of all, conscientiousness — which means being dependable, making plans and following through on them. …  The second thing the market seems to want from leaders is a relentless and somewhat mind-numbing commitment to incremental efficiency gains.”

I would have preferred it if Brooks had not use words like “dull” and “mind-numbing”.  But I appreciate his implicit support of Operations Research.   Perhaps our field should adopt a new slogan:   “We are Operations Researchers.  We have a relentless commitment to incremental efficiency gains.”

The phrase “and somewhat mind-numbing” is optional.

Small pond Republicans

“Would you rather be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond.”  This is a question sometimes asked of job seekers who are deciding between a large firm or a small start-up.  Sometimes it is asked of a talented academic researcher who is deciding between a first tier research university (large pond) or a university where there are fewer high quality researchers (small pond).  It is rarely asked of political parties, who are always seeking to enlarge their power.  At least that is what I used to think.

Apparently conservative Republicans prefer to be large fish in a small pond.  The most recent evidence of this is their attitude of “good riddance” towards Arlen Specter, and their apparent desire to see Colin Powell to leave the party.

In today’s Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby supports Powell leaving the Republican party (after Jacoby mischaracterizes Powell’s views).  More importantly, there seems to be a chorus of those who would like Powell to leave, most notably Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney, both of whom are “small pond Republicans.”   Colin Powell is thoughtful, compassionate, honest, pragmatic, and strongly believes in the rule of law.  Perhaps this explains why Limbaugh and Cheney and would like him to leave the Republican Party.

When Powell joined the GOP, he believed it best represented his overall views on politics.  Since then, the Republican party has moved heavily to the right, has become far less tolerant, and is much smaller.  The conservative solution to this is to try to weed out those who want the party to move more to the center.   This is not the way to gain political influence, but perhaps conservatives have bigger fish to fry, or to kick out of their shrinking pond.

A combinatorial problem on coincidences

In response to a recent editorial by Dick Cavett on coincidences,  Jack (4th commenter) responded with the following story:

A relative was married and there was a sit-down dinner for all guests at the reception, including my father, mother, sister and me. I suppose there were 150 people. The hostess wanted totally arbitrary seating, so she placed 150 little cards in a basket, numbered 1 -150, and each guest was to reach in a pick a number as they entered the room. Then she randomly numbered the 150 seats at the tables. It made for some confusion, as each person had to search for his or her seat. In case you haven’t guessed, the four of us where seated in a row. I mean, what are the chances!

You can try solving it yourself before reading on.  Assume that there were 15 circular tables, each with 10 persons each.

Solution. The assignment of people to numbers can be ignored since the probabilities are exactly the same for every possible assignment of people to numbers.  The analysis assumes that the assignment of people to numbers has already been carried out.

There are 150! (that is, 150 factorial) ways of placing the 150 numbers at the tables.  There are 10 ways of selecting four consecutive seats at any specified table, and thus 150 different ways of selecting four consecutive seats at one of the 15 tables.  If the family sits together, this leaves 146 seats for everyone else, and these numbers can be assigned to seats in 146! ways.   Thus, the number of configurations in which the four family members are seated in a row are

146! (150)(4!),

where the 4! is the number of different ways the four family members can be arranged within the four seats.  Therefore, the probability of the four family members being together is

146!(150)(4!)/150! = 24/(149*148*147),

which is approximately 1 in 135,000.  Incidentally, the probability is independent of the number of tables or the size of tables, so long as there are at least 5 persons at each table.   For example, the probability is the same if there was a single circular table with 150 seats.