I came home from the airport today to discover my car had been broken into again, only this time they decided to enter by shattering my front window, which will now cost me $200 to replace.  I feel bad for the person who is in a situation where he has to break my window to steal what amounted to about $4 and some pens, but I can’t imagine that it was worth the effort.  It also nets a $204 loss to me, while only a $4 gain to him.  The Coase Theorem teaches us that we would both be better off if I just gave $5 to him. He’d have an extra dollar, and I wouldn’t have to replace my window.

Of course, some people call paying someone not to break your stuff extortion.  If only I could pay a group of people to protect me from potential car-robbers.  I could even pool my money with other car-owners and they could protect all cars, not just mine.  And maybe, while they’re at it, they could protect people from murders, or guard public events.  And as long as they’re protecting everyone, maybe we could fund them through some sort of tax scheme - after all, their protection would be a public good.

But what would we call such a group, and who would stop them from beating the crap out of everybody?

Categories: Community, Governance, Incentive Centered Design, Law, Politics
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Looks like my move to Chicago was a smart one: it’s now Fast Company’s City of the Year.

Now if only I could squeeze in some time to spend there with my travel schedule.

Categories: Community
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Or will at least be on a TV.

Tycho of Penny Arcade writes:

Forming your own bands which create original music and then upload these tracks - complete with vocals - to a community rated central repository verges on the supernatural. That’s the new MTV. It’s what MTV looks like when we seize the reins in glorious revolution.

He’s talking about Rock Band, the upcoming game from the makers of Guitar Hero.

Established companies are finally starting to ‘get it’ and empower their users or risk becoming irrelevant.

Categories: Business and Economics, Community, Information Economics, Social Software, Technology
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A discussion of Millenials in the Christian Science Monitor:

But Twenge and others are wildly mistaken about the Millennial generation – those born since the early 1980s. No matter what teens say on surveys, there is scant evidence that they act more selfishly. In fact, the trends in youth behavior support the opposite conclusion – that Millennials have much greater regard for one another, their parents, and the community than Generation Xers or baby boomers had at the same phase of life.

Some notes:

• This is an important lesson about surveys and revealed preferences. Survey questions only work if you have reason to believe people will respond honestly (why questions about race don’t work) and the questions you’re asking actually measure what you want (which is much more frequent). The crime data shows how people are actually behaving, not how they answer silly questions about their personality.
• Why are there always sky-is-falling predictions about the next generation, especially when in general, things keep getting better? Cut the kids some slack, as much as you try to say that you were different, you were just like them when you were young.
• More specifically, whats with the boomers and trying to put all the negative attributes of their generation (selfishness, antipathy towards parents, sex and drug use) onto the newest generation, despite the fact that all the evidence says Millenials are totally unlike the boomers (similar to how boomers weren’t like their parents).

Categories: America, Community, Polling
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Just another gem from Sonia’s blog:

I think that’s the thing I like about America most. Here, the sense of community is a lot more cohesive but no one gets a choice in the matter. The men have to be the providers so they have to study engineering or medicine, etc. The women are expected to be housewives so they can’t really work if they want to. And the kids have to study SO HARD, and that too, the subjects their parents want, not necessarily what they want. In the U.S. maybe the individualism is too pronounced at times, but I really appreciate the opportunity to decide who I am and how I function in the world.

There are others there, and I don’t even think she realizes most of them.

Categories: America, Community
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Rosner’s Domain has an interview with another Jewish demographer (I noted his talk with Ira Sheskin here). This time, he questions

There is no question that intermarriage is changing the face of American Jewry (and Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora). But the evidence suggests that intermarriage is not the cause of the problem. The underlying issue is that many Jews do not grow up experiencing a rich Jewish home life and their Jewish education is ineffective and, too often, distancing. A colleague who is a Jew-by-choice recently joked that it was easy for him to embrace Judaism - he didn’t have the baggage that born Jews did of a having had to “suffer” in Hebrew school as children.

Dr. Saxe heads up the Steinhardt Social Research Institute, which conducted the meta-analysis counting project I mentioned here. As far as I can tell, the institute is fairly new and hasn’t really put out much research yet, though other scholars at Brandeis working on similar matters certainly have.

One thing to note is that Dr. Saxe extrapolates a lot from his Boston Community Survey, despite the fact that there’s no evidence that trends in Boston apply nationally or globally, and there are a number of reasons to expect otherwise. Nevertheless, I tend to agree that the problem isn’t intermarriage, no matter how the numbers line up, but a lack of engagement on the part of the Jewish community.

Categories: Community, Jewishness, Metrics, Polling
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A new study from the Steinhardt Social Research Institute says there could be over seven million Jews. Why are there so many different numbers, and why are Jews so hard to count.

One of the biggest reasons is that it’s hard to determine just who is a Jew. People identify as Jewish on religious, ethnic, and cultural grounds, while others identify by birth, and still others were clearly born to Jews but do not personally identify as Jewish. This makes picking out who is Jewish in a survey extremely difficult. You have to ask the right questions, the right ways, and then figure out which answers mean someone is a Jew. Changes in how you define a Jew can cause swings of literally millions of people.

But once you come up with a definition for who’s Jewish and who isn’t, you’ve still got trouble counting people. That’s because no matter how you define it, there just aren’t that many Jews in the population. Think of a jar with 1000 marbles in it. Of those, somewhere between 975 and 985 are yellow, while the rest are green. The green marbles, between 15 and 25, represent the size of the Jewish population. Now imagine that you have to count them by taking a small sample, say 100 marbles, out of the jar. If the jar were half green and half yellow, this would work pretty well, but with only a small number of green marbles, your sample of 100 could give you one, two, or three, each of which would give you radically different estimate of the number of green marbles in the whole jar. Counting Jews works the same way - the statistical sampling methods used in normal social science break down when trying to reach a very broad but very small group.

Further, Jews are less likely than the population at large to respond to random digit dial phone surveys. In other words, when you try to take the marbles out of the jar and count them, some marbles won’t let you, and the green marbles are less likely to let you. Given the huge swings a few marbles can give you, this makes them even more difficult to count. Because Jews won’t talk to the survey interviewers, we don’t really know how much less likely they are to answer the phone, so we don’t really know how to weight things. We also don’t know the characteristics that make one person more likely to answer than another.

Each of these caveats makes counting Jews extremely difficult, and leads to the controversy around the numbers given by Jewish demographers. So what are the different techniques that are used? Random digit dial surveys, like the massive National Jewish Population Survey use a weighting technique, similar to what political pollsters use, to try and bring the numbers in line with what they know to be true about the population as a whole. These can be controversial, whether for counting Jews or voters, as they start to tinker with the underlying science of public opinion research in ways that not all social scientists or statisticians agree. The NJPS also needs an extremely large sample to cover the whole country, and this means it’s prohibitively expensive to conduct accurately.

Another technique, used by Dr. Ira Sheskin at the University of Miami, takes a collection of community studies and combines them all together to get a national account. Since most Jews live in urban areas, Dr. Sheskin’s community studies, of which he has done many, are more likely to target those numbers where Jews are concentrated. He also over-samples in “core” Jewish areas, increasing his response rate. However, this method has its own shortfalls. For instance, many elderly Jews are “snow birds,” with summer homes in the Midwest or Northeast and winter residences in southern areas like Florida and Arizona, making it likely that they’ll be double counted. The same thing happens with younger Jews who may go to college in one city while claiming residence in another. And finally, it ignores the “long tail” of Jewish communities, smaller cities that still have Jewish populations.

Researchers at Brandeis’s Steinhardt Social Research Institute used a third method. They took publicly available survey data, rather than data specific studies on the Jewish community, and conducted a “meta-analysis,” trying to merge it all together to come up with a good accounting. In other words, instead of taking 100 marbles out of the jar, they found twenty people who had each taken 100 marbles out of the jar for different reasons, and used their counting. Not only does this give them more samples, but it also allowed them to save money for expensive polls with large samples that are required for the other two techniques. Unfortunately, there are a number of risks here. Different studies use different samples, questions, methodology, making it complex to determine how to weight any specific data point, and restricting the available data to what those other studies are interested in. Nevertheless, it provides an innovative, and significantly more cost effective, technique for gathering data not only about how many Jews there are, but information about them as well.

So which of these methods works the best, and how many Jews are there? Because of the problems described above, there’s no way to really know. The best answer is that it’s somewhere between four and eight million, and that whatever number you pick is probably off by a million. And like with most things Jewish, there’s going to be a healthy debate around the issue so that any two Jewish demographers will probably give you three different numbers.

Categories: America, Community, Information Asymmetries, Jewishness, Metrics, Polling
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Prudie has gotten interesting again, tackling a number of great dating issues (rather than crazy divorcees), meaning my favorite advice columnist is back. A reader asks her:

Dear Prudence,
My son is 21, a junior in college, and seriously dating an 18-year-old freshman. He brought her to our house for Thanksgiving, and she is attractive and charming. The problem is that we are Jewish and have mandated to our three sons that they must marry a Jewish woman. We are heartbroken that he is dating a non-Jewish woman. We are not sure if we should forbid him from dating her or if we should leave them alone and hope that they break up and he finds a nice Jewish woman to marry. Please don’t tell me that I should get over this and accept whoever he wants to marry. My wife and I cannot accept a daughter-in-law of a different faith. I don’t want to over- or underreact, and don’t know what to do.

—Heartbroken

Prudie’s answer nails it, the best way to encourage your child to have a Jewish home and marriage is to make Judaism appealing.

Categories: Community, Dating, Jewishness, Matching Mechanisms
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Googling around I found this Jewish Week article on why Jewish mega-philanthropists aren’t donating to Jewish causes:

Our annual research of mega-gifts — gifts above $1 million — turns up at least 50 people who could match or exceed Stanton’s generosity. Typically, these are wealthy Jewish business leaders who give only relatively modest gifts to Jewish causes.

It’s tempting to write these people off as uncommitted Jews, but it would be wrong.

If Jewish causes want to receive mega-gifts, they have to prove themselves worthy. They have to compete on equal ground with the secular hospitals, symphonies, museums and universities, all of which court and inspire Jewish donors.

The money-paragraph at the end:

Look at it this way: Today’s philanthropists think like investors, because that’s how they got wealthy. They want their money to achieve a return; they want results.

That means Jewish causes need to change the way they run their businesses.  Want to attract investment?  You need a clear definition of what you hope to accomplish, a strategy for accomplishing it, and clear metrics that demonstrate your progress.  Even more importantly, those metrics have to reflect your goals, not your activities.  Non-profits, especially in the Jewish community, need to treat their donors like corporations treat their shareholders, and start to demonstrate real, measurable results.

Categories: America, Community, Governance, Jewishness, Metrics, Philanthropy, Strategy
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But half the 247 pupils at the 40-year-old local authority-supported school are Muslim, and apparently the Muslim parents go through all sorts of hoops, including moving into the school’s catchment area, to get their children into King David to learn Hebrew, wave Israeli flags on independence day and hang out with the people some would have us believe that they hate more than anyone in the world.

The Muslim parents, mostly devout and many of the women wearing the hijab, say they love the ethos of the school, and even the kosher school lunches, which are suitable because halal and kosher dietary rules are virtually identical. The school is also respectful to Islam, setting aside a prayer room for the children and supplying Muslim teachers during Ramadan. At Eid, the Muslim children are wished Eid Mubarak in assembly, and all year round, if they wish, can wear a kufi (hat). Amazingly, dozens of the Muslim children choose instead to wear the Jewish kipah.

About a Jewish school in England with a majority Muslim student body.

Categories: Community, Education, Israel, Jewishness, Politics
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Rosner’s domain interviewed Jewish demography expert Dr. Ira Sheskin:

Where the lowering of the numbers will have an impact is on small Jewish communities. A Jewish community of 10,000 which now supports, say, 3 synagogues, a JCC, a kosher butcher, and several Jewish agencies and organizations, may very well lose some of this infrastructure if, say 20 years from now, the population is down to 5,000. So the impact of the lowering of the Jewish population will be at the local level more than at the national level.

Many resources in the Jewish community are being applied now by Jewish Federations and Foundations throughout the country to assure the Jewish future. Sheldon Adelson just started a foundation which will provide $200-$250 million per year in grants to Jewish communities. The challenge is to devise programs and services that will provide a quality of life within Jewish communities that will keep people wanting to be Jewish.

Dr. Sheskin also addresses intermarriage later on, though he tacks differently than i would. For those interested in Jewish demographics, most research studies are available for free online from the Jewish Databank. There, you can find the summary reports of most community and national studies, as well as the raw data for many of them, including the National Jewish Population Survey.

Categories: America, Community, Jewishness, Metrics, Philanthropy, Polling
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Phoebe at Jewlicious bemoans that all Jewish events are Jewish singles events, taking her recent Birthright trip as the example:

The problem with Birthright (or at least the version I experienced) as it currently exists is the level of desperation. One can’t help but wonder, if Israel’s such a great country, then why do people have to pay us to go visit it? If Jewish women are so beautiful, as Momo keeps insisting, then why do Jewish men have to be told to notice this?

At some point, the leadership of the Jewish community has to wake up and end the forced mating program before Jews become like pandas, unwilling to breed in captivity to save the species. Instead, they need to go back to stating the value proposition of Judaism, the reasons that it’s worth saving.
Also, her post is one of the best I’ve ever read in the JBlogosphere.

Categories: Community, Dating, Israel, Jewishness, Matching Mechanisms, Strategy
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Mystery Pollster Mark Blumenthal cites a National Center for Health Statistics study concerning the growth in cell-phone only households, a concern for pollsters who can’t reach them, as well as a Pew Study which finds that this group is distinct from the rest of the population:

A new study of the issue finds that cell-only Americans – an estimated 7%-9% of the general public – are significantly different in many ways from those reachable on a landline. They are younger, less affluent, less likely to be married or to own their home, and more liberal on many political questions.

It doesn’t look like the study controlled for age in the base numbers, and aren’t younger people generally less affluent, less likely to be married or own their own home, and more liberal on many political questions? What the study really says is that young people aren’t reachable by pollsters because they are in cell phone only households. Don’t worry, though, young people don’t vote!  When they did control for age, most of the differences look like they’re for things that correlate strongly with affluence and urbanization, which makes intuitive sense.

Categories: America, Community, Politics, Polling, Technology
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According to Slate, an attempt to get a nobody elected to the NHL All Star Game has exposed gross incompetence on the part of the site administrators and league officials:

How did the Rory Vote-O-Matic work? According to Touesnard, online security at NHL.com was pathetic. The league tried to counter automated scripts by making voters decipher words embedded in distorted images—a system known as CAPTCHA. But the NHL used only 51 different picture files and each one had a predictable name, like “1.gif.” All the Rory hackers had to do was create a table that linked up each file name with the appropriate pass phrase. Touesnard coded up the Vote-O-Matic in just a few hours.

Incentive centered design problem for online voting, anyone?

My favorite tidbit:

Some have even gone so far as to suggest the whole thing was orchestrated by the league’s viral marketers, who have been pushing a fan-centered brand under the slogan “My NHL.” But it’s hard to imagine how anything positive could come from such a parade of scandalous incompetence.

Having viral marketers is stupid enough on its own.  Then giving them positive credit for something they didn’t start and subsequently blatantly mismanaged?

Categories: Business and Economics, Community, Governance, Incentive Centered Design, Information Economics, Information Markets, Marketing, Social Software, Users as Partners
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In the Ann Arbor Business Review, Detroit Renaissance President Doug Rothwell:

I think that it clearly shows the importance of our universities in helping us make economic transformation a reality. Google is in Ann Arbor because of the relationship with the University of Michigan. And I think that too often in the past this state has not embraced its public universities, particularly its flagship universities - Michigan, Michigan State, Wayne State, the research universities - as really being absolutely vital to the future economic health of the state.

From AnnArborIsOverRated

Categories: Business and Economics, Community, Education, The Academy, Users as Partners
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