Health Care Outcome Equality

Pulled from Marginal Revolution:

What will result from the intersection of two possible trends: insistence on a greater equality in health care outcomes, and the development of new technologies -- some at the genetic level for the individual -- which will lead to a greater inequality of health care outcomes?

Keeping Them Honest

Both sides of the political aisle are prone to exaggeration and convenient amnesia. Recent discussions of Obama's plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire have included references to socialism. Below you will find the historical top marginal income tax rates, color coded by party. Another take is here. [Data Source].

Wording Matters

Choice of wording matters.

V-day

BPS summarizes the state of knowledge of psych research for those looking for a Valentine. I must confess to apparently the wrong approach.

When wooing a woman, use chat-up lines that demonstrate your helpfulness, generosity, athleticism, ‘culture’ and wealth. Don't bother with jokes, empty compliments and sexual references.

I once went to Europe to ride my bike, and while there I helped an old lady get on the train. Does that count?

Andrew Gelman posts some nerdy V-day poems here. My favorites:

I'm aiming for a p-value less than .01
That you and me together could have lots of fun
The R2 of those before you were really quite poor
But the multiple comparisons problem we'll just ignore
-+-
I may know all things statistical
But how to win your love is far more mystical
I could derive and integrate with great flair
And we could make a perfectly correlated pair
-+-
H0: All is lost, our love is not mean to be
Ha: Oh happy day, you really like me
Our favorite test statistic says p=0.053
That's a little high but it's good enough for me
-+-
I've suffered through dates that were very extreme
When all I was hoping for was closer to the mean
Their knowledge of boring facts was encyclopedian
When it would have been better to be on the other side of the median
And eventually even their manners did erode
With scores for politeness nowhere near the mode
So I apologize for being so informal
But I'm so glad I finally found someone normal

Positive versus Normative

A false dichotomy.

Relationship Scholar Dies

The academic community lost an important researcher, Caryl Rusbult. From her obit in Science News:

Caryl Rusbult was the queen of close relationships. For more than 30 years, and for the past six years at Vrije University in Amsterdam, she studied how some men and women form lasting, supportive marriages. Rusbult’s work led her to conclude that close partners are interpersonal artists, sculpting one another’s strengths and weaknesses so as to bring out the best in each other. She called this the Michelangelo Phenomenon, a reference to the great Renaissance sculptor who said that he used a chisel to release ideal figures from blocks of stone in which they slumbered.
......
And the discussion would have been lively. Shortly after meeting one another in the early 1980s, Reis and Rusbult got into a fierce debate at a psychology conference about what people really want in close relationships. Reis championed emotional intimacy. Rusbult insisted that partners want to coordinate their behavior so they can achieve goals that each holds dear.

“Ten years and much research later, I was convinced that she was right,” Reis says.
......
Real-life dating and married couples provided her team with glimpses of the Michelangelo Phenomenon in action. Time and again, romantic pairings succeeded if each partner detected the other’s self-reported dreams and aspirations and found ways to guide him or her toward those goals. This process hinged on identifying and working with a partner’s personal flaws, just as a sculptor incorporates irregularities in a block of stone into a masterpiece.

Dating Markets

I've always said the sex ratio is an important aspect of any dating market. Here is an article from the New York Times on the ramifications of the shift to more females in college. It is clearly a better time to be in college than when I was there. Alex Taborrak discusses it here, and here he provides a good example of how small differences with large opportunity costs can dramatically alter the "power" in a relationship.

Casual observation here on campus suggests males would be wise to lock up their significant other with a ring now, because they won't be able to do better after school is out.