Tag Archives: data

Stop Staring at Your Backup Camera!

by RodgerQuinonez Posted on June 20, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jacob Bogage tells us that backup cameras in cars aren’t really helping that much:

Backup cameras have been around longer than other car safety tech, so the federal government has years of data on their effect. Between 2008 and 2011 — the most recent years for which data was made available by NHTSA — backup cameras more than doubled from 32% to 68% of all new cars sold. But injuries fell less than 8%, from about 13,000 down to 12,000. The improvement in safety has been very gradual from year to year.

The fatality rate has improved somewhat, dropping 31% over the same period. But the sample size is small — deaths from cars moving in reverse are relatively rare. NHTSA’s research shows deaths declined from 274 to 189 between 2008 and 2011, and the number was volatile year to year.

My current car is the first I’ve driven that has a backup camera, and this story doesn’t surprise me. As near as I can tell, using a backup camera requires you to change your driving habits, and it took me a while to figure that out. The most basic problem is that backup cameras—like most video screens—beg for your attention, and if you give in to that temptation you might very well be driving less safely than without a camera. The problems are pretty obvious:

If your attention is focused on the camera, you aren’t checking the traffic in front of you. But when you back out of a parking spot, for example, cross traffic is coming at you in both directions.
Backup cameras have an extreme wide-angle view, which is obviously useful. However, it also makes any object more than a few yards away look tiny. Even cars can be easy to miss sometimes, and smaller objects like children, dogs, and so forth can be all but invisible.
Despite their wide angle, sometimes cars don’t enter the camera’s sightlines until they’re quite close.
Most backup cameras just aren’t very good. Their imaging starts out mediocre just by virtue of using tiny lenses and sensors. And it only gets worse from there. Their imaging is poor at night. Their imaging is poor when the camera faces the sun. Their imaging is poor in bad weather. Their imaging is poor when the background is busy. Their imaging is poor when the lens gets dirty.

So how should you drive with a backup camera? Ironically, you need to change your driving habits back to what they were before you got a backup camera. That is, you should treat it as simply another window. Don’t obsess over it. Crane your neck and check all your windows and your rearview mirror and your backup camera. In other words, drive just like you used to except with one additional window. Too many people treat backup cameras as a substitute for all their other windows, instead of an addition to them.

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Stop Staring at Your Backup Camera!

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Weekly Flint Water Report: May 21-27

by AvisRicketson Posted on June 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here is this week’s Flint water report—late but not forgotten, due to some kind of weird screw-up at the Michigan DEQ site. First they didn’t have the data. Then eventually they did, but the spreadsheet was unreadable. Then they took everything down entirely. Then they finally reposted last week’s data. As usual, I’ve eliminated outlier readings above 2,000 parts per billion, since there are very few of them and they can affect the averages in misleading ways. During the week, DEQ took 392 samples. The average for the past week was 11.10.

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Weekly Flint Water Report: May 21-27

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Why Is the Murder Rate Increasing?

by AllanTrapp Posted on May 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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Over at Vox, Dara Lind has a longish piece about the “Ferguson Effect,” the notion that homicides are up because police are afraid to do their jobs in an era of viral videos and public backlash against police violence:

Just like there’s been a certain reluctance to admit homicide is rising at all among people who don’t want to blame Black Lives Matter protesters for it, there’s been reluctance to attribute any rise in homicides to changes in policing….But the reality is that changes in policing do affect crime rates. Indeed, “proactive” policing — in forms that have officers walking around neighborhoods and building relationships with their residents — is one of the most effective things a city can do to prevent crime. You just have to look at the correct scale: Police departments are local institutions, and they affect things on a local scale.

“Gun violence is very local,” says crime analyst Jeff Asher. “And changes in gun violence patterns probably have local explanations.” So he doesn’t give much credence to Comey’s version of the Ferguson effect theory — that the hypothetical fear of being the subject of a viral video somewhere is changing how cops around the country do their jobs. “There’s little evidence in the places we can measure it,” he says, “that proactivity in, say, Louisville, went down because of events in St. Louis or Baltimore.”

The problem, of course, is that this kind of thing is difficult to measure, which means the Ferguson Effect is all but impossible to verify. Personally I’m skeptical: homicide rates appear to be up a lot more than overall violent crime rates, and that’s hard to square with any kind of policing theory. And it’s important to get this right: If we choose the wrong theory about why murder rates are up, we have almost no chance of getting them back down. Liberals and conservatives alike need to be willing to go wherever the data leads them.

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Why Is the Murder Rate Increasing?

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In the 21st Century, We All Want Smart, Gorgeous Mates

by GwenJosehvf Posted on April 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Wonkblog points us today to a chart from Max Roser showing how men and women rated various aspects of potential mates in 1939 vs. 2009. (Since 1939 is the comparison year, it goes without saying that we’re talking about straight, cis, and most likely white folks here.) You can see the entire set of data at either of the links above, but I was interested mainly in the traits that have moved up or down significantly over that period. Here they are, in a handily color-coded pink and blue chart:

What can we tell from this? For starters, keep in mind that this is what people say they value, not what they actually value. “Similar political background,” for example, has allegedly moved up only one spot, from dead last to almost last, so it’s not in my chart. But there’s considerable evidence that a lot of people today would rather have their big toes cut off than associate with someone of the opposite party. So take all of this with a grain of salt.

Anyway, obviously chastity is out the door. No one cares anymore. Refinement is now decidedly old-fashioned, replaced by a desire for the more egalitarian virtue of sociability. And love has zoomed up to the top of the chart. (Allegedly, anyway.)

Beyond that, the two big movers are education and good looks. Apparently we all want mates who are both smart and gorgeous, which might go a long way toward explaining why marriage seems to be in decline. How many smart, gorgeous people are there in the world, after all? And if they have to be gregarious too—well, you’re just being mighty picky. Good luck.

Notably, the boring traits haven’t changed much: dependability and stability were near the top of the chart in 1939, and they’re still there now. I guess meat and potatoes are always in fashion. Or so we tell the pollsters, anyway.

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In the 21st Century, We All Want Smart, Gorgeous Mates

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Was the Great Ad Blocker Freakout of 2015 Justified?

by bileteavion Posted on March 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Six months ago, after years of power surfers happily using ad blockers with no real problems, Apple decided to ruin things for everyone by supporting ad blocking in its products. Since everything Apple does is, by definition, the most pivotal event ever in the tech world—if you happen to work in the online journalism biz, anyway—this caused instant panic in the online journalism biz. Suddenly you could hardly click your mouse without running into a site nagging you about your ad blocker, or even flatly refusing to allow you in unless you turned the blocker off.

It’s time to take stock. Was this panic justified? The use of ad-blocking apps has certainly grown over the past few years, but has it specifically skyrocketed since Apple’s announcement? I’m unable to find any reliable data on this score, and my gut tells me that the panic over this was probably unjustified, as panic usually is.

Needless to say, though, my gut is not infallible. I’d prefer actual evidence. With the benefit of several months for tempers to calm, I think it’s time for someone to examine this and tell us what’s really happened. Who out there has the data to do this?

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Was the Great Ad Blocker Freakout of 2015 Justified?

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Judge Orders Apple to Help FBI Crack San Bernardino iPhone

by JanSpinksg Posted on February 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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A federal judge wants Apple to build a “back door” that allows it to access encrypted data on the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino attackers. Apple is resisting:

The order, signed Tuesday by a magistrate judge in Riverside, Calif., does not ask Apple to break the phone’s encryption but rather to disable the feature that wipes the data on the phone after 10 incorrect tries at entering a password. That way, the government can try to crack the password using “brute force” — attempting tens of millions of combinations without risking the deletion of the data….Federal prosecutors stated in a memo accompanying the order that the software would affect only the seized phone.

In theory, this should be little more than a macabre joke. If Apple is truly using strong encryption, it wouldn’t take ten million tries to crack the password, it would take more tries than there are atoms in the universe.

Unless, of course, the attackers are really stupid and used “123456” or “Jihad Forever” as their password. Which they very well might have. Folks like this aren’t always especially bright.

In any case, I find it hard to side with Apple here. It’s one thing for Apple to implement strong encryption that even Apple itself can’t break. It’s another to deny law enforcement the ability to even try to break the encryption. My initial reaction—which I admit might change if I think about this further—is that liberals have never opposed the right of the government to execute a search. We just want them to get a warrant first, and we want it particularized to a specific case. So we object to warrantless searches and we object to mass collection of surveillance data. A court order that applies to a specific case shouldn’t be a problem.

Apple, of course, is arguing that if they create a special FBI version of iOS, it can be used anytime and anywhere, with or without a warrant. So that’s the question for the court. If they compel Apple to create a version of iOS that can be hacked, are there legally enforceable restrictions on its use? Or does it become a permanent plaything for anyone who can issue a national security letter—which appears to include practically the entire FBI? This will be an interesting case going forward.

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Judge Orders Apple to Help FBI Crack San Bernardino iPhone

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Raw Data: Fewer Blacks Are Going to Jail These Days

by LucileKilvingto Posted on February 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last week Keith Humphreys noted something interesting: although incarceration rates have gone down recently, the absolute level of white incarceration has risen while the absolute level of black incarceration has fallen. But that’s for prisons. What about local jails?

Same thing, it turns out. Since 2009, the number of white jail inmates has gone up by about 30,000 while the black jail population has gone down by 40,000. Humphreys comments: “In short, if you broaden the lens of analysis from prisons to include jails, the patterns I wrote about are even stronger: Being behind bars is becoming a less common experience for African-Americans and a more common experience for non-Hispanic Whites.”

I don’t quite know what this means, but it’s an interesting tidbit of data. Blacks are still in jail (and prison) at a higher relative rate than whites, but since 2009 that’s at least starting to reverse a little.

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Raw Data: Fewer Blacks Are Going to Jail These Days

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EINSTEIN is Probably the Wrong Name for the Government’s Very Flawed Cybersecurity System

by LachlanBlocher Posted on January 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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The government relies on a system called EINSTEIN, or the National Cybersecurity Protection System, to detect and stop the rising numbers of cyberattacks on its computers. But a new report from the Government Accountability Office says EINSTEIN is falling far short of expectations.

The latest version of the $6-billion-dollar system, which rolled out in 2013, was designed to both detect suspicious cyber activity and prevent anything harmful from entering or leaving government computer networks. But the GAO says the system gives its users only “a limited ability to detect potentially malicious activity entering and exiting computer networks at federal agencies.” And when the GAO tested EINSTEIN, the system could only identify six percent of the common vulnerabilities in programs typically used on federal computers, including Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer.

The system is also falling short on helping agencies share information about cyber threats. The GAO found that only 5 of 23 federal agencies are actually using the “intrusion prevention” parts of the EINSTEIN system, which actively try to block malicious content. The information gained from those agencies helps recognize patterns that the system can use to improve and identify other similar attacks. The smaller the pool of data, the less effective the system can be. The information-sharing process itself also appears to be a mess. “DHS has yet to develop most of the planned functionality for NCPS’s information-sharing capability,” the report said. “Moreover, agencies and DHS did not always agree about whether notifications of potentially malicious activity had been sent or received, and agencies had mixed views about the usefulness of these notifications.”

A classified version of the report was released in November, but a declassified version was released on Thursday by the GAO. It came just days after the government announced the formation of a new agency to handle background checks after two massive hacks struck the Office of Personnel Management. The hacks, believed to be the work of the Chinese government, stole the highly sensitive background investigation forms of more than 20 million federal employees. After the attacks became public knowledge last year, the government’s cybersecurity defenses came under withering scrutiny from congressional overnight committees. This week’s report isn’t likely to help.

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EINSTEIN is Probably the Wrong Name for the Government’s Very Flawed Cybersecurity System

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The Supreme Court Did Something Great for 1,000 Kids Who Were Sentenced to Life in Prison

by ElouiseAuger9 Posted on January 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Juvenile offenders serving a mandatory sentence of life without parole may have a shot at release, following a Supreme Court ruling made on Monday. The case, Montgomery v. Alabama, is the fourth in a string of Supreme Court decisions since 2005 that reduce the harshest penalties imposed on kids, including a 2012 ruling that mandatory juvenile life without parole sentences violated the Eight Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The decision will affect at least 1,000 people across the country, according to data collected by the Phillips Black Project. This group of inmates disproportionately includes black and Hispanic offenders who committed their crimes as teens.

That includes Taurus Buchanan, a ninth grader who was locked up for life automatically after he threw one punch, killing a younger boy in a neighborhood fight.

Montgomery v. Alabama expands the impact of a 2012 US Supreme Court ruling that banned mandatory life sentences for offenders who committed their crimes as minors. While some states allowed eligible offenders to apply for resentencing after the ruling, lower courts in other states held that the Supreme Court’s decision did not affect old cases. In Montgomery, the high court ruled that the 2012 decision was a “new substantive rule” that states were required to apply retroactively.

The petitioner, Henry Montgomery, was convicted of murder at age 17 after killing a deputy sheriff in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, in 1963. Montgomery was sentenced to death, but a Louisiana Supreme Court finding allowed him to be resentenced to life in prison without parole. In his opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote:

The sentence was automatic upon the jury’s verdict, so Montgomery had no opportunity to present mitigation evidence to justify a less severe sentence. That evidence might have included Montgomery’s young age at the time of the crime; expert testimony regarding his limited capacity for foresight, self-discipline, and judgment; and his potential for rehabilitation. Montgomery, now 69 years old, has spent almost his entire life in prison.

Prisoners will not be granted automatic release—some face the prospect of receiving another life sentence when their cases are reheard. However, the court indicates that states could comply with the decision by simply making juvenile lifers eligible for parole:

This would neither impose an onerous burden on the States nor disturb the finality of state convictions. And it would afford someone like Montgomery, who submits that he has evolved from a troubled, misguided youth to a model member of the prison community, the opportunity to demonstrate the truth of Miller’s central intuition—that children who commit even heinous crimes are capable of change.

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The Supreme Court Did Something Great for 1,000 Kids Who Were Sentenced to Life in Prison

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Southern White Women Are Apparently in Pretty Bad Shape These Days

by DanialLeverett Posted on January 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Since I happened to mention the famous Case/Deaton mortality study in the previous post, here’s the latest from Andrew Gelman. As you may recall, Case and Deaton concluded that mortality among middle-aged whites from suicide, alcohol, and drug poisoning had skyrocketed over the past two decades. This set pundits afire with theories about what was going on, but Gelman has done some age adjustment to the cohorts that Case and Deaton used, and then broken up the data by gender, and then by geographic area. Here’s what he gets:

After 2005, there’s no effect on middle-aged men at all. It’s all women. And if you break it down further, nearly the entire effect is concentrated among women in the South. But why? Gelman punts:

I don’t have any explanations for this. As I told a reporter the other day, I believe in the division of labor: I try to figure out what’s happening, and I’ll let other people explain why.

I think that’s wise. For one thing, if you slice the data in a different way, you might get a different result. What’s more, as I’ve mentioned several times, the increased mortality affects the young too, not just the middle aged. So if you spun some brilliant theories about why middle-aged whites are so damn depressed these days, you might want to rethink things. Your new theory needs to explain why the young and the middle-aged are dying in greater numbers, and you also need to explain why it’s affecting primarily women in the South. Good luck.

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Southern White Women Are Apparently in Pretty Bad Shape These Days

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