Steve Kass

Headlines today, all citing the same study by the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute:

• Texting While Driving Increases Crash Risk by 20X
• Texting increases crash risk 23 times: study
• Texting Drivers 23 Times More Likely to Wreck

From the press release for the study (emphasis mine):

In VTTI’s studies that included light vehicle drivers and truck drivers, manual manipulation of phones such as dialing and texting of the cell phone lead to a substantial increase in the risk of being involved in a safety?critical event (e.g., crash or near crash). However, talking or listening increased risk much less for light vehicles and not at all for trucks. Text messaging on a cell phone was associated with the highest risk of all cell phone related tasks.

From a New York Times article containing further detail about the VTTI study (emphasis again mine):

In the two studies, there were 21 crashes and 197 near crashes — defined as an imminent collision narrowly avoided — from a variety of causes, including texting. There were also about 3,000 other near crashes that were somewhat easier for the truckers to avoid, the researchers said. There also were 1,200 unintended lane deviations.To determine how the events compared to safer conditions, the researchers compared what occurred in the dangerous situations to 20,000 segments of videotape chosen at random.

In the case of texting, the software detected 31 near crashes in which the cameras confirmed the trucker was texting, though no actual collisions occurred. In the random moments of videotape, there were six instances of truckers’ texting that did not result in the software detecting a dangerous situation.

I couldn’t find the study data on the VTTI web site, but I found some PowerPoint presentations and other documents about the study. None of them quoted a “crash risk.” The increased risks were for “crash/near crash” incidents. The numbers quoted by the Times make it pretty clear that “crash/near crash” included crashes, near crashes, “other near crashes” and unintended lane deviations, because that’s the only way the odds ratio comes out to 23:

Do I think texting while driving is a bad idea? Yes. Do I think you’re 23 times more likely to have an accident while texting than while not texting? I don’t know. The VTTI study suggests not, and it might suggest the opposite: while texting, you’re less likely to have an accident (but more likely to brake, swerve, or change lanes unintentionally). I can’t say whether the study suggests either of these things with statistical significance, because I don’t have the data, but it does seem to be the case that the study subjects, when texting, were more likely to swerve or slam on their brakes, but not crash.

I can think of some possible reasons for this, too: if you’re texting, you’re probably not sleeping (sleeping being a significant risk factor for actual crashes, but probably not for swerving and braking), and if you’re texting, you might know you’re creating a dangerous situation and be more prepared to swerve or brake suddenly.

If a sentence is short enough to be a headline, it isn’t true.

A headline on blog.aflcio.org says “CEOs Get One-Third of All Pay.” Not surprisingly, it’s flat-out false. The group of Americans “getting” all this money isn’t CEOs. It’s everyone earning more than the Social Security wage base, currently $106,800, according to the AFL-CIO blog’s second-hand source, a Wall Street Journal article. (Google’s cache has the full article, which the WSJ site won’t show you unless you register.)

Credit to the WSJ for drawing attention to data that could support an argument for payroll taxes on higher wages. (I don’t know what the WSJ’s editorial stance on taxes is; I just know they tend to be on the other side of most issues from me, but they usually do their homework more thoroughly than most media outlets.)

The data suggest that the payroll tax ceiling hasn’t kept up with the growth in executive pay. As executive pay has increased, the percentage of wages subject to payroll taxes has shrunk, to 83% from 90% in 1982. Compensation that isn’t subject to the portion of payroll tax that funds old-age benefits now represents foregone revenue of $115 billion a year.

I don’t know why the WSJ decided that if you’re earning a lot of money, you must be an executive. Maybe it has to do with who they perceive as their readership. (Personally, I’m not this “highly paid” nor am I an executive, but that’s not relevant to the argument.)

I no idea what fraction of All Pay this country’s CEOs earn, but now I know it’s less than a third.

[Thanks, Lucinda, for sharing this article.]

There’s a lot of buzz in the news about the proposed surtax on the rich to finance health care. Some of the articles have localized their reports (Analysis: Millionaires tax could take combined Ohio rate to 54%) by quoting the highest federal+state+local marginal tax rate on individuals in their state, but misidentifying what the figure is.

If there’s a word that means “to sensationalize by lying, especially when shielded by a masthead; most frequently used in numerical contexts” I don’t know it, so I’ll coin one: vulpigerate. It’s vulpigeration to leave out the important words highest and marginal.

For the record, the highest marginal combined tax rate varies by state, and for 2009 earnings, it’s typically between 40% and 50% for a single-filer. The proposed surtax is 5.2% on all but (haha) the first $1,000,000 of adjusted gross earnings, and this pushes the maximum marginal rate to between about 45% and 55%. (This is assuming that no changes in federal and state rates are also forthcoming. I apologize for any lack of due diligence. I promise I’m not vulpigerating.)

Short of publishing vulpigeratory headlines and articles, some outlets have decorated their articles with misinformed quotes, or they’ve opened the door to innumerate comments from angryreaders.

For the record, here’s a little spreadsheet that shows the story for New Jersey. (We’re in the top 10 for highest marginal combined tax rate. Yay!)

Have a nice day.

In today’s online edition, BBC News published “Faulty 20p coins ‘worth £50 each'”. A Coin Factfile sidebar to the article notes originally noted that

British coins do not carry the name of the country of issue – neither do those of the USA

Coins of the USA, of course, do carry the name of the country of issue. Instead of sending the BBC feedback (which I did), maybe I should have offered to sell them my collection of “faulty” US coins on which the words United States of America appear. I’d have taken a mere £20 a piece.

At least BBC News attributed their “factfile” facts. They came from the London Mint Office. Despite its august name, the London Mint Office isn’t the Royal Mint. It’s more like a British Franklin Mint, I think. According to their web page, the London Mint Office is

a wholly-owned subsidiary of one of Europe’s most successful direct marketing organisations’, the Samlerhuset Group.

How the London Mint Office qualified for a .org domain beats me. Not to mention how any of this qualifies as news.

What do you call it if someone commits a crime in an attempt to prove they were right that the crime rate is increasing? Last year, Martin Bernheimer wrote about the sorry state of arts criticism in the country:

Many US papers have abandoned thoughtful, detailed reviews altogether. Publishers, editors and, presumably, readers want instant evaluations and newsbites, preferably with flashy pictures. It is Zagat-think, simplicity for the simple-minded.

Today, Martin Bernheimer reviewed the New York Philharmonic’s performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. You can guess where I’m going with this. (Disclosure: I sang in the chorus.) The Financial Times as an organization may or may not have abandoned thoughtful, detailed reviews, but Bernheimer nonetheless gave them the kind of review he said many US papers want. Nope, I won’t be filing his review under “thoughtful and detailed.” The date of the concert, the names of the soloists, and the row in which Bernheimer unhappily sat unfortunately don’t pass the bar for detail. And nothing in his mostly weasely review fits the thoughtful category. Not to omit detail myself, I’ll mention a couple of things Bernheimer got wrong: Joseph Flummerfelt didn’t prepare all three choirs, and Anthony Dean Griffey wasn’t motley. Admittedly, the hypothesis that Bernheimer is writing bad reviews to support his claim that there are too many bad reviews is hard to support. If that were the point, wouldn’t he write the bad reviews using a pseudonym? So here’s another hypothesis about what’s wrong with the guy. He reported today that Avery Fisher Hall

distorted the inherent complexities virtually beyond recognition. Echoes abounded, balances went awry, attacks blurred. Some voices disappeared in the muddle, others boomed as if electronically amplified. It was ugly.

I think one of the abounding echoes was that of his own voice in his own head, because last month, he had this to say about Boulez’s performance of Mahler’s Eighth in Carnegie:

Balances went askew. Melodic details got buried in textural muddles.

Next time someone pays for Bernheimer to sit in a chair, an audiologist’s office might be the right venue. Welcome to my new sarcastic and bitter category. My excuse for being sarcastic and bitter? None, but I’ll point out that I’m not claiming to be a real critic, nor am I getting paid to write this. I promise to post something warm and fuzzy soon. Related reading: Shut up, Martin Bernheimer (Einstein on the A Train, April 23, 2008) Related hearing (only through July 10, 2009): tonight’s performance of the concert, which was broadcast live. I think you’ll love it.

I wanted an adjectival form of hysteron proteron today, and I decided not to write hysteroproteronic, if you know what I mean (or ass-backwards).  I guess if there were one, there’d only be a single word (like zeugma, though of course it wouldn’t be zeugma) for hysteron proteron, and the idea of printing proteron hysteron on a T-shirt wouldn’t even exist. Which got me thinking. How many other funny things don’t exist for reasons like this?

On a happier note, I’m not a stand-up comic and I have an appropriate blog category for this post.

I’m singing Mahler’s Eighth with the New York Philharmonic this week. It’s a phenomenal experience, not to mention a spectacular piece of music, performed by one of the world’s best orchestras and some amazing soloists. All backed up by 170 adult and 40 children choristers, of which I’m one (of the adults).

On August 25, 2009, the New York Philharmonic will release a recording of our performance through iTunes, Amazon and other retailers. If you don’t have tickets and don’t want to wait until August, you can listen to tomorrow night’s performance live on WQXR 96.3FM in the New York area or on WQXR.com, and possibly on the NY Phil’s web site for a couple of weeks after that.

Shameless subplug: You can also hear me in this Dutoit/Montreal recording of Fauré’s Requiem and Pavane (the version with silly words – of the Pavane, that is), and in this Dessoff recording of choral works (good stuff you probably haven’t heard) by Corigliano, Rorem, Moravec, and Convery.

The Mathematics Genealogy Project now traces my mathematical genealogy back to Galileo, passing through Benkart, Jacobson, Chrystal, Maxwell, Hopkins, Sedgwick, Jones, Cranke, Postlethwaite, Whisson, Taylor (Walter, not Brook), Smith, Cotes, Newton, Barrow, de Roberval, and Viviani along the way. Cool.

If you squint, you’ll see my name in tiny print under Itzik’s. He wrote most of the book, but I contributed two chapters and did most of the technical review. Click on the image to visit the book’s Barnes and Noble page.

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