Scientific American ran a piece yesterday on Simpson’s paradox — the phenomenon in which a trend that holds within every subgroup of a dataset reverses, or vanishes entirely, when those subgroups are combined. Regular readers of this blog will have encountered it before. In 2012, it showed up inside No Child Left Behind: a school … Read more
The big news in congressional procedure this week — and I recognize that “big news in congressional procedure” is a phrase that requires either explanation or apology, and I intend to provide both — is that Senate Republicans are planning to use the budget reconciliation process to pass the SAVE America Act, a voter ID … Read more
When we last checked in on the DHS shutdown, the diagnosis was a bilateral war of attrition: two parties simultaneously bearing costs, each hoping the other would flinch first, while the costs fell primarily on TSA workers and travelers who had no seat at the table. The shutdown was 36 days old. The signal, I … Read more
Four items from the news this week, plus two more on the horizon. It was that kind of week. In the News The Deadline That Wasn’t, Then Wasn’t Again Trump’s ultimatum to Iran — open the Strait of Hormuz or face renewed strikes on energy infrastructure — was due March 23. Then it was due … Read more
On March 16, a federal judge in Arizona denied Kalshi’s motion for a preliminary injunction against the state. On March 17, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed 20 misdemeanor criminal charges against the company — the first criminal charges ever filed against a major prediction market. The charges allege that Kalshi is operating an illegal … Read more
Ten years ago on this blog, I wrote about truels — three-person duels — and argued that the 2016 GOP primary was one. The basic insight: when three players are in a fight and only one can win, it matters enormously whom you shoot at, and the answer is usually counterintuitive. In particular, the two weaker players … Read more
The Financial Times ran a piece last week reporting that Senegal — yes, that Senegal — had borrowed €650 million through instruments it had not disclosed to the IMF, to its existing bondholders, or apparently to anyone who might have objected. Which, it turns out, is everyone. I clicked on it because it was about … Read more
The Department of Homeland Security has been shut down for 36 days. This is the third funding lapse in six months. More than 400 TSA officers have quit since February 14. On March 14, 55 percent of scheduled staff didn’t show up at Houston Hobby. Airlines are warning of chaos through Easter. On Saturday, President … Read more
A new recurring feature, starting this week. A few items from the news — sometimes updates to arguments this blog has already made, sometimes new events the existing framework illuminates without quite rising to a full post — followed by a couple of things we’re watching that haven’t ripened yet. Everything here is shorter than … Read more
Yesterday’s post argued that a national aggregate can accurately represent no one’s actual experience when the underlying data are structured the right way — or, more precisely, the wrong way. The incarceration example was instructive precisely because it was symmetrically uncomfortable: the same Simpson’s paradox that embarrasses the reform-is-working narrative also embarrasses the cities-are-dangerous one. … Read more