In which I need to get a grip

A couple weeks ago, Mathbabe posted some thoughts on survivorship bias that got me thinking about the anecdata in my life.

In case you do not want to look up the Wikipedia article, survivorship bias is a bias introduced into data when a studied population is compared to historical averages, ignoring the fact that the studied population has certain non-average characteristics that cause it to be observed/ in the sample.

It is a sort of selection bias introduced by assuming that the portion of the sample that does not complete the study is randomly distributed, when that is not the case.

I'm not going anywhere with this. I just need to air my thoughts.

1. I know two African Americans in my field. Someone who knows my circle of colleagues should feel free to correct me. I went to graduate school with one of these scientists. Through a series of confounding and rather stupid events, I had a conversation with him about "growing up black in the US." It turned out that he did not consider himself black, but mixed race. Given the "one drop" policy that is still an unspoken truth in much of the US, I asked him what the difference was. His answer: he did not grow up immersed in black culture. I forget the details, but it involved a small college town, and hanging out with other children of academics. I am not arguing anyone's right to identify racially however he/she chooses. I am simply struck, that of all the African Americans either my partner or I know, the only one who identifies as mixed race is a successful academic.
2. At one of the women in my field meetings I went to several years back, I found myself sitting next to a post-doc, very insistent on the fact that there was not difference in the treatment of women and men in her field. She was often the only female in her sub-field at conferences, but that was because her field was new, and women had not yet flocked to it. Considering the field as a whole, she thought that women just needed to learn to deal with the crap a bit more. Once we did that, we were just judged on our publication record. Naive as I was at the time, I tried to argue with her on just the arguments that she presented: that she claimed that men needed to be good scientists to succeed, while women needed to be good scientists and pachiderms to succeed. Ignoring all else, wasn't the extra pachidermal requirement itself a sign of inequality? I should have kept my mouth shut. I only succeeded in spoiling my lunch. I do not know if I offered any solace to any of the other attenders. I certainly did nothing to convince my intended audience. It still rankles me on bad days.
3. For the second time in my career, I recently attended a two part conference where I was the most senior woman for the first part. Moments like this disgust me. This conference also had the added feature that there were no female speakers in either part. That is a first for me. I am immensely grateful to the older gentleman who also pointed out the lack of female speakers. I am saddened by the number of women a pointed out the gender distribution to who did not seem to notice or mind. (To be fair, it is not as if the men I pointed the gender distribution out to really seemed to care either.) I envy the women who can go through something like this and not notice. Life must be easier for them somehow, I imagine. If you do not feel the insults that are thrust at you, consciously or not, you cannot be hurt by them.
4. Various people close to me are in very shitty situations right now. Compared to them, I live a pampered life. Class differences in my friend set should not surprise me, but it disturbs me greatly when the situation is put before me quite so clearly. They do not have PhDs, they do not have dual income households. Sometimes, it is simply a matter of financial or emotional survival for them. They live in situations that, I am fairly certain, given my emotional and physical shortcomings would leave me crippled or dead. But they survive. Given all the advantages I have in life, I wonder what exactly it is I am doing, pretending that I can speak for women. The circles I surround myself with on a day to day basis are those of such a tiny elite.

For those of you who know my moods: yes, I just submitted a job application.

Visiting

• Its a bad situation, when I meet Dr. Superstar after nearly 4 years, the first thing he asks about is Epsilon, and then proceeds to tell me how he also now has a child. It doesn't help that the connection I want to draw between my work and his starts a philosophy discussion, since he is less aware of my particular sub-field than I'd thought.
• Pubs with obscure literary names make me very happy. Especially when I catch the reference.
• We all send off class signals, in the way we dress, the way we talk, and even how we carry ourselves. I don't know if we do this less in the US than in other countries, or if we are more likely to believe that the US is a classless society, and therefore we don't have a socio-economic class, but we all do it. I can't help the class signals I give off, but I do try to not be pretentious about it. So when I find myself surrounded by The Accent, I have to remind myself that I should not go running with my tail between my legs from my social betters; I do belong here, that in the US, I belong to the equivalent class. 
• The conversation on the train between the drunk guys next to me and the trans man in front of me sounds like I may need to intervene, until one of the drunks tells the trans man how one of his friends now wants to be a woman. Sometimes things go well.

School and class

I was listening to a BBC debate on the British education system last week. It was notable as a cultural experience. Many of the same issues that appear in the "American education crisis" appeared in the program: whether the important issue is testing or non-testable aspects of education, like music or art or values; the decline of test scores, and what to make of a recent renormalization of some standardized tests (A levels); the value of vocational school versus a more academic track; what to teach, and more importantly, what not to teach, since one can't teach everything that is societally accepted as "good for kids"; the value of free schools (which I think are the British equivalent of charter schools.)

Like many of the similar debates States-side, there was little discussion of the fact that economics factors at home are still the leading indicator of academic achievement in both the US and the UK. This was very frustrating. Though I do appreciate the panelist who pointed out that that students from poorer families were by far more likely to enter vocational programs rather than middle class families with a family history of college education. Similarly, I wanted to smack the audience member who commented that maybe the problem was that upper class children were being deprived of their full potential by not encouraging them to become car mechanics.

Privilege. I know its an issue everywhere. The different forms of it in different countries strike me. For instance, I am fairly certain that poor families here actually means poor families, and is not code for "poor brown kids." But the racism that sets my teeth on edge in the US was just replaced by classism in this debate. The amount of discussion about whether or not a student was capable of learning things like physics or Shakespeare was dumbfounding. There really does seem to be a portion of British society, (or at least of BBC radio 4 listeners) who believe that some people (upper class people) are more intelligent than other (poor) people. Like all discriminatory views, I got the impression from the debate that for many people (such as the moderator) this was known to be a politically incorrect view, but was still held (at least subconsciously).

On whole, this debate was as useless interms of actually informing me on what good policy pathways could be as the ones I listen to in the States. But I walked away with one sad thought. In the US, we love to talk about failing teachers. This is sad and frustrating and untrue, and the meme has permeated the public consciousness, and it seems that many Americans believe that teachers are lazy and incompetent. But teachers are adults. How much worse must it be to grow up in a society where the discussion about education is not whether or not your teachers can teach you, but whether or not you are capable or learning?*

The second part of the debate appears tomorrow.

*There are definitely policies that are set up not to teach poorer students, and there is an underlying (and sometimes spoken) belief that these students can't learn, but I haven't heard it as part of mainstream debate in decades.