Problem-Solving Archives - Page 5 of 29

Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction

In 1954 Paul Meehl, a psychologist at the University of Minnesota, published Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction. He compared the judgment of experienced clinicians with predictions made by simple formulas. His analysis favored the formulas and “caused a considerable stir amongst clinicians.” Meehl described the clinicians’ preference as “using our heads instead of the formula.”

Meehl later reported that “half the clinical faculty at one large Freudian oriented midwest university were plunged into a 6-month reactive depression.” Later meta-analyses supported his claim. On average, mechanical prediction was about 10 percent more accurate.

Fifty States

Before the 2012 presidential election, the statistician Nate Silver gave Barack Obama a chance of “more than 70 per cent,” and then “north of 90 per cent.” MSNBC host Joe Scarborough called Silver “a joke.” He said anyone who thought the race was “anything but a tossup right now” was “such an ideologue.”

Silver’s forecast called the result correctly in all 50 states. In 2008 he had called 49 of the 50, missing only Indiana.

CompStat

In April 1994 the New York Police Department introduced CompStat, created by Commissioner Bill Bratton and Jack Maple. The department kept a daily-updated record of reported crimes, and its leaders met regularly to review the trends. Maple called his crime maps the “Charts of the Future.”

Precinct commanders answered for their numbers. Three-quarters of them “were dismissed over 18 months for failing to bring the numbers down.” The system was copied in the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia and Mexico.

Under the same pressure, some commanders distorted the crime statistics.

The Elephant in the Room

American English has ready words for naming a problem.

the elephant in the room — “an obvious major problem or issue that people avoid discussing or acknowledging.” The phrase is recorded from 1985. A common way to open a hard topic in a meeting is: “Let’s address the elephant in the room.”

to red-flag — “to identify or draw attention to (a problem or issue to be dealt with).”

to flag — to point out a problem so that someone deals with it.

to call it out — to name a problem or a mistake openly.

to raise a concern — to bring up a problem formally, in a meeting or in writing.

The Whistleblowers

Time magazine named three women its Persons of the Year for 2002: Sherron Watkins of Enron, Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom. Each first raised the problem inside her own organization.

Watkins, an Enron vice president, wrote to chairman Kenneth Lay that the company’s accounting methods were improper. Rowley, an FBI staff attorney, wrote to Director Robert Mueller that the bureau had “brushed off pleas” from its Minneapolis office to investigate Zacarias Moussaoui. Cooper told WorldCom’s board that the company had hidden “$3.8 billion in losses.”

Time called them “women of ordinary demeanor but exceptional guts and sense.” Cooper said: “I’m not a hero. I’m just doing my job.”

The Couric Effect

In March 2000 the NBC morning show Today broadcast Katie Couric’s own colonoscopy as part of a colon cancer awareness campaign. Her husband, the TV legal analyst Jay Monahan, had died of colon cancer in 1998.

A study published in 2003 in the Archives of Internal Medicine measured the result. Colonoscopies per doctor per month rose from 15.0 to 18.1, and the higher rate held through the nine months the study covered. It became known as the “Couric effect.”

Hello, My Name’s Betty Ford

In September 1974 First Lady Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer and had surgery. She “broke with social conventions by fostering public discussion of her diagnosis and treatment.” Her openness “helped bring the disease into the open and inspired countless women to seek breast examinations.”

On April 11, 1978, after a family intervention, she entered a Navy hospital “for treatment of addiction to alcohol and prescription medication.” In 1982 the Betty Ford Center, which she co-founded, opened in Rancho Mirage, California. She greeted new patients: “Hello, my name’s Betty Ford, and I’m an alcoholic and drug addict.”

Open Disclosures

On November 5, 1994, Ronald Reagan wrote a letter to the American people: “I have recently been told that I am one of the millions of Americans who will be afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease.”

He explained why he made it public: “Nancy and I had to decide whether as private citizens we would keep this a private matter or whether we would make this news known in a public way.” He recalled earlier illnesses: “In the past Nancy suffered from breast cancer and I had my cancer surgeries. We found through our open disclosures we were able to raise public awareness.”

Sunlight Is the Best of Disinfectants

In Harper’s Weekly on December 20, 1913, Louis D. Brandeis wrote in an essay called “What Publicity Can Do”: “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” The essay was reprinted in his 1914 book Other People’s Money.

Americans usually quote Brandeis as “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” His words “is said to be” show that he was citing a saying. The short form had already appeared in print in 1879.

Houston, We’ve Had a Problem

On the evening of April 13, 1970, about 56 hours into the flight of Apollo 13, command module pilot Jack Swigert reported: “Okay, Houston … we’ve had a problem here.” When asked to repeat, commander Jim Lovell said: “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Then he named it: “We’ve had a Main B Bus Undervolt.”

The phrase Americans know is “Houston, we have a problem.” The Houston Chronicle traced it to Ron Howard’s 1995 film Apollo 13, though a 1974 TV movie had already used a changed version. In 2005 the American Film Institute ranked the film line No. 50 among the 100 greatest movie quotes.