Luck and success
Well of course luck has something to do with success. But the basics must be there in terms of brains, drive, and ability, or it won’t work out in the long run even with some luck.
I don’t think much of simulations of the type described in the article, either.
It’s my observation that most people get on track fairly early (generally before 40 or even earlier) or they don’t. For example, the Depression was a cautionary tale my parents often told me, involving several friends of theirs (people I knew) whose luck—in terms of career “success,” that is—ran out when they were very young. For example, there was the guy who wanted more than anything to be a gym teacher but had to drop out of high school and felt himself lucky to find a job, any job. He ended up pushing racks in the garment district for a long long time and never made much money at all, although his son became—a gym teacher. It’s pretty obvious that if you get a degree of some sort and are trying to get work when there’s a recession going on rather than a boom, it will affect you, and people who might have smooth sailing otherwise will have a tougher time under those conditions. There are plenty of other things that matter, including how big the cohort is against which you’re competing, how you look, or what is the favored gender and race du jour.
Speaking of gender, I also noticed this today, about the choices women make in the work world. An excerpt from the interview (quotes are from psychologist Susan Pinker—who, by the way, turns out to be psychologist Steven Pinker’s sister):
I can’t predict the future, but several excellent recent studies show that, paradoxically, as a society becomes more egalitarian, the gender gap in occupational choice becomes wider, not narrower. A case in point: A study published last month in Psychological Science, by the psychologists David Geary and Gijsbert Stoet, looked at the academic performance of nearly half a million adolescents from 67 countries. What they found was that the more gender equal a country was, as determined by the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, the fewer women ultimately took up STEM paths in college. Countries with the most robust legal and cultural protections for gender equality””along with the strongest social safety nets””such as Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, and Finland, have the fewest female STEM graduates, weighing in at about 20 percent of the total (the U.S. has 24 percent). In contrast, countries with almost no protections, with few guarantees for women and where life satisfaction is low””such as Algeria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Albania””had by far the highest representation of women in STEM, approaching the researchers’ estimates of 41 percent, based on how well girls do in math and science in high school, without considering their other skills. Another study showing this paradoxical effect, from 2008, was led by David Schmitt. He and his colleagues found that gender differences in personality are way larger in cultures that offer more egalitarian gender roles and opportunities. This is not what one would predict if men’s and women’s preferences were exclusively constrained by cultural forces…
In places where girls and women feel they have the freedom to make their own choices, in other words, they are more likely to act on their personal strengths and interests. But in places where they feel constrained by cultural or financial strictures, they are more likely to go for what they consider a sure thing, which is a STEM career. I absolutely agree with and promote equal access to opportunities and education. But equal access to opportunities and education does not determine an equal result.
Hey, but every good progressive knows the only way to measure equality is not by equality of opportunity but equality of result, right?
[ADDENDUM: Oh, and by the way:
Success is counted sweetest
By those who ne’er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.Not one of all the purple Host
Who took the Flag today
Can tell the definition
So clear of victoryAs he defeated ”“ dying ”“
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Burst agonized and clear!]
The unambiguous identification of sex (i.e. genotype) and gender (i.e. phenotype, orientation) is a prerequisite to reconciling moral, natural (e.g. fitness), and personal imperatives.
Regarding gender, I’ve often thought that if we want gender parity in tech, it will mean discouraging a girl who got a 90 in history and an 85 in math from going into history or law, and telling her to get a degree in CS instead.
We have the notion that a person should focus on what they are “best” at, and not what they are “good enough” for. Maybe that’s a good idea, maybe it isn’t.
Luck has something to do with it. My uncle graduated from high school at age 15 during the Depression. There was no money for college, so he went to work. At age 16 he was managing a gas station with an older partner. The older partner cheated him.(Coincidentally, three decades later my uncle’s son met the old cheater when my cousin was attending college, where the old cheater was the father of one of my cousin’s frat mates.)
My uncle didn’t give up. He retired as the manager of a factory that manufactured cheese. All the triple effect evaporators and the like showed me that he was doing the job that most companies would have given to an engineer. My uncle also acquired some farm land over the years.
Another study showing this paradoxical effect, from 2008, was led by David Schmitt. He and his colleagues found that gender differences in personality are way larger in cultures that offer more egalitarian gender roles and opportunities. This is not what one would predict if men’s and women’s preferences were exclusively constrained by cultural forces.
Another paradoxical effect is that racial disparity in prison population tends to be greater in more northern, more liberal states than in more southern, more conservative states.The Color of Justice: Racial and Ethnic Disparity in State Prisons.
The states with the highest racial disparities in prison population are New Jersey, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Vermont, and Connecticut.
I have been wondering for a while, why the emphasis on women in STEM fields? Most people in STEM fields end up working for some business major or ,god help us, someone from marketing.
Reminded of something.
Luck favors the prepared.
–Edna Mode, “The Incredibles”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZkspgM95cw
Gringo Says:
March 5th, 2018 at 4:53 pm
It’s been reduced to math:
http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/prison.htm
“POLITICS, IMPRISONMENT AND RACE
An adult black man is seven times more likely than his white counterpart to reside behind bars. Paradoxically, the largest disparities are found in political domains controlled by liberals — the leaders in the struggle for racial justice. By examining how criminal behavior is distributed within the races, the paradox is resolved showing it to be an unintended consequence of liberal benevolence and goodwill.”
La Griffe du Lion
Be prepared to be blown away.
Just read Pinker’s article.
It’s a good thing for her that she doesn’t work for Google.
I have been wondering for a while, why the emphasis on women in STEM fields?
Martin: Because they can. Because it’s one of the last male bastions. Because there is real money and power at stake.
Feminists are not doing jack about the gender imbalances in garbage collection and oil rig work.
Huxley:
Because in those dangerous dirty jobs having physical strength, agility, and grit are different things than thinking you are strong, quick, and determined. Those big pieces of steel and such don’t “care;” they will kill you if you aren’t in the right place or can’t get out of their way.
There is something to be said, also, for the role that being on the lookout for opportunities has in success.
Someone like that person who ONLY wanted to be a gym teacher is less likely to achieve his dream, compared to someone who wants “more”, but is flexible about the direction he would be willing to take to achieve it.
In other words, there are those that are “on the make”, and those that have a dream, which is the only outcome that will satisfy them.
With two daughters in college, I was pleased when the 21 year old decided to try for a degree in information systems.
I’ve brought her to Women in Technology conferences and while she moved away from the field because her first class she was the only (ogled) female student in class – I tried to explain the power she would have in life to earn more and be more independent if she worked past the issue.
I’ve seen this work that you site Neo and I’m amazed and I only learned it this last year. Places like Sweden are not getting the results they seek. Sometimes the instincts of a mother are not correct – nurturing and coddling should be replaced with hardship and nudging – or whatever terms we can say.
While maybe nobody wants to be doing hard work – that is the way true happiness is achieved. Research and long hours is stuff dreams are made of??? 🙂
Hi Andrew My paper at StanCon in January gets into why discriminations are constrained to be positive in traditional IRT. It depends on the relationship between the data and the unobserved latent variable if we believe that the relationship is monotonically increasing, then it makes sense to constrain alpha to be positive. For example, on a test if you get a question right it *always* signals higher ability as a student. But in other situations, such as in the ideal point model, that may not be the case voting “yes on a bill could signal you are higher or lower on the latent scale (conservative/liberal) because it depends on how the bill loads in the ideal point space. For that reason, in the ideal point model the discrimination parameters should be left unconstrained. In some situations, it may be possible to fit either model. For example, in the paper I look at an Amazon food ratings database (1 to 5 scale) of coffee products. If I constrained alpha, the model would be interpreted as which coffee product receives the best ratings/has the highest ability. But if I don”t, which I don”t in the paper, then the model becomes about which coffee products tend to be most polarizing between raters. It took me a long time to figure this out, so I wanted to share. The paper should be up on the Stan website along with the other conference papers soon.
But of course. Women are generally more interested in people and living things, and therefore numerically dominate psychology, biology and vet med. I have coached scholastic chess, and I know well how hard it is to get high-school girls to engage in it. I joke that girls are far to sensible to spend vast chunks of time staring at plastic pieces on a vinyl board.