Data dashboards, critical thinking, and more

Two interesting and relevant articles are in this morning's New York Times. First, it appears that Police Commissioner Ray Kelly receives a weekly data dashboard, in his case a lengthy document that provides updated statistical information. Data dashboards, or regular statistical updates, are an extremely useful management tool, one that senior executives can use to get a point in time sense of what is happening in an agency, department, or unit. (Even the Times used "snapshot" in the headline.) Unusually, Mr. Kelly's data dashboard appears to include some interpretations:

For example, the report, obtained by The New York Times, indicated that the department had created a database to better track the reliability of confidential informants offering information. It told Mr. Kelly that in the previous week, no officer had been shot, committed suicide or shot a dog, but that one suspect had been shot. It gave details on the most recent escaped prisoner, and highlighted various crime trends.

I couldn't find the data dashboard itself on the NYPD website, and the Times article did not link to it. The data dashboard appears to include updates to at least some of the many useful statistics the NYPD makes available, including annual firearms discharge reports, weekly COMPSTAT files, and stop and frisk reports.

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The other article is a column by Paul Krugman called "The Ignorance Caucus." It's a tenet of this blog that information is critical to understanding what is happening in our world. We should think critically about what information is in front of us, remembering that there will always be something that we don't know, but some information is better than none. Those principles are being lost in our politics:

For these days his party dislikes the whole idea of applying critical thinking and evidence to policy questions. And no, that’s not a caricature: Last year the Texas G.O.P. explicitly condemned efforts to teach “critical thinking skills,” because, it said, such efforts “have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.”

And such is the influence of what we might call the ignorance caucus that even when giving a speech intended to demonstrate his openness to new ideas, Mr. Cantor felt obliged to give that caucus a shout-out, calling for a complete end to federal funding of social science research. Because it’s surely a waste of money seeking to understand the society we’re trying to change. . . .

Do actions like this have important effects? Well, consider the agonized discussions of gun policy that followed the Newtown massacre. It would be helpful to these discussions if we had a good grasp of the facts about firearms and violence. But we don’t, because back in the 1990s conservative politicians, acting on behalf of the National Rifle Association, bullied federal agencies into ceasing just about all research into the issue. Willful ignorance matters.

It makes for some depressing reading. 

Tracking NYC's snowplows

Here's a new site to play with during the storm: New York City's new snowplow tracker, PlowNYC.
You get to plug in an address and see how recently the street in front of it has been plowed. (It's updated every 30 minutes.) Handy pop-ups tells you whether your street is a primary, secondary, or tertiary street.

And while we're at it, Gothamist has provided a handy borough-by-borough list of the best places for sledding. Stay warm!

Update, February 11: I had hoped to update the post with a link to Boston's snowplow tracker, but the site got so much traffic during the storm that it has been shut down. Story here. And here is a good set of photos of the storm posted by TheAtlantic. Screenshot of one, below.

Charts from the new Federal Advisory Committee Draft Report on Climate Assessment

Climate Central has pulled out five important charts from the draft climate assessment report released in January by the National Climate Assessment Development Advisory Committee. That's a screenshot of one of them, above.

The report, which is the first since 2009 to systematically examine the effects of global warming on the U.S., bolsters some of the conclusions of the previous report and cites new findings showing that the country is already experiencing a wide range of disruptive impacts from global warming, primarily through the changing frequency and severity of weather extremes.

Take a look at the Executive Summary, available either on the Climate Central link, above, or through the committee's website, linked below. Here's one short example, from Table 1.1: Regional Observations of Climate Change:

Northeast: Heat waves, coastal flooding due to sea level rise and storm surge, and river flooding due to more extreme precipitation events are affection communities in the region. . .

Southwest: Drought and increased warming have fostered wildfires and increased competition for scarce water resources for people and ecosystems.

You can download the full report, and comment on it, here. The comment period is open until April 14, 2013. Take a look at the executive summary - it will be something to do over the weekend if we really do get the (massive, climate change influenced?) blizzard being predicted.

The (green) Super Bowl ad you didn't see

Yup. Soda Stream, and its competitors allow you to rent a cylinder of carbon dioxide and make your own club soda and flavored soft drinks (diet too) from tap water in a reusable bottle. It's a good way to help the environment. As the writer David Roberts points out on Grist.org, there are expensive environmental costs associated with bottled drinks, whether they are water or soda.

Roberts also links to this article on The Daily Beast that explains how CBS refused to play the ad - and the impact that refusal is having.

Do I have a soda maker? Yes.

Social Media and Management

From the McKinsey Quarterly (free once you register), here's an interesting piece on six social media skills every leader needs, along with some suggestions for implementation. Social media can be off-putting, but a working knowledge, or better, is necessary, say authors Roland Deiser and Sylvain Newton.

By nature unbridled, these new communications media can let internal and privileged information suddenly go public virally. What’s more, there’s a mismatch between the logic of participatory media and the still-reigning 20th-century model of management and organizations, with its emphasis on linear processes and control. Social media encourages horizontal collaboration and unscripted conversations that travel in random paths across management hierarchies. It thereby short-circuits established power dynamics and traditional lines of communication.

 Translated from consultant-ese, here's what the article recommends:

1. Create content that is compelling, not (necessarily) perfect. The authors use the 'auteur' theory of filmmaking as an example: the skills required are "an authentic voice, imagination, and the ability to craft compelling stories and to turn them into media products that make people take note." Turning out videos doesn't hurt.

2.  Using new distribution pathways mean that leaders can spark a discussion, then learn from it. In order to be effective, the leader needs to work on developing a group interested enough to make the message go viral, and then remember to synthesize what the group is saying about an issue.

3. Filter out what's unimportant. Just make sure that you look at social media streams as well as more traditional ones, like email.

4. Take the lead in using social media. All your direct reports need to become media literate. Encourage experiments and allow for mistakes.

5. Create the necessary infrastructure.  Create some kind of social media space: a wiki, an internal blog, a video channel. If possible, include consumers in the discussion.

6. Stay on top of emerging trends.

Tracking Old Faithful

Old Faithful, the iconic American geyser, is also a statistician's delight. Its eruption can be predicted only based on the length of the previous eruption, and Old Faithful's eruption durations are bimodal. That means that there are two distinct eruption durations. The range can be from about 70 minutes to about 100 minutes, plus or minus 10 minutes on either side. The longer the previous eruption, the longer the interval, possibly because it takes longer for the underground chambers to refill after a longer eruption.

Park rangers at the Old Faithful visitor center time the duration of the eruptions, and Ranger Rita Garcia explained the process to me. There are numerous pre-eruptions, all timed, but the eruption itself doesn't begin until the height of the spray is sustained at 15-20 feet. The ranger notes the start time, height, and duration of the eruption. There are detailed records going back 40 years, and archival but less detailed records before that. Old Faithful's eruptions are "unusually regular." Though we don't know for sure (it's too hot!) the belief is that Old Faithful has its own water reservoir, one that is low in silica for a geyser. But no one knows for sure. (That's OK - we may yet figure it out. You can see my review of Samuel Arbesman's book "The Half-Life of Facts, which explains why technical and scientific progress occur at fixed rates, here.)

You might be wondering how the rangers measure the height of the eruption. The visitor center, which you can see in the background of the picture above, is below the grade of Old Faithful. And it's not as if there's a helpful measuring stick next to the geyser. But look at the picture below.

That neatly triangular tree in the center? The rangers compare the height of the eruption to it; a helpful student calculated the heights for them a couple of years ago.

You can see what's happening now using the National Park Service's Old Faithful webcam here. And there's a good explanation of why geysers erupt here. And here is a link to the Geyser Observation and Study Association if you want to learn more.

Maps can explain the world

Or at least some of it. That's a screenshot of one of the very cool maps Business Insider has put together here. Do they explain the entire world? Not really. Are there things that could be done better? Yes, and feel free to identify them in the comments. Enjoy the link, and the weekend.