I took a family history class in college. During the class, which I really enjoyed...mostly due to the fact that it was a cool class and partially due to the fact that I sat next to a super cute boy :-)...we learned how much information you can find out about deceased family members through studying census records. You can find out so much about a person's life just through tracking them through the census - where they lived, if they owned property, how many children they had, if they had other people living with them, about how long they lived there, etc., etc., etc.
So, it was with great anticipation that I waited for our census form to come in the mail...imagine, I get to fill out this form that may one day be used by searching predecessors to learn about my life. It's kind of a cool thing (yes, I realize the fact that I think it is cool makes me uber super dorky!). Yesterday, the form arrived. I pulled out my pen and greedily began to fill it out - somehow convinced that Wil might fight with me for the opportunity (yeah, like that's gonna happen!).
Person 1
Name: Wilfredo Gonzalez
Gender: male (man, I'm good at this form!)
Age: 27
Is person 1 of Hispanic, Latino or Spanish origin: YEP!
What is person 1's race: Errrch...(imagine a screeching tires sound here). The form said, for the purposes of this census Hispanic origins are not races. Huh, didn't realize...so the options for Wil on this question that I was required by law to fill out were White (no, not really), black (yeah, definitely not), American Indian (nope), Japanese (not the last time I checked), Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Samoan, other Asian...
Yeah, so my husband is not any of those, because believe it or not he actually is hispanic - just like the many, many, MANY other people in this country who also happen to identify themselves as Hispanic - whether or not the United States government seems to think that is a valid race.
I'm not sure Wil was quite as upset about this as I was, but I was pretty annoyed. I was tempted to check Japanese just to throw them off, but then remembered the possible future posterity and did not want to confuse them because I am annoyed with the census people, not my future children's children's children.
So instead, I checked other and wrote in Hispanic, because yes, I really do think it is a race and the one that most correctly identifies my husband. So to the people who wrote this year's census questionnaire (none of whom, I'm guessing, were Hispanic) I think you missed the boat...in a BIG way!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Saturday, March 13, 2010
When You're Sick
Overheard at our house today:
Wil: Do you know who you remind me of when you're sick?
Me: Oh no, who?
Wil: You, in pictures from when you were a teenager.
Good...I've been hoping to relive my awkward phase! :-)
Wil: Do you know who you remind me of when you're sick?
Me: Oh no, who?
Wil: You, in pictures from when you were a teenager.
Good...I've been hoping to relive my awkward phase! :-)
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Domesticated Bliss
Wil and I rarely have the opportunity to eat dinner together during the week. Typically, I'm at work until after he leaves for school, and he doesn't get home until between 7:30 (at the earliest) and after 10.
Because of this, I rarely cook dinner. In fact...it's quite possible I ate better dinners when I was in college (how sad is that?).
In college, I had a roommate who would make lasagna and chicken enchiladas, a huge thing of them, and then put them in baggies and freeze them to eat later. I remembered her trick and thought it might work for us.
Tonight, we made four meals - Sicilian something or other, pizza spaghetti, chicken and potato casserole and stuffed pasta shells (I looked them up online, because I wasn't sure what types of recipes would be good to freeze). Here they are in our freezer...and taking up most of the room.
This way, we can quickly have a hot meal for dinner (or lunch). I'm hoping it will reduce how often we eat out - meaning it will both be cheaper and healthier. We'll see how it goes...hopefully we'll be doing this again soon.
Because of this, I rarely cook dinner. In fact...it's quite possible I ate better dinners when I was in college (how sad is that?).
In college, I had a roommate who would make lasagna and chicken enchiladas, a huge thing of them, and then put them in baggies and freeze them to eat later. I remembered her trick and thought it might work for us.
Tonight, we made four meals - Sicilian something or other, pizza spaghetti, chicken and potato casserole and stuffed pasta shells (I looked them up online, because I wasn't sure what types of recipes would be good to freeze). Here they are in our freezer...and taking up most of the room.
This way, we can quickly have a hot meal for dinner (or lunch). I'm hoping it will reduce how often we eat out - meaning it will both be cheaper and healthier. We'll see how it goes...hopefully we'll be doing this again soon.
A Few Updates
I haven't been blogging much lately. Here's what's going on in our lives:
- Wil's Car: It's broken, again...the piece that mounts the alternator to the engine broke - not sure how that happens. Wil is going to the dealership to get a new part tomorrow. (Have I ever mentioned how his car is a lemon?) :-)
- Wil's School: Wil decided to change his major to nursing. I was surprised at first, but I'm really excited about it now! I think it fits him perfectly! He's taking biology and welding this semester, has another biology class to take over the summer and then can take the test and apply for nursing school.
- Wil's Work: Wil has been working crazy overtime the last two weeks. He worked all day Thursday, went back at 5 p.m., worked until midnight, started at 6 the next morning, worked until noon, started again at 5 p.m. and worked until 6 a.m. I have no idea how he does that, but if you ask him, he'll tell you he's a machine!
- My Car: Seems to be working fine for now.
- My School: I took my third cake decorating class in February and I start my fourth, and final, cake decorating class tomorrow (yes, I know this is not the same thing as Wil's school, but I still think it counts...my homework is just more fun...and tastes better.) :-)
- My Work: Is good. We were crazy busy with the Waste Management Phoenix Open and the launch of the Health & Wealth Raffle. It seems to be settling down a bit now, which is nice.
- Elvis: Is learning how to speak on command. He's doesn't have it down yet, but hopefully soon!
In the Middle
My aunt and uncle came over tonight.
This is where Elvis wanted to sit...he's a person, too!
Incompetence
For your reading pleasure today...an article that ran in the New York Times in 2000. I got this article during my internship and have saved it ever since because I think it is so funny.
It also gives me hope. On the days when I feel completely incompetent, I realize I must be competent or I would always think I was awesome.
There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.
Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.
On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.
"I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it," Dunning said.
One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.
The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it," wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.
This deficiency in "self-monitoring skills," the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and of the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.
In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning tested their theory of incompetence. They found that subjects who scored in the lowest quartile on tests of logic, English grammar and humor were also the most likely to "grossly overestimate" how well they had performed.
In all three tests, subjects' ratings of their ability were positively linked to their actual scores. But the lowest-ranked participants showed much greater distortions in their self-estimates.
Asked to evaluate their performance on the test of logical reasoning, for example, subjects who scored only in the 12th percentile guessed that they had scored in the 62nd percentile, and deemed their overall skill at logical reasoning to be at the 68th percentile.
Similarly, subjects who scored at the 10th percentile on the grammar test ranked themselves at the 67th percentile in the ability to "identify grammatically correct standard English," and estimated their test scores to be at the 61st percentile.
On the humor test, in which participants were asked to rate jokes according to their funniness (subjects' ratings were matched against those of an "expert" panel of professional comedians), low-scoring subjects were also more apt to have an inflated perception of their skill. But because humor is idiosyncratically defined, the researchers said, the results were less conclusive.
Unlike unskilled counterparts, the most able subjects in the study, Kruger and Dunning found, were likely to underestimate their competence. The researchers attributed this to the fact that, in the absence of information about how others were doing, highly competent subjects assumed that others were performing as well as they were -- a phenomenon psychologists term the "false consensus effect."
When high-scoring subjects were asked to "grade" the grammar tests of their peers, however, they quickly revised their evaluations of their own performance. In contrast, the self-assessments of those who scored badly themselves were unaffected by the experience of grading others; some subjects even further inflated their estimates of their own abilities.
"Incompetent individuals were less able to recognize competence in others," the researchers concluded.
In a final experiment, Dunning and Kruger set out to discover if training would help modify the exaggerated self-perceptions of incapable subjects. In fact, a short training session in logical reasoning did improve the ability of low-scoring subjects to assess their performance realistically, they found.
The findings, the psychologists said, support Thomas Jefferson's assertion that "he who knows best knows how little he knows."
And the research meshes neatly with other work indicating that overconfidence is common; studies have found, for example, that the vast majority of people rate themselves as "above average" on a wide array of abilities -- though such an abundance of talent would be impossible in statistical terms. This overestimation, studies indicate, is more likely for tasks that are difficult than for those that are easy.
Such studies are not without critics. Dr. David C. Funder, a psychology professor at the University of California at Riverside, for example, said he suspects that most lay people have only a vague idea of the meaning of "average" in statistical terms.
"I'm not sure the average person thinks of 'average' or 'percentile' in quite that literal a sense," Funder said, "so 'above average' might mean to them 'pretty good,' or 'OK,' or 'doing all right.' And if, in fact, people mean something subjective when they use the word, then it's really hard to evaluate whether they're right or wrong, using the statistical criterion."
But Dunning said his current research and past studies indicated there are many reasons why people would tend to overestimate their competency and not be aware of it.
In various situations, feedback is absent, or at least ambiguous; even a humorless joke, for example, is likely to be met with polite laughter. And faced with incompetence, social norms prevent most people from blurting out "You stink!" -- truthful though this assessment may be.
It also gives me hope. On the days when I feel completely incompetent, I realize I must be competent or I would always think I was awesome.
Research finds most people who are incompetent not aware of it
There are many incompetent people in the world. Dr. David A. Dunning is haunted by the fear that he might be one of them.
Dunning, a professor of psychology at Cornell, worries about this because, according to his research, most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent.
On the contrary. People who do things badly, Dunning has found in studies conducted with a graduate student, Justin Kruger, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.
"I began to think that there were probably lots of things that I was bad at, and I didn't know it," Dunning said.
One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence.
The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly, they suggested in a paper appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it," wrote Kruger, now an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, and Dunning.
This deficiency in "self-monitoring skills," the researchers said, helps explain the tendency of the humor-impaired to persist in telling jokes that are not funny, of day traders to repeatedly jump into the market -- and repeatedly lose out -- and of the politically clueless to continue holding forth at dinner parties on the fine points of campaign strategy.
In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning tested their theory of incompetence. They found that subjects who scored in the lowest quartile on tests of logic, English grammar and humor were also the most likely to "grossly overestimate" how well they had performed.
In all three tests, subjects' ratings of their ability were positively linked to their actual scores. But the lowest-ranked participants showed much greater distortions in their self-estimates.
Asked to evaluate their performance on the test of logical reasoning, for example, subjects who scored only in the 12th percentile guessed that they had scored in the 62nd percentile, and deemed their overall skill at logical reasoning to be at the 68th percentile.
Similarly, subjects who scored at the 10th percentile on the grammar test ranked themselves at the 67th percentile in the ability to "identify grammatically correct standard English," and estimated their test scores to be at the 61st percentile.
On the humor test, in which participants were asked to rate jokes according to their funniness (subjects' ratings were matched against those of an "expert" panel of professional comedians), low-scoring subjects were also more apt to have an inflated perception of their skill. But because humor is idiosyncratically defined, the researchers said, the results were less conclusive.
Unlike unskilled counterparts, the most able subjects in the study, Kruger and Dunning found, were likely to underestimate their competence. The researchers attributed this to the fact that, in the absence of information about how others were doing, highly competent subjects assumed that others were performing as well as they were -- a phenomenon psychologists term the "false consensus effect."
When high-scoring subjects were asked to "grade" the grammar tests of their peers, however, they quickly revised their evaluations of their own performance. In contrast, the self-assessments of those who scored badly themselves were unaffected by the experience of grading others; some subjects even further inflated their estimates of their own abilities.
"Incompetent individuals were less able to recognize competence in others," the researchers concluded.
In a final experiment, Dunning and Kruger set out to discover if training would help modify the exaggerated self-perceptions of incapable subjects. In fact, a short training session in logical reasoning did improve the ability of low-scoring subjects to assess their performance realistically, they found.
The findings, the psychologists said, support Thomas Jefferson's assertion that "he who knows best knows how little he knows."
And the research meshes neatly with other work indicating that overconfidence is common; studies have found, for example, that the vast majority of people rate themselves as "above average" on a wide array of abilities -- though such an abundance of talent would be impossible in statistical terms. This overestimation, studies indicate, is more likely for tasks that are difficult than for those that are easy.
Such studies are not without critics. Dr. David C. Funder, a psychology professor at the University of California at Riverside, for example, said he suspects that most lay people have only a vague idea of the meaning of "average" in statistical terms.
"I'm not sure the average person thinks of 'average' or 'percentile' in quite that literal a sense," Funder said, "so 'above average' might mean to them 'pretty good,' or 'OK,' or 'doing all right.' And if, in fact, people mean something subjective when they use the word, then it's really hard to evaluate whether they're right or wrong, using the statistical criterion."
But Dunning said his current research and past studies indicated there are many reasons why people would tend to overestimate their competency and not be aware of it.
In various situations, feedback is absent, or at least ambiguous; even a humorless joke, for example, is likely to be met with polite laughter. And faced with incompetence, social norms prevent most people from blurting out "You stink!" -- truthful though this assessment may be.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
And the Answer Is
Nice work on the wasted quiz! Here are the answers:
1 & 2. You were all right about the plastic bags (I think; I don't know anything about the types of plastics, but Vivi sounded like she knew what she was talking about so I think I'll take her word for it). Yes, plastic bags are recyclable, but NOT in your recycling bin. The reason is that the recycling process for plastic bags requires them to be clean. When you take them to the bin at the grocery store, they all stay relatively clean. When you put them in your mixed recyclables recycling bin, they get all gunky and gross and are then too difficult to try to recycle because they would have to be cleaned first which would be virtually impossible to do in a mass, cost effective way.
Random side note: Did you know that contrary to popular belief, they prefer that you leave the lids ON the plastic bottles? They're too small to sort through and get easily lost if you take them off.
3. Wow...I thought 200 tons was a lot - that's about 4,000 tons per month. I'm not sure how to impress you people - do you realize 200 tons is a little more than the weight of 24 elephants...the largest land animal?!? DO YOU?!? I happen to think that's a lot!
Bonus question: Alison and Nikki were the closest with a foot and something dead...the answer is...are you ready for it, are you sure you're ready for it? A HUMAN SKULL!!!! Ewwwww! When asked what they did when they found a HUMAN SKULL in the recyclables, Jerry said "I picked it up and put it on my desk until the police came" - of course he did!?!?! That's the first thing I would think if I found a human skull at work, I should pick it up and put it on my desk...
A couple of thoughts - first, (benefit of the doubt and this is not someone who has committed a crime) who thinks a human skull is recyclable? WHAT are you going to turn that into? Second, (let's say you are someone who has recently committed a crime) if you're trying to hide a skull...why send it somewhere where they have to hand sort through everything...duh! You deserve to be on the world's stupidest criminals for that one.
1 & 2. You were all right about the plastic bags (I think; I don't know anything about the types of plastics, but Vivi sounded like she knew what she was talking about so I think I'll take her word for it). Yes, plastic bags are recyclable, but NOT in your recycling bin. The reason is that the recycling process for plastic bags requires them to be clean. When you take them to the bin at the grocery store, they all stay relatively clean. When you put them in your mixed recyclables recycling bin, they get all gunky and gross and are then too difficult to try to recycle because they would have to be cleaned first which would be virtually impossible to do in a mass, cost effective way.
Random side note: Did you know that contrary to popular belief, they prefer that you leave the lids ON the plastic bottles? They're too small to sort through and get easily lost if you take them off.
3. Wow...I thought 200 tons was a lot - that's about 4,000 tons per month. I'm not sure how to impress you people - do you realize 200 tons is a little more than the weight of 24 elephants...the largest land animal?!? DO YOU?!? I happen to think that's a lot!
Bonus question: Alison and Nikki were the closest with a foot and something dead...the answer is...are you ready for it, are you sure you're ready for it? A HUMAN SKULL!!!! Ewwwww! When asked what they did when they found a HUMAN SKULL in the recyclables, Jerry said "I picked it up and put it on my desk until the police came" - of course he did!?!?! That's the first thing I would think if I found a human skull at work, I should pick it up and put it on my desk...
A couple of thoughts - first, (benefit of the doubt and this is not someone who has committed a crime) who thinks a human skull is recyclable? WHAT are you going to turn that into? Second, (let's say you are someone who has recently committed a crime) if you're trying to hide a skull...why send it somewhere where they have to hand sort through everything...duh! You deserve to be on the world's stupidest criminals for that one.
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