QTRS Jan 23, 2025

Graphs and interesting content for the curious

As I see it…

I was listening to The Ezra Klein Show. Democrats Are Losing the War for Attention. Badly (1/17/2025), and they make the point that attention is more important today and that money doesn’t necessarily buy attention. For instance, how much is an interview on Rogan worth for a politician? It is also clear that Trump is great at getting attention.

As I see it, Trump is not just good at getting attention; he’s managed to put Democrats on the defensive to the point where they can’t articulate their viewpoints well and are becoming more defensive. At my college, there have already been “faculty development” sessions on how to deal with the outcome of the election and how to deal with the recent executive orders. Funny that we didn’t need these for the last election.

From the perspective of higher education DEI is under attack, yet it isn’t that they have lost numerous cases (Chronicle, 1/11/2025)

Perry’s alma mater is not the only institution in his sights. Over the past seven years, he has filed close to 850 complaints with OCR, alleging more than 2,000 violations of federal antidiscrimination law by more than 750 colleges. The office has opened more than 375 investigations into those complaints and resolved 345 of them, mostly to his satisfaction, he says.

they can’t come to grips that the law isn’t in their favor

“Discrimination on the basis of sex or race is unlawful even if the discrimination advantages the ‘right’ groups for the ‘right’ reasons,” Perry said. “It’s a simple matter of the law.”

“DEI is under attack,” partly because it is illegal and partly because a good half of the country doesn’t think it is fair. Instead of complaining about being attacked, the left needs to make their case better and maybe put forward legislation to make what they are doing legal.

The left will also talk about the attacks on transgender students despite the fact that the Bostock case was ruled in their favor in 2020 by the Supreme Court, giving transgender people full civil rights. From The Chronicle (1/21/2025)

Trump’s order directed the forthcoming U.S. attorney general to issue guidance that Title IX does not require “gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces,” and barred federal funds from being used “to promote gender ideology.”

Should trans women be allowed to use women’s bathrooms, change in women’s locker rooms, and be housed in women’s prisons? These are open questions, and asking them or not agreeing with the “right” viewpoint is not an attack.

Immigration is another example. The left seems to want open borders. This isn’t some scientifically proven correct viewpoint. It isn’t an attack on immigrants to suggest that maybe immigration should be limited. In this case, the left should be talking about how we need immigration to keep the population from shrinking (more on this on Tuesday).

What concerns me is that these issues are going the way of abortion. You are either pro choice or pro life, and each side views the other as a monster. If you aren’t all in on DEI, you are racists. If you don’t support everything the transgender community wants, you are transphobic. There is no space to support Bostock but think that transwomen shouldn’t be allowed in female sports or bathrooms. I do put more responsibly on the left given their control of higher education. If open, honest discussion, debate, and compromise can’t happen on campus, and right now it can’t, then we have a real problem.

Maybe I’m wrong but one thing is clear…

Democrats are not winning

The surge of those that think of themselves as independents from Gallup (1/16/2025) should really be a message to both parties. But if you take out the independent option, then:

The Democratic Party long had at least a slight edge in party preferences among the U.S. adult population. But in the past three years, under an unpopular Biden administration, Republican identification and leaning has exceeded that of Democrats.

Funding on Men’s health

We all know society doesn’t spend enough on women’s health, right? This sentence should make you think of the data rule: doubt something everyone knows is true. The graph here comes from the Nuzzo Letter (11/18/2024). The data comes from the NIH Biennial Reports page from the Office of Research on Women’s Health. NIH spends more than twice the money studying women’s health specifically as compared to men’s health.

For the last three years, the spending on men’s health hasn't been zero; they just stopped including it in the reports. The 2021-2022 report, the most recent report, has this to say:

NIH does not currently calculate or report annual funding associated with projects dedicated solely to men’s health or projects benefiting men and women.

Why did they stop? I won’t speculate. I will note that men don’t live as long as women, so why the disparity in funding?

In fact, there does not appear to be any office in the federal government focused on men’s health. Again from the Nuzzo Letter (1/22/2025).

More on men and women

This is a fascinating result from the paper The sexy and formidable male body: men’s height and weight are conditfion-dependent, sexually selected traits (1/22/2025). It is no surprise that in wealthier countries, measured with HDI here, people grow taller. They have better access to food and less stress from disease. What is surprising is that men are impacted by HDI more than women.

…each 0.2 increase in HDI was associated with an average height increase of approximately 1.68 cm for females and 4.03 cm for males.

Immigration and innovation

This is more than impressive innovation from immigrants. From AEI’s DataPoints email (1/23/2025)

Japan’s nuclear energy (re)expansion

From the eia (1/10/2025)

Data center update

I could list a bunch of projects, but when one announcement is for half a trillion over four years, they get sole billing. OpenAI announces 'The Stargate Project:' $500bn over four years on AI infrastructure (1/21/2025)

The spinning CD

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Please let me know if you believe I expressed something incorrectly or misinterpreted the data. I'd rather know the truth and understand the world than be correct. I welcome comments and disagreements. We should all be forced to express our opinions and change our minds, but we should also know how to respectfully disagree and move on. Send me article ideas, feedback, or other thoughts at briefedbydata@substack.com.

Bio

I am a tenured mathematics professor at Ithaca College (PhD Math: Stochastic Processes, MS Applied Statistics, MS Math, BS Math, BS Exercise Science), and I consider myself an accidental academic (opinions are my own). I'm a gardener, drummer, rower, runner, inline skater, 46er, and R user. I’ve written the textbooks “R for College Mathematics and Statistics” and “Applied Calculus with R.” I welcome any collaborations. I welcome any collaborations.