Hi kathie. So nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. I enjoyed your book. Thank you. I would like to start this interview by talking a little bit about you. I also would like the audience to hear the story which honestly which really offended me. Which is in your introduction. You got a note from a professor claiming he would never be a political scientist. Can you say little bit about that . Speech i put that in the book because when i was in college i struggled with what i wanted to major in. I wanted about going into science, humanities or social science. And i finally decided on social science because i found those questions much more interesting comment engaging in urgent for me. My First Political science course we read all of the great political philosophers from plato on up. They were all asking the question, what is justice . What is Good Government . How can you organize a government and organize society to make life better for people. Particularly to make justice. So, i ended up before he decided to become a Political Science major i took this course. And i already had kind of a lack of confidence in my skills as a humanist or social scientists. Because i did not get very good grades in those courses. But i got really good grades in my science and math courses. So is kind of a dilemma. So i took this Political Science class, i do not even a member what the paper was on. Never remember that stuff. Member the greater the nasty comments. So the professor wrote this as a credible effort but she will never be a political scientist. Look, it really resignation with that story. I remember myself, i became a mathematician. But one of the reasons, i guess it was a similar dilemma. One of the things i realized in middle school i believe, were being taught about manifest destiny. And it was like a thing but we should believe. I remember thinking from the perspective of the american district the native americans is not at all a reasonable theory. I remember thinking at least in geometry which i was taking at the time, like when i prove something i know i prove something i could be comfortable with that. So i felt the discomfort somehow overwhelms my interest. But of course my interest was there. And somehow for you i think it was the opposite, do you agree . I think that is right. And also, i had a discomfort moment with numbers. Which is probably what led to this book. Ive been discussing for a long time. Mike took my first economics course, i remember the professor put up all these graphs on the board of supply and demand curves. And said what a beautiful model the market was. Because if you just believed he didnt say believe. People buy things depending on the price. An supply or sell things. At the point where the price is right, a buyer was just by the seller was to sell. The market is perfect and it makes everybody happy. I raised my hand and i said price isnt the only thing people think about when they decide whether to buy something, or what they want to buy. In the professor said oh no that is true. But if we make this a simplification we can really get some powerful conclusions by stripping away all the extraneous stuff. And that just bugged the heck out of me. Thank you for that story. By the way i agree with you. Thats what i took economics in college i was like this is not mathematical enough. For exactly the same reason. Was too contextual to many assumptions. If it was pure mathematics, which is what i was interested in athe time because you agree t strip away about you have a stripped down, and you can use logical inference. But you said bring to my first aconable bookish question was, and thinking through a lot of one of your points which is the ia that when we count things, im almost going to repeat wha you said. We count things illness at t classify them we have to strip them of context. And that is something that is a deeply hum thing. So we teach our children to do. Tell us a little bit about that classification a the number as aetaphor. So that is the key point of my book. I think that we are taught in school, and even by our pants or whoever teaches us to count that there is a right answer and you are tagging a number wor like one, two, three, youre justagging number words onto things. But in fact you have to decide what belonged in the groupf things you are counting. Soay a parent putsown a bunch of oranges and apples in front of a kid and say count the apples. The kid has to know how to tell an apple from an orange. They have to be taught those rules before hand. Before they can start to count. So, that is the simple one. I thinkts easy to teach kids howo tell an apple from an onge, right . But go to something more interesting like counting ballots in an election. Somebody has to decide you count votes for different candidates. But somebody is making a desion before they even count the votes. What is a valid ballots . This ballot, ift is a mail in ballot does it meet the test . Just sign all the right places or whaver . And somebody is decidingho is a boater. Who even gets to cast the ballot. Those classification decisions, who is in, who is out, which ballots are i which ballots are outs, those get made before anybody starts to tally up the number of votes on the ballots. If you dont mind me dwelling on this for a few minutes, it is a very profound point. I have three children. We think of teaching our children to count, we think its an exercise that too comes after one or three comes after to what comes after three et cetera. But what your book has done is made me rethink that. That in fact, that is the easy part, right . The hard part is the invisible part more we are asking them to categorize in the first place. It reminds me of one of my favorite conundrums that i came up with as a teenager. When you say hi to a peace of broccoli, is that the entire stock that says hi back . Or the little florets at the end of the broccoli that says hi back . I know that is a ridiculous example. But its kind of the same thing. What is an individual item of nature in this context . That is what we are always asking our sons and daughters to do. Decide what belongs and what doesnt belo in this category. Its very, very important. Another example came up with in reading this book is again thinking about this a lot is, for taxes. My frien is an accountant, he does taxes. From his perspective its like people think that the tax calculation is hd. But of course the tax calculation is really, really ea once you decide what counts as income, right . This doesnt count. If you get rid of this and had to admit your income, once you have the income number the tax calculation is really easy, right . Its what belongs what doesnt belong. Thats a negotiation we are constantly doing. I think it is really him porch and points. To enter provi a couple more examples from the book . Yes, i do i do thats great. I kind of like came to this insight when i was reading dr. Seuss one fish two fish. Ive been thinking aut these numbers suffer a long time. I thought, i want to go back and see how kids learn to count. What is that moment when you get thensight about quantity . I thought it was a counting book forever remembered as a counting book. It starts at one fishwo fish red fish blue fish old fish new fish blackfish bluefish. And it goes on and on with differen kinds of fish. I never gets past two. And then theres another verse that says hi fish low fi fast fish slow fish. Not one of them is like another. Dont ask us why, go ask your moer. And then i thought, if not one of the car how doou know they are all fish . How do youount them always . And it made me realize that is a problem of life. Everything is unique, right . It is only humans come to group things in order to sense of our world. And to think about things. And think about it, language does the same thing. We teach kids words, we teach them or example the word for no wheat teach them by pointing to my nose, daddys nose, doggies nose, you have a new puppy. Right . Doggies nose in my nose dont look anything alike. And babys nose does not look a whole lot like my nose. But, they have certain similarities that are meaningful to us adults. And so we lump them all under one word. And so i really think numbers and language numbers are another kind of language for categorizing things. That is a really great segue to my next series of questions. Which is like numbers are just the language. Like justin merely . We have this unbelievable power. Ta about that quite brilliantly with respect to scoring systems. I want you t talk a little bit about the system wheby people are asked to measure their own pain in a medical situation. Talk about that and whatoes that even meano measure ones pain on the scale of one to ten . See next s, if i ever had anytng to that causes pain at some doctor or nurse will ask you, on a scale from one to t, how bad is it . Sometimes they will say one is hardly noticeable inen is off the charts i cant stand it anymore. I want to jump out a window. And mt people are completely baffled by thisuestion. We dont think about pain we experience it in lot of different ways. But we dont experience it like a thermometer. Like with numrs. So what i found really interesting, ive asked a lot of friends about the pain scale when i was writing this book. And everybody says they find it really difficult to put their pain and a number. To put a number on their pain. And yet, the medical system keeps using it. I think it has some benefit. Pain is uncommunicative, no one else can feel your pain. It is just one of those experiences that is yours and yours alone. And it is really impossible to communicate. So trying to do that with a number is at least a start. As it canadian dr. Who came up with i think a much better way of asking people to kind of measure or get a handle on peoples pain. It is a system of words. He just listen to people talk about their pain and he came up with about 100 different words to characterize pain. And most of the medical professionals ive talked to have said they think the word system is much more helpful in allowing patients to express what they feel in helping clinicians understand what they feel. I think in some words apparently are just bingo words. A person says them and they clinician know so that is the; sir. Im just making that example. So, even though i think the pain scale is very problematic and frustrating for people, it is one big advantage is it is a language. It allows people to communicate a little bit. So if you say my pain was a ten yesterday but its only a seven now, you are communicating that you feel that much better. And if the doctors give you some pain meds and then you say is still at a ten. They know to try something else. So it becomes a language of communication. And it is better than nothing but its not a very good one. Yeah. Couple fascinating details in that last part of the section about the pain numbers. The first one that despite how well the more contextual nuance word language for pain works, like billing companies, Insurance Companies prefer the numbers. I think it is because they just want to know how much they can charge. [laughter] or that you seem to imply there is a rule for fa pain is above a six you should be treated for i it. The doctors responsibility is to give you a pain med. That is really interesting. In some sense it becomes more quantified. It becomes a more objective from the perspective of the insurance agency. But the flipside of that which i found even more interesting and i like you to discuss a little bit is the extent to which patients themselves learn that rule. An asserted control over their own treatment by deciding what to say when asked what is your pain level. Could you talk a little bit of that flip of a certain control the patient to the system . So i learned from a friend who has cancer, and is on some pretty serious pain meds that, she said to me they dont want you to be above a five. And i scratched my head, what does that mean . They dont want you to be, they try to tell you not to say above a five . She said no if youre above a five that means are going 20 do something about it. They want to giveou meds. So then i talked to more people. What people told me was that they know, its kind of a cat and mouse game. Put down and then the other side puts down with their aner or the next card is. So people who are eeriencing a lot of pain often make a tradeoff themselves. Because pain meds make you really a zbie is the word people usually use. They reay mess with your head and you cannot think clearly, they make you tired. So people whoave a lot of in sometimes think i dont want to just be doped up on opioids. And so seval of my friends told me that they learned they learn to use the scale t control with the nur or the doctorould do. If they didnt want more pain meds they would say aow numbe number. Host one of the things i learned from t book, was how much a scoring system exerted in terms of power and in terms of this authority that you know like fewer time at a Public School teacher which the book also discusses getting there value added model score. So many teachers in that syem, their natural reaction was to trust the numr because it was a score we are so used to trusting our scos spread we have a fica score, we haveur weights, we have our iq score. We are expected to trust these things. And the trust isnt always deserved. So it is fascinating to see and that example you just gave of the pn meds to see the patient or in other wor the target of the score is actuallyaking control because it is so rare. Usually the score is are power over the targets of the score. And its a rarer case where the targets take back the power. Do you want to talk a little bit about the teachers in the scoring system around the teachers . Yes lets talk about power first. I think im just to go back to the pain thing the reason why the patients take control is because they are the ones scoring themselves. And that is unusual. Somebody else is scoring you. We all grow up in school being scored all the time, being given grades. We are used to being the weekend of the scoring system. That is somebody elses power. Unfortunately kids learn very early on that the teacher is right or the grade is right. A grade will make them doubt themselves. I certainly doubted myself when i was told i would never be a political scientist. Its a long story of why came around to it. So yet numbersave this aura in our culture of being objective. There is a lot of slogans nowadays to saye want to make evidencebase decisions. We want to make databased decisions. We went ourecisions to be driven by research, driven by facts. What people mea nowadays by evidence data wh numbers, they think those a objective and words are squishy and subject to interpretation, which they are. The point of my boo. So yeah. People used scoring systems and all kinds of organizations to make decisns that are going to affect other peoples lives. Whether they he them, fire them, promote them, get them a pay raise. Give them insurance, how much to charge them for their insurance . Whether t give them a bank loa loan, so the example that fascinates both of us about teachers is that people in the edation bureaucracies wanted to make sure that teachers were qualified and producing results. So they came up with a way to measure results which w testing students on reading and math. Pretty much those two subjects. And then when sdents spent here in aeachers classroom d they do well on this test, the result is attributed to the quality of the teacher. The first students doell, so thats kind a simple model of how it works. Bu they developed fancy formulas to try to sort out exactly how much of the student test or was due to the teachers teaching andow much was due to extraous factors like what the kid learn the year before. How good the teacher in the previous grade w. And how they did in the past. He way i say it is the teacher will give them credit if he did better than expected. If the student did better than expected. So then in addition to scoring people, to scoring teachers, these systems also either rewarded or penalize them on the basis of their score. They could get fired, whole schools would be shut down or taken over by Emergency Management or whatever, put into receivership. School budgets would be determined by how will these teachers were performing. So it could be lifeanddeath consequences, not literally but job losing consequences for teachers to get a bad score. It is the combination of the scoring system and the attachment of rewards and penalties on the test scores that leads to these consequence consequences. The score is what i tell about in the book, we, all of us hope that education does so much more than teach people how to add and subtract, pass a reading comprehension test. Or know the right grammar rules. And so we really hope, for my money a really good teacher is one who instills curiosity in the students. And instills excitement about learning and confidence that they can learn. To make them want to learn, and boost them. And encourage their imagination, nurture their creativity. Sure i want my kids learn how to count for it and want them how to read and write. But i want them to do so much more than that. And i want education to do that. And the problem is these formulas for how much value a teacher adds to a students knowledge are really so narrowly defined. They include only these narrow parts of education that is such a small part of it. Yes. I often say the idea of assessing a teacher with test scores is easily seen as an insufficient concept. We have to go to this 12 year experiment to train teachers. I guess we did do that. I want to move back what gets counted what doesnt. I have three examples here. But i want you to choose one. The violence against women, what is counted when we are talking violence against women . For example they want people to realize this book has wonderful examples. The gdp. What is counted as production as it means for the nation or other nations . And of course madisons virginia slaveholder calculation of what gets counted as a human with rights. So take one of those that you would like to go through. To lay down that whole point very strongly. Its really not about the counting print accounting is the easy part. Its about what counts. Who gets categorized appropriatel so that we can counted later. Okay. Its hard to choose. I think we can come back in another context. So the un wanted to develop a way to measure gender violence in Different Countries. Had a whole bunch of committee meetings, invited people from Different Countries. And what they wanted to do was set up some indicators. So say what counts as violence . Is it rape . Is it murder, of course. Is it beating up somebody . Is it taking somebody . And so they got some people, women from north america and europe had a list of activities or actions they would count as violence. And ultimately they would go around and ask, do surveys in Different Countries and ask if you have experience in this or that. There was rape and beating and kicking and so on. Are the things the northern and western people came up with. Then there some bangladesh women at one of the meetings. They said we have different kinds of violence in our countr country. Throwing acid in your face. Burning, setting you on fire, dropping you from a high place. Sticking needles under your fingernails. Smashing your hand. Those are things we think are violence. They also said it was psychological violence to take another wife, take a second wife. Or to be rate and punish a woman for not giving birth to a mail child. Those were things they considered gender violence. And the committee that ultimately designed the survey with all the indicators did not include any of those things that the bangladesh women had brought up. So there you have a case where it is a question of who is in the room. We come back to power really. So who is in the room and these decisions are getting made . What counts as violence . The women were in the room but they were not Strong Enough to get their definitions of violence or experience of violence counted. So when the survey gets done, that wont be done. Yeah it really is about power pretty special the three fifths rule. We dont have time for all those atrocity questions that i have. Were going to move ahead. Im always looking for positive stories about numbers and power. What to talk about numbers as a witnesses in this context of flint michigan if you would. Before i talk about that i would like to say a lot of people when they first hear my message they worry im telling people never trusted number. Numbers are no good we should not count. That is not my message at all. I think numbers can be extremely helpful. I have lots of examples in the book. So they flint, michigan water crisis is one of them where the city of flint switched its source of water from the detroit reservoir to the flint river i think it was called. And shortly after that, people started noticing that the people influence their water smelled and tasted funny. They started have some prey Serious Problems for their hair was falling out, skin rashes. And Everybody Knows i think there is a lot of lead in the water. And a lot of children had lead poisoning because of drinking this water. Numbers are really critical forinding out this in the cause of the problem. Iturned out the epa the environmtal Protection Agency has standards for what are safe levels of lead in water. There should not be led in water. The clinical water act said no one should be using lead pipes anymore. That was 1986. But old pipes were grandfathere in. And flint michigan had a l of old Housing Stock with old pipes. And the cdc uses numbers to say how much is a safe level of lead in anyons lead. You can do a blood tt and count particles of blood particles of lead. Thankou. So the cdc says no level is safe. But above a certain level we should be concerned, above five we shod be concerned. But we don need to treat until we are above 4 so it happened is the citizen of flint invited a water engineer to come in and test their water. D he figured out right away there was probably lead in the water because of corrosion from old pipes. So he teste the water ensure enough there were very hh levels. By t way micgan department of Environmental Affairs or whatever its called tests of the water. But claimed it was safe. That there was no lead in it. And the way they tested it, turned out, andhis water engineer discovered, was they told residents orhey sent their inspectors in and they let the water run for 3 minutes so theyve flushed allhe lead particles out of the pipe so of course they got low readin. But this water engineer came in and he did his own test and he got numbers that were very, very high. And then a doctor, it was a pediatrician with hearing concns from the mothers of her patients. She h access to all of the blood lead testing. She worked in the hospital where it was done. And she compared the blood levels in kids before the switch to the n system of water to after. And sure enough the levels would have dramatilly. So tse two sets of numbers put together where the cardinal story that the water engineer made very convincing lead pip corrode and send particles into the water which gets into peoples blood. Those two sets of numbers became the witnesses to condemn the city for its change and its lack of doing anything about the water the lead problem. I still feel like the story though, it so oen case that you do find out that they numbers were on your side. And yet you lost. There must have beenoming think the answer is there was a good Media Coverage of this. I think i eveneard that pediatricianad pr. Somehow those real numbers the non fak lead water levels, they were somehow brought to the surface. I mean the poweras somehow ercome. Do you know how . I thi two things. Its pretty typical. There were a few citizens. I think one mom in particular who knew not t trust the numbers. And she insisted on, she brought water samples in to government agencies. I forgetf she contacted the water engineer, but the citin advocacy was one thing. I eventually got lots of moms to test tir water. The kit that theater engineer provided. The secon ingredient for overcoming power is that tse citizens had allies who were in ageies. In government or science experts like the water engineer and the doctor. So they became passionate abouthe problem. And they worked with the citizens, the patients, the homeowners and so on. Thats good, thats good. Of course the numbers even when they are right they dont always emerge victorious. Could you tell the audience a little bit about what you call the fixit effect . I am skeptical. A man ask you some pushy questions if you dont mind facebook alright good. The little devic you wear on yourrist, it counts your step steps. People whoear fit bits try to make themselves exercise more by counting their steps and they try to reach goals. The interesting thing about it is, everyone i know that has a fit but says that they walk more because the fitbits counting them. It encourages them to walk a little bit longer than they otherwise would or climb up some ste that they havent reached their 10,000 step goal for the day. So i use that as a metaphor for this pnomenon when you count something, especially when you count yourself, i knew what to look good on the measure we will change your behavior to get a good count. Toet a good number. So tha is the fitbit effect. Heres why meda pushed bk on it. I hope you appreciate m points. I dont disagree with the fact, if there is an impactful metric that is measuring them they will change their haviors order to make their metric look good. That is certaly well understood pretty right about that myself. I talk about Colleges Ranking model that certainly a very, very important factor in how adnistrators act. With respect to the fitbit specifically, i found that almost all fitbit users there were there fit bits after h a couple of months or completel ignore them. One of the interesting things that happened is you are listening to people who still not only where there fit bit. Like a very, very narrow group of people. You dont mind me saying. The real fitbit effect is there really annoying and most people ignore them not what i mean . The overwheing story is they dont actually cause people to changeheir behavior. But there are a few peopleor whom the fitbit is what they really want. And for them, it story is different, you sued him saying . Yes, i do. Its a very good point. Clearly only people who are motivated to change their behavior get a fitbit and aware. Once they are no longer motivated they will change. What i am saying it still holds for the short term. Avett doesnt change their behavior for the longterm. But at the moments, during that time a couple of months when they arenfatuated with their new fitbit and gung ho. They are gung ho and they probably do lose someeight at first. Maybe they dont stay on it. Select main site of course is example of this. But fitbit, for thatatter diet, theres one thing people selfselected by them. But even most people who buy fitbits dont u them. But there been experiments wher because fitbits super users look so goodn fitbit, Health Programs will buy fitbits for everyon on their health policy. And guess what . Those people nev even wanted the fitbit to begin with prayer they are not fascinated with them. Its like a complete disasr. Its just very selfselected small slice of humans for that effect actually happens. But lets not dwell on that point. As medical point iserfectly reasonable. Q talk aboutolling and racist pulling in th fitbit effect . So social scientists have really tried to understand racist attitudes and racist thinking. They do that by asking People Survey questions. And so some of the questions, when i started looking into this just appalled me that anyone could even ask these questions. One of them is on a scale from one to seven, where one is lazy in seven is hardworking, where you think blacks fall . The same thing on intelligence. The same thing on violence. For example. And i think the survey questions like these, there are lots of other survey questions, do you think immigrants are good for the country bad forhe country . Kind of a ridiculous question if you thinkbout it. Those queions have an implicit lesson which is stereotyping is legitimat. You can dece that every member of a racial gro is at some degree of laziness or hardworking or whatever. Thats a legitime way to think. That is with the queion implies is a legitimate way to think. And i think it reinforces people tha race is a real thing. It is a real category. People can be categorized easily with just black or white and reinforces for people they can make judgments about a whole group. And political leaders who are waiting to hear political opinions want to know how people stereotype. I think it is self reinforcement affect that i like into the fitbit. Ideas connected to this idea you want to look good for the poll takers. Yeah. Theres a lot of work in survey research called the social desirability effect. People want to give a desirable answer. They want to appear smart. They want to appear not prejudice. Whats amazing with the racism researches plenty of people are quite willing to express prejudice. But in general, that is a huge problem with survey research. People sometimes do it facetoface sometimes telephone interviews. People want to sound good to someone interviewing them. I think half the time people dont know what a question mean means. They dont understand it. But they give an answer so they dont sound dumb. Host theres a lot of latenht tv talk shows that use that against people by interviewing them about absolute non, like garbage questions. They get people to answerhem quite seriously. I would like to talk about the census in the category of hianics prettify that to be effective in the section of the book. And also i think related to this, if you dont mind mentioning that. Sure. The census first started asking a question about is this person hispanic in 1980. Before about 1970, the term hispanic was not even in much use in the united states. There were a lot of people whose origins were in spanishspeaking countries, particular mexico, cuba, puerto rico. They lived together and tended to cluster together in certain areas of the united states. And they did not think of themselves as hispanic. They thought of themselves as cuban, puerto rican or mexican. But then in the late 60s and 70s, after the Civil Rights Act in equal opportunity act, the government wanted to get racial and ethnic classifications in order to make sure they could enforce equal treatment. And equal voting for examp. So it started, wanted to collect data on that. Instead the Census Bureau wanted to have a hispanic question. But they really didnt know, the leaders did not know how they were going to get people to think of themselve as hispanic. So they called a meeting of hispanic leaders of these different groups. And ask themo promote the census t their communities. And to encourage peopl to identify as hispanic. Hmmm the leaders were all in favor of that. At that point they understood they would be benefits to be had from having big numbers. Youould maybe get more seats in congress if more people were counted in areas where they lived. You get more federal aid to cities or place where hispanic people lived. Again, this was a measuri instrument the census create the category, put the question out there, then quite activel recruited people to encourage people to answer the question yes. To answer it atll in answer ye. It was an interactive kind of feedback effect where the category was there people put themselves intot. What i like about that story, firstf all i did n know that was in a context in e census by taking on that category actually had on effect on people self regard andelf image. An identity was super interesting. It also reminds me going back to the earlier discussion we had about people choosing the pain numberhat would give them the treatment they want. This is another example of somehow the targets of the counting, the census, the target the people, asserting controlver their own agency. By filling out their own form. And sometimes the were again the masters of their own desty by having their own ethnic city and race wch is a whole different discussion you also have their about the rest under race they might choo. Yes. Thank you for making tt analogy. I didnt see it quite in the same way. It is very much true the senses gives peopl a chance to identify to say with their racesnd their ethnicity is. Keep that in more categories andhoices you can have you can write inome other race. When fascinating factoid that i came up with is some other race was the thi largest category of race in the 2010 census. Whic tells me that people don like to accept. A lot of people do notike to accept the categories there offered. That is a funny padox, one hand it says you can identify whatever race you say you are. Or you want to be or consider yourself but on the other hand, the census people give categories, except for the some other race, they provide categories. So the last topic i wanted to cover but i have a few more but we are running out of time is this context of the county Services Hotline algorithm which is a mouthful. Basically its a child abuse hotline. And you know ive read the wonderful book talks about you talk about her work and some other stuff to. You know, i have to say ive spent quite a bit of time talking to people who started that algorithm. And i do feel like, im not saying its perfect. It is not perfect. In fact the flaws are well laid out in your book. Poor people are much more likely to be read lighted people of color are much more likely to be reported on for their choosing the wrong prediction variable which means they are creating their own reality by saying this kids likely to be taken from their home making that kid much more likely to be taken from their home. Theres muc more problems. Let me make the follong policolice. First of all, weve been talk about power for this hour. A lot of the times i get frustrated because people are assuming authority and power in an un reasonable unaccountable way. Theyre trying to get away with something basically. That happens a lot with numbers, believe the scoring system because its objective. Anyway you have no right to appeal type of thing. But i would in the case of social workers with child abuse, i would like them to have a cover, a little bit of cover for it works for them. And i say that as a friend of many social workers that got burned out. Because they have so much responsibility to make the right call on these actual life and death matters see what im saying . In some sense i would love it. Think we could all agree on this. I would love it if they had a machine that could actually help them do their job. And if the machine was wrong they could say the machine was wrong. Usually when somebody says dont blame me blame the machine and like thats a copout, take responsibility. But in this case and like yeah you did your best. It is really hard to make calls. And it really is. It is really hard. I think the other and actually more relevant plea i will make for that algorithm. And again its problematic, it is problematic is that because it is data. Because you are collecting data, it is auditable in a very, this is the same can be said for like goober system of managing by algorithms. These are systems that once there made algorithmic, the good news is you can also make them work better because they are following rules. And you can shift rules of the old rules arent working very well. That is my other pulley. The final thing i will say is you talk a lot in the second to last part of the book about ethics. In the thing that it keep on pointing out to talk about the child abuse hotline is that there is a trolley problem and better than that child abuse hotline. And it is for children. There is a false positive of an algorithm or a process, the process itself trying to decide whether to take a child from their home if they are at risk of abuse. You can be taking kids away from their home where they should not be taken. You could be leaving kids in their home when they should be taken. You see what i mean . There are two mistakes the system could make. And they are different mistakes. They are not equal. Its worse to leave a kid to abuse than to take a kid away from a family thats not doing well. Im not saying this is a good idea. But im saying this is worse. Absolutely. Anything we can do to help people and help leaders make better decisions is a good thing the good thing about numbers is that times to measure thing comes up with a system whether its an algorithm or indicators. Is that the exercise of trying to measure things horses enough to think about what we value, what we care about, what is important. And i think the point i want to leave people with is we have got a system. Maybe its better, maybe it still got problems but its better than winging it or what ever that they had to do before. You sit anything they can take the burden off is good. But we dont stop ever. We should always be trying to improve those systems. And those measurements. I think if we think of numbers as a language for talking about our values and what is important and who is being hurt and who is being helped, then we are using them wisely. If we think of them as this is a score, that is the end, i am right, you are wrong, you will never have a friend. [laughter] that is not a recipe for prress. Right deborah i could not agree more. Im really gla i had a to read this book. Im glad i have the chanceor discussion today. Guest thank you very much. This program is available as a podcast on after wor programs can be viewed on their website booktv. Org. You are watching book tv on cspan2. Every week and with the latest non Fiction Books and authors. Cspan2, created by americas Cable Television company as a public service. And brought to you today by your television provider. Heres a look at some Publishing Industry news for the 71st annual National Book awards were held virtually last week. This years nonfiction prize went to the late journalists less pain and his daughter and principal researcher tamera payne for their biography of malcolm x. The dead are rising. Imperfection charles you for his novel interior chinatown. The National Book foundation with sponsors the annual awards also presented a Lifetime Achievement honor to author walter mosley. Writtens biggest literary price was also awarded last week. This years prize was given to scottish writer Douglas Stuart for his debut novel shall be pain. In other news, Simon Schuster which was put up for sale by its Parent Company viacom cbs in march was sold to americas largest Publisher Penguin random House Speaker for 2 billion. Also when the news npd book skin reports that print book sales were up 19. 5 for the week ending november 14. Adult nonfiction sales rose close to 12 . And they are up over 2 for the year. And the New York Times examined how long it has taken president s to pen their memoirs. Present a bottom just released the first volume of his president ial bomar took his longest at three years and ten months while president s carter, reagan and george w. Bush were the quickest and just under two years. Book tv will continue to bring in new programs and publishing news. You can also watch all of our past programs anytime a booktv. Org. This year marks the 20th anniversary book tv Author Program in depth. For the next three hours youll see many of the authors who have appeared on the program. We are also joined by author cornell west andte heads of Simon Schuster andis rectory publishing. Remember something still something brings tears to my eyes. I hope it wont do it now. On the seventh of december, actually the eighth ofem decembe december 1941, i went to what you would call a problem, a dance. It was the equivalent of a freshman at the university. I came homers at 2 00 oclock at