Surprised Economists

I've been struck repeatedly over the last few years by how many stories about the economy contain phrases along the lines of "economists were surprised by..."

It seems like they are surprised by any economic news that comes out. Something is always more or less than predictions, and not by just a little, but by orders of magnitude. For example, economists were surprised again today by job numbers and factory orders. (Incidentally, I wish I'd got to this earlier, the wording earlier today was different, the "news people" softened their description of how surprising the numbers were).

a government report showed the nation’s employers cut far fewer jobs than expected last month, stirring optimism about the buoyancy of the economy. . .

The Labor Department’s report that employers cut 20,000 jobs in April was a relief to Wall Street, which had been expecting payrolls to fall by 75,000 jobs. . .

The Commerce Department said U.S. manufacturers saw orders increase 1.4 percent in March. Economists expected a 0.2 percent increase after declines in January and February.

They were expecting 75000 fewer jobs. They were only off by 275% This one isn't sooooo bad, after all there are a lot of jobs in the nation, and the usual gains are 200-300 thousand. Maybe they had a bad day. But, 0.2 versus 1.4? That's off by 600% and the viable range on those numbers is never more than a few percentage points.

I can only think of 3 explanations for the constant stream of these stories:

• First, the stupid economists are the only ones giving interviews.
• Second, these are the smart ones, and even they don't know what they are talking about.
• Third, and this is my theory: You cannot reduce the countless individual choices of a quarter billion people to a formula with any degree of accuracy.

This may disappoint some of my economist friends, but economics is NOT a hard science, it is a descriptive science. It is valuable when looking retrospectively, but absolutely useless as a tool for precise prediction.

Economics is not the only 'science' with this problem. Political science, sociology, psychology, and even, to some extent biology have the same shortcoming. This is because they are trying to predict the actions of beings with souls and free will. In such cases, the best you can do is averages and general trends.

That doesn't mean they are not worthwhile tools, but their practitioners need to recognize the limits of their science and not advocate more detailed policies than the science can support.

Hit With the Ugly Stick

Another news story with my comments interspersed. . .

The best marriages are those where women marry men who are less attractive than themselves, research has found.

Psychologists who studied newlyweds found men who were better-looking than their wives were more likely to be unhappy and have negative feelings about their marriage.

Whenever a story talks about measuring things like attractiveness, you know it's going to be worthless. Better looking? What units are those again? centilookers, or is it Wayne and Garth's scale, I forget. Must be the ISO beauty standard, revision 2 most likely.

In couples where the wife is more attractive, both partners tended to be very content.

That depends on who's doing the evaluation, both as to attractiveness and as to contentment.

Did the researchers tell the couples which one was more attractive? if not, doesn't that indicate a pre-existing bias in minds of the participating couples? If so, doesn't that bias the sample too? Either way, won't that affect the findings?

If they were evaluated by someone else, what does that tell us? Only that the finding are valid for those people evaluating the beauty of the subjects, nothing more. Change evaluators, and the results change. There is just no way to measure beauty.

The research, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, suggests that, in evolutionary terms, women are less choosy about their man's looks as long as he is able to help them reproduce.

Men, however, are programmed to choose a mate who is most likely to pass on their genes and look for youth, health and physical attractiveness.

Programmed? Doesn't that imply organization, hierarchy and order?

The tests involved 82 couples married within the previous six months.

Six months? They know enough to measure contentment after six months?

This whole article raises the question of why these couples get married in the first place. if the men really found their wives unattractive, why marry? Also, what kind of moron volunteers for a study and brags about being more attractive than his wife. The fact the participants are evaluating others based on physical appearance indicates a certain shallowness among the participants.

My guess is they are not content because they are stuck on themselves. It has nothing to do with their spouse.

Nothing about these articles makes any sense.