Longtime readers of GM/BM will remember this post, where I discussed the formula used by the Department of Homeland Security for allocating anti-terrorism funds. At the time, I explained:
It turns out that the allocation method was remarkably simple. In their applications for funding, cities listed assets that they needed to protect. What DHS did was take the number of listed assets from all of the cities that were going to be recipients of funds, and give each city an amount of funding proportional to the number of assets they listed.
So, the Empire State building is equal to the neighborhood bank in Omaha. The stock exchange on Wall Street is equal to the memorial park in Anchorage, Alaska. Mount Sinai hospital is equal to the county hospital in the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio. The New York subway system (18.5 billion passenger-miles per year) is equal to the Minneapolis transit system (283 million passenger-miles per year). The Brooklyn Bridge is equal the George Street bridge in New Brunswick, NJ.
Well, according to the New York Times (login required), it appears that I gave too much credit to the DHS. They weren't saying that, for example, Wall Street was equivalent to the memorial park in Anchorage. What they were saying is that the Wall Street stock exchange is equivalent to the Mule Day Parade in Columbia Tenessee; Mt. Sinai hospital is equivalent to an unnamed Donut Shop; the Macy's thanksgiving parade is equivalent to the Bean Fest in Mountain View, Arkansas.
Questioned about the foolishness of this insane list, a DHS spokesperson responded "We don't find it embarrassing, the list is a valuable tool."
Don't you feel safer now that you know how the government is using what they keep stressing is your money to protect you?
Comments
The final three paragraphs are priceless:
See? I'm sure there's a science lesson in that --- surface-area-to-volume ratios, etc.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 12, 2006 1:10 PM
So Indiana, once labeled the state with most prosaic name, has almost three times the number of targets as California, almost twice that of NY. New license plate motto--'Indiana, the Target-Rich State'
Posted by: VJ | July 12, 2006 1:22 PM
Blake:
I got so angry reading that article that I didn't make it all the way to the end, and missed that gem. Obviously, the Times reporter was as annoyed at this as I was. :-)
Posted by: Mark C. Chu-Carroll | July 12, 2006 1:45 PM
Our government's command of the math relevant to the GWOTTM fails to impress on many levels.
Here's a gem from Bruce Schneier on terrorism, data mining and Bayes' theorem.
The scariest part is that, as is pointed out in the comments, individuals at NSA surely understand the math, and know that their organization is committed to a doomed project, but it goes forward anyway.
Posted by: jre | July 12, 2006 3:30 PM
jre:
That's an interesting essay on Bayes' theorem and data mining. I had actually thought of the same thing, finding terrorists as an example of the False Positive Paradox, but apparently this other fellow wrote it up before I could. Serves me right.
The comment thread is entertaining, in an entropic sort of way. To my eye, it appears plagued with misunderstandings, mostly due to shoddy grasps of statistics. I imagine that by now, any major participant in that discussion will have irrevocably fixed their views such that no amount of rational argument can perturb them. The discourse didn't take very long to degenerate into appeals to authority/anecdotal evidence ("I can't tell you what I do, but this works for me") and waving the flag of "social network theory".
Reading those comments is a bit like watching the Monty Hall Paradox be born, all over again.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 12, 2006 4:07 PM
When I saw that article on Schneier's blog, I thought of sending it to GMBM (yes, the comments over there are absolutely horrible), but I forgot about it.
I do understand the level of aggression necessary for programs like this at NSA, though. You can't wait for good data to appear; you grasp at everything. Now, taking the results seriously is a different story.
Posted by: Koray | July 13, 2006 4:33 PM
Hmm, judging by the photo, Bruce Schneier is a clone of Toby Ziegler.
Posted by: Auros | July 13, 2006 5:37 PM
Wait a minute... Minneapolis has a transit system?
I've lived here all my life (actually in St Paul for the last 10) and I haven't really noticed.
I'm hoping the light rail connecting Mpls and St Paul actually gets built.
Posted by: gravitybear | July 18, 2006 5:07 PM