I haven’t had time to run the numbers, but I’m a bit dissatisfied with the Misery Index in this case. The most obvious issue is that while inflation is a bad thing, so is deflation; however, under the Index, a high deflation rate is seen to mitigate high unemployment. The second is that steady, targeted inflation is a sign that the economy is growing smoothly and under control.

Again, without crunching the numbers, I can’t say anything specific, but it seems to me that a formula with nicer properties might measure either the absolute rate of change from one period to the next (capturing volatility fairly cleanly) or, for the less mathematically inclined, the absolute value of the change. The problem of measuring a rate of change is that you’d need to correct for unemployment as well; measuring rates of change also leaves you sensitive to different lengths of time being measured, whereas the misery index as it stands can be seen as a snapshot.

So, a compromise: set a benchmark – perhaps 3% for inflation and 5% for unemployment, since those are numbers that are bandied about as “targets.” Snapshot the measure by measuring the absolute value of the rate minus the benchmark figure.

Misery Index
Accurate, but hamfisted
Plausible? Who knows?

The rules of international wrestling have changed over the past few years. Right now, matches are decided under a two-of-three-periods system with multiple victory conditions. At the time I was involved in refereeing, the match was longer (two three-minute periods) and the victory conditions were simpler (a pin or a ten-point differential ended the match immediately, with the winner being decided based on points at the end of the match if neither occurred). If the wrestlers were tied after the six-minute match, they wrestled an additional three-minute overtime period, and if at the end of that period they remained tied, the match was decided on criteria. For simplicity, the only criterion I’ll consider is the one that decided most tied matches – passivities, warnings for refusing to wrestle aggressively. The wrestler with fewer passivities won the match. In addition, I’m going to consider the older rules, since the passivity criterion has been eliminated by forced scoring under the new rules.

Smart coaches managed their wrestlers to avoid passivity calls, and would often tell the wrestler with fewer passivities that he had a half-point advantage. That is, if the points were equal, the wrestler with fewer passivities would win, but a technical point scored against him would put him behind again. That seemed imprecise to me, since it didn’t take into account the marginal value of additional passivities.

I decided that each marginal passivity could be evaluated using an inverse power function of two; that is, the value of a lead in passivities was Σ(1/2ⁿ), where n is the difference between the passivity totals. A wrestler ahead by one passivity is indeed ahead by half a point; a wrestler ahead by two passivities has a lead equivalent to 3/4 of a point (1/2 + 1/4), and so on. The inverse power function captures the diminishing returns of a strategy designed to maximize a lead in passivities – the sum will never reach one, and each passivity is worth less than the one before it. However, each passivity does slightly lower the probability of the trailing wrestler making up the difference and forces him to try to score technical points, which are worth more because they’re more difficult to score.

I’m sure it’s also possible to do a finance-style discount analysis of the value of a particular lead in points based on the amount of time remaining in the match. A lead would have to be discounted based on the expected number of points to be scored by each wrestler in the time remaining, since a lead at the very beginning of the match is much less safe than a lead in the final seconds. That would require data analysis to determine the expected value of the points to be scored by the leading wrestler and by the trailing wrestler given the time remaining and the point spread. Research project idea: determine a method of discounting the value of a lead in points based on the number of seconds remaining.

A number of commentators have discussed Stephen Harper’s attempt to move the government of Canada rightward as well as fill a niche as the “natural governing party” of Canada. That seems at odds to me – I would think that the natural government is a party of the radical centre, and that attempting to fill that niche would require a step centreward by a given party rather than an attempt to move the country.

My conjecture: Harper’s ideal of Canadian government does not match that of the average Canadian citizen. I’ll take a look at an editorial and a specific case, then make a prediction, after the jump.

Harper’s goal, says Michael Adams, is to gain control of the government and move it to the right through a series of incremental steps. The first issue is Harper’s definition of conservative: shrinking government and shrinking taxes as fiscal policy, traditionalism as social policy. As the leader of the government, he has the ability to enforce those ideals through party discipline – he act positively, by cutting taxes, or negatively, by refusing to raise taxes to allocate funds for programs. In the case of the continuing debate on the arts, in fact, both aims are served by a single act of refusal to fund – an artist categorized as nontraditional may be refused funding, lowering federal spending and preventing the spread of subversive ideas.

Adams asserts, and I agree, that the average Canadian is not in line with Harper socially:

Public opinion and values research data reveal a population that is socially liberal: secular, tolerant of differences, profoundly committed to social equality. Canadians are proud of the equality measures that have been advanced by their courts and governments in recent decades; in this area, the dominant orientation is liberal. Canadians, moreover, have relatively little appetite for culture wars. So-called ordinary Canadians demonstrated this aversion recently when they declined an invitation to engage in some angry resentment of greedy, effete big-city artists.

Canadians are socially liberal in terms of equality. I wrote a research paper on Canadian jurisprudence as an undergrad political science student. I examined situations in which the United States and Canada both had Supreme Court cases on the same issue, and in which the Supreme Court of Canada had cited the Supreme Court of the United States, and found that in almost every case the Canadian case made decisions which had significant marginal social liberalism. I did not have the tools at the time to correlate those cases with population data, and I’ll leave that exercise for another day. I will, however, proceed along the assumption that jurisprudence roughly reflects population ideals. (Project idea: rank significant rights cases on a scale from socially liberal to socially conservatism, and correlate that data with polling data on similar issues. Null hypothesis: no correlation.)

A Globe and Mail editorial notes, as an instance of Harper’s incrementalism, his introduction of a bill to replace the young offender law struck down by the McLachlin Court. After the Supreme Court struck down a statute presuming adult penalties for young offenders under certain circumstances, the Harper government introduced a bill simply making young-offender penalties similar to adult-offender penalties. Whether this is a useful method of assessing penalties is a question for the government, as well as for the Courts under any reasonable construction of Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, it is also a question for the Canadian populace, which may find the Harper government’s insistence that young offenders be treated in a manner equivalent to adult offenders distasteful. It certainly represents the Conservative government’s decision to try to shift the administration of the country rightward.

As promised, a prediction: the election will proceed as a referendum on the incremental shifts and the Tories as the natural governing party of Canada. Because there is a divided left, one cannot evaluate the referendum based solely on the number of seats won by each party in the House of Commons. The Tories will almost surely win a plurality government. Rather, my hypothesis is that the Tories will have a plurality, but not a majority, of the national popular vote. Further, a significant number of ridings won by the Tories will be won by plurality and not by majority. That is, votes for leftist parties (Greens + NDP + Liberals) will outnumber votes for the Conservatives.

(Note to self: construct statistical model to correct for the NDP’s drainage of Liberal voters.)