College Admissions

There is a brief period in a professor’s life when they are the lion of the dinner table and toast of the town. Its when the children of their friends and contemporaries are about to enter college. To my colleagues near and far I say enjoy the attention while you can.

What advice did I offer when called upon to do so?

Don’t worry. Your child has already made the most important decision of their lives and done so correctly. They chose you as a parent.

`No, seriously, how can my child make it to a top school?’, was the invariable reply. Followed by a reminder of the ostensibly low acceptance rates at `top’ colleges. `Don’t worry,’ I would repeat, `arithmetic is on your side.’

Each year about 30,000 students apply to Harvard. About 10,000 of these will be summarily rejected on academic grounds. That leaves about 20,000. Not all of them will get into Harvard. However, most of them are applying to the same subset of schools. There are 7 Ivy League schools, plus MIT, Stanford & Caltech. Throw in the University of Chicago and Berkeley. Collectively, these institutions enroll about 20,000 students in their freshman classes. This is not counting Duke, Northwestern, Michigan and UCLA.

`But, but, isn’t all that hard work, focus and diligence wasted if they don’t get into Stanford, MIT or Harvard?’

No, those habits will serve them throughout their lives not just at admission. Admissions is a lottery among those who make the `grade’. If the `losing ticket’ is Cornell or Chicago, its a lottery with no downside! How often does life present you with with such an opportunity.

The Power of the Swing Voter

The world may be interested in the whereabouts of Vladimir Putin and whether Elton John’s boycott of Dolce and Gabbana turns out successful. Here, in the holy land, we wait for the elections to the parliament that will take place this Tuesday. The elections, which should have been an easy stroll for acting prime minister Benyamin Netanyahu, turned out to be a difficult trek.

There are 120 parliament members and two main candidates for the position of prime minister: Benyamin Netanyahu, who heads the right-wing parties, and Isaac Herzog, who heads the center-left parties. The way a government is formed is that after votes are counted and the 120 seats are divided among the parties, largely in proportion to the number of votes they got, the leader of each party recommends to the President of the state a person, which that party backs for the post of prime minister. The President then asks the person who he believes has the highest chance of creating a coalition to try and make a coalition. If that person fails, then the President asks another person to form a coalition, and so on.

Latest polls say that the parties that support Netanyahu will get about 55 seats, and the parties that support Herzog will get roughly the same number of seats. The remaining 10 seats will go to a newly formed party, headed by Moshe Kahlon, who said that he would recommend nobody to the President. Why did he say it? On the one hand, Kahlon was a parliament member of Netanyahu’s party (and a minister in Netanyahu’s government), and his voters come from the right wing. Saying that he will recommend Herzog is a death strike to his party. On the other hand, he was very critical about Netanyahu’s conduct and poses himself as “the true representative of the right wing”, and so he cannot say that he will recommend that person whom he thinks is not a good prime minister.

Who will then be the prime minister? PredictIT.com estimates at 56% the probability that Netanyahu is reelected. And if not? Then Herzog, as there is no one else.

Almost. Think of the situation from the eyes of game theory. Suppose that neither Netanyahu nor Herzog are recommended by more than half the votes. Herzog is in a bad shape: the Arab party is supposed to recommend Herzog, and polls predict that it will get about 13 seats. Traditionally the Arab parties are not invited to be part of the government: Herzog will have to make a coalition of more than 60 members excluding the Arab party; this is tough. Netanyahu is in a bad shape as well; polls predict that his party will lose quite a few seats, and if he will not be recommended by more than half the members of the parliament, he might be kicked out by his own party. So who can be the new prime minister?

I ask you to consider the swing voter, Kahlon. Since he comes from the right wing, all parties in the right wing will prefer him to Herzog. All the parties in the left wing will prefer him to Netanyahu or to any other candidate from the right wing. This is a hell of a reason not to recommend any of the two to the President.

Is my theory right? Will the swing voter use his power to become the real winner of the elections? We will have to wait a few weeks and see for ourselves.

Buffet and Luck

Two articles in the March 3rd, 2015 issue of the NY Times. One by the columnist Nocera marvels at Buffet’s success and concludes that it must be due to Buffet’s genius. The second, in the business section of the same, summarizes Buffet’s annual letter that attempts to explain his success. As usual, neither considers the possibility that luck may have a role in Buffet’s success. Buffet may indeed be a Vulcan, but based on the data alone one cannot reject the possibility that luck may explain Buffet’s record. I won’t repeat the argument but will point to this paper by my colleagues (Foster & Stine) that does so.