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