The BBC has given us a great batch of numbers worth analyzing. First up is the fact that earlier this year 85,000 love island applicants were contrasted against the 23,521 who applied to Oxford and Cambridge this year.
This
startling difference was initially used to laugh at the ambitions of
many of the population. Why aspire to have emotional
immaturity gawped at when you could be improving yourself with the world's best
education? But commentators then pointed out that the public
isn't so stupid, as Oxford and Cambridge have strict entry requirements,
whereas Love Island doesn't require intelligent applicants.
This
second set of commentators had a point, but they weren't entirely clear
why. We're effectively looking at an 'expected return' calculation, not
just a reward, and the public is able to consider this even without
knowing the concept. They are considering not only the reward, but also
the chance of success. If I offer a 99% chance of winning £1, many
people would spend a minute applying. If I offer a 1% chance of winning
£2, fewer people would waste their time, despite the greater reward. The
expected return changes from 99p to 2p for that minute's investment.
Judging something only by the reward on offer is silly.
Those
second commentators therefore had a point when they said that the
initial reaction was ill-judged, but they were also wrong. Why? It's not
really more realistic for an academically unsuccessful person to hope
to be on Love Island.
Firstly, Love Island still has selection
criteria: it's not random. And it selects far fewer people. If both
Oxbridge and Love Island were random selection processes with equal
rewards, you'd expect many thousand more applicants for Oxbridge, which
selects thousands a year. Love Island only takes a few. Furthermore, we
know that those few are often selected from the same few pools of
people: modelling agencies, friends of previous participants (often the
same thing) and people who already have a social media presence. Getting
onto Love Island is not random: it's mostly about moving in the right
social network.... sounds familiar.
Secondly, as an aside, we
should be clear about how meritocratic Oxbridge selection is: there's
quite a bit of randomness. It's hard for tutors to pick who is brightest
from a range of children all of whom anticipate doing well on a few
tests. That might not affect very unqualified people, though, who will
never do well on those tests.
So we find that Love Island
involves a lot more 'network privilege' than anyone has allowed for, and
that Oxbridge entry involves a bit more randomness.
Thirdly,
the rewards of Oxbridge are questionable. Yes, Oxford and Cambridge
graduates dominate many respected job markets, but probably not because
of that education; it is much more likely that pre-existing social
networks and privilege help such people get both the jobs and the
Oxbridge education. Commentators like to write about the Oxbridge elite,
but this elite doesn't include just anyone who gets into Oxbridge. As
famous stories about the Bullingdon Club demonstrate, it is a group of
people within Oxbridge who seem to enjoy
Fourthly, the rewards of Love Island aren't so ridiculous. Being a celebrity is easy money. These people get hordes of social media followers and hence advertising revenue; they get paid to go to clubs and parties, and this is their hard work.
Finally,
I think LI applications are a reflection of modern society. Everyone
aspires to make it rich and still believes it to be possible in our modern world. That's a sad lie. What
little chance of success anyone has is more down to luck than personal
achievement. In that sense, the first set of commentators were right,
but for the wrong reasons. It is indeed ridiculous that so many people
hope to make it big. The problem is that going to Oxbridge wouldn't help them; making it big is desperately unlikely for anyone without the right connections and luck. That's where the first commentators were wrong.
It's ridiculous that making it big is possible;
that some untalented or even talented few earn vast sums of money whilst
others who are almost as, or more, qualified struggle to survive. I think
that's more a reason for despair rather than laughter though.
And
the second set of commentators, who pointed out that the first set of
articles were wrong, were also right, but for the wrong reasons. So
that's an entire media commentariat who successfully got something right, but by
good luck not insight. How typical of the way the world works! Maybe good jobs don't go to the brightest people. Or maybe those journalists are our brightest and
best. Another reason either to laugh or cry.
On the other statistics the BBC mentioned, there are a few things worth mentioning too. For example, the UK's happiness has increased, supposedly, from 7.29 to 7.52. But scales out of 10 are notoriously unreliable: people rarely use the extremes of the scale, instead using for 6-9 as their options. 7 is an extremely common outcome. Then of course we don't have the variability of the number, a time series year-on-year, or any idea of what makes people think they're happy. After all, we know that the truth hurts. Could ignorance make people happy? Is that a good thing?
0.1% of the country is built-on. But what matters is how much land is needed to support urban environments. If dense cities with many people need large acreages of farmland to support them, and half the country can't be farmed or built on anyway, then it might well be a crowded island.
More people are killed by cows in the UK than by sharks worldwide. A favourite of amateur statisticians like me is to compare shark attacks to other hugely unlikely causes of death. I am looking forward to a comedy horror film about evil cows plotting humanity's doom. Or maybe freedom-fighting cows with PETA support? Of course, the one I remember is that there are more hospitalizations from getting dressed than from shark attacks. Socks are dangerous.
On the other statistics the BBC mentioned, there are a few things worth mentioning too. For example, the UK's happiness has increased, supposedly, from 7.29 to 7.52. But scales out of 10 are notoriously unreliable: people rarely use the extremes of the scale, instead using for 6-9 as their options. 7 is an extremely common outcome. Then of course we don't have the variability of the number, a time series year-on-year, or any idea of what makes people think they're happy. After all, we know that the truth hurts. Could ignorance make people happy? Is that a good thing?
0.1% of the country is built-on. But what matters is how much land is needed to support urban environments. If dense cities with many people need large acreages of farmland to support them, and half the country can't be farmed or built on anyway, then it might well be a crowded island.
More people are killed by cows in the UK than by sharks worldwide. A favourite of amateur statisticians like me is to compare shark attacks to other hugely unlikely causes of death. I am looking forward to a comedy horror film about evil cows plotting humanity's doom. Or maybe freedom-fighting cows with PETA support? Of course, the one I remember is that there are more hospitalizations from getting dressed than from shark attacks. Socks are dangerous.
