Anthropological Niche

The New York Times uses an anthroplogist as an example of students needing statistics in today's job market.  From the article:

At Harvard, Carrie Grimes majored in anthropology and archaeology and ventured to places like Honduras, where she studied Mayan settlement patterns by mapping where artifacts were found. But she was drawn to what she calls “all the computer and math stuff” that was part of the job.

“People think of field archaeology as Indiana Jones, but much of what you really do is data analysis,” she said.

Now Ms. Grimes does a different kind of digging. She works at Google, where she uses statistical analysis of mounds of data to come up with ways to improve its search engine.

The New York Times has a elegant visualization of results attached to their article on the American Time Use Survey.  According the the ATUS website:

The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) measures the amount of time people spend doing various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing.

• The American Time Use Survey (ATUS) provides nationally representative estimates of how, where, and with whom Americans spend their time, and is the only federal survey providing data on the full range of nonmarket activities, from childcare to volunteering.

• ATUS data files are used by researchers to study a broad range of issues; the data files include information collected from over 85,000 interviews conducted from 2003 to 2008.

• ATUS data files can be linked to data files from the Current Population Survey (CPS). This expands the context in which time-use data can be analyzed and saves taxpayer money because fewer questions must be asked in the ATUS interview.

I just ran across an article on a Chinese military news story, that argues for anthropological knowledge in making national security policy:

This article argues that new adversaries and operational environments necessitate a sharper focus on cultural knowledge of the enemy. A lack of this knowledge can have grave consequences. Conversely, understanding adversary culture can make a positive difference strategically, operationally, and tactically. Although success in future operations will depend on cultural knowledge, the Department of Defense currently lacks the programs, systems, models, personnel, and organizations to deal with either the existing threat or the changing environment. A Federal initiative is urgently needed to incorporate cultural and social knowledge of adversaries into training, education, planning, intelligence, and operations. Across the board, the national security structure needs to be infused with anthropology, a discipline invented to support warfighting in the tribal zone.

Daniel Everett is widely known for his ethnolinguistic study of the Piraha, which has made some interesting arguments on the evolution of grammar.  From his lecture on endanged languages:

There are 6,912 to 7,000 languages, nobody knows exactly how many, but around that number, 3500 languages are spoken by 0.2% of the worlds population. So, almost half the world's languages, or half the world's languages are spoken by only 0.2% of the population, 40% of the languages in the world are endangered.

I hear time and again from fellow faculty that today's students are computer savvy.  This is a myth.  Students do know how to use computers, but most only know how to email, surf the web and perform basic word processing.  As found in a recent study by North Carolina Central University, summerized by The Wired Campus:

Researchers surveyed 171 undergraduates, the majority of whom believed they had either an average or high skill level in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The students were then tested on three different skill levels — basic, moderate, and advanced — in each of those applications.... Students correctly perceived their skill level only in PowerPoint, the study said, with 81 percent of students who thought they had at least an average skill level actually performing that way.... When using Microsoft Word, 75 percent of students perceived a high skill level, and could on average perform 12 out of the 13 basic tasks, like changing the font and making text bold or italic.... The study said students had the worst perception of their skill at using Microsoft Excel. About 69 percent of students thought they had at least an average skill level, but could not perform most of the basic, moderate, or advanced tasks, which included actions that ranged from from copying cells to creating formulas.