Fun survey, thanks for running it. `Maths lecturer' is one of those categories where almost everyone doing the job could have earned much more elsewhere; whatever you think of the activity per se, almost everyone doing it could have gone into finance-type jobs if they had wanted to, and so earned many multiples of what they actually do earn.
"I’m told relentlessly mocking your leadership is the best way to build a loyal substack audience."
Possibly. I'm confident relentlessly mocking typos is the best way to cultivate a grateful author :-).
I think "an overrepresentation of mathematicians" should become a phrase meaning "data of unusually high quality and insight".
May I commend your friend who warned you off pie charts - which while they're not fatal as a way of displaying ordered categorical variables, are cripplingly poor for comparing between multiple charts. I suspect she's part of the overrepresentation of mathematicians that has so improved your survey :-).
Firefighters lack of representation in public discourse may simply be because there aren't very many of them - there are only 30k in England (can't find numbers for the UK, but based on the teacher breakdown probably around 35k), compared to 171k police officers and 750k nurses in the UK. By way of comparrison there are 479k state school teachers in England (525k in the UK).
I think the narrative in the UK is that all forms of criminal lawyers, while not badly paid, are making a lot less than they could in commercial law for the sake of keeping running the system that nails bad guys, and protects innocents. Seems good.
I think there's another interesting dimension you could have called out in the results - the professions with significant disagreement (votes for very virtuous and very reprehensible) down to those we all agree on (whether in approval or indifference). I do think there's a pattern here of professions that are doing something we all think is useful (e.g. HGV drivers) vs. professions that aren't doing something themselves but are trying to influence people to pick something (campaigners, missionaries). I think the latter are dominated by charities, and gives an interesting angle on the role and percieved morality of charities in our society.
I did actually come up with a formula to measure 'controversiality' but didn't end up including it because I wasn't entirely happy with it and it had some perversities to it at the margins (it was (total virtuous)*(total reprehensible)/(total neutral). The jobs I listed at the top of 'sort by controversial' were the ones that scored highest on it though. It's a good spot that, with the exception of soldier, all of the ones that are most divisive are about campaigning or persuading people of stuff.
That seems like a reasonable formula, although min(very virtuous, very reprehensible)/total neutral might be more stable, and better respects the very/somewhat distinction.
"Strippers are still in net negative territory. (Again, the pro-sex work strand on the left is perhaps more represented in activism than in reality.)"
I took the opposite conclusion from this data point. Sure, they're still net negative, but the jump from -53 on the right to -17 on the left is striking and indicative of a genuine difference in attitude.
IME, pro-sex-work views tend to be "this is not immoral and is no worse than any other job", not "this is actively virtuous" (although evidently the latter view does exist, on both sides of the political spectrum!)
Yes, fair point. 'Right-wingers are much more negative about sex-work than left-wingers' and 'left-wingers are much less anti, but those who wish to actively 'celebrate' it are a small minority' are both valid take-aways.
(disclaimer: I am a physics lecturer)
Fun survey, thanks for running it. `Maths lecturer' is one of those categories where almost everyone doing the job could have earned much more elsewhere; whatever you think of the activity per se, almost everyone doing it could have gone into finance-type jobs if they had wanted to, and so earned many multiples of what they actually do earn.
"I’m told relentlessly mocking your leadership is the best way to build a loyal substack audience."
Possibly. I'm confident relentlessly mocking typos is the best way to cultivate a grateful author :-).
I think "an overrepresentation of mathematicians" should become a phrase meaning "data of unusually high quality and insight".
May I commend your friend who warned you off pie charts - which while they're not fatal as a way of displaying ordered categorical variables, are cripplingly poor for comparing between multiple charts. I suspect she's part of the overrepresentation of mathematicians that has so improved your survey :-).
Firefighters lack of representation in public discourse may simply be because there aren't very many of them - there are only 30k in England (can't find numbers for the UK, but based on the teacher breakdown probably around 35k), compared to 171k police officers and 750k nurses in the UK. By way of comparrison there are 479k state school teachers in England (525k in the UK).
I think the narrative in the UK is that all forms of criminal lawyers, while not badly paid, are making a lot less than they could in commercial law for the sake of keeping running the system that nails bad guys, and protects innocents. Seems good.
I think there's another interesting dimension you could have called out in the results - the professions with significant disagreement (votes for very virtuous and very reprehensible) down to those we all agree on (whether in approval or indifference). I do think there's a pattern here of professions that are doing something we all think is useful (e.g. HGV drivers) vs. professions that aren't doing something themselves but are trying to influence people to pick something (campaigners, missionaries). I think the latter are dominated by charities, and gives an interesting angle on the role and percieved morality of charities in our society.
Doh, you got in just before me with the "leadership" typo.
I thought "an overrepresentation of mathematicians" sounded like a collective noun.
I thought we'd already taken 'a pedantry of mathematicians'?
Good points on firefighters and criminal lawyers!
I did actually come up with a formula to measure 'controversiality' but didn't end up including it because I wasn't entirely happy with it and it had some perversities to it at the margins (it was (total virtuous)*(total reprehensible)/(total neutral). The jobs I listed at the top of 'sort by controversial' were the ones that scored highest on it though. It's a good spot that, with the exception of soldier, all of the ones that are most divisive are about campaigning or persuading people of stuff.
That seems like a reasonable formula, although min(very virtuous, very reprehensible)/total neutral might be more stable, and better respects the very/somewhat distinction.
"I’m told relentlessly mocking your leadership is the best way to build a loyal substack audience."
I think you meant "readership", but it's likely to be unironically true with "leadership"!
Another typo:
"Nor is *their* huge surprise that tobacco marketing executives were at the bottom of the pile."
The readership/leadership error was a particularly good one!
"Strippers are still in net negative territory. (Again, the pro-sex work strand on the left is perhaps more represented in activism than in reality.)"
I took the opposite conclusion from this data point. Sure, they're still net negative, but the jump from -53 on the right to -17 on the left is striking and indicative of a genuine difference in attitude.
IME, pro-sex-work views tend to be "this is not immoral and is no worse than any other job", not "this is actively virtuous" (although evidently the latter view does exist, on both sides of the political spectrum!)
Yes, fair point. 'Right-wingers are much more negative about sex-work than left-wingers' and 'left-wingers are much less anti, but those who wish to actively 'celebrate' it are a small minority' are both valid take-aways.