andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-16 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: This is my last entry derived from Anthony Burgess’s book reviews , and it’ll be short. His review of Angus Wilson’s “The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Works” is a wonderfully balanced little thing. Nothing incredibly deep–like most items in the collection, the review is only two pages long–but I give it credit for being a rare piece of Kipling criticism I’ve seen that (a) seriously engages with the politics, without (b) congratulating itself on bravely going against the fashions of the politically incorrect chattering classes by celebrating Kipling’s magnificent achievement blah blah blah. Instead, Burgess shows respect for Kipling’s work and puts it in historical, biographical, and literary context. Burgess concludes that Wilson’s book “reminds us, in John Gross’s words, that Kipling ‘remains a haunting, unsettling presence, with whom we still have to come to terms.’ Still.” Well put, and generous of Burgess to end his review with another’s quote. Other cri
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same-blog 1 1.0 16 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-04-Burgess on Kipling
Introduction: This is my last entry derived from Anthony Burgess’s book reviews , and it’ll be short. His review of Angus Wilson’s “The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Works” is a wonderfully balanced little thing. Nothing incredibly deep–like most items in the collection, the review is only two pages long–but I give it credit for being a rare piece of Kipling criticism I’ve seen that (a) seriously engages with the politics, without (b) congratulating itself on bravely going against the fashions of the politically incorrect chattering classes by celebrating Kipling’s magnificent achievement blah blah blah. Instead, Burgess shows respect for Kipling’s work and puts it in historical, biographical, and literary context. Burgess concludes that Wilson’s book “reminds us, in John Gross’s words, that Kipling ‘remains a haunting, unsettling presence, with whom we still have to come to terms.’ Still.” Well put, and generous of Burgess to end his review with another’s quote. Other cri
2 0.16057132 973 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-26-Antman again courts controversy
Introduction: Commenter Zbicyclist links to a fun article by Howard French on biologist E. O. Wilson: Wilson announced that his new book may be his last. It is not limited to the discussion of evolutionary biology, but ranges provocatively through the humanities, as well. . . . Generation after generation of students have suffered trying to “puzzle out” what great thinkers like Socrates, Plato, and Descartes had to say on the great questions of man’s nature, Wilson said, but this was of little use, because philosophy has been based on “failed models of the brain.” This reminds me of my recent remarks on the use of crude folk-psychology models as microfoundations for social sciences. The article also discusses Wilson’s recent crusade against selfish-gene-style simplifications of human and animal nature. I’m with Wilson 100% on this one. “Two brothers or eight cousins” is a cute line but it doesn’t seem to come close to describing how species or societies work, and it’s always seemed a
3 0.13528399 4 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-26-Prolefeed
Introduction: From Anthony Burgess’s review of “The Batsford Companion to Popular Literature,” by Victor Neuberg: Arthur J. Burks (1898-1974) was no gentleman. During the 1930s, when he would sometimes have nearly two million words in current publication, he aimed at producing 18,000 words a day. Editors would call me up and ask me to do a novelette by the next afternoon, and I would, but it nearly killed me. . . . I once appeared on the covers of eleven magazines the same month, and then almost killed myself for years trying to make it twelve. I never did. [Masanao: I think you know where I'm heading with that story.] Ursula Bloom, born 1985 and still with us [this was written sometime between 1978 and 1985], is clearly no lady. Writing also under the pseudonyms of Lozania Prole (there’s an honest name for you), Sheila Burnes and Mary Essex, she has produced 486 boooks, beginning with Tiger at the age of seven. . . . Was Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875-1932) a gentleman? .
4 0.13047026 2168 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-12-Things that I like that almost nobody else is interested in
Introduction: This post by Jordan Ellenberg (“Stoner represents a certain strain in the mid-century American novel that I really like, and which I don’t think exists in contemporary fiction. Anguish, verbal restraint, weirdness”) reminds me that what I really like is mid-to-late-twentieth-century literary criticism . I read a great book from the 50s, I think it was, by Anthony West (son of Rebecca West and H. G. Wells), who reviewed books for the New Yorker. It was great, and it made me wish that other collections of his reviews had been published (they hadn’t). I’d also love to read collections of Alfred Kazin ‘s reviews (there are some collections, but he published many many others that have never been reprinted) and others of that vintage. I’m pretty sure these hypothetical books wouldn’t sell many copies, though. (I feel lucky, though, that at one point a publisher released a pretty fat collection of Anthony Burgess ‘s book reviews.) It’s actually scary to think that many many more peopl
5 0.12264506 243 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-30-Computer models of the oil spill
Introduction: Chris Wilson points me to this visualizatio n of three physical models of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Cool (and scary) stuff. Wilson writes: One of the major advantages is that the models are 3D and show the plumes and tails beneath the surface. One of the major disadvantages is that they’re still just models.
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20 0.043489981 718 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-18-Should kids be able to bring their own lunches to school?
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same-blog 1 0.97116059 16 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-04-Burgess on Kipling
Introduction: This is my last entry derived from Anthony Burgess’s book reviews , and it’ll be short. His review of Angus Wilson’s “The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Works” is a wonderfully balanced little thing. Nothing incredibly deep–like most items in the collection, the review is only two pages long–but I give it credit for being a rare piece of Kipling criticism I’ve seen that (a) seriously engages with the politics, without (b) congratulating itself on bravely going against the fashions of the politically incorrect chattering classes by celebrating Kipling’s magnificent achievement blah blah blah. Instead, Burgess shows respect for Kipling’s work and puts it in historical, biographical, and literary context. Burgess concludes that Wilson’s book “reminds us, in John Gross’s words, that Kipling ‘remains a haunting, unsettling presence, with whom we still have to come to terms.’ Still.” Well put, and generous of Burgess to end his review with another’s quote. Other cri
2 0.81114203 1179 andrew gelman stats-2012-02-21-“Readability” as freedom from the actual sensation of reading
Introduction: In her essay on Margaret Mitchell and Gone With the Wind, Claudia Roth Pierpoint writes: The much remarked “readability” of the book must have played a part in this smooth passage from the page to the screen, since “readability” has to do not only with freedom from obscurity but, paradoxically, with freedom from the actual sensation of reading [emphasis added]—of the tug and traction of words as they move thoughts into place in the mind. Requiring, in fact, the least reading, the most “readable” book allows its characters to slip easily through nets of words and into other forms. Popular art has been well defined by just this effortless movement from medium to medium, which is carried out, as Leslie Fiedler observed in relation to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “without loss of intensity or alteration of meaning.” Isabel Archer rises from the page only in the hanging garments of Henry James’s prose, but Scarlett O’Hara is a free woman. Well put. I wish Pierpoint would come out with ano
3 0.79566866 285 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-18-Fiction is not for tirades? Tell that to Saul Bellow!
Introduction: Tyler Cowen links approvingly to this review by B. R. Myers of a book that I haven’t read. Unlike Cowen, I haven’t seen the book in question–so far, I’ve only read the excerpt that appeared in the New Yorker–but I can say that I found Myers’s review very annoying. Myers writes: The same narrator who gives us “sucked” and “very into” also deploys compound adjectives, bursts of journalese, and long if syntactically crude sentences. An idiosyncratic mix? Far from it. We find the same insecure style on The Daily Show and in the blogosphere; we overhear it on the subway. It is the style of all who think highly enough of their own brains to worry about being thought “elitist,” not one of the gang. . . . But if Freedom is middlebrow, it is so in the sacrosanct Don DeLillo tradition, which our critical establishment considers central to literature today. . . . Are we to chuckle at the adult woman for writing this in seriousness, or is she mocking her younger self, the teenage ra
4 0.77699888 258 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-05-A review of a review of a review of a decade
Introduction: At the sister blog, David Frum writes , of a book by historian Laura Kalman about the politics of the 1970s: As a work of history about the Ford and Carter years, there is nothing seriously wrong with it. The facts are accurate, the writing is clear and the point of view is not tendentious. Once upon a time, such a book might have been useful to somebody. But the question it raises–and it’s not a question about this book alone–is: What’s the point of this kind of history in the age of the Internet? Suppose I’m an undergraduate who stumbles for the first time across the phrase “Proposition 13.” I could, if I were minded, walk over to the university library, pull this book from the shelf and flip to the index. Or I could save myself two hours and Google it. I wouldn’t learn more from a Google search than I’d learn in these pages. But I wouldn’t learn a whole lot less either. As a textbook writer, I think about some of these issues too! I have two things to add to Frum’s rem
5 0.7629602 1436 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-31-A book on presenting numbers from spreadsheets
Introduction: I sometimes get books in the mail that seem right in my wheelhouse, but actually I have nothing useful to say because I’m not part of the target audience. An example: the book Painting With Numbers by Randall Bolton on “presenting financials and other numbers so people will understand you.” The author seems well-connected; the book has blurbs from a CEO, a COO, a bank vice-chairman, a former White House chief of staff, and Congressman Tom Campbell. So I assume the author knows something about business communication. But I have no way of evaluating the book. Any given page seems to contain useful information—for example, I just opened to page 73, which is all about not wasting your audience’s time, a principle which I am often emphasizing. Now I flip to page 120, which has “Long-Term Payoff Tip #8: Document Your Work!” Good point. My next flip takes us to page 175, which covers the value of getting audience feedback. Given that all these randomly-selected pages have good ad
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same-blog 1 0.91153258 16 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-04-Burgess on Kipling
Introduction: This is my last entry derived from Anthony Burgess’s book reviews , and it’ll be short. His review of Angus Wilson’s “The Strange Ride of Rudyard Kipling: His Life and Works” is a wonderfully balanced little thing. Nothing incredibly deep–like most items in the collection, the review is only two pages long–but I give it credit for being a rare piece of Kipling criticism I’ve seen that (a) seriously engages with the politics, without (b) congratulating itself on bravely going against the fashions of the politically incorrect chattering classes by celebrating Kipling’s magnificent achievement blah blah blah. Instead, Burgess shows respect for Kipling’s work and puts it in historical, biographical, and literary context. Burgess concludes that Wilson’s book “reminds us, in John Gross’s words, that Kipling ‘remains a haunting, unsettling presence, with whom we still have to come to terms.’ Still.” Well put, and generous of Burgess to end his review with another’s quote. Other cri
2 0.87626493 1558 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-02-Not so fast on levees and seawalls for NY harbor?
Introduction: I was talking with June Williamson and mentioned offhand that I’d seen something in the paper saying that if only we’d invested a few billion dollars in levees we would’ve saved zillions in economic damage from the flood. (A quick search also revealed this eerily prescient article from last month and, more recently, this online discussion.) June said, No, no, no: levees are not the way to go: Here and here are the articles on “soft infrastructure” for the New York-New Jersey Harbor I was mentioning, summarizing work that is more extensively published in two books, “Rising Currents” and “On the Water: Palisade Bay”: The hazards posed by climate change, sea level rise, and severe storm surges make this the time to transform our coastal cities through adaptive design. The conventional response to flooding, in recent history, has been hard engineering — fortifying the coastal infrastructure with seawalls and bulkheads to protect real estate at the expense of natural t
3 0.81464839 1028 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-26-Tenure lets you handle students who cheat
Introduction: The other day, a friend of mine who is an untenured professor (not in statistics or political science) was telling me about a class where many of the students seemed to be resubmitting papers that they had already written for previous classes. (The supposition was based on internal evidence of the topics of the submitted papers.) It would be possible to check this and then kick the cheating students out of the program—but why do it? It would be a lot of work, also some of the students who are caught might complain, then word would get around that my friend is a troublemaker. And nobody likes a troublemaker. Once my friend has tenure it would be possible to do the right thing. But . . . here’s the hitch: most college instructors do not have tenure, and one result, I suspect, is a decline in ethical standards. This is something I hadn’t thought of in our earlier discussion of job security for teachers: tenure gives you the freedom to kick out cheating students.
4 0.80730081 1975 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-09-Understanding predictive information criteria for Bayesian models
Introduction: Jessy, Aki, and I write : We review the Akaike, deviance, and Watanabe-Akaike information criteria from a Bayesian perspective, where the goal is to estimate expected out-of-sample-prediction error using a bias-corrected adjustment of within-sample error. We focus on the choices involved in setting up these measures, and we compare them in three simple examples, one theoretical and two applied. The contribution of this review is to put all these information criteria into a Bayesian predictive context and to better understand, through small examples, how these methods can apply in practice. I like this paper. It came about as a result of preparing Chapter 7 for the new BDA . I had difficulty understanding AIC, DIC, WAIC, etc., but I recognized that these methods served a need. My first plan was to just apply DIC and WAIC on a couple of simple examples (a linear regression and the 8 schools) and leave it at that. But when I did the calculations, I couldn’t understand the resu
5 0.79930007 9 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-28-But it all goes to pay for gas, car insurance, and tolls on the turnpike
Introduction: As a New Yorker I think I’m obliged to pass on the occasional Jersey joke (most recently, this one , which annoyingly continues to attract spam comments). I’ll let the above title be my comment on this entry from Tyler Cowen entitled, “Which Americans are ‘best off’?”: If you consult human development indices the answer is Asians living in New Jersey. The standard is: The index factors in life expectancy at birth, educational degree attainment among adults 25-years or older, school enrollment for people at least three years old and median annual gross personal earnings. More generally, these sorts of rankings and ndexes seem to be cheap ways of grabbing headlines. This has always irritated me but really maybe I should go with the flow and invent a few of these indexes myself.
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