andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-36 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Around the time I was finishing up my Ph.D. thesis, I was trying to come up with a good title–something more grabby than “Topics in Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography”–and one of the other students said: How about something iike, Female Mass Murderers: Babes Behind Bars? That sounded good to me, and I was all set to use it. I had a plan: I’d first submit the one the boring title–that’s how it would be recorded in all the official paperwork–but then at the last minute I’d substitute in the new title page before submitting to the library. (This was in the days of hard copies.) Nobody would look at the time, then later on, if anyone went into the library to find my thesis, they’d have a pleasant surprise. Anyway, as I said, I was all set to do this, but a friend warned me off. He said that at some point, someone might find it, and the rumor would spread that I’m a sexist pig. So I didn’t. I was thinking about this after hearing this report based on a reading of Sup
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 thesis, I was trying to come up with a good title–something more grabby than “Topics in Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography”–and one of the other students said: How about something iike, Female Mass Murderers: Babes Behind Bars? [sent-3, score-0.222]
2 That sounded good to me, and I was all set to use it. [sent-4, score-0.233]
3 I had a plan: I’d first submit the one the boring title–that’s how it would be recorded in all the official paperwork–but then at the last minute I’d substitute in the new title page before submitting to the library. [sent-5, score-1.164]
4 ) Nobody would look at the time, then later on, if anyone went into the library to find my thesis, they’d have a pleasant surprise. [sent-7, score-0.471]
5 Anyway, as I said, I was all set to do this, but a friend warned me off. [sent-8, score-0.366]
6 He said that at some point, someone might find it, and the rumor would spread that I’m a sexist pig. [sent-9, score-0.694]
7 I was thinking about this after hearing this report based on a reading of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s undergraduate thesis. [sent-11, score-0.384]
8 Although in this case, I suppose the title was unobjectionable, it was the content that bothered people. [sent-12, score-0.509]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('title', 0.316), ('thesis', 0.216), ('babes', 0.18), ('murderers', 0.18), ('sexist', 0.18), ('tomography', 0.18), ('emission', 0.17), ('rumor', 0.17), ('warned', 0.17), ('elena', 0.163), ('kagan', 0.163), ('nominee', 0.163), ('paperwork', 0.163), ('said', 0.154), ('grabby', 0.152), ('reconstruction', 0.149), ('finishing', 0.145), ('recorded', 0.135), ('supreme', 0.131), ('pleasant', 0.131), ('sounded', 0.131), ('substitute', 0.131), ('minute', 0.126), ('submitting', 0.126), ('bars', 0.122), ('court', 0.119), ('boring', 0.116), ('undergraduate', 0.113), ('female', 0.113), ('library', 0.113), ('submit', 0.109), ('hearing', 0.108), ('official', 0.105), ('spread', 0.103), ('set', 0.102), ('image', 0.102), ('bothered', 0.102), ('mass', 0.101), ('friend', 0.094), ('behind', 0.091), ('content', 0.091), ('find', 0.087), ('plan', 0.086), ('topics', 0.083), ('nobody', 0.08), ('days', 0.078), ('anyway', 0.074), ('went', 0.07), ('something', 0.07), ('anyone', 0.07)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.99999994 36 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-16-Female Mass Murderers: Babes Behind Bars
Introduction: Around the time I was finishing up my Ph.D. thesis, I was trying to come up with a good title–something more grabby than “Topics in Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography”–and one of the other students said: How about something iike, Female Mass Murderers: Babes Behind Bars? That sounded good to me, and I was all set to use it. I had a plan: I’d first submit the one the boring title–that’s how it would be recorded in all the official paperwork–but then at the last minute I’d substitute in the new title page before submitting to the library. (This was in the days of hard copies.) Nobody would look at the time, then later on, if anyone went into the library to find my thesis, they’d have a pleasant surprise. Anyway, as I said, I was all set to do this, but a friend warned me off. He said that at some point, someone might find it, and the rumor would spread that I’m a sexist pig. So I didn’t. I was thinking about this after hearing this report based on a reading of Sup
2 0.1588158 162 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-25-Darn that Lindsey Graham! (or, “Mr. P Predicts the Kagan vote”)
Introduction: On the basis of two papers and because it is completely obvious, we (meaning me , Justin, and John ) predict that Elena Kagan will get confirmed to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. But we also want to see how close we can come to predicting the votes for and against. We actually have two sets of predictions, both using the MRP technique discussed previously on this blog. The first is based on our recent paper in the Journal of Politics showing that support for the nominee in a senator’s home state plays a striking role in whether she or he votes to confirm the nominee. The second is based on a new working paper extending “basic” MRP to show that senators respond far more to their co-partisans than the median voter in their home states. Usually, our vote “predictions” do not differ much, but there is a group of senators who are predicted to vote yes for Kagan with a probability around 50% and the two sets of predictions thus differ for Kagan more than usual.
3 0.1477081 458 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-08-Blogging: Is it “fair use”?
Introduction: Dave Kane writes: I [Kane] am involved in a dispute relating to whether or not a blog can be considered part of one’s academic writing. Williams College restricts the use of undergraduate theses as follows: Non-commercial, academic use within the scope of “Fair Use” standards is acceptable. Otherwise, you may not copy or distribute any content without the permission of the copyright holder. Seems obvious enough. Yet some folks think that my use of thesis material in a blog post fails this test because it is not “academic.” See this post for the gory details. Parenthetically, your readers might be interested in the substantive discovery here, the details of the Williams admissions process (which is probably very similar to Columbia’s). Williams places students into academic rating (AR) categories as follows: verbal math composite SAT II ACT AP AR 1: 770-800 750-800 1520-1600 750-800 35-36 mostly 5s AR 2: 730-770 720-750 1450-1520 720-770 33-34 4s an
4 0.11388317 235 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-25-Term Limits for the Supreme Court?
Introduction: In the wake of the confirmation of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, political commentators have been expressing a bit of frustration about polarization within the court and polarization in the nomination process. One proposal that’s been floating around is to replace lifetime appointments by fixed terms, perhaps twelve or eighteen years. This would enforce a regular schedule of replacements, instead of the current system in which eighty-something judges have an incentive to hang on as long as possible so as to time their retirements to be during the administration of a politically-compatible president. A couple weeks ago at the sister blog, John Sides discussed some recent research that was relevant to the judicial term limits proposal. Political scientists Justin Crowe and Chris Karpowitz analyzed the historical record or Supreme Court terms and found that long terms of twenty years or more have been happening since the early years of the court. Yes, there is less turnover th
Introduction: That’s the title of my talk at Montana State University this Thursday (21 Mar). For those of you who happen to be in the area, it’s 3:30-5:00pm in the Procrastinator Theater. I’m also speaking in the statistics seminar from 11-12:15 in the Byker Auditorium in the Chemistry building. Topic: Causality and Statistical Learning . P.S. My title is a bit Geng-inspired, which reminds me that I recently came across this interesting mini-bio.
6 0.078890882 1590 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-26-I need a title for my book on ethics and statistics!!
7 0.076657698 1752 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-06-Online Education and Jazz
8 0.07423991 1028 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-26-Tenure lets you handle students who cheat
9 0.073549956 1351 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-29-A Ph.D. thesis is not really a marathon
10 0.07214199 2188 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-27-“Disappointed with your results? Boost your scientific paper”
11 0.070426382 1937 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-13-Meritocracy rerun
12 0.069609843 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
13 0.067455143 1957 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-26-“The Inside Story Of The Harvard Dissertation That Became Too Racist For Heritage”
15 0.066695668 995 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-06-Statistical models and actual models
16 0.062643491 2282 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-05-Bizarre academic spam
17 0.06228862 1796 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-09-The guy behind me on line for the train . . .
18 0.062225703 152 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-17-Distorting the Electoral Connection? Partisan Representation in Confirmation Politics
19 0.061870817 1290 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-30-I suppose it’s too late to add Turing’s run-around-the-house-chess to the 2012 London Olympics?
20 0.061774723 407 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-11-Data Visualization vs. Statistical Graphics
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.112), (1, -0.059), (2, -0.019), (3, 0.017), (4, 0.028), (5, 0.008), (6, 0.051), (7, 0.015), (8, 0.007), (9, -0.029), (10, 0.039), (11, -0.006), (12, 0.021), (13, -0.027), (14, 0.014), (15, -0.003), (16, 0.011), (17, -0.001), (18, -0.002), (19, 0.011), (20, -0.007), (21, -0.012), (22, -0.021), (23, -0.004), (24, 0.014), (25, -0.007), (26, -0.018), (27, -0.059), (28, 0.03), (29, -0.012), (30, 0.008), (31, -0.002), (32, -0.008), (33, -0.012), (34, -0.0), (35, -0.023), (36, -0.015), (37, -0.021), (38, 0.035), (39, 0.029), (40, 0.014), (41, -0.032), (42, 0.038), (43, 0.014), (44, -0.025), (45, -0.021), (46, 0.028), (47, 0.008), (48, 0.017), (49, -0.012)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.96371144 36 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-16-Female Mass Murderers: Babes Behind Bars
Introduction: Around the time I was finishing up my Ph.D. thesis, I was trying to come up with a good title–something more grabby than “Topics in Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography”–and one of the other students said: How about something iike, Female Mass Murderers: Babes Behind Bars? That sounded good to me, and I was all set to use it. I had a plan: I’d first submit the one the boring title–that’s how it would be recorded in all the official paperwork–but then at the last minute I’d substitute in the new title page before submitting to the library. (This was in the days of hard copies.) Nobody would look at the time, then later on, if anyone went into the library to find my thesis, they’d have a pleasant surprise. Anyway, as I said, I was all set to do this, but a friend warned me off. He said that at some point, someone might find it, and the rumor would spread that I’m a sexist pig. So I didn’t. I was thinking about this after hearing this report based on a reading of Sup
2 0.7668162 1417 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-15-Some decision analysis problems are pretty easy, no?
Introduction: Cassie Murdoch reports : A 47-year-old woman in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, got behind the wheel of her car after having a bit too much to drink, but instead of wreaking havoc on the road, she ended up lodged in a sand trap at a local golf course. Why? Because her GPS made her do it—obviously! She said the GPS told her to turn left, and she did, right into a cornfield. That didn’t faze her, and she just kept on going until she ended up on the golf course and got stuck in the sand. There were people on the course at the time, but thankfully nobody was injured. Police found a cup full of alcohol in her car and arrested her for driving drunk. Here’s the punchline: This is the fourth time she’s been arrested for a DUI. Assuming this story is accurate, I guess they don’t have one of those “three strikes” laws in Massachusetts? Personally, I’m a lot more afraid of a dangerous driver than of some drug dealer. I’d think a simple cost-benefit calculation would recommend taking away
3 0.7661373 1938 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-14-Learning how to speak
Introduction: I’ve been trying to reduce my American accent when speaking French. I tried taping my voice and playing it back, but that didn’t help. I couldn’t actually tell that I had a strong accent by listening to myself. My own voice is just too familiar to me. Then Malecki told me about the international phonetic alphabet, which is just great. And there’s even a convenient website that translates. For example, le loup est revenu -> lə lu ε ʀəvny I stared at Malecki’s mouth while he said the phrase, and I finally understood the difference between the two different “oo” sounds. That evening at home I tried it out on the local expert and he laughed at my attempts but grudgingly admitted I was getting better. On about the 10th try, after watching him say it over and over and staring at his mouth, I was finally able to do it! I know this is going to sound stupid to all you linguistics experts out there, but I had no idea that you could figure out how to speak better by staring at s
4 0.73380065 1831 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-29-The Great Race
Introduction: This post is by Phil. Last summer my wife and I took a 3.5-month vacation that included a wide range of activities. When I got back, people would ask “what were the highlights or your trip?”, and I was somewhat at a loss: we had done so many things that were so different, many of which seemed really great…how could I pick? Someone said, wisely, that in six months or a year I’d be able to answer the question because some memories would be more vivid than others. They were right, and I was recently thinking back on our vacation and putting together a list of highlights — enjoyable in itself, but also worth doing to help plan future vacations. One of the things we did was go to four evenings of track and field events at the London Olympics. After we got back, people would ask what we had seen at the Olympics. I would say “We saw Usain Bolt run the 200m, we saw the women’s 4x100m relay and the men’s 4×400, we saw the last events of the decathlon…lots of great stuff. But my favorite was
5 0.73193038 698 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-05-Shocking but not surprising
Introduction: Much-honored playwright Tony Kushner was set to receive one more honor–a degree from John Jay College–but it was suddenly taken away from him on an 11-1 vote of the trustees of the City University of New York. This was the first rejection of an honorary degree nomination since 1961. The news article focuses on one trustee, Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, an investment adviser and onetime political aide, who opposed Kushner’s honorary degree, but to me the relevant point is that the committee as a whole voted 11-1 to ding him. Kusnher said, “I’m sickened,” he added, “that this is happening in New York City. Shocked, really.” I can see why he’s shocked, but perhaps it’s not so surprising that it’s happening in NYC. Recall the famous incident from 1940 in which Bertrand Russell was invited and then uninvited to teach at City College. The problem that time was Russell’s views on free love (as they called it back then). There seems to be a long tradition of city college officials being will
6 0.72963107 458 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-08-Blogging: Is it “fair use”?
7 0.71872389 438 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-30-I just skyped in from Kentucky, and boy are my arms tired
8 0.69814891 532 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-23-My Wall Street Journal story
10 0.69691795 2323 andrew gelman stats-2014-05-07-Cause he thinks he’s so-phisticated
11 0.69643027 913 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-16-Groundhog day in August?
12 0.69616067 983 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-31-Skepticism about skepticism of global warming skepticism skepticism
13 0.69564128 2313 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-30-Seth Roberts
14 0.69460642 1673 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-15-My talk last night at the visualization meetup
15 0.69060314 1143 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-29-G+ > Skype
16 0.68683249 239 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-28-The mathematics of democracy
18 0.68359721 1190 andrew gelman stats-2012-02-29-Why “Why”?
19 0.67778617 634 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-29-A.I. is Whatever We Can’t Yet Automate
20 0.67268598 1307 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-07-The hare, the pineapple, and Ed Wegman
topicId topicWeight
[(5, 0.028), (7, 0.016), (13, 0.014), (16, 0.046), (21, 0.029), (24, 0.08), (49, 0.015), (55, 0.018), (58, 0.038), (63, 0.016), (65, 0.014), (68, 0.175), (84, 0.015), (86, 0.021), (89, 0.027), (99, 0.352)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
1 0.96815646 958 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-14-The General Social Survey is a great resource
Introduction: See, for example, this report by Deborah Carr on changing attitudes about marital infidelity: Two great things about the General Social Survey are: (1) the data are freely available online , and (2) the same questions have been asked since 1972 so you get a nice long series.
2 0.96600515 622 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-21-A possible resolution of the albedo mystery!
Introduction: Remember that bizarre episode in Freakonomics 2, where Levitt and Dubner went to the Batcave-like lair of a genius billionaire who told them that “the problem with solar panels is that they’re black .” I’m not the only one who wondered at the time: of all the issues to bring up about solar power, why that one? Well, I think I’ve found the answer in this article by John Lanchester: In 2004, Nathan Myhrvold, who had, five years earlier, at the advanced age of forty, retired from his job as Microsoft’s chief technology officer, began to contribute to the culinary discussion board egullet.org . . . At the time he grew interested in sous vide, there was no book in English on the subject, and he resolved to write one. . . . broadened it further to include information about the basic physics of heating processes, then to include the physics and chemistry of traditional cooking techniques, and then to include the science and practical application of the highly inventive new techniq
3 0.96482289 877 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-29-Applying quantum probability to political science
Introduction: As we’ve discussed on occasion, conditional probability (“Boltzmann statistics,” in physics jargon) is false at the atomic level. (It’s false at the macroscopic level too, but with discrepancies too small to be detected directly most of the time.) Occasionally I’ve speculated on how quantum probability (that is, the laws of uncertainty that hold in the real world) might be applied to social science research. I’ve made no progress but remain intrigued by the idea. Chris Zorn told me he recently went to a meeting on applications of non-Kolmogorovian / quantum probability to social & human phenomena. Here’s his paper (with Charles Smith), “Some Quantum-Like Features of Mass Politics in Two-Party Systems,” which begins: We [Smith and Zorn] expand the substantive terrain of QI’s reach by illuminating a body of political theory that to date has been elaborated in strictly classical language and formalisms but has complex features that seem to merit generalizations of the prob
same-blog 4 0.95756406 36 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-16-Female Mass Murderers: Babes Behind Bars
Introduction: Around the time I was finishing up my Ph.D. thesis, I was trying to come up with a good title–something more grabby than “Topics in Image Reconstruction for Emission Tomography”–and one of the other students said: How about something iike, Female Mass Murderers: Babes Behind Bars? That sounded good to me, and I was all set to use it. I had a plan: I’d first submit the one the boring title–that’s how it would be recorded in all the official paperwork–but then at the last minute I’d substitute in the new title page before submitting to the library. (This was in the days of hard copies.) Nobody would look at the time, then later on, if anyone went into the library to find my thesis, they’d have a pleasant surprise. Anyway, as I said, I was all set to do this, but a friend warned me off. He said that at some point, someone might find it, and the rumor would spread that I’m a sexist pig. So I didn’t. I was thinking about this after hearing this report based on a reading of Sup
5 0.95514381 1284 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-26-Modeling probability data
Introduction: Rafael Huber writes: I conducted an experiment in which subjects where asked to estimate the probability of a certain event given a number of information (like a wheater forecaster or a stockmarket trader). These probability estimates are the dependent variable of my experiment. My goal is to model the data with a (hierarchical) Bayesian regression. A linear equation with all the presented information (quantified as log odds) defines the mu of a normal likelihood. The tau as precision is another free parameter. y[r] ~ dnorm( mu[r] , tau[ subj[r] ] ) mu[r] <- b0[ subj[r] ] + b1[ subj[r] ] * x1[r] + b2[ subj[r] ] * x2[r] + b3[ subj[r] ] * x3[r] My problem is that I do not believe that the normal is the correct probability distribution to model probability data (‌ because the error is limited). However, until now nobody was able to tell me how I can correctly model probability data. My reply: You can take the logit of the data before analyzing them. That is assuming there
6 0.9500677 913 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-16-Groundhog day in August?
7 0.94816482 924 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-24-“Income can’t be used to predict political opinion”
8 0.94116271 47 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-23-Of home runs and grand slams
9 0.93577129 1568 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-07-That last satisfaction at the end of the career
10 0.92875165 369 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-25-Misunderstanding of divided government
11 0.9188838 1114 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-12-Controversy about average personality differences between men and women
12 0.91877091 255 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-04-How does multilevel modeling affect the estimate of the grand mean?
13 0.91785562 1674 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-15-Prior Selection for Vector Autoregressions
14 0.91651517 1090 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-28-“. . . extending for dozens of pages”
16 0.91019297 626 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-23-Physics is hard
17 0.90879828 875 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-28-Better than Dennis the dentist or Laura the lawyer
18 0.90760803 1251 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-07-Mathematical model of vote operations
19 0.90545499 2071 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-21-Most Popular Girl Names by State over Time
20 0.90202785 1582 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-18-How to teach methods we don’t like?