andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-46 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: J. Robert Lennon writes : At the moment I [Lennon] am simultaneously working on two magazine articles, each requiring me to assess not just a book, but (briefly) a writer’s entire career. The writers in question are both prominent, both widely published, read, and appreciated. And yet neither, I think, enjoys a full appreciation of their career–its real scope, with all its twists and turns, its eccentricities intact. In one case, the writer had one smash hit, and one notorious book everyone hates. In the other, the writer has somehow become known as the author of one really serious book that gets taught a lot in college classes, and a bunch of other stuff generally thought to be a little bit frivolous. But close readings of each (hell, not even that close) reveals these reputations to be woefully inadequate. Both writers are much more interesting than their hits and bombs would suggest. This naturally got me thinking about statisticians. Some statisticians are famous (within
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Robert Lennon writes : At the moment I [Lennon] am simultaneously working on two magazine articles, each requiring me to assess not just a book, but (briefly) a writer’s entire career. [sent-2, score-0.539]
2 The writers in question are both prominent, both widely published, read, and appreciated. [sent-3, score-0.267]
3 And yet neither, I think, enjoys a full appreciation of their career–its real scope, with all its twists and turns, its eccentricities intact. [sent-4, score-0.65]
4 In one case, the writer had one smash hit, and one notorious book everyone hates. [sent-5, score-0.481]
5 In the other, the writer has somehow become known as the author of one really serious book that gets taught a lot in college classes, and a bunch of other stuff generally thought to be a little bit frivolous. [sent-6, score-0.696]
6 But close readings of each (hell, not even that close) reveals these reputations to be woefully inadequate. [sent-7, score-0.47]
7 Both writers are much more interesting than their hits and bombs would suggest. [sent-8, score-0.427]
8 This naturally got me thinking about statisticians. [sent-9, score-0.09]
9 Some statisticians are famous (within the statistics world) without having made any real contributions (as far as I can tell). [sent-10, score-0.303]
10 I’ll send a free book to the first person who guesses both authors correctly (if you do it before Lennon announces it himself). [sent-16, score-0.803]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('lennon', 0.522), ('guesses', 0.248), ('writer', 0.239), ('writers', 0.185), ('book', 0.161), ('eccentricities', 0.154), ('twists', 0.146), ('bombs', 0.139), ('enjoys', 0.139), ('wilcoxon', 0.139), ('announces', 0.127), ('reputations', 0.127), ('appreciation', 0.124), ('hell', 0.124), ('wonders', 0.124), ('readings', 0.122), ('close', 0.118), ('free', 0.113), ('scope', 0.109), ('simultaneously', 0.106), ('requiring', 0.104), ('hits', 0.103), ('reveals', 0.103), ('assess', 0.093), ('prominent', 0.091), ('briefly', 0.09), ('naturally', 0.09), ('real', 0.087), ('hit', 0.085), ('correctly', 0.084), ('taught', 0.084), ('classes', 0.083), ('subjects', 0.083), ('magazine', 0.083), ('moment', 0.083), ('widely', 0.082), ('career', 0.082), ('contributions', 0.082), ('somehow', 0.081), ('notorious', 0.081), ('turns', 0.079), ('neither', 0.078), ('curious', 0.077), ('robert', 0.075), ('famous', 0.071), ('send', 0.07), ('entire', 0.07), ('author', 0.066), ('college', 0.065), ('statisticians', 0.063)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0000001 46 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-21-Careers, one-hit wonders, and an offer of a free book
Introduction: J. Robert Lennon writes : At the moment I [Lennon] am simultaneously working on two magazine articles, each requiring me to assess not just a book, but (briefly) a writer’s entire career. The writers in question are both prominent, both widely published, read, and appreciated. And yet neither, I think, enjoys a full appreciation of their career–its real scope, with all its twists and turns, its eccentricities intact. In one case, the writer had one smash hit, and one notorious book everyone hates. In the other, the writer has somehow become known as the author of one really serious book that gets taught a lot in college classes, and a bunch of other stuff generally thought to be a little bit frivolous. But close readings of each (hell, not even that close) reveals these reputations to be woefully inadequate. Both writers are much more interesting than their hits and bombs would suggest. This naturally got me thinking about statisticians. Some statisticians are famous (within
2 0.17072207 204 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-12-Sloppily-written slam on moderately celebrated writers is amusing nonetheless
Introduction: Via J. Robert Lennon , I discovered this amusing blog by Anis Shivani on “The 15 Most Overrated Contemporary American Writers.” Lennon found it so annoying that he refused to even link to it, but I actually enjoyed Shivani’s bit of performance art. The literary criticism I see is so focused on individual books that it’s refreshing to see someone take on an entire author’s career in a single paragraph. I agree with Lennon that Shivani’s blog doesn’t have much content –it’s full of terms such as “vacuity” and “pap,” compared to which “trendy” and “fashionable” are precision instruments–but Shivani covers a lot of ground and it’s fun to see this all in one place. My main complaint with Shivani, beyond his sloppy writing (but, hey, it’s just a blog; I’m sure he saves the good stuff for his paid gigs) is his implicit assumption that everyone should agree with him. I’m as big a Kazin fan as anyone, but I still think he completely undervalued Marquand . The other thing I noticed
3 0.11249363 174 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-01-Literature and life
Introduction: What can we learn about an author from his or her fiction? This is an old, old question, I know. But I still can’t help thinking about it when I read a book. John Updike ‘s stories are full of male characters whom women find irresistibly attractive. I can only assume that this reflects Updike’s own experiences, to some extent. If he had not been, in reality, catnip to women, I imagine he’d have made more of a big deal about the episodes in his books where women kept falling into his protagonists’ laps. Same for John D. Macdonald , although there I suppose it’s possible he was just throwing in the sex to sell books. And even more so for Richard Ford . This guy’s male characters are so smooth, there’s no way that Ford isn’t/wasn’t like that too. What about Lorrie Moore? I think she must have had a very frustrating life (so far). I say this because her stories always seem to be centered around a female character who is witty, thoughtful, and refined, and surrounded by re
4 0.10863581 831 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-30-A Wikipedia riddle!
Introduction: I was distinguished for over three years and now am renowned. For most of the past year and a half, though, I was neither. Who am I? First person who guesses the right answer in comments gets a free copy of Jenny Davidson’s book, “Breeding”–as soon as she sends it to me, as she promised a couple years ago! You’ll get an extra prize if you can express the answer in an indirect way, without using the person’s name or being too obvious about it but making the identification clear enough that I know you know the answer. P.S. Reading Wikipedia edits . . . that’s a new low in time-wasting!
5 0.10195334 637 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-29-Unfinished business
Introduction: This blog by J. Robert Lennon on abandoned novels made me think of the more general topic of abandoned projects. I seem to recall George V. Higgins writing that he’d written and discarded 14 novels or so before publishing The Friends of Eddie Coyle. I haven’t abandoned any novels but I’ve abandoned lots of research projects (and also have started various projects that there’s no way I’ll finish). If you think about the decisions involved, it really has to be that way. You learn while you’re working on a project whether it’s worth continuing. Sometimes I’ve put in the hard work and pushed a project to completion, published the article, and then I think . . . what was the point? The modal number of citations of our articles is zero, etc.
6 0.094029859 330 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-09-What joker put seven dog lice in my Iraqi fez box?
7 0.084570937 1642 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-28-New book by Stef van Buuren on missing-data imputation looks really good!
8 0.082944706 2245 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-12-More on publishing in journals
9 0.079316139 1843 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-05-The New York Times Book of Mathematics
10 0.079136975 2083 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-31-Value-added modeling in education: Gaming the system by sending kids on a field trip at test time
11 0.07441169 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
12 0.072206922 115 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-28-Whassup with those crappy thrillers?
13 0.071948119 1634 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-21-Two reviews of Nate Silver’s new book, from Kaiser Fung and Cathy O’Neil
14 0.071403638 596 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-01-Looking for a textbook for a two-semester course in probability and (theoretical) statistics
15 0.070993185 30 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-13-Trips to Cleveland
16 0.070348777 8 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-28-Advice to help the rich get richer
17 0.068042874 1780 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-28-Racism!
18 0.067806542 2021 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-13-Swiss Jonah Lehrer
19 0.067774422 798 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-12-Sometimes a graph really is just ugly
20 0.067698866 1012 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-16-Blog bribes!
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.124), (1, -0.063), (2, -0.052), (3, 0.02), (4, -0.004), (5, 0.025), (6, 0.056), (7, -0.0), (8, 0.05), (9, 0.013), (10, 0.043), (11, -0.024), (12, 0.011), (13, 0.001), (14, 0.061), (15, -0.029), (16, -0.026), (17, 0.031), (18, 0.053), (19, -0.048), (20, 0.022), (21, -0.012), (22, 0.058), (23, 0.009), (24, 0.013), (25, 0.01), (26, 0.005), (27, 0.055), (28, -0.016), (29, 0.028), (30, -0.01), (31, -0.002), (32, 0.021), (33, -0.005), (34, -0.002), (35, 0.032), (36, 0.037), (37, -0.019), (38, -0.014), (39, -0.032), (40, -0.034), (41, -0.026), (42, -0.022), (43, -0.007), (44, 0.043), (45, -0.012), (46, 0.001), (47, -0.006), (48, 0.008), (49, 0.012)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.97895718 46 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-21-Careers, one-hit wonders, and an offer of a free book
Introduction: J. Robert Lennon writes : At the moment I [Lennon] am simultaneously working on two magazine articles, each requiring me to assess not just a book, but (briefly) a writer’s entire career. The writers in question are both prominent, both widely published, read, and appreciated. And yet neither, I think, enjoys a full appreciation of their career–its real scope, with all its twists and turns, its eccentricities intact. In one case, the writer had one smash hit, and one notorious book everyone hates. In the other, the writer has somehow become known as the author of one really serious book that gets taught a lot in college classes, and a bunch of other stuff generally thought to be a little bit frivolous. But close readings of each (hell, not even that close) reveals these reputations to be woefully inadequate. Both writers are much more interesting than their hits and bombs would suggest. This naturally got me thinking about statisticians. Some statisticians are famous (within
2 0.86444831 115 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-28-Whassup with those crappy thrillers?
Introduction: I was stunned this from Jenny Davidson about mystery writers: The crime fiction community is smart and adult and welcoming, and so many good books are being written (Lee Child was mentioning his peer group – i.e. they were the new kids around the same tie – being Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman – the list speaks for itself) . . . Why was I stunned? Because just a few days earlier I had a look at a book by Robert Crais. It just happened that Phil, when he was visiting, had finished this book (which he described as “pretty good”) and left it with me so he wouldn’t have to take it back with him. I’d never heard of Crais, but it had pretty amazing blurbs on the cover and Phil recommended it, so I took a look. It was bad. From page 1 it was bad. It was like a bad cop show. I could see the seams where the sentences were stitched together. I could see how somebody might like this sort of book, but I certainly can’t understand the blurbs or the i
3 0.86102164 1483 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-04-“Bestselling Author Caught Posting Positive Reviews of His Own Work on Amazon”
Introduction: I don’t have much sympathy for well-paid academic plagiarists who are too lazy to do their jobs, but I actually can feel for the author in this story who posted fake positive Amazon reviews of his own books and negative reviews of his competitors’. I mean, sure, this is despicable behavior, I won’t deny that, but it’s gotta be harder and harder to make money writing books. Even a so-called bestselling author must feel under a lot of pressure. I was recently reading a book by Jonathan Coe—he’s just great, and famous, and celebrated, but I doubt he’s getting rich from his books. Not that there’s any reason that he has to get rich, but if even Jonathan Coe isn’t living the high life, that’s not good for authors in general. It’s a far cry from the days in which Updike, Styron, etc., could swagger around like bigshots.
4 0.85069853 1641 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-27-The Möbius strip, or, marketing that is impervious to criticism
Introduction: Johnny Carson had this great trick where, after a joke bombed, he’d do such a good double-take that he’d end up getting a huge laugh. This gimmick could never have worked as his sole shtick—at some point, Johnny had to tell some good jokes—but it was a reliable way to limit the downside. For the purpose of our discussion here, the point is that, even when the joke failed, Carson had a way out. I thought of this today after following a link from a commenter that led to this blog on publicity-minded author Tim Ferriss. I’ve never read anything by Ferriss but I’ve read about him on occasion: his gimmick is he promotes his book using ingenious marketing strategies. Sort of like how Madonna is famous for being famous, and Paris Hilton is famous for being famous for being famous, Ferriss is famous for self-promotion. Matt Metzgar writes : I [Metzgar] saw a bunch of ads on the internet today for Tim Ferriss’ new book. Even though the book was released today, it already has all
5 0.84492403 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
6 0.84306949 30 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-13-Trips to Cleveland
7 0.84012085 1843 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-05-The New York Times Book of Mathematics
8 0.8271327 886 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-02-The new Helen DeWitt novel
9 0.82532358 285 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-18-Fiction is not for tirades? Tell that to Saul Bellow!
10 0.82450408 102 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-21-Why modern art is all in the mind
11 0.81967837 8 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-28-Advice to help the rich get richer
12 0.81781173 1827 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-27-Continued fractions!!
13 0.81544453 1405 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-04-“Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Would Bet on Everything”
14 0.80429113 824 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-26-Milo and Milo
15 0.80051166 258 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-05-A review of a review of a review of a decade
16 0.79115999 57 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-29-Roth and Amsterdam
17 0.79071611 432 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-27-Neumann update
18 0.78188264 203 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-12-John McPhee, the Anti-Malcolm
19 0.78015089 4 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-26-Prolefeed
20 0.77761924 2334 andrew gelman stats-2014-05-14-“The subtle funk of just a little poultry offal”
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.023), (7, 0.016), (15, 0.046), (16, 0.087), (24, 0.073), (27, 0.013), (53, 0.335), (86, 0.024), (99, 0.273)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
1 0.96149385 413 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-14-Statistics of food consumption
Introduction: Visual Economics shows statistics on average food consumption in America: My brief feedback is that water is confounded with these results. They should have subtracted water content from the weight of all dietary items, as it inflates the proportion of milk, vegetable and fruit items that contain more water. They did that for soda (which is represented as sugar/corn syrup), amplifying the inconsistency. Time Magazine had a beautiful gallery that visualizes diets around the world in a more appealing way.
2 0.942276 1589 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-25-Life as a blogger: the emails just get weirder and weirder
Introduction: In the email the other day, subject line “Casting blogger, writer, journalist to host cable series”: Hi there Andrew, I’m casting a male journalist, writer, blogger, documentary filmmaker or comedian with a certain type personality for a television pilot along with production company, Pipeline39. See below: A certain type of character – no cockiness, no ego, a person who is smart, savvy, dry humor, but someone who isn’t imposing, who can infiltrate these organizations. This person will be hosting his own show and covering alternative lifestyles and secret societies around the world. If you’re interested in hearing more or would like to be considered for this project, please email me a photo and a bio of yourself, along with contact information. I’ll respond to you ASAP. I’m looking forward to hearing from you. *** Casting Producer (646) ***.**** ***@gmail.com I was with them until I got to the “no ego” part. . . . Also, I don’t think I could infiltrate any org
Introduction: Tapen Sinha writes: Living in Mexico, I have been witness to many strange (and beautiful) things. Perhaps the strangest happened during the first outbreak of A(H1N1) in Mexico City. We had our university closed, football (soccer) was played in empty stadiums (or should it be stadia) because the government feared a spread of the virus. The Metro was operating and so were the private/public buses and taxis. Since the university was closed, we took the opportunity to collect data on facemask use in the public transport systems. It was a simple (but potentially deadly!) exercise in first hand statistical data collection that we teach our students (Although I must admit that I did not dare sending my research assistant to collect data – what if she contracted the virus?). I believe it was a unique experiment never to be repeated. The paper appeared in the journal Health Policy. From the abstract: At the height of the influenza epidemic in Mexico City in the spring of 2009, the f
4 0.91999406 1856 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-14-GPstuff: Bayesian Modeling with Gaussian Processes
Introduction: I think it’s part of my duty as a blogger to intersperse, along with the steady flow of jokes, rants, and literary criticism, some material that will actually be useful to you. So here goes. Jarno Vanhatalo, Jaakko Riihimäki, Jouni Hartikainen, Pasi Jylänki, Ville Tolvanen, and Aki Vehtari write : The GPstuff toolbox is a versatile collection of Gaussian process models and computational tools required for Bayesian inference. The tools include, among others, various inference methods, sparse approximations and model assessment methods. We can actually now fit Gaussian processes in Stan . But for big problems (or even moderately-sized problems), full Bayes can be slow. GPstuff uses EP, which is faster. At some point we’d like to implement EP in Stan. (Right now we’re working with Dave Blei to implement VB.) GPstuff really works. I saw Aki use it to fit a nonparametric version of the Bangladesh well-switching example in ARM. He was sitting in his office and just whip
5 0.91323328 1677 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-16-Greenland is one tough town
Introduction: Americans (including me) don’t know much about other countries. Jeff Lax sent me to this blog post by Myrddin pointing out that Belgium has a higher murder rate than the rest of Western Europe. I have no particular take on this, but it’s a good reminder that other countries differ from each other. Here in the U.S., we tend to think all western European countries are the same, all eastern European countries are the same, etc. In reality, Sweden is not Finland . P.S. According to the Wiki , Greenland is one tough town. I guess there’s nothing much to do out there but watch satellite TV, chew the blubber, and kill people.
same-blog 6 0.90919048 46 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-21-Careers, one-hit wonders, and an offer of a free book
7 0.8977493 1802 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-14-Detecting predictability in complex ecosystems
8 0.89599383 1468 andrew gelman stats-2012-08-24-Multilevel modeling and instrumental variables
9 0.87333655 1905 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-18-There are no fat sprinters
10 0.86909223 1902 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-17-Job opening at new “big data” consulting firm!
11 0.86633551 991 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-04-Insecure researchers aren’t sharing their data
12 0.86342359 733 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-27-Another silly graph
13 0.84911251 2022 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-13-You heard it here first: Intense exercise can suppress appetite
15 0.83004844 1047 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-08-I Am Too Absolutely Heteroskedastic for This Probit Model
16 0.82562041 495 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-31-“Threshold earners” and economic inequality
17 0.822065 880 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-30-Annals of spam
18 0.82027501 237 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-27-Bafumi-Erikson-Wlezien predict a 50-seat loss for Democrats in November
19 0.8198781 2067 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-18-EP and ABC
20 0.81214714 354 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-19-There’s only one Amtrak