andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-64 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Perhaps because of these discussions , I was pointed toward an article on “Rethinking Darfur” by Marc Gustafson, which was written up in a news story here . From the publicity email: This paper is intended to challenge the conventional wisdom about the causes and levels of violence in Darfur during the conflict there. Gustafson, a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, draws on historical analysis, explores mortality surveys, and dissects six years of American budgetary allocations in Sudan, contending that while the war in Darfur has had horrific results, it has been mischaracterized persistently in terms of the scale and causes of the conflict. Gustafson argues that these mischaracterizations had negative effects on elite and public understanding of the conflict, and consequently had a rather dubious effect on policy choices. I don’t have time to look at this and so offer no comment one way or the other, but I thought it might be of interest to some of you, so I’m posting it her
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1 Perhaps because of these discussions , I was pointed toward an article on “Rethinking Darfur” by Marc Gustafson, which was written up in a news story here . [sent-1, score-0.296]
2 From the publicity email: This paper is intended to challenge the conventional wisdom about the causes and levels of violence in Darfur during the conflict there. [sent-2, score-0.97]
3 Gustafson argues that these mischaracterizations had negative effects on elite and public understanding of the conflict, and consequently had a rather dubious effect on policy choices. [sent-4, score-0.722]
4 I don’t have time to look at this and so offer no comment one way or the other, but I thought it might be of interest to some of you, so I’m posting it here. [sent-5, score-0.197]
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same-blog 1 0.99999988 64 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-03-Estimates of war deaths: Darfur edition
Introduction: Perhaps because of these discussions , I was pointed toward an article on “Rethinking Darfur” by Marc Gustafson, which was written up in a news story here . From the publicity email: This paper is intended to challenge the conventional wisdom about the causes and levels of violence in Darfur during the conflict there. Gustafson, a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, draws on historical analysis, explores mortality surveys, and dissects six years of American budgetary allocations in Sudan, contending that while the war in Darfur has had horrific results, it has been mischaracterized persistently in terms of the scale and causes of the conflict. Gustafson argues that these mischaracterizations had negative effects on elite and public understanding of the conflict, and consequently had a rather dubious effect on policy choices. I don’t have time to look at this and so offer no comment one way or the other, but I thought it might be of interest to some of you, so I’m posting it her
2 0.12266607 2097 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-11-Why ask why? Forward causal inference and reverse causal questions
Introduction: Guido Imbens and I write : The statistical and econometrics literature on causality is more focused on “effects of causes” than on “causes of effects.” That is, in the standard approach it is natural to study the effect of a treatment, but it is not in general possible to define the causes of any particular outcome. This has led some researchers to dismiss the search for causes as “cocktail party chatter” that is outside the realm of science. We argue here that the search for causes can be understood within traditional statistical frameworks as a part of model checking and hypothesis generation. We argue that it can make sense to ask questions about the causes of effects, but the answers to these questions will be in terms of effects of causes. We also posted the paper on NBER so I’m hoping it will get some attention from economists. [Again, here's the open link to the paper.] I think what we have here is an important idea linking statistical and econometric models of caus
Introduction: Mike Spagat sends in an interesting explanation for the noted problems with conflict mortality studies (a topic we’ve discussed on occasion on this blog). Spagat writes: This analysis is based on the fact that conflict violence does not spread out at all uniformly across a map but, rather, tends to concentrate in a few areas. This means that small, headline-grabbing violence surveys are extremely unreliable. There is a second point, based on the work of David Hemenway which you’ve also cited on your blog. Even within exceptionally violent environments most households will still not have a violent death. So a very small false positive rate in a household survey will cause substantial upward bias in violence estimates.
4 0.085663885 1675 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-15-“10 Things You Need to Know About Causal Effects”
Introduction: Macartan Humphreys pointed me to this excellent guide . Here are the 10 items: 1. A causal claim is a statement about what didn’t happen. 2. There is a fundamental problem of causal inference. 3. You can estimate average causal effects even if you cannot observe any individual causal effects. 4. If you know that, on average, A causes B and that B causes C, this does not mean that you know that A causes C. 5. The counterfactual model is all about contribution, not attribution. 6. X can cause Y even if there is no “causal path” connecting X and Y. 7. Correlation is not causation. 8. X can cause Y even if X is not a necessary condition or a sufficient condition for Y. 9. Estimating average causal effects does not require that treatment and control groups are identical. 10. There is no causation without manipulation. The article follows with crisp discussions of each point. My favorite is item #6, not because it’s the most important but because it brings in some real s
5 0.068237841 295 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-25-Clusters with very small numbers of observations
Introduction: James O’Brien writes: How would you explain, to a “classically-trained” hypothesis-tester, that “It’s OK to fit a multilevel model even if some groups have only one observation each”? I [O'Brien] think I understand the logic and the statistical principles at work in this, but I’ve having trouble being clear and persuasive. I also feel like I’m contending with some methodological conventional wisdom here. My reply: I’m so used to this idea that I find it difficult to defend it in some sort of general conceptual way. So let me retreat to a more functional defense, which is that multilevel modeling gives good estimates, especially when the number of observations per group is small. One way to see this in any particular example in through cross-validation. Another way is to consider the alternatives. If you try really hard you can come up with a “classical hypothesis testing” approach which will do as well as the multilevel model. It would just take a lot of work. I’d r
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same-blog 1 0.96102703 64 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-03-Estimates of war deaths: Darfur edition
Introduction: Perhaps because of these discussions , I was pointed toward an article on “Rethinking Darfur” by Marc Gustafson, which was written up in a news story here . From the publicity email: This paper is intended to challenge the conventional wisdom about the causes and levels of violence in Darfur during the conflict there. Gustafson, a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, draws on historical analysis, explores mortality surveys, and dissects six years of American budgetary allocations in Sudan, contending that while the war in Darfur has had horrific results, it has been mischaracterized persistently in terms of the scale and causes of the conflict. Gustafson argues that these mischaracterizations had negative effects on elite and public understanding of the conflict, and consequently had a rather dubious effect on policy choices. I don’t have time to look at this and so offer no comment one way or the other, but I thought it might be of interest to some of you, so I’m posting it her
Introduction: Dan Kahan writes: We all know it’s ridiculous to be able to go on an fMRI fishing trip & resort to post hoc story-telling to explain the “significant” correlations one (inevitably) observes (good fMRI studies *don’t* do this; only bad ones do– to the injury of the reputation of all the scholars doing good studies of this kind). But now one doesn’t even need correlations that support the post-hoc inferences one is drawing. This one’s good. Kahan continues: Headline: Religious Experiences Shrink Part of the Brain text: ” … The study, published March 30 [2011] in PLoS One, showed greater atrophy in the hippocampus in individuals who identify with specific religious groups as well as those with no religious affiliation … The results showed significantly greater hippocampal atrophy in individuals reporting a life-changing religious experience. In addition, they found significantly greater hippocampal atrophy among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religiou
3 0.66075587 2367 andrew gelman stats-2014-06-10-Spring forward, fall back, drop dead?
Introduction: Antonio Rinaldi points me to a press release describing a recent paper by Amneet Sandhu, Milan Seth, and Hitinder Gurm, where I got the above graphs (sorry about the resolution, that’s the best I could do). Here’s the press release: Data from the largest study of its kind in the U.S. reveal a 25 percent jump in the number of heart attacks occurring the Monday after we “spring forward” compared to other Mondays during the year – a trend that remained even after accounting for seasonal variations in these events. But the study showed the opposite effect is also true. Researchers found a 21 percent drop in the number of heart attacks on the Tuesday after returning to standard time in the fall when we gain an hour back. Rinaldi thinks: “On Tuesday? No multiple comparisons here???” The press release continues: “What’s interesting is that the total number of heart attacks didn’t change the week after daylight saving time,” said Amneet Sandhu, M.D., cardiology fellow, Univer
4 0.65932953 1404 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-03-Counting gays
Introduction: Gary Gates writes : In a recent study, the author of this article estimated that the self- identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community makes up 3.8 percent of the American population. The author’s estimate was far lower than many scholars and activists had contended, and it included a relatively high proportion of persons self-identifying as bisexuals. This article responds to two of the central criticisms that arose in the controversy that followed. First, in response to claims that his estimate did not account for people who are in the closet, the author describes how demographers might measure the size of the closet. Second, in response to those who either ignored the reported large incidence of bisexuality or misconstrued the meaning of that incidence, the Author considers how varying frameworks for conceptualizing sexual orientation might alter the ratio of lesbian or gay individuals to bisexuals. This article goes on to offer observations about the ch
Introduction: Gur Huberman points to an article on the financial crisis by Bethany McLean, who writes : lthough our understanding of what instigated the 2008 global financial crisis remains at best incomplete, there are a few widely agreed upon contributing factors. One of them is a 2004 rule change by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that allowed investment banks to load up on leverage. This disastrous decision has been cited by a host of prominent economists, including Princeton professor and former Federal Reserve Vice-Chairman Alan Blinder and Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. It has even been immortalized in Hollywood, figuring into the dark financial narrative that propelled the Academy Award-winning film Inside Job. . . . Here’s just one problem with this story line: It’s not true. Nor is it hard to prove that. Look at the historical leverage of the big five investment banks — Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The Government Accou
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Introduction: My talks at Cambridge this Wed and Thurs in the department of Machine Learning . Powerpoints are here and here . Also some videos are here (but no videos of the “Nothing is Linear, Nothing is Additive” talk).
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Introduction: Perhaps because of these discussions , I was pointed toward an article on “Rethinking Darfur” by Marc Gustafson, which was written up in a news story here . From the publicity email: This paper is intended to challenge the conventional wisdom about the causes and levels of violence in Darfur during the conflict there. Gustafson, a Marshall Scholar at Oxford, draws on historical analysis, explores mortality surveys, and dissects six years of American budgetary allocations in Sudan, contending that while the war in Darfur has had horrific results, it has been mischaracterized persistently in terms of the scale and causes of the conflict. Gustafson argues that these mischaracterizations had negative effects on elite and public understanding of the conflict, and consequently had a rather dubious effect on policy choices. I don’t have time to look at this and so offer no comment one way or the other, but I thought it might be of interest to some of you, so I’m posting it her
3 0.68374753 139 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-10-Life in New York, Then and Now
Introduction: Interesting mini-memoir from John Podhoretz about the Upper West Side, in his words, “the most affluent shtetl the world has ever seen.” The only part I can’t quite follow is his offhand remark, “It is an expensive place to live, but then it always was.” I always thought that, before 1985 or so, the Upper West Side wasn’t so upscale. People at Columbia tell all sorts of stories about how things used to be in the bad old days. I have one other comment. Before giving it, let me emphasize that enjoyed reading Podhoretz’s article and, by making the comment below, I’m not trying to shoot Podhoretz down; rather, I’m trying to help out by pointing out a habit in his writing that might be getting in the way of his larger messages. Podhoretz writes the following about slum clearance: Over the course of the next four years, 20 houses on the block would be demolished and replaced with a high school named for Louis Brandeis and a relocated elementary school. Of the 35 brownstones t
4 0.67012262 813 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-21-Scrabble!
Introduction: AT writes : Sitting on my [AT's] to-do list for a while now has been an exploration of Scrabble from an experimental design point of view; how to better design a tournament to make the variance as small as possible while still preserving the appearance of the home game to its players. . . . I’m proud (relieved?) to say that I’ve finally finished the first draft of this work for two-player head-to-head games, with a duplication method that ensures that if the game were repeated, each player would receive tiles from the reserve in the same sequence: think of the tiles being laid out in order (but unseen to the players), so that one player draws from the front and the other draws from the back. . . . One goal of this was to figure out how much of the variance in score comes from the tile order and how much comes from the board, given that a tile order would be expected. It turns out to be about half-bag, half-board . . . Some other findings from the simulations: The blank
5 0.65133595 633 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-28-“The New Tyranny: Carbon Monoxide Detectors?”
Introduction: This story reminds me that, when I was in grad school, the state of Massachusetts instituted a seat-belt law which became a big controversy. A local talk show host made it his pet project to shoot down the law, and he succeeded! There was a ballot initiative and the voters repealed the seat belt law. A few years later the law returned (it was somehow tied in with Federal highway funding, I think, the same way they managed to get all the states to up the drinking age to 21), and, oddly enough, nobody seemed to care the second time around. It’s funny how something can be a big political issue one year and nothing the next. I have no deep insights on the matter, but it’s worth remembering that these sorts of panics are nothing new. Recall E.S. Turner’s classic book, Roads to Ruin. I think there’s a research project in here, to understand what gets an issue to be a big deal and how it is that some controversies just fade away.
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