andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-78 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: I keep hearing about textbook publishers who practically bribe instructors to assign their textbooks to students. And then I received this (unsolicited) email: You have recently been sent Pearson (Allyn & Bacon, Longman, Prentice Hall) texts to review for your summer and fall courses. As a thank you for reviewing our texts, I would like to invite you to participate in a brief survey (attached). If you have any questions about the survey, are not sure which books you have been sent, or if you would like to receive instructor’s materials, desk copies, etc. please let me know! If you have recently received your course assignments – let me know as well . Additionally, if you have decided to use a Pearson book in your summer or fall courses, I will provide you with an ISBN that will include discounts and resources for your students at no extra cost! All you have to do is answer the 3 simple questions on the attached survey and you will receive a $10.00 Dunkin Donuts gift card.
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1 I keep hearing about textbook publishers who practically bribe instructors to assign their textbooks to students. [sent-1, score-0.282]
2 And then I received this (unsolicited) email: You have recently been sent Pearson (Allyn & Bacon, Longman, Prentice Hall) texts to review for your summer and fall courses. [sent-2, score-0.431]
3 As a thank you for reviewing our texts, I would like to invite you to participate in a brief survey (attached). [sent-3, score-0.093]
4 If you have any questions about the survey, are not sure which books you have been sent, or if you would like to receive instructor’s materials, desk copies, etc. [sent-4, score-0.199]
5 If you have recently received your course assignments – let me know as well . [sent-6, score-0.103]
6 Additionally, if you have decided to use a Pearson book in your summer or fall courses, I will provide you with an ISBN that will include discounts and resources for your students at no extra cost! [sent-7, score-0.253]
7 All you have to do is answer the 3 simple questions on the attached survey and you will receive a $10. [sent-8, score-0.317]
8 Actually, the survey only has 3 questions, so really the $10 of donuts is more than fair as compensation. [sent-15, score-0.311]
9 The form also says, “There can only be 1 winner so get your name in the running fast! [sent-19, score-0.19]
10 ” What kind of raffle is it where you have to get your name in the running fast? [sent-20, score-0.359]
11 From the above description, the tote bag appears to contain a tote bag. [sent-26, score-1.682]
12 Does this second tote bag contain its own tote bag? [sent-27, score-1.682]
13 I broke down, filled out the form, and sent it in. [sent-42, score-0.178]
14 I don’t actually like donuts, so I’ll give the gift certificate as a prize to some students during a class demonstration. [sent-43, score-0.389]
15 If I do actually win the raffle, I’ll report back and tell you if the tote bag contains a tote bag. [sent-51, score-1.666]
16 It could come in handy in our planned trip to the beach this August! [sent-52, score-0.155]
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Introduction: I keep hearing about textbook publishers who practically bribe instructors to assign their textbooks to students. And then I received this (unsolicited) email: You have recently been sent Pearson (Allyn & Bacon, Longman, Prentice Hall) texts to review for your summer and fall courses. As a thank you for reviewing our texts, I would like to invite you to participate in a brief survey (attached). If you have any questions about the survey, are not sure which books you have been sent, or if you would like to receive instructor’s materials, desk copies, etc. please let me know! If you have recently received your course assignments – let me know as well . Additionally, if you have decided to use a Pearson book in your summer or fall courses, I will provide you with an ISBN that will include discounts and resources for your students at no extra cost! All you have to do is answer the 3 simple questions on the attached survey and you will receive a $10.00 Dunkin Donuts gift card.
2 0.1890223 667 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-19-Free $5 gift certificate!
Introduction: I bought something online and got a gift certificate for $5 to use at BustedTees.com. The gift code is TP07zh4q5dc and it expires on 30 Apr. I don’t need a T-shirt so I’ll pass this on to you. I assume it only works once. So the first person who follows up on this gets the discount. Enjoy!
3 0.13319364 2257 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-20-The candy weighing demonstration, or, the unwisdom of crowds
Introduction: From 2008: The candy weighing demonstration, or, the unwisdom of crowds My favorite statistics demonstration is the one with the bag of candies. I’ve elaborated upon it since including it in the Teaching Statistics book and I thought these tips might be useful to some of you. Preparation Buy 100 candies of different sizes and shapes and put them in a bag (the plastic bag from the store is fine). Get something like 20 large full-sized candy bars, 20 or 30 little things like mini Snickers bars and mini Peppermint Patties. And then 50 or 60 really little things like tiny Tootsie Rolls, lollipops, and individually-wrapped Life Savers. Count and make sure it’s exactly 100. You also need a digital kitchen scale that reads out in grams. Also bring a sealed envelope inside of which is a note (details below). When you get into the room, unobtrusively put the note somewhere, for example between two books on a shelf or behind a window shade. Setup Hold up the back of cand
4 0.087148085 1813 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-19-Grad students: Participate in an online survey on statistics education
Introduction: Joan Garfield, a leading researcher in statistics education, is conducting a survey of graduate students who teach or assist with the teaching of statistics. She writes: We want to invite them to take a short survey that will enable us to collect some baseline data that we may use in a grant proposal we are developing. The project would provide summer workshops and ongoing support for graduate students who will be teaching or assisting with teaching introductory statistics classes. If the grant is funded, we would invite up to 40 students from around the country who are entering graduate programs in statistics to participate in a three-year training and support program. The goal of this program is to help these students become expert and flexible teachers of statistics, and to support them as they move through their teaching experiences as graduate students. Here’s the the online survey . Garfield writes, “Your responses are completely voluntary and anonymous. Results w
5 0.078501277 103 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-22-Beach reads, Proust, and income tax
Introduction: The commenting feature doesn’t work for me on Helen DeWitt’s blog so I’m forced to comment on her entries here. 1. She discusses whether it’s fair to characterize The Last Samurai . I have a slightly different perspective on this: I’ve never really understood the idea that a “beach read” should be something light and fluffy. On the beach, you can relax, you have the time to get into anything. I could see wanting something light on the subway–you have to be able to get into it right away and follow it amid all the jostles. I guess the point is that when you’re at the beach, you’re far from the library. So what you really want for the beach is not necessarily something relaxing or easy to read, but rather a sure thing , a known quantity that you’ll definitely enjoy. No point sitting on the beach reading a book that you hate. 2. In an interesting discussion of translation, DeWitt recommends learning a language by reading great literature in the original tongue. Seems f
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10 0.054067746 18 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-06-$63,000 worth of abusive research . . . or just a really stupid waste of time?
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20 0.045998961 1371 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-07-Question 28 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
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Introduction: I keep hearing about textbook publishers who practically bribe instructors to assign their textbooks to students. And then I received this (unsolicited) email: You have recently been sent Pearson (Allyn & Bacon, Longman, Prentice Hall) texts to review for your summer and fall courses. As a thank you for reviewing our texts, I would like to invite you to participate in a brief survey (attached). If you have any questions about the survey, are not sure which books you have been sent, or if you would like to receive instructor’s materials, desk copies, etc. please let me know! If you have recently received your course assignments – let me know as well . Additionally, if you have decided to use a Pearson book in your summer or fall courses, I will provide you with an ISBN that will include discounts and resources for your students at no extra cost! All you have to do is answer the 3 simple questions on the attached survey and you will receive a $10.00 Dunkin Donuts gift card.
2 0.73417056 749 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-06-“Sampling: Design and Analysis”: a course for political science graduate students
Introduction: Early this afternoon I made the plan to teach a new course on sampling, maybe next spring, with the primary audience being political science Ph.D. students (although I hope to get students from statistics, sociology, and other departments). Columbia already has a sampling course in the statistics department (which I taught for several years); this new course will be centered around political science questions. Maybe the students can start by downloading data from the National Election Studies and General Social Survey and running some regressions, then we can back up and discuss what is needed to go further. About an hour after discussing this new course with my colleagues, I (coincidentally) received the following email from Mike Alvarez: If you were putting together a reading list on sampling for a grad course, what would you say are the essential readings? I thought I’d ask you because I suspect you might have taught something along these lines. I pointed Mike here and
3 0.71276695 385 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-31-Wacky surveys where they don’t tell you the questions they asked
Introduction: Maria Wolters writes: The parenting club Bounty, which distributes their packs through midwives, hospitals, and large UK supermarket and pharmacy chains, commissioned a fun little survey for Halloween from the company OnePoll . Theme: Mothers as tricksters – tricking men into fathering their babies. You can find a full smackdown courtesy of UK-based sex educator and University College London psychologist Petra Boynton here . (One does wonder how a parenting club with such close links to the UK National Health Service thought a survey on this topic was at all appropriate, but that’s another rant.) So far, so awful, but what I [Wolters] thought might grab your attention was the excuse OnePoll offered for their work in their email to Petra. (Petra is very well known in the UK, and so was able to get a statement from the polling company.) Here it is in its full glory, taken from Petra’s post: As the agency which commissioned this research and distributed the resulting new
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Introduction: From 2008: The candy weighing demonstration, or, the unwisdom of crowds My favorite statistics demonstration is the one with the bag of candies. I’ve elaborated upon it since including it in the Teaching Statistics book and I thought these tips might be useful to some of you. Preparation Buy 100 candies of different sizes and shapes and put them in a bag (the plastic bag from the store is fine). Get something like 20 large full-sized candy bars, 20 or 30 little things like mini Snickers bars and mini Peppermint Patties. And then 50 or 60 really little things like tiny Tootsie Rolls, lollipops, and individually-wrapped Life Savers. Count and make sure it’s exactly 100. You also need a digital kitchen scale that reads out in grams. Also bring a sealed envelope inside of which is a note (details below). When you get into the room, unobtrusively put the note somewhere, for example between two books on a shelf or behind a window shade. Setup Hold up the back of cand
5 0.67137671 1940 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-16-A poll that throws away data???
Introduction: Mark Blumenthal writes: What do you think about the “random rejection” method used by PPP that was attacked at some length today by a Republican pollster. Our just published post on the debate includes all the details as I know them. The Storify of Martino’s tweets has some additional data tables linked to toward the end. Also, more specifically, setting aside Martino’s suggestion of manipulation (which is also quite possible with post-stratification weights), would the PPP method introduce more potential random error than weighting? From Blumenthal’s blog: B.J. Martino, a senior vice president at the Republican polling firm The Tarrance Group, went on an 30-minute Twitter rant on Tuesday questioning the unorthodox method used by PPP [Public Policy Polling] to select samples and weight data: “Looking at @ppppolls new VA SW. Wondering how many interviews they discarded to get down to 601 completes? Because @ppppolls discards a LOT of interviews. Of 64,811 conducted
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Introduction: I keep hearing about textbook publishers who practically bribe instructors to assign their textbooks to students. And then I received this (unsolicited) email: You have recently been sent Pearson (Allyn & Bacon, Longman, Prentice Hall) texts to review for your summer and fall courses. As a thank you for reviewing our texts, I would like to invite you to participate in a brief survey (attached). If you have any questions about the survey, are not sure which books you have been sent, or if you would like to receive instructor’s materials, desk copies, etc. please let me know! If you have recently received your course assignments – let me know as well . Additionally, if you have decided to use a Pearson book in your summer or fall courses, I will provide you with an ISBN that will include discounts and resources for your students at no extra cost! All you have to do is answer the 3 simple questions on the attached survey and you will receive a $10.00 Dunkin Donuts gift card.
2 0.86224496 1122 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-16-“Groundbreaking or Definitive? Journals Need to Pick One”
Introduction: Sanjay Srivastava writes : As long as a journal pursues a strategy of publishing “wow” studies, it will inevitably contain more unreplicable findings and unsupportable conclusions than equally rigorous but more “boring” journals. Groundbreaking will always be higher-risk. And definitive will be the territory of journals that publish meta-analyses and reviews. . . . Most conclusions, even those in peer-reviewed papers in rigorous journals, should be regarded as tentative at best; but press releases and other public communication rarely convey that. . . . His message to all of us: Our standard response to a paper in Science, Nature, or Psychological Science should be “wow, that’ll be really interesting if it replicates.” And in our teaching and our engagement with the press and public, we need to make clear why that is the most enthusiastic response we can justify.
3 0.86065912 2215 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-17-The Washington Post reprints university press releases without editing them
Introduction: Somebody points me to this horrifying exposé by Paul Raeburn on a new series by the Washington Post where they reprint press releases as if they are actual news. And the gimmick is, the reason why it’s appearing on this blog, is that these are university press releases on science stories . What could possibly go wrong there? After all, Steve Chaplin, a self-identified “science-writing PIO from an R1,” writes in a comment to Raeburn’s post: We write about peer-reviewed research accepted for publication or published by the world’s leading scientific journals after that research has been determined to be legitimate. Repeatability of new research is a publication requisite. I emphasized that last sentence myself because it was such a stunner. Do people really think that??? So I guess what he’s saying is, they don’t do press releases for articles from Psychological Science or the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology . But I wonder how the profs in the psych d
4 0.82912707 487 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-27-Alfred Kahn
Introduction: Appointed “inflation czar” in late 1970s, Alfred Kahn is most famous for deregulating the airline industry. At the time this seemed to make sense, although in retrospect I’m less a fan of consumer-driven policies than I used to be. When I was a kid we subscribed to Consumer Reports and so I just assumed that everything that was good for the consumer–lower prices, better products, etc.–was a good thing. Upon reflection, though, I think it’s a mistake to focus too narrowly on the interests of consumers. For example (from my Taleb review a couple years ago): The discussion on page 112 of how Ralph Nader saved lives (mostly via seat belts in cars) reminds me of his car-bumper campaign in the 1970s. My dad subscribed to Consumer Reports then (he still does, actually, and I think reads it for pleasure–it must be one of those Depression-mentality things), and at one point they were pushing heavily for the 5-mph bumpers. Apparently there was some federal regulation about how strong
Introduction: To understand the above title, see here . Masanao writes: This report claims that eating meat increases the risk of cancer. I’m sure you can’t read the page but you probably can understand the graphs. Different bars represent subdivision in the amount of the particular type of meat one consumes. And each chunk is different types of meat. Left is for male right is for female. They claim that the difference is significant, but they are clearly not!! I’m for not eating much meat but this is just way too much… Here’s the graph: I don’t know what to think. If you look carefully you can find one or two statistically significant differences but overall the pattern doesn’t look so compelling. I don’t know what the top and bottom rows are, though. Overall, the pattern in the top row looks like it could represent a real trend, while the graphs on the bottom row look like noise. This could be a good example for our multiple comparisons paper. If the researchers won’t
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