andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-116 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: In the past decades violent means of grabbing power have been discredited and internationally regulated. Still, grabbing power is as desired as it has always been, and I’d like to introduce some new methods used today: Establish your base of power by achieving a critical mass (75%+) within a group with a high barrier to entry . Examples of barriers to entry: genetics (familiar ties, skin, eye color, hair type – takes 2+ generations to enter), religion (takes 2-10 years to enter), language (very hard to enter after the age of 10). Encourage your followers to have many children – because of common ethical concerns, other groups will help you bring them up. Control the system of indoctrination , such as religious schooling, government-based educational system, entertainment, popular culture – limiting the loss of children to out-group (only needed for non-genetic barriers to entry). Wait 18 years for your followers’ children to become eligible to vote. Win elections by
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 In the past decades violent means of grabbing power have been discredited and internationally regulated. [sent-1, score-0.67]
2 Still, grabbing power is as desired as it has always been, and I’d like to introduce some new methods used today: Establish your base of power by achieving a critical mass (75%+) within a group with a high barrier to entry . [sent-2, score-1.253]
3 Examples of barriers to entry: genetics (familiar ties, skin, eye color, hair type – takes 2+ generations to enter), religion (takes 2-10 years to enter), language (very hard to enter after the age of 10). [sent-3, score-0.742]
4 Encourage your followers to have many children – because of common ethical concerns, other groups will help you bring them up. [sent-4, score-0.333]
5 Control the system of indoctrination , such as religious schooling, government-based educational system, entertainment, popular culture – limiting the loss of children to out-group (only needed for non-genetic barriers to entry). [sent-5, score-0.589]
6 Wait 18 years for your followers’ children to become eligible to vote. [sent-6, score-0.344]
7 Win elections by popular vote – and have the option of abolishing democracy and instituting the rule by in-group. [sent-7, score-0.272]
8 Other tricks of the trade: Support economic and social policies that benefit the in-group disproportionally more than out-group. [sent-8, score-0.106]
9 Supporting the immigration of people that can join the group, or evangelize your message to potential followers. [sent-9, score-0.1]
10 Focus on out-group members in distress , as they appreciate help, become more willing to convert, and are more eager about in-group. [sent-10, score-0.192]
11 Barriers to entry are an important factor that strengthens the internal cohesion of the group and helps maintain the base of power you’ve established. [sent-12, score-0.778]
12 This strategy has been and is being applied in numerous countries, and is a weaker form of genocide especially when the in-group is based on genetics. [sent-13, score-0.185]
13 Disclaimer : I do not endorse such (or any) power-grabbing strategies. [sent-14, score-0.084]
14 I find that structuring research findings in the form of “How to”s and “5 Easy Steps” appealing to self-interest communicate information more efficiently than academic treatises in today’s conditions of information overload. [sent-16, score-0.27]
15 Bibliography: Jack Parsons (who sadly recently passed away) wrote a book, Population Competition for Security or Attack: A Study of the Perilous Pursuit of Power Through Weight of Numbers. [sent-17, score-0.085]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('barriers', 0.262), ('power', 0.22), ('enter', 0.217), ('entry', 0.215), ('grabbing', 0.185), ('followers', 0.175), ('jack', 0.158), ('children', 0.158), ('base', 0.122), ('group', 0.115), ('disproportionally', 0.106), ('caplan', 0.106), ('cohesion', 0.106), ('distress', 0.106), ('emigration', 0.106), ('genocide', 0.106), ('instituting', 0.106), ('internationally', 0.106), ('parsons', 0.106), ('stefano', 0.106), ('treatises', 0.106), ('bibliography', 0.1), ('eligible', 0.1), ('immigration', 0.1), ('liberty', 0.1), ('barrier', 0.092), ('takes', 0.091), ('bryan', 0.09), ('schooling', 0.09), ('popular', 0.089), ('disclaimer', 0.087), ('hair', 0.087), ('become', 0.086), ('pursuit', 0.085), ('generations', 0.085), ('sadly', 0.085), ('structuring', 0.085), ('achieving', 0.084), ('endorse', 0.084), ('skin', 0.084), ('today', 0.083), ('ties', 0.082), ('discredited', 0.081), ('entertainment', 0.081), ('system', 0.08), ('support', 0.08), ('form', 0.079), ('violent', 0.078), ('democracy', 0.077), ('convert', 0.077)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.99999994 116 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-29-How to grab power in a democracy – in 5 easy non-violent steps
Introduction: In the past decades violent means of grabbing power have been discredited and internationally regulated. Still, grabbing power is as desired as it has always been, and I’d like to introduce some new methods used today: Establish your base of power by achieving a critical mass (75%+) within a group with a high barrier to entry . Examples of barriers to entry: genetics (familiar ties, skin, eye color, hair type – takes 2+ generations to enter), religion (takes 2-10 years to enter), language (very hard to enter after the age of 10). Encourage your followers to have many children – because of common ethical concerns, other groups will help you bring them up. Control the system of indoctrination , such as religious schooling, government-based educational system, entertainment, popular culture – limiting the loss of children to out-group (only needed for non-genetic barriers to entry). Wait 18 years for your followers’ children to become eligible to vote. Win elections by
2 0.090026736 721 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-20-Non-statistical thinking in the US foreign policy establishment
Introduction: I’m a few weeks behind in my New Yorker reading and so just recently read this fascinating article by Ryan Lizza on the current administration’s foreign policy. He gives some insights into the transformation Obama from antiwar candidate to a president conducting three wars. Speaking as a statistician, though, what grabbed my eye was a doctrine of journalist/professor/policymaker Samantha Power. Lizza writes: In 2002, after graduating from Harvard Law School, she wrote “A Problem from Hell,” which surveyed the grim history of six genocides committed in the twentieth century. Propounding a liberal-interventionist view, Power argued that “mass killing” on the scale of Rwanda or Bosnia must be prevented by other nations, including the United States. She wrote that America and its allies rarely have perfect information about when a regime is about to commit genocide; a President, therefore, must have “a bias toward belief” that massacres are imminent. From a statistical perspect
3 0.081331596 2018 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-12-Do you ever have that I-just-fit-a-model feeling?
Introduction: Didier Ruedin writes: Here’s something I’ve been wondering for a while, and I thought your blog might be the right place to get the views from a wider group, too. How would you describe that feeling when—after going through the theory, collecting data, specifying the model, perhaps debugging the code—you hit enter and get the first results (of a new study) on your screen? I find this quite an exciting moment in research, somehow akin making a (silly) bet with a friend, but at the same time more serious as I’m wagering (part) of my view how the world functions. Anyhow, I thought it could be interesting to hear from others how they feel in that moment. For me it’s often an anticlimax, in that once I’ve gone through all the effort to successfully fit a model, then I have to go through another long set of steps to understand what I have in front of me. Every once in awhile the results just jump out and are exciting, but usually it takes a lot of work to see what I’m looking for.
Introduction: Brendan Nyhan sends me this article from the research-methods all-star team of Katherine Button, John Ioannidis, Claire Mokrysz, Brian Nosek , Jonathan Flint, Emma Robinson, and Marcus Munafo: A study with low statistical power has a reduced chance of detecting a true effect, but it is less well appreciated that low power also reduces the likelihood that a statistically significant result reflects a true effect. Here, we show that the average statistical power of studies in the neurosciences is very low. The consequences of this include overestimates of effect size and low reproducibility of results. There are also ethical dimensions to this problem, as unreliable research is inefficient and wasteful. Improving reproducibility in neuroscience is a key priority and requires attention to well-established but often ignored methodological principles. I agree completely. In my terminology, with small sample size, the classical approach of looking for statistical significance leads
Introduction: As I’ve written here many times, my experiences in social science and public health research have left me skeptical of statistical methods that hypothesize or try to detect zero relationships between observational data (see, for example, the discussion starting at the bottom of page 960 in my review of causal inference in the American Journal of Sociology). In short, I have a taste for continuous rather than discrete models. As discussed in the above-linked article (with respect to the writings of cognitive scientist Steven Sloman), I think that common-sense thinking about causal inference can often mislead. In many cases, I have found that that the theoretical frameworks of instrumental variables and potential outcomes (for a review see, for example, chapters 9 and 10 of my book with Jennifer) help clarify my thinking. Here is an example that came up in a recent blog discussion. Computer science student Elias Bareinboim gave the following example: “suppose we know nothing a
6 0.07589227 196 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-10-The U.S. as welfare state
7 0.075697847 797 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-11-How do we evaluate a new and wacky claim?
8 0.074681386 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
9 0.074226424 564 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-08-Different attitudes about parenting, possibly deriving from different attitudes about self
10 0.0725374 9 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-28-But it all goes to pay for gas, car insurance, and tolls on the turnpike
11 0.069452822 1447 andrew gelman stats-2012-08-07-Reproducible science FAIL (so far): What’s stoppin people from sharin data and code?
12 0.066947982 2174 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-17-How to think about the statistical evidence when the statistical evidence can’t be conclusive?
14 0.066281542 1414 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-12-Steven Pinker’s unconvincing debunking of group selection
15 0.066204309 1949 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-21-Defensive political science responds defensively to an attack on social science
17 0.064841837 148 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-15-“Gender Bias Still Exists in Modern Children’s Literature, Say Centre Researchers”
18 0.064812124 841 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-06-Twitteo killed the bloggio star . . . Not!
19 0.064473815 1709 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-06-The fractal nature of scientific revolutions
20 0.064317614 719 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-19-Everything is Obvious (once you know the answer)
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.133), (1, -0.051), (2, 0.032), (3, -0.01), (4, -0.011), (5, 0.003), (6, -0.015), (7, -0.003), (8, -0.021), (9, 0.022), (10, -0.017), (11, -0.019), (12, 0.006), (13, -0.005), (14, 0.005), (15, 0.009), (16, 0.029), (17, -0.025), (18, 0.008), (19, -0.005), (20, -0.012), (21, 0.011), (22, -0.01), (23, -0.019), (24, 0.008), (25, 0.013), (26, 0.022), (27, 0.035), (28, 0.024), (29, -0.026), (30, -0.013), (31, 0.001), (32, 0.013), (33, 0.012), (34, 0.03), (35, 0.028), (36, 0.004), (37, 0.022), (38, 0.024), (39, -0.002), (40, 0.005), (41, -0.006), (42, 0.008), (43, -0.009), (44, 0.006), (45, -0.02), (46, 0.021), (47, -0.005), (48, -0.024), (49, -0.005)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.98004967 116 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-29-How to grab power in a democracy – in 5 easy non-violent steps
Introduction: In the past decades violent means of grabbing power have been discredited and internationally regulated. Still, grabbing power is as desired as it has always been, and I’d like to introduce some new methods used today: Establish your base of power by achieving a critical mass (75%+) within a group with a high barrier to entry . Examples of barriers to entry: genetics (familiar ties, skin, eye color, hair type – takes 2+ generations to enter), religion (takes 2-10 years to enter), language (very hard to enter after the age of 10). Encourage your followers to have many children – because of common ethical concerns, other groups will help you bring them up. Control the system of indoctrination , such as religious schooling, government-based educational system, entertainment, popular culture – limiting the loss of children to out-group (only needed for non-genetic barriers to entry). Wait 18 years for your followers’ children to become eligible to vote. Win elections by
2 0.7616865 2327 andrew gelman stats-2014-05-09-Nicholas Wade and the paradox of racism
Introduction: The paradox of racism is that at any given moment, the racism of the day seems reasonable and very possibly true, but the racism of the past always seems so ridiculous. I’ve been thinking about this for a few months ever since receiving in the mail a new book, “A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History,” by New York Times reporter Nicholas Wade. Here’s what I wrote in my review of this book for Slate : The word “inequality” does not appear in the book’s index, but what Wade is offering is essentially a theory of economic and social inequality, explaining systematic racial differences in prosperity based on a combination of innate traits (“the disinclination to save in tribal societies is linked to a strong propensity for immediate consumption”) and genetic adaptation to political and social institutions (arguing, for example, that generations of centralized rule have effected a selection pressure for Chinese to be accepting of authority). Wade is clearly in
Introduction: Reed Abelson and Gardiner Harris report in the New York Times that some serious statistical questions have been raised about the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, an influential project that reports huge differences in health care costs and practices in different places in the United States, suggesting large potential cost savings if more efficient practices are used. (A claim that is certainly plausible to me, given this notorious graph ; see here for background.) Here’s an example of a claim from the Dartmouth Atlas (just picking something that happens to be featured on their webpage right now): Medicare beneficiaries who move to some regions receive many more diagnostic tests and new diagnoses than those who move to other regions. This study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, raises important questions about whether being given more diagnoses is beneficial to patients and may help to explain recent controversies about regional differences in spending. A
4 0.75469393 1414 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-12-Steven Pinker’s unconvincing debunking of group selection
Introduction: Steven Pinker writes : Human beings live in groups, are affected by the fortunes of their groups, and sometimes make sacrifices that benefit their groups. Does this mean that the human brain has been shaped by natural selection to promote the welfare of the group in competition with other groups, even when it damages the welfare of the person and his or her kin? . . . Several scientists whom I [Pinker] greatly respect have said so in prominent places. And they have gone on to use the theory of group selection to make eye-opening claims about the human condition. They have claimed that human morailty, particularly our willingness to engage in acts of altruism, can be explained as an adaptation to group-against-group competition. As E. O. Wilson explains, “In a group, selfish individuals beat altruistic individuals. But, groups of altruistic individuals beat groups of selfish individuals.” . . . I [Pinker] am often asked whether I agree with the new group selectionists, and the q
5 0.73781091 1128 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-19-Sharon Begley: Worse than Stephen Jay Gould?
Introduction: Commenter Tggp links to a criticism of science journalist Sharon Begley by science journalist Matthew Hutson. I learned of this dispute after reporting that Begley had received the American Statistical Association’s Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award, a completely undeserved honor, if Hutson is to believed. The two journalists have somewhat similar profiles: Begley was science editor at Newsweek (she’s now at Reuters) and author of “Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves,” and Hutson was news editor at Psychology Today and wrote the similarly self-helpy-titled, “The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane.” Hutson writes : Psychological Science recently published a fascinating new study on jealousy. I was interested to read Newsweek’s 1300-word article covering the research by their science editor, Sharon Begley. But part-way through the article, I
6 0.73311895 1427 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-24-More from the sister blog
7 0.73150653 1942 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-17-“Stop and frisk” statistics
8 0.72645146 2220 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-22-Quickies
9 0.71977562 67 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-03-More on that Dartmouth health care study
10 0.71793479 1949 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-21-Defensive political science responds defensively to an attack on social science
11 0.71776497 284 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-18-Continuing efforts to justify false “death panels” claim
12 0.71651083 827 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-28-Amusing case of self-defeating science writing
13 0.70949167 177 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-02-Reintegrating rebels into civilian life: Quasi-experimental evidence from Burundi
14 0.70878249 382 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-30-“Presidential Election Outcomes Directly Influence Suicide Rates”
15 0.70858186 1114 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-12-Controversy about average personality differences between men and women
17 0.70787805 1947 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-20-We are what we are studying
18 0.70646107 989 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-03-This post does not mention Wegman
19 0.70272565 828 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-28-Thoughts on Groseclose book on media bias
topicId topicWeight
[(2, 0.033), (12, 0.016), (15, 0.011), (16, 0.072), (24, 0.111), (27, 0.041), (45, 0.012), (47, 0.012), (48, 0.032), (61, 0.021), (63, 0.015), (70, 0.125), (81, 0.02), (86, 0.069), (94, 0.017), (99, 0.235)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.95284653 116 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-29-How to grab power in a democracy – in 5 easy non-violent steps
Introduction: In the past decades violent means of grabbing power have been discredited and internationally regulated. Still, grabbing power is as desired as it has always been, and I’d like to introduce some new methods used today: Establish your base of power by achieving a critical mass (75%+) within a group with a high barrier to entry . Examples of barriers to entry: genetics (familiar ties, skin, eye color, hair type – takes 2+ generations to enter), religion (takes 2-10 years to enter), language (very hard to enter after the age of 10). Encourage your followers to have many children – because of common ethical concerns, other groups will help you bring them up. Control the system of indoctrination , such as religious schooling, government-based educational system, entertainment, popular culture – limiting the loss of children to out-group (only needed for non-genetic barriers to entry). Wait 18 years for your followers’ children to become eligible to vote. Win elections by
2 0.94124329 1329 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-18-Those mean psychologists, making fun of dodgy research!
Introduction: Two people separately sent me this amusing mock-research paper by Brian A. Nosek (I assume that’s what’s meant by “Arina K. Bones”). The article is pretty funny, but this poster (by Nosek and Samuel Gosling) is even better! Check it out: I remarked that this was almost as good as my zombies paper, and my correspondent pointed me to this page of (I assume) Nosek’s research on aliens. P.S. I clicked through to take the test to see if I’m dead or alive, but I got bored after a few minutes. I gotta say, if Gosling can come up with a 10-item measure of the Big Five, this crew should be able to come up with a reasonably valid alive-or-dead test that doesn’t require dozens and dozens of questions!
3 0.92713672 1979 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-13-Convincing Evidence
Introduction: Keith O’Rourke and I wrote an article that begins: Textbooks on statistics emphasize care and precision, via concepts such as reliability and validity in measurement, random sampling and treatment assignment in data collection, and causal identification and bias in estimation. But how do researchers decide what to believe and what to trust when choosing which statistical methods to use? How do they decide the credibility of methods? Statisticians and statistical practitioners seem to rely on a sense of anecdotal evidence based on personal experience and on the attitudes of trusted colleagues. Authorship, reputation, and past experience are thus central to decisions about statistical procedures. It’s for a volume on theoretical or methodological research on authorship, functional roles, reputation, and credibility in social media, edited by Sorin Matei and Elisa Bertino.
4 0.91870022 1657 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-06-Lee Nguyen Tran Kim Song Shimazaki
Introduction: Andrew Lee writes: I am a recent M.A. graduate in sociology. I am primarily qualitative in method but have been moving in a more mixed-methods direction ever since I discovered sports analytics (Moneyball, Football Outsiders, Wages of Wins, etc.). For my thesis I studied Korean-Americans in education in the health professions through a comparison of Asian ethnic representation in Los Angeles-area medical and dental schools. I did this by counting up different Asian ethnic groups at UC Irvine, USC and Loma Linda University’s medical/dental schools using surnames as an identifier (I coded for ethnicity using an algorithm from the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries which correlated surnames with ethnicity: http://www.naaccr.org/Research/DataAnalysisTools.aspx). The coding was mostly easy, since “Nguyen” and “Tran” is always Vietnamese, “Kim” and “Song” is Korean, “Shimazaki” is Japanese, etc. Now, the first time around I found that Chinese-Americans and
5 0.90875387 1266 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-16-Another day, another plagiarist
Introduction: This one isn’t actually new, but it’s new to me. It involves University of Michigan business school professor Karl Weick. Here’s the relevant paragraph of Weick’s Wikipedia entry (as of 13 Apr 2012): In several published articles, Weick related a story that originally appeared in a poem by Miroslav Holub that was published in the Times Literary Supplement. Weick plagiarized Holub in that he republished the poem (with some minor differences, including removing line breaks and making small changes in a few words) without quotation or attribution. Some of Weick’s articles included the material with no reference to Holub; others referred to Holub but without indicating that Weick had essentially done a direct copy of Holub’s writing. The plagiarism was detailed in an article by Thomas Basbøll and Henrik Graham. [5] In a response, Weick disputed the claim of plagiarism, writing, “By the time I began to see the Alps story as an example of cognition in the path of the action, I had lo
6 0.89466596 1097 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-03-Libertarians in Space
7 0.89119476 777 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-23-Combining survey data obtained using different modes of sampling
8 0.88995814 1346 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-27-Average predictive comparisons when changing a pair of variables
9 0.88990295 982 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-30-“There’s at least as much as an 80 percent chance . . .”
11 0.88324642 1518 andrew gelman stats-2012-10-02-Fighting a losing battle
13 0.87969065 1278 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-23-“Any old map will do” meets “God is in every leaf of every tree”
14 0.87843698 2118 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-30-???
15 0.8777132 2058 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-11-Gladwell and Chabris, David and Goliath, and science writing as stone soup
16 0.8776139 1971 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-07-I doubt they cheated
17 0.87735105 781 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-28-The holes in my philosophy of Bayesian data analysis
18 0.87660205 1061 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-16-CrossValidated: A place to post your statistics questions
19 0.87610531 2182 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-22-Spell-checking example demonstrates key aspects of Bayesian data analysis
20 0.87543398 1983 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-15-More on AIC, WAIC, etc