andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-170 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Responding to journalist Elizabeth Kolbert’s negative review of Freakonomics 2 in the New Yorker, Stephen Dubner writes , that, although they do not have any training in climate science, it’s also the case that: Neither of us [Levitt and Dubner] were Ku Klux Klan members either, or sumo wrestlers or Realtors or abortion providers or schoolteachers or even pimps. And yet somehow we managed to write about all that without any horse dung (well, not much at least) flying our way. But Levitt is a schoolteacher (at the University of Chicago)! And, of course, you don’t have to be a sumo wrestler to be (some kind of an) expert on sumo wrestling, nor do you have to teach in the K-12 system to be an expert in education, nor do you have to provide abortions to be an expert on abortion, etc. And Levitt has had quite a bit of horse dung thrown at him for the abortion research. The connection is that abortion and climate change matter to a lot of people, while sumo wrestling and pimps and
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1 And yet somehow we managed to write about all that without any horse dung (well, not much at least) flying our way. [sent-2, score-0.234]
2 And, of course, you don’t have to be a sumo wrestler to be (some kind of an) expert on sumo wrestling, nor do you have to teach in the K-12 system to be an expert in education, nor do you have to provide abortions to be an expert on abortion, etc. [sent-4, score-0.699]
3 And Levitt has had quite a bit of horse dung thrown at him for the abortion research. [sent-5, score-0.494]
4 The connection is that abortion and climate change matter to a lot of people, while sumo wrestling and pimps and teachers who cheat are more like feature-story material. [sent-6, score-0.868]
5 Kolbert writes that Levitt and Dubner treat climate change as “mainly as an opportunity to show how clever they are. [sent-7, score-0.244]
6 Freaknomics 1 was all about Levitt’s cleverness, but Freakonomics 2 is much more about the cleverness of other people such as John List and that super-rich Microsoft guy. [sent-9, score-0.163]
7 Before Freakonomics 1, Levitt was a very successful professor: well paid, with the opportunity to work with excellent students, lots of invitations to speak in interesting places, the assurance that people would notice his articles when they came out, etc. [sent-11, score-0.104]
8 A lot of people just aren’t going to take his stuff seriously anymore–and the people who do like it, might very well like it for the wrong reasons. [sent-15, score-0.159]
9 He might feel on top of the world now, as an equal-opportunity offender who’s riled conservatives on abortion and race, punctured liberal myths on climate change, and lived to tell the tale. [sent-17, score-0.482]
10 Again, Freakonomics 1 had some highly-questionable abortion research, and abortion is a hot topic, but this didn’t seem to hurt the reception of the book or Levitt’s standing as scholar. [sent-23, score-0.614]
11 And Freakonomics 2 also features the offensive-to-many claim that drunk people should drive instead of walk and that prostitution is a good career opportunity. [sent-24, score-0.294]
12 But I doubt either of these would’ve derailed the juggernaut (to mix metaphors). [sent-25, score-0.099]
13 Beyond the political issues, one key difference is that there really is a research consensus that Levitt and Dubner are opposing on global warming. [sent-27, score-0.081]
14 For the abortion, drunk driving, and prostitution examples, all that they’re battling are the majority views on morality and common sense. [sent-28, score-0.261]
15 It’s highly plausible that a hard-nosed researcher can bring his quantitative skills to bear on a problem and reveal hidden truths that are counter to conventional morality and common sense. [sent-29, score-0.22]
16 It’s not so plausible that an outsider can demolish the findings of scientists such as Raymond Pierrehumbert (see below) who are themselves quantitative researchers. [sent-30, score-0.149]
17 Whatever you say about the merits of the case, I admire Levitt for taking his stance on climate change. [sent-31, score-0.175]
18 He’s already famous and can get in the newspaper whenever he completes a new research article, and he also has a blog where he can share his ideas with many thousands of people and also promote others’ work that he likes. [sent-33, score-0.101]
19 When I worked at Berkeley, I had a couple of colleagues who intentionally misread my work, for example describing a nonlinear differential equation model as “linear. [sent-41, score-0.074]
20 ) I had thoughts of going over to their offices to explain their misunderstandings, but I was so angry that I couldn’t bring myself to do it. [sent-43, score-0.098]
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Introduction: Responding to journalist Elizabeth Kolbert’s negative review of Freakonomics 2 in the New Yorker, Stephen Dubner writes , that, although they do not have any training in climate science, it’s also the case that: Neither of us [Levitt and Dubner] were Ku Klux Klan members either, or sumo wrestlers or Realtors or abortion providers or schoolteachers or even pimps. And yet somehow we managed to write about all that without any horse dung (well, not much at least) flying our way. But Levitt is a schoolteacher (at the University of Chicago)! And, of course, you don’t have to be a sumo wrestler to be (some kind of an) expert on sumo wrestling, nor do you have to teach in the K-12 system to be an expert in education, nor do you have to provide abortions to be an expert on abortion, etc. And Levitt has had quite a bit of horse dung thrown at him for the abortion research. The connection is that abortion and climate change matter to a lot of people, while sumo wrestling and pimps and
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Introduction: A friend/colleague sent me some comments on my recent article with Kaiser Fung on Freakonomics. My friend gave several reasons why he thought we were unfair to Levitt. I’ll give my reply (my friend preferred that I not quote his email, but you can get a general sense of the questions from my answers). But first let me point you to my original post, Freakonomics 2: What went wrong? , from a couple years ago, in which I raised many of the points that ultimately went into our article. And here’s my recent note. (I numbered my points, but the email I was replying to was not numbered. This is not a point-by-point rebuttal to anything but rather just a series of remarks.) 1. Both Kaiser and I are big fans of Freakonomics. It’s only because Levitt can (and has) done better, that we’re sad when he doesn’t live up to his own high standards. If we didn’t convey this sense of respect in our American Scientist article, that is our failing. 2. I think it was at best tacky and
Introduction: In the interview we discussed a couple months ago, Steven Levitt said: I [Levitt] voted for Obama [in 2008] because I wanted to tell my grandchildren that I voted for Obama. And I thought that he would be the greatest president in history. This surprised me. I’d assumed Levitt was a McCain supporter! Why? Because in October, 2008, he wrote that he “loved” the claim by conservative University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan that “the current unemployment rate of 6.1 percent is not alarming.” I’d read that at the time, perhaps incorrectly, as Mulligan making an election-season pitch that the economy was doing just fine (Mulligan: “if you are not employed by the financial industry (94 percent of you are not), don’t worry”) hence implicitly an argument for a Republican vote in that year (given the usual rules of retrospective voting that the incumbent party gets punished by a poor economy). And I correspondingly (and, it seems, incorrectly) read Levitt’s endorsement of Mu
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Introduction: Kaiser and I tell the story . Regular readers will be familiar with much of this material. We kept our article short because of space restrictions at American Scientist magazine. Now I want to do a follow-up with all the good stories that we had to cut. P.S. Let me remind everyone once again that Freakonomics (the book and the blog) has some great stuff. Kaiser and I are only picking on Levitt & co. because we know they could do so much better. P.P.S. Just to emphasize: our point that Freakonomics has mistakes is nothing new—see, for example, the articles and blogs by Felix Salmon, Ariel Rubenstein, John DiNardo, and Daniel Davies. The contribution of our new article is explore how it was that all these mistakes happened, to juxtapose the many strengths of the Freakonomics franchise (much of the work described in the first book but also a lot of what appears on their blog) with its failings. In some ways these contrasts are characteristic of social science research in
Introduction: Steven Levitt writes :. Diamond often would fall asleep in seminars, often for large chunks of time. What was amazing, however, is that he would open his eyes and then make by far the most insightful comment of the entire seminar! Now that we have n=2 [see the first part of the title of this blog entry], I’m wondering . . . maybe this sort of thing is more common than Levitt and I had realized. P.S. Levitt also writes: The one thing that puzzles me [Levitt] is why in the world would he want to be on the Board of the Federal Reserve? One thing economists just don’t understand are people’s preferences. To get meta here for a moment . . . just as Levitt can’t understand Diamond’s preferences, I find it extremely difficult to understand that Levitt is puzzled by Diamond’s desire to serve on the Federal Reserve, It’s obvious, no? Diamond has expertise on macroeconomics and, I assume, some strong and well-informed opinions on monetary policy; the Federal Reserve determ
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Introduction: Steven Levitt writes :. Diamond often would fall asleep in seminars, often for large chunks of time. What was amazing, however, is that he would open his eyes and then make by far the most insightful comment of the entire seminar! Now that we have n=2 [see the first part of the title of this blog entry], I’m wondering . . . maybe this sort of thing is more common than Levitt and I had realized. P.S. Levitt also writes: The one thing that puzzles me [Levitt] is why in the world would he want to be on the Board of the Federal Reserve? One thing economists just don’t understand are people’s preferences. To get meta here for a moment . . . just as Levitt can’t understand Diamond’s preferences, I find it extremely difficult to understand that Levitt is puzzled by Diamond’s desire to serve on the Federal Reserve, It’s obvious, no? Diamond has expertise on macroeconomics and, I assume, some strong and well-informed opinions on monetary policy; the Federal Reserve determ
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Introduction: Hykel Hosni noticed this bit from the Lindley Prize page of the Society for Bayesan Analysis: Lindley became a great missionary for the Bayesian gospel. The atmosphere of the Bayesian revival is captured in a comment by Rivett on Lindley’s move to University College London and the premier chair of statistics in Britain: “it was as though a Jehovah’s Witness had been elected Pope.” From my perspective, this was amusing (if commonplace): a group of rationalists jocularly characterizing themselves as religious fanatics. And some of this is in response to intense opposition from outsiders (see the Background section here ). That’s my view. I’m an insider, a statistician who’s heard all jokes about religious Bayesians, from Bayesian and non-Bayesian statisticians alike. But Hosni is an outsider, and here’s how he sees the above-quoted paragraph: Research, however, is not a matter of faith but a matter of arguments, which should always be evaluated with the utmost intellec
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Introduction: As part of his continuing plan to sap etc etc., Aleks pointed me to an article by Max Miller reporting on a recommendation from Jacob Appel: Adding trace amounts of lithium to the drinking water could limit suicides. . . . Communities with higher than average amounts of lithium in their drinking water had significantly lower suicide rates than communities with lower levels. Regions of Texas with lower lithium concentrations had an average suicide rate of 14.2 per 100,000 people, whereas those areas with naturally higher lithium levels had a dramatically lower suicide rate of 8.7 per 100,000. The highest levels in Texas (150 micrograms of lithium per liter of water) are only a thousandth of the minimum pharmaceutical dose, and have no known deleterious effects. I don’t know anything about this and am offering no judgment on it; I’m just passing it on. The research studies are here and here . I am skeptical, though, about this part of the argument: We are not talking a
Introduction: Howard Wainer writes : When we focus only on the differences between groups, we too easily lose track of the big picture. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the current public discussions of the size of the gap in test scores that is observed between racial groups. It has been noted that in New Jersey the gap between the average scores of white and black students on the well-developed scale of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has shrunk by only about 25 percent over the past two decades. The conclusion drawn was that even though the change is in the right direction, it is far too slow. But focusing on the difference blinds us to what has been a remarkable success in education over the past 20 years. Although the direction and size of student improvements are considered across many subject areas and many age groups, I will describe just one — 4th grade mathematics. . . . there have been steep gains for both racial groups over this period (somewhat steeper g
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