andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-222 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Alex Tabarrok reports on an analysis from the Los Angeles Times of teacher performance (as measured by so-called value-added analysis, which is basically compares teachers based on their students’ average test scores at the end of the year, after controlling for pre-test scores. It’s well known that some teachers are much better than others, but, as Alex points out, what’s striking about the L.A. Times study is that they are publishing the estimates for individual teachers . For example, this: Nice graphics, too. To me, this illustrates one of the big advantages of research in a non-academic environment. If you’re writing an article for the L.A. Times, you can do what you want (within the limits of the law). If you’re doing the same research study at a university, there are a million restrictions. For example, from an official documen t, “The primary purpose of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects participati
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1 Alex Tabarrok reports on an analysis from the Los Angeles Times of teacher performance (as measured by so-called value-added analysis, which is basically compares teachers based on their students’ average test scores at the end of the year, after controlling for pre-test scores. [sent-1, score-1.0]
2 It’s well known that some teachers are much better than others, but, as Alex points out, what’s striking about the L. [sent-2, score-0.554]
3 Times study is that they are publishing the estimates for individual teachers . [sent-4, score-0.884]
4 To me, this illustrates one of the big advantages of research in a non-academic environment. [sent-6, score-0.288]
5 Times, you can do what you want (within the limits of the law). [sent-9, score-0.1]
6 If you’re doing the same research study at a university, there are a million restrictions. [sent-10, score-0.297]
7 I’d think that would help a lot with estimates for individual teachers. [sent-15, score-0.221]
8 Alex also links to a study that recommends “to hire a lot of teachers on probation and then fire 80% after two years. [sent-19, score-0.994]
9 ” That sounds a bit ridiculous to me: who would take such a job, knowing there’s an 80% chance of getting fired? [sent-20, score-0.26]
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same-blog 1 0.99999994 222 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-21-Estimating and reporting teacher effectivenss: Newspaper researchers do things that academic researchers never could
Introduction: Alex Tabarrok reports on an analysis from the Los Angeles Times of teacher performance (as measured by so-called value-added analysis, which is basically compares teachers based on their students’ average test scores at the end of the year, after controlling for pre-test scores. It’s well known that some teachers are much better than others, but, as Alex points out, what’s striking about the L.A. Times study is that they are publishing the estimates for individual teachers . For example, this: Nice graphics, too. To me, this illustrates one of the big advantages of research in a non-academic environment. If you’re writing an article for the L.A. Times, you can do what you want (within the limits of the law). If you’re doing the same research study at a university, there are a million restrictions. For example, from an official documen t, “The primary purpose of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects participati
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Introduction: In discussing the ongoing Los Angeles Times series on teacher effectiveness, Alex Tabarrok and I both were impressed that the newspaper was reporting results on individual teachers, moving beyond the general research findings (“teachers matter,” “KIPP really works, but it requires several extra hours in the school day,” and so forth) that we usually see from value-added analyses in education. My first reaction was that the L.A. Times could get away with this because, unlike academic researchers, they can do whatever they want as long as they don’t break the law. They don’t have to answer to an Institutional Review Board. (By referring to this study by its publication outlet rather than its authors, I’m violating my usual rule (see the last paragraph here ). In this case, I think it’s ok to refer to the “L.A. Times study” because what’s notable is not the analysis (thorough as it may be) but how it is being reported.) Here I’d like to highlight a few other things came up in our
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Introduction: I’m not a great teacher. I can get by because I work hard and I know a lot, and for some students my classes are just great, but it’s not a natural talent of mine. I know people who are amazing teachers, and they have something that I just don’t have. I wrote that book, Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks (with Deb Nolan) because I’m not a good teacher and hence need to develop all sorts of techniques to be able to do what good teachers can do without even trying. I’m not proud of being mediocre at teaching. I don’t think that low teaching skill is some sort of indicator that I’m a great researcher. The other think about teaching ability is that I think it’s hard to detect without actually seeing someone teach a class. If you see me give a seminar presentation or even a guest lecture, you’d think I’m an awesome teacher. But, actually, no. I’m an excellent speaker, not such a great teacher. This all came to mind when I received the following email from anthropologist Hen
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Introduction: Jacob Hartog writes the following in reaction to my post on the use of value-added modeling for teacher assessment: What I [Hartog] think has been inadequately discussed is the use of individual model specifications to assign these teacher ratings, rather than the zone of agreement across a broad swath of model specifications. For example, the model used by NYCDOE doesn’t just control for a student’s prior year test score (as I think everyone can agree is a good idea.) It also assumes that different demographic groups will learn different amounts in a given year, and assigns a school-level random effect. The result is that, as was much ballyhooed at the time of the release of the data,the average teacher rating for a given school is roughly the same, no matter whether the school is performing great or terribly. The headline from this was “excellent teachers spread evenly across the city’s schools,” rather than “the specification of these models assume that excellent teachers are
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Introduction: Last month I expressed disagreement the following statement from New Republic columnist Jonathan Chait, who wrote: The old liberal slogan always demanded that we “treat teachers like professionals.” That entails some measure of accountability—we can debate the metrics—which allows both that very bad teachers be fired and that very good ones can obtain greater pay and recognition. That’s the definition of a professional career track . . . I was surprised to find the option of being fired as part of the definition of professionalism, and I conjectured that journalists, who currently have little job security could feel resentful toward teachers and other workers who have the expectation of jobs for life. (As Mark Palko notes , “we’re talking about reneging on assurances of job security that were contractual agreed upon and came after a period of proven performance.”) In an update ( link from Palko), Chait writes : Being a professional, to most people, means having the o
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same-blog 1 0.94620377 222 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-21-Estimating and reporting teacher effectivenss: Newspaper researchers do things that academic researchers never could
Introduction: Alex Tabarrok reports on an analysis from the Los Angeles Times of teacher performance (as measured by so-called value-added analysis, which is basically compares teachers based on their students’ average test scores at the end of the year, after controlling for pre-test scores. It’s well known that some teachers are much better than others, but, as Alex points out, what’s striking about the L.A. Times study is that they are publishing the estimates for individual teachers . For example, this: Nice graphics, too. To me, this illustrates one of the big advantages of research in a non-academic environment. If you’re writing an article for the L.A. Times, you can do what you want (within the limits of the law). If you’re doing the same research study at a university, there are a million restrictions. For example, from an official documen t, “The primary purpose of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects participati
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Introduction: Wayne Folta writes, “In light of your recent blog post on women in higher education, here’s one I just read about on a techie website regarding elementary education”: Why do girls get better grades in elementary school than boys—even when they perform worse on standardized tests? New research . . . suggests that it’s because of their classroom behavior, which may lead teachers to assign girls higher grades than their male counterparts. . . . The study, co-authored by [Christopher] Cornwell and David Mustard at UGA and Jessica Van Parys at Columbia, analyzed data on more than 5,800 students from kindergarten through fifth grade. It examined students’ performance on standardized tests in three categories—reading, math and science-linking test scores to teachers’ assessments of their students’ progress, both academically and more broadly. The data show, for the first time, that gender disparities in teacher grades start early and uniformly favor girls. In every subject area, bo
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Introduction: I’m not a great teacher. I can get by because I work hard and I know a lot, and for some students my classes are just great, but it’s not a natural talent of mine. I know people who are amazing teachers, and they have something that I just don’t have. I wrote that book, Teaching Statistics: A Bag of Tricks (with Deb Nolan) because I’m not a good teacher and hence need to develop all sorts of techniques to be able to do what good teachers can do without even trying. I’m not proud of being mediocre at teaching. I don’t think that low teaching skill is some sort of indicator that I’m a great researcher. The other think about teaching ability is that I think it’s hard to detect without actually seeing someone teach a class. If you see me give a seminar presentation or even a guest lecture, you’d think I’m an awesome teacher. But, actually, no. I’m an excellent speaker, not such a great teacher. This all came to mind when I received the following email from anthropologist Hen
4 0.78350383 226 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-23-More on those L.A. Times estimates of teacher effectiveness
Introduction: In discussing the ongoing Los Angeles Times series on teacher effectiveness, Alex Tabarrok and I both were impressed that the newspaper was reporting results on individual teachers, moving beyond the general research findings (“teachers matter,” “KIPP really works, but it requires several extra hours in the school day,” and so forth) that we usually see from value-added analyses in education. My first reaction was that the L.A. Times could get away with this because, unlike academic researchers, they can do whatever they want as long as they don’t break the law. They don’t have to answer to an Institutional Review Board. (By referring to this study by its publication outlet rather than its authors, I’m violating my usual rule (see the last paragraph here ). In this case, I think it’s ok to refer to the “L.A. Times study” because what’s notable is not the analysis (thorough as it may be) but how it is being reported.) Here I’d like to highlight a few other things came up in our
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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Introduction: Alex Tabarrok reports on an analysis from the Los Angeles Times of teacher performance (as measured by so-called value-added analysis, which is basically compares teachers based on their students’ average test scores at the end of the year, after controlling for pre-test scores. It’s well known that some teachers are much better than others, but, as Alex points out, what’s striking about the L.A. Times study is that they are publishing the estimates for individual teachers . For example, this: Nice graphics, too. To me, this illustrates one of the big advantages of research in a non-academic environment. If you’re writing an article for the L.A. Times, you can do what you want (within the limits of the law). If you’re doing the same research study at a university, there are a million restrictions. For example, from an official documen t, “The primary purpose of an Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects participati
2 0.98076558 2197 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-04-Peabody here.
Introduction: I saw the trailer for the new Mr. Peabody movie and it looked terrible. They used that weird animation where everything looks round, also the voice had none of the intonations of the “real” Peabody (for some reason, the trailer had the original English voices, maybe they didn’t get their act together to make a dubbed trailer in time for the release here), also the scenes looked pretty stupid. I went back home and checked out Peabody on wikipedia and it turns out that they made 91 episodes! I had no idea. Anyway, here’s my real question: Why bother making a Mr. Peabody movie if you’re not going to do it well? I understand that lots of moviemakers are hacks and there will always be a huge audience for crap in any case, so I’m certainly not demanding that all movies be “good” (in whatever sense that means, from my perceptions). But there are lots and lots of opportunities to make crap movies, there are a million toys and video games and comic book characters and fairy tales and br
Introduction: The pre-NYT David Brooks liked to make fun of the NYT. Here’s one from 1997 : I’m not sure I’d like to be one of the people featured on the New York Times wedding page, but I know I’d like to be the father of one of them. Imagine how happy Stanley J. Kogan must have been, for example, when his daughter Jamie got into Yale. Then imagine his pride when Jamie made Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summa cum laude. . . . he must have enjoyed a gloat or two when his daughter put on that cap and gown. And things only got better. Jamie breezed through Stanford Law School. And then she met a man—Thomas Arena—who appears to be exactly the sort of son-in-law that pediatric urologists dream about. . . . These two awesome resumes collided at a wedding ceremony . . . It must have been one of the happiest days in Stanley J. Kogan’s life. The rest of us got to read about it on the New York Times wedding page. Brooks is reputed to be Jewish himself so I think it’s ok for him to mock Jewish peop
4 0.97828925 54 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-27-Hype about conditional probability puzzles
Introduction: Jason Kottke posts this puzzle from Gary Foshee that reportedly impressed people at a puzzle-designers’ convention: I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability I have two boys? The first thing you think is “What has Tuesday got to do with it?” Well, it has everything to do with it. I thought I should really figure this one out myself before reading any further, and I decided this was a good time to apply my general principle that it’s always best to solve such problems from scratch rather than trying to guess at the answer. So I laid out all the 4 x 49 possibilities. The 4 is bb, bg, gb, gg, and the 49 are all possible pairs of days of the week. Then I ruled out all the possibilities that were inconsistent with the data: this leaves the following: bb with all pairs of days that include a Tuesday. That’s 13 possibilities (Mon/Tues, Tues/Tues, Wed/Tues, …, Tues/Mon, …, Sun/Tues, remembering not to count Tues/Tues twice). bg with all
5 0.97812378 2066 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-17-G+ hangout for test run of BDA course
Introduction: Try this link . . . . OK, it worked (as well as might be expected given that we don’t have any professional audiovisual people involved). Tomorrow 8h30, I’ll post a new link with the new G+ hangout. We’ll be going through the first two sets of slides (class1a.pdf and class1b.pdf) following the link for the slides here .
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