andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-263 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Alex Chernavsky writes: I recently came across an interesting blog post , written by someone who is self-taught in statistics (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I have no particular expertise in statistics, but her analysis looks impressive to me. I’d be very interested to find out the opinion of a professional statistician. Do you have any interest in blogging about this subject? My (disappointing, I’m sure) reply: This indeed looks interesting. I don’t have the time/energy to look at it more right now, and it’s too far from any areas of my expertise for me to give any kind of quick informed opinion. It would be good for this sort of discussion to appear in a nutrition journal where the real experts could get at it. I expect there are some strong statisticians who work in that field, although I don’t really know for sure. P.S. I suppose I really should try to learn more about this sort of thing, as it could well affect my life more than a lot of other subje
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1 Alex Chernavsky writes: I recently came across an interesting blog post , written by someone who is self-taught in statistics (not that there’s anything wrong with that). [sent-1, score-0.742]
2 I have no particular expertise in statistics, but her analysis looks impressive to me. [sent-2, score-0.675]
3 I’d be very interested to find out the opinion of a professional statistician. [sent-3, score-0.341]
4 Do you have any interest in blogging about this subject? [sent-4, score-0.241]
5 My (disappointing, I’m sure) reply: This indeed looks interesting. [sent-5, score-0.296]
6 I don’t have the time/energy to look at it more right now, and it’s too far from any areas of my expertise for me to give any kind of quick informed opinion. [sent-6, score-0.913]
7 It would be good for this sort of discussion to appear in a nutrition journal where the real experts could get at it. [sent-7, score-0.881]
8 I expect there are some strong statisticians who work in that field, although I don’t really know for sure. [sent-8, score-0.529]
9 I suppose I really should try to learn more about this sort of thing, as it could well affect my life more than a lot of other subjects (from sports to sex ratios) that I’ve studied in more depth. [sent-11, score-1.461]
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same-blog 1 1.0 263 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-08-The China Study: fact or fallacy?
Introduction: Alex Chernavsky writes: I recently came across an interesting blog post , written by someone who is self-taught in statistics (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I have no particular expertise in statistics, but her analysis looks impressive to me. I’d be very interested to find out the opinion of a professional statistician. Do you have any interest in blogging about this subject? My (disappointing, I’m sure) reply: This indeed looks interesting. I don’t have the time/energy to look at it more right now, and it’s too far from any areas of my expertise for me to give any kind of quick informed opinion. It would be good for this sort of discussion to appear in a nutrition journal where the real experts could get at it. I expect there are some strong statisticians who work in that field, although I don’t really know for sure. P.S. I suppose I really should try to learn more about this sort of thing, as it could well affect my life more than a lot of other subje
2 0.1849879 1173 andrew gelman stats-2012-02-17-Sports examples in class
Introduction: Karl Broman writes : I [Karl] personally would avoid sports entirely, as I view the subject to be insufficiently serious. . . . Certainly lots of statisticians are interested in sports. . . . And I’m not completely uninterested in sports: I like to watch football, particularly Nebraska, Green Bay, and Baltimore, and to see Notre Dame or any team from Florida or Texas lose. But statistics about sports? Yawn. As a person who loves sports, statistics, and sports statistics, I have a few thoughts: 1. Not everyone likes sports, and even fewer are interested in any particular sport. It’s ok to use sports examples, but don’t delude yourself into thinking that everyone in the class cares about it. 2. Don’t forget foreign students. A lot of them don’t even know the rules of kickball, fer chrissake! 3. Of the students who care about a sport, there will be a minority who really care. We had some serious basketball fans in our class last year. 4. I think the best solution
3 0.13370949 120 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-30-You can’t put Pandora back in the box
Introduction: Rajiv Sethi writes : I suspect that within a decade, blogs will be a cornerstone of research in economics. Many original and creative contributions to the discipline will first be communicated to the profession (and the world at large) in the form of blog posts, since the medium allows for material of arbitrary length, depth and complexity. Ideas first expressed in this form will make their way (with suitable attribution) into reading lists, doctoral dissertations and more conventionally refereed academic publications. And blogs will come to play a central role in the process of recruitment, promotion and reward at major research universities. This genie is not going back into its bottle. And he thinks this is a good thing: In fact, the refereeing process for blog posts is in some respects more rigorous than that for journal articles. Reports are numerous, non-anonymous, public, rapidly and efficiently produced, and collaboratively constructed. It is not obvious to me [Sethi]
Introduction: Hey, we all know the answer: “correlation does not imply causation”—but of course life is more complicated than that. As philosophers, economists, statisticians, and others have repeatedly noted, most of our information about the world is observational not experimental, yet we manage to draw causal conclusions all the time. Sure, some of these conclusions are wrong (more often than 5% of the time, I’m sure) but that’s an accepted part of life. Challenges in this regard arise in the design of a study, in the statistical analysis, in how you write it up for a peer-reviewed journal, and finally in how you present it to the world. School sports and life outcomes An interesting case of all this came up recently in a post on Freakonomics that pointed to a post on Deadspin that pointed to a research article . The claim was that “sports participation [in high school] causes women to be less likely to be religious . . . more likely to have children . . . more likely to be singl
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Introduction: This looks cool.
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same-blog 1 0.98046058 263 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-08-The China Study: fact or fallacy?
Introduction: Alex Chernavsky writes: I recently came across an interesting blog post , written by someone who is self-taught in statistics (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I have no particular expertise in statistics, but her analysis looks impressive to me. I’d be very interested to find out the opinion of a professional statistician. Do you have any interest in blogging about this subject? My (disappointing, I’m sure) reply: This indeed looks interesting. I don’t have the time/energy to look at it more right now, and it’s too far from any areas of my expertise for me to give any kind of quick informed opinion. It would be good for this sort of discussion to appear in a nutrition journal where the real experts could get at it. I expect there are some strong statisticians who work in that field, although I don’t really know for sure. P.S. I suppose I really should try to learn more about this sort of thing, as it could well affect my life more than a lot of other subje
2 0.81723565 1832 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-29-The blogroll
Introduction: I encourage you to check out our linked blogs . Here’s what they’re all about: Cognitive and Behavioral Science BPS Research Digest : I haven’t been following this one recently, but it has lots of good links, I should probably check it more often. There are a couple things that bother me, though. The blog is sponsored by the British Psychological Society, so this sounds pretty serious. But then they run things like advertising promotions sponsored by a textbook company and highlight iffy experimental claims. For example, in 2010 they ran a wholly uncritical post on the notorious Daryl Bem study that purported to find ESP. After being called on it in the comments, the blogger (Christian Jarrett) responded with, “The stats appear sound. . . . it’s a great study. Rigorously conducted” and even defended “the discussion of quantum physics in the paper.” To be fair, though, and as he points out in comments, Jarrett wrote of Bem’s study: “this isn’t proof of psi, far fr
3 0.76719785 1007 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-13-At last, treated with the disrespect that I deserve
Introduction: I was at a work-related event today [actually, last month; these non-topical blog entries are on approximately one-month delay], but not connected to the statistics or political science departments. There were a few people there I knew well, and they were introducing me to others. Then at some point when I was talking with one of the more important people in the room, a sixtyish guy comes by and stands next to us. I put out my hand and introduce myself. He looks at me in puzzlement, spits out his first name, and without a pause starts talking to the person I’d been speaking with. After about a minute of talk, he walks away, and the important person and I continued our conversation. No big deal . . . but, I have to admit, I haven’t had that experience very often recently. I’m often at events where I know everyone (or almost everyone) and they know me, and I’m also often at events where I know very few people and have to introduce myself. But it’s rare to be somewhere where I’m
4 0.76652831 1623 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-14-GiveWell charity recommendations
Introduction: In a rare Christmas-themed post here, I pass along this note from Alexander Berger at GiveWell : We just published a blog post following up on the *other* famous piece of evidence for deworming, the Miguel and Kremer experiment from Kenya. They shared data and code from their working paper (!) follow-up finding that deworming increases incomes ten years later, and we came out of the re-analysis feeling more confident in, though not wholly convinced by, the results. We’ve also just released our new list of top charities for giving season this year, which I think might be a good fit for your audience. We wrote a blog post explaining our choices , and have also published extensive reviews of the top charities and the interventions on which they work. Perhaps the most interesting change since last year is the addition of GiveDirectly in the #2 spot; they do direct unconditional cash transfers to people living on less than a dollar a day in Kenya. We think it’s a remarkable mode
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Introduction: The American Statistical Association has a blog called the Statistics Forum that I edit but haven’t been doing much with. Originally I thought we’d get a bunch of bloggers and have a topic each week or each month and get discussions from lots of perspectives. But it was hard to get people to keep contributing, and the blog+comments approach didn’t seem to be working as a way to get wide-ranging discussion. I did organize a good roundtable discussion at one point, but it took a lot of work on my part. Recently I had another idea for the blog, based on something that Kaiser Fung wrote on three hours in the life of a statistician , along with a similar (if a bit more impressionistic) piece I wrote awhile back describing my experiences on a typical workday. So here’s the plan. 365 of you write vignettes about your statistical lives. Get into the nitty gritty—tell me what you do, and why you’re doing it. I’ll collect these and then post them at the Statistics Forum, one a day
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Introduction: Alex Chernavsky writes: I recently came across an interesting blog post , written by someone who is self-taught in statistics (not that there’s anything wrong with that). I have no particular expertise in statistics, but her analysis looks impressive to me. I’d be very interested to find out the opinion of a professional statistician. Do you have any interest in blogging about this subject? My (disappointing, I’m sure) reply: This indeed looks interesting. I don’t have the time/energy to look at it more right now, and it’s too far from any areas of my expertise for me to give any kind of quick informed opinion. It would be good for this sort of discussion to appear in a nutrition journal where the real experts could get at it. I expect there are some strong statisticians who work in that field, although I don’t really know for sure. P.S. I suppose I really should try to learn more about this sort of thing, as it could well affect my life more than a lot of other subje
2 0.97521752 352 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-19-Analysis of survey data: Design based models vs. hierarchical modeling?
Introduction: Alban Zeber writes: Suppose I have survey data from say 10 countries where by each country collected the data based on different sampling routines – the results of this being that each country has its own weights for the data that can be used in the analyses. If I analyse the data of each country separately then I can incorporate the survey design in the analyses e.g in Stata once can use svyset ….. But what happens when I want to do a pooled analysis of the all the data from the 10 countries: Presumably either 1. I analyse the data from each country separately (using multiple or logistic regression, …) accounting for the survey design and then combine the estimates using a meta analysis (fixed or random) OR 2. Assume that the data from each country is a simple random sample from the population, combine the data from the 10 countries and then use multilevel or hierarchical models My question is which of the methods is likely to give better estimates? Or is the
3 0.97436267 1254 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-09-In the future, everyone will publish everything.
Introduction: Bob told me the other day (the other week, actually, as I’m stacking up posts here with a roughly one-month delay) that I shouldn’t try to compete with the electrical engineers when it comes to length of C.V.: according to Bob, these dudes can have over two thousand publications! How do they do it? First, an EE prof will have tons of graduate students and postdocs, they’re all writing papers and presenting at conferences, and they all stick his name on the author list. Second, these students and postdocs write up and publish every experiment they do . Including (especially!) computer experiments. And . . . all these people writing paper cite each other, so they quickly rack up thousands of citations. Upon hearing this, my first reaction to this was fear, plain and simple. One of the distinguishing characteristics of my own research record is that I have so many publications and citations. Those electrical engineers . . . how dare they go around devaluing my currency!
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Introduction: Dan Kahan writes: Okay, have done due diligence here & can’t find the reference. It was in recent blog — and was more or less an aside — but you ripped into researchers (pretty sure econometricians, but this could be my memory adding to your account recollections it conjured from my own experience) who purport to make estimates or predictions based on multivariate regression in which the value of particular predictor is set at some level while others “held constant” etc., on ground that variance in that particular predictor independent of covariance in other model predictors is unrealistic. You made it sound, too, as if this were one of the pet peeves in your menagerie — leading me to think you had blasted into it before. Know what I’m talking about? Also — isn’t this really just a way of saying that the model is misspecified — at least if the goal is to try to make a valid & unbiased estimate of the impact of that particular predictor? The problem can’t be that one is usin
Introduction: Hey, we all know the answer: “correlation does not imply causation”—but of course life is more complicated than that. As philosophers, economists, statisticians, and others have repeatedly noted, most of our information about the world is observational not experimental, yet we manage to draw causal conclusions all the time. Sure, some of these conclusions are wrong (more often than 5% of the time, I’m sure) but that’s an accepted part of life. Challenges in this regard arise in the design of a study, in the statistical analysis, in how you write it up for a peer-reviewed journal, and finally in how you present it to the world. School sports and life outcomes An interesting case of all this came up recently in a post on Freakonomics that pointed to a post on Deadspin that pointed to a research article . The claim was that “sports participation [in high school] causes women to be less likely to be religious . . . more likely to have children . . . more likely to be singl
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