andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-321 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Last night I spoke at the Columbia Club of New York, along with some of my political science colleagues, in a panel about politics, the economy, and the forthcoming election. The discussion was fine . . . until one guy in the audience accused us of bias based on what he imputed as our ethnicity. One of the panelists replied by asking the questioner what of all the things we had said was biased, and the questioner couldn’t actually supply any examples. It makes sense that the questioner couldn’t come up with a single example of bias on our part, considering that we were actually presenting facts . At some level, the questioner’s imputation of our ethnicity and accusation of bias isn’t so horrible. When talking with my friends, I engage in casual ethnic stereotyping all the time–hey, it’s a free country!–and one can certainly make the statistical argument that you can guess people’s ethnicities from their names, appearance, and speech patterns, and in turn you can infer a lot
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1 Last night I spoke at the Columbia Club of New York, along with some of my political science colleagues, in a panel about politics, the economy, and the forthcoming election. [sent-1, score-0.397]
2 until one guy in the audience accused us of bias based on what he imputed as our ethnicity. [sent-5, score-0.577]
3 One of the panelists replied by asking the questioner what of all the things we had said was biased, and the questioner couldn’t actually supply any examples. [sent-6, score-1.262]
4 It makes sense that the questioner couldn’t come up with a single example of bias on our part, considering that we were actually presenting facts . [sent-7, score-0.962]
5 At some level, the questioner’s imputation of our ethnicity and accusation of bias isn’t so horrible. [sent-8, score-0.448]
6 When talking with my friends, I engage in casual ethnic stereotyping all the time–hey, it’s a free country! [sent-9, score-0.346]
7 –and one can certainly make the statistical argument that you can guess people’s ethnicities from their names, appearance, and speech patterns, and in turn you can infer a lot about people’s political attitudes from their occupations, ethnicities, and so on. [sent-10, score-0.493]
8 Still, I think it was a pretty rude comment and pretty pointless. [sent-11, score-0.089]
9 Maybe he thought we’d break down under the pressure and admit that we were all being programmed by our KGB handlers? [sent-13, score-0.239]
10 Then, later on, someone asked a truly racist question–a rant, really–that clearly had a close relation to his personal experiences even while having essentially zero connection to the real world as we understand it statistically. [sent-15, score-0.307]
11 I’ve seen the polls and I know that there are a lot of racists out there, of all stripes. [sent-16, score-0.183]
12 Still, I don’t encounter this sort of thing much in my everyday life, and it was a bit upsetting to see it in the flesh. [sent-17, score-0.274]
13 Yes, I realize that women and minorities have to deal with this all the time. [sent-22, score-0.089]
14 This was the first time in my professional life that I’ve been accused of bias based on my (imputed) ethnicity, but I’m sure that if you’re a member of a traditionally-disparaged group, it happens all over. [sent-23, score-0.61]
15 So I’m not complaining, exactly, but it still upsets me a bit. [sent-24, score-0.206]
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