andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-381 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Justin Phillips placed some questions on the YouGov Model Politics poll and reports the following: Early this month, Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) angered gay rights organizations when he said that openly gay people (along with sexually active unmarried women) shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom. This comment was originally reported in the Spartanberg Herald-Journal and subsequently covered by a variety of national media outlets including CBS News. The Senator justified his comments by suggesting that his beliefs are shared by many Americans. DeMint told the Herald Journal “[When I said those things] no one came to my defense. But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.” So is the Senator correct? Do Americans want openly gay men and women out of the classroom? . . . Most Americans do not share Senator DeMint’s views. Our survey shows that a large majorit
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 This comment was originally reported in the Spartanberg Herald-Journal and subsequently covered by a variety of national media outlets including CBS News. [sent-2, score-0.258]
2 The Senator justified his comments by suggesting that his beliefs are shared by many Americans. [sent-3, score-0.166]
3 They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion. [sent-6, score-0.171]
4 Do Americans want openly gay men and women out of the classroom? [sent-8, score-0.742]
5 Our survey shows that a large majority of respondents—66%—support the inclusion of sexual orientation in employment nondiscrimination laws (only 20% are opposed). [sent-13, score-0.584]
6 In our survey, 58% of respondents think that openly gay and lesbian individuals should be allowed to work as elementary school teachers, with only 26% opposed. [sent-18, score-1.072]
7 Responses are not particularly sensitive to question wording . [sent-19, score-0.125]
8 even a majority of southern respondents (52%) aren’t bothered by openly gay teachers. [sent-22, score-1.002]
9 So who is Senator DeMint speaking with in his informal survey of voter attitudes toward gays and lesbian? [sent-23, score-0.275]
10 Among this group, a narrow plurality of respondents (45% to 38%) are opposed to allowing openly gay teachers in the classroom. [sent-25, score-1.247]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('demint', 0.484), ('senator', 0.395), ('openly', 0.341), ('gay', 0.315), ('respondents', 0.184), ('lesbian', 0.166), ('classroom', 0.125), ('rights', 0.119), ('americans', 0.118), ('teachers', 0.104), ('opposed', 0.104), ('majority', 0.094), ('survey', 0.093), ('angered', 0.088), ('herald', 0.088), ('nondiscrimination', 0.088), ('plurality', 0.088), ('women', 0.086), ('cbs', 0.083), ('subsequently', 0.083), ('yougov', 0.083), ('shouldn', 0.082), ('unmarried', 0.08), ('carolina', 0.075), ('wording', 0.071), ('inclusion', 0.069), ('southern', 0.068), ('gays', 0.068), ('outlets', 0.068), ('elementary', 0.066), ('orientation', 0.064), ('sexual', 0.064), ('phillips', 0.063), ('justified', 0.061), ('placed', 0.058), ('informal', 0.057), ('jim', 0.057), ('voter', 0.057), ('employment', 0.057), ('organizations', 0.056), ('justin', 0.056), ('narrow', 0.056), ('allowing', 0.055), ('laws', 0.055), ('covered', 0.054), ('sensitive', 0.054), ('shared', 0.053), ('originally', 0.053), ('beliefs', 0.052), ('freedom', 0.052)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0 381 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-30-Sorry, Senator DeMint: Most Americans Don’t Want to Ban Gays from the Classroom
Introduction: Justin Phillips placed some questions on the YouGov Model Politics poll and reports the following: Early this month, Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) angered gay rights organizations when he said that openly gay people (along with sexually active unmarried women) shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom. This comment was originally reported in the Spartanberg Herald-Journal and subsequently covered by a variety of national media outlets including CBS News. The Senator justified his comments by suggesting that his beliefs are shared by many Americans. DeMint told the Herald Journal “[When I said those things] no one came to my defense. But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.” So is the Senator correct? Do Americans want openly gay men and women out of the classroom? . . . Most Americans do not share Senator DeMint’s views. Our survey shows that a large majorit
2 0.16557515 355 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-20-Andy vs. the Ideal Point Model of Voting
Introduction: Last week, as I walked into Andrew’s office for a meeting, he was formulating some misgivings about applying an ideal-point model to budgetary bills in the U.S. Senate. Andrew didn’t like that the model of a senator’s position was an indifference point rather than at their optimal point, and that the effect of moving away from a position was automatically modeled as increasing in one direction and decreasing in the other. Executive Summary The monotonicity of inverse logit entails that the expected vote for a bill among any fixed collection of senators’ ideal points is monotonically increasing (or decreasing) with the bill’s position, with direction determined by the outcome coding. The Ideal-Point Model The ideal-point model’s easy to write down, but hard to reason about because of all the polarity shifting going on. To recapitulate from Gelman and Hill’s Regression book (p. 317), using the U.S. Senate instead of the Supreme Court, and ignoring the dis
Introduction: The above graph shows the estimated support, by state, for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, a gay rights bill that the Senate will be voting on this Monday. The estimates were constructed by Kate Krimmel, Jeff Lax, and Justin Phillips using multilevel regression and poststratification. Check out that graph again. The scale goes from 20% to 80%, but every state is in the yellow-to-red range. Support for a law making it illegal to discriminate against gays has majority support in every state. And in most states the support is very strong. And here’s the research paper by Krimmel, Lax, and Phillips, which begins: Public majorities have supported several gay rights policies for some time, yet Congress has responded slowly if at all. We address this puzzle through dyadic analysis of the opinion- vote relationship on 23 roll-call votes between 1993 and 2010, matching members of Congress to policy-specific opinion in their state or district. We also extend the MRP opinion e
4 0.13746697 44 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-20-Boris was right
Introduction: Boris Shor in January : the pivotal Senator will now be a Republican, not a Democrat . . . Brown stands to become the pivotal member of the Senate. The New York Times today : The Senate voted on Thursday afternoon to close debate on a far-reaching financial regulatory bill . . . In an interesting twist, the decisive vote was supplied by Senator Scott Brown, the Republican freshman of Massachusetts . . .
5 0.12396318 1404 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-03-Counting gays
Introduction: Gary Gates writes : In a recent study, the author of this article estimated that the self- identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community makes up 3.8 percent of the American population. The author’s estimate was far lower than many scholars and activists had contended, and it included a relatively high proportion of persons self-identifying as bisexuals. This article responds to two of the central criticisms that arose in the controversy that followed. First, in response to claims that his estimate did not account for people who are in the closet, the author describes how demographers might measure the size of the closet. Second, in response to those who either ignored the reported large incidence of bisexuality or misconstrued the meaning of that incidence, the Author considers how varying frameworks for conceptualizing sexual orientation might alter the ratio of lesbian or gay individuals to bisexuals. This article goes on to offer observations about the ch
6 0.10829493 688 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-30-Why it’s so relaxing to think about social issues
7 0.10469547 1320 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-14-Question 4 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
8 0.097464636 627 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-24-How few respondents are reasonable to use when calculating the average by county?
9 0.084195003 50 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-25-Looking for Sister Right
10 0.083325937 1725 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-17-“1.7%” ha ha ha
11 0.078492634 828 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-28-Thoughts on Groseclose book on media bias
12 0.076342836 1803 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-14-Why girls do better in school
13 0.076316006 1356 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-31-Question 21 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
14 0.075134411 142 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-12-God, Guns, and Gaydar: The Laws of Probability Push You to Overestimate Small Groups
15 0.073787346 162 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-25-Darn that Lindsey Graham! (or, “Mr. P Predicts the Kagan vote”)
16 0.071660191 150 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-16-Gaydar update: Additional research on estimating small fractions of the population
17 0.070430636 1085 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-27-Laws as expressive
18 0.069522731 2074 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-23-Can’t Stop Won’t Stop Mister P Beatdown
19 0.069482565 130 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-07-A False Consensus about Public Opinion on Torture
20 0.068522997 1899 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-14-Turing chess tournament!
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.08), (1, -0.041), (2, 0.087), (3, -0.016), (4, -0.004), (5, 0.052), (6, -0.014), (7, 0.023), (8, -0.017), (9, -0.019), (10, 0.03), (11, -0.023), (12, -0.015), (13, 0.069), (14, -0.007), (15, -0.021), (16, 0.022), (17, 0.004), (18, -0.01), (19, -0.002), (20, -0.015), (21, -0.028), (22, -0.044), (23, -0.051), (24, 0.018), (25, 0.013), (26, 0.003), (27, -0.015), (28, 0.026), (29, -0.007), (30, -0.0), (31, 0.008), (32, 0.021), (33, 0.015), (34, -0.006), (35, -0.001), (36, 0.025), (37, 0.038), (38, 0.014), (39, 0.007), (40, -0.017), (41, 0.023), (42, 0.024), (43, -0.005), (44, -0.024), (45, 0.029), (46, -0.009), (47, 0.005), (48, -0.001), (49, 0.002)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.9693203 381 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-30-Sorry, Senator DeMint: Most Americans Don’t Want to Ban Gays from the Classroom
Introduction: Justin Phillips placed some questions on the YouGov Model Politics poll and reports the following: Early this month, Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) angered gay rights organizations when he said that openly gay people (along with sexually active unmarried women) shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom. This comment was originally reported in the Spartanberg Herald-Journal and subsequently covered by a variety of national media outlets including CBS News. The Senator justified his comments by suggesting that his beliefs are shared by many Americans. DeMint told the Herald Journal “[When I said those things] no one came to my defense. But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.” So is the Senator correct? Do Americans want openly gay men and women out of the classroom? . . . Most Americans do not share Senator DeMint’s views. Our survey shows that a large majorit
2 0.71956712 1322 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-15-Question 5 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
Introduction: 5. Which of the following better describes changes in public opinion on most issues? (Choose only one.) (a) Dynamic stability: On any given issue, average opinion remains stable but liberals and conservatives move back and forth in opposite directions (the “accordion model”) (b) Uniform swing: Average opinion on an issue can move but the liberals and conservatives don’t move much relative to each other (the disribution of opinions is a “solid block of wood”) (c) Compensating tradeoffs: When considering multiple survey questions on the same general topic, average opinion can move sharply to the left or right on individual questions while the average over all the questions remains stable (the “rubber band model”) Solution to question 4 From yesterday : 4. Researchers have found that survey respondents overreport church attendance. Thus, naive estimates from surveys overstate the percentage of Americans who attend church regularly. Does this have a large impact on estimate
3 0.71323913 1978 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-12-Fixing the race, ethnicity, and national origin questions on the U.S. Census
Introduction: In his new book, “What is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans,” former Census Bureau director Ken Prewitt recommends taking the race question off the decennial census: He recommends gradual changes, integrating the race and national origin questions while improving both. In particular, he would replace the main “race” question by a “race or origin” question, with the instruction to “Mark one or more” of the following boxes: “White,” “Black, African Am., or Negro,” “Hispanic, Latino, or Spanish origin,” “American Indian or Alaska Native,” “Asian”, “Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander,” and “Some other race or origin.” Then the next question is to write in “specific race, origin, or enrolled or principal tribe.” Prewitt writes: His suggestion is to go with these questions in 2020 and 2030, then in 2040 “drop the race question and use only the national origin question.” He’s also relying on the American Community Survey to gather a lo
4 0.70561939 1371 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-07-Question 28 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
Introduction: This is it, the last question on the exam! 28. A telephone survey was conducted several years ago, asking people how often they were polled in the past year. I can’t recall the responses, but suppose that 40% of the respondents said they participated in zero surveys in the previous year, 30% said they participated in one survey, 15% said two surveys, 10% said three, and 5% said four. From this it is easy to estimate an average, but there is a worry that this survey will itself overrepresent survey participants and thus overestimate the rate at which the average person is surveyed. Come up with a procedure to use these data to get an improved estimate of the average number of surveys that a randomly-sampled American is polled in a year. Solution to question 27 From yesterday : 27. Which of the following problems were identified with the Burnham et al. survey of Iraq mortality? (Indicate all that apply.) (a) The survey used cluster sampling, which is inappropriate for estim
5 0.69222426 1288 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-29-Clueless Americans think they’ll never get sick
Introduction: Cassie Murdoch points to a report from a corporate survey: Sixty-two percent of U.S. employees say it’s not likely they or a family member will be diagnosed with a serious illness like cancer, a survey indicates. The Aflac WorkForces Report, a survey of nearly 1,900 benefits decision-makers and more than 6,100 U.S. workers, also indicated 55 percent said they were not very or not at all likely to be diagnosed with a chronic illness, such as heart disease or diabetes. Here are some actual statistics: The American Cancer Society, Cancer Facts & Figures 2012, said 1-in-3 women and 1-in-2 men will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and the National Safety Council, Injury Facts 2011 edition, says more than 38.9 million injuries occur in a year requiring medical treatment. The American Heart Association, Heart Disease & Stroke Statistics 2012, said 1-in-6 U.S. deaths were caused by coronary heart disease, Tillman said. And some details on the survey:
6 0.69062442 1323 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-16-Question 6 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
7 0.67414522 1320 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-14-Question 4 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
9 0.6443668 385 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-31-Wacky surveys where they don’t tell you the questions they asked
10 0.63678676 2167 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-10-Do you believe that “humans and other living things have evolved over time”?
11 0.63594621 666 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-18-American Beliefs about Economic Opportunity and Income Inequality
12 0.63469177 142 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-12-God, Guns, and Gaydar: The Laws of Probability Push You to Overestimate Small Groups
13 0.62824726 1356 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-31-Question 21 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
14 0.62372667 1341 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-24-Question 14 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
15 0.6201635 784 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-01-Weighting and prediction in sample surveys
16 0.61338663 1313 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-11-Question 1 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
17 0.61019671 730 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-25-Rechecking the census
18 0.60861373 1115 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-12-Where are the larger-than-life athletes?
19 0.60663164 1345 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-26-Question 16 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
20 0.59961563 2019 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-12-Recently in the sister blog
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.208), (2, 0.014), (9, 0.013), (15, 0.025), (16, 0.069), (24, 0.097), (36, 0.014), (47, 0.02), (55, 0.054), (64, 0.012), (66, 0.015), (87, 0.064), (93, 0.037), (99, 0.214)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
1 0.92372715 565 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-09-Dennis the dentist, debunked?
Introduction: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a handy summary of the claims and the evidence (click on it to enlarge): The Pelham et al. articles have come up several times on the blog, starting with this discussion and this estimate and then more recently here . I’m curious what Pelham and his collaborators think of Simonsohn’s claims.
same-blog 2 0.9168328 381 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-30-Sorry, Senator DeMint: Most Americans Don’t Want to Ban Gays from the Classroom
Introduction: Justin Phillips placed some questions on the YouGov Model Politics poll and reports the following: Early this month, Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) angered gay rights organizations when he said that openly gay people (along with sexually active unmarried women) shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom. This comment was originally reported in the Spartanberg Herald-Journal and subsequently covered by a variety of national media outlets including CBS News. The Senator justified his comments by suggesting that his beliefs are shared by many Americans. DeMint told the Herald Journal “[When I said those things] no one came to my defense. But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.” So is the Senator correct? Do Americans want openly gay men and women out of the classroom? . . . Most Americans do not share Senator DeMint’s views. Our survey shows that a large majorit
3 0.90185487 2166 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-10-3 years out of date on the whole Dennis the dentist thing!
Introduction: Paging Uri Simonsohn . . . January 2014: Alice Robb writes , completely uncritically: “If Your Name is Dennis, You’re More Likely to Become a Dentist The strange science of how names shape careers.” But look what you can learn from a quick google: Hmmmm, maybe worth following up on that second link . . . More details here , from 2011: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a han
4 0.8876406 1828 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-27-Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences
Introduction: James Druckman and Jeremy Freese write: We are pleased to announce that Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences (TESS) was renewed for another round of funding by NSF starting last Fall. TESS allows researchers to submit proposals for experiments to be conducted on a nationally-representative, probability-based Internet platform, and successful proposals are fielded at no cost to investigators. More information about how TESS works and how to submit proposals is available at http://www.tessexperiments.org. Additionally, we are pleased to announce the development of two new proposal mechanisms. TESS’s Short Studies Program (SSP) is accepting proposals for fielding very brief population-based survey experiments on a general population of at least 2000 adults. SSP recruits participants from within the U.S. using the same Internet-based platform as other TESS studies. More information about SSP and proposal requirements is available at http://www.tessexperiments.org/ssp.
5 0.88524783 1068 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-18-Faculty who don’t like teaching and hate working with students
Introduction: Peter Woit links to Steve Hsu linking to a 1977 interview by Katherine Sopka of physics professor Sidney Coleman. I don’t know anything about Coleman’s research but the interview caught my eye because one of my roommates in grad school was one of Coleman’s advisees. Anyway, here’s the key bit from the interview: Sopka: But you do enjoy working with students or do you? Coleman: No. I hate it. You do it as part of the job. Well, that’s of course false…or maybe more true than false when I say I hate it. Occasionally there’s a student who is a joy to work with. But I certainly would be just as happy if I had no graduate students… Sopka: I guess your remark means then that you would like to avoid teaching undergraduate courses or even required graduate courses… Coleman: Or even special topics courses. Teaching is unpleasant work. No question about it. It has its rewards. One feels happy about having a job well done. Washing the dishes, waxing the floors (things I also
6 0.86489302 4 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-26-Prolefeed
7 0.86463857 40 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-18-What visualization is best?
8 0.85231125 365 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-24-Erving Goffman archives
9 0.84622753 1540 andrew gelman stats-2012-10-18-“Intrade to the 57th power”
10 0.83413661 1075 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-20-This guy has a regular column at Reuters
11 0.82579041 1765 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-16-Recently in the sister blog
12 0.82468474 1781 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-29-Another Feller theory
13 0.80898881 557 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-05-Call for book proposals
14 0.80305153 1177 andrew gelman stats-2012-02-20-Joshua Clover update
15 0.79443729 1755 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-09-Plaig
16 0.77988756 1736 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-24-Rcpp class in Sat 9 Mar in NYC
17 0.7770412 862 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-20-An illustrated calculus textbook
18 0.77667379 1262 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-12-“Not only defended but also applied”: The perceived absurdity of Bayesian inference
20 0.76892722 2190 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-29-Stupid R Tricks: Random Scope