andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-444 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining

444 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-02-Rational addiction


meta infos for this blog

Source: html

Introduction: Ole Rogeberg sends in this: and writes: No idea if this is amusing to non-economists, but I tried my hand at the xtranormal-trend. It’s an attempt to spoof the many standard “incantations” I’ve encountered over the years from economists who don’t want to agree that rational addiction theory lacks justification for some of the claims it makes. More specifically, the claims that the theory can be used to conduct welfare analysis of alternative policies. See here (scroll to Rational Addiction) and here for background.


Summary: the most important sentenses genereted by tfidf model

sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore

1 Ole Rogeberg sends in this: and writes: No idea if this is amusing to non-economists, but I tried my hand at the xtranormal-trend. [sent-1, score-0.574]

2 It’s an attempt to spoof the many standard “incantations” I’ve encountered over the years from economists who don’t want to agree that rational addiction theory lacks justification for some of the claims it makes. [sent-2, score-2.62]

3 More specifically, the claims that the theory can be used to conduct welfare analysis of alternative policies. [sent-3, score-0.987]


similar blogs computed by tfidf model

tfidf for this blog:

wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)

[('addiction', 0.487), ('rational', 0.315), ('spoof', 0.27), ('lacks', 0.235), ('ole', 0.235), ('rogeberg', 0.235), ('claims', 0.2), ('scroll', 0.196), ('justification', 0.188), ('theory', 0.183), ('welfare', 0.182), ('conduct', 0.175), ('amusing', 0.161), ('encountered', 0.158), ('attempt', 0.14), ('sends', 0.14), ('specifically', 0.138), ('alternative', 0.124), ('background', 0.117), ('tried', 0.116), ('economists', 0.115), ('hand', 0.096), ('standard', 0.085), ('agree', 0.08), ('used', 0.065), ('idea', 0.061), ('years', 0.059), ('analysis', 0.058), ('want', 0.056), ('many', 0.049), ('ve', 0.046), ('writes', 0.041), ('see', 0.036)]

similar blogs list:

simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle

same-blog 1 0.99999994 444 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-02-Rational addiction

Introduction: Ole Rogeberg sends in this: and writes: No idea if this is amusing to non-economists, but I tried my hand at the xtranormal-trend. It’s an attempt to spoof the many standard “incantations” I’ve encountered over the years from economists who don’t want to agree that rational addiction theory lacks justification for some of the claims it makes. More specifically, the claims that the theory can be used to conduct welfare analysis of alternative policies. See here (scroll to Rational Addiction) and here for background.

2 0.22014599 692 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-03-“Rationality” reinforces, does not compete with, other models of behavior

Introduction: John Sides followed up on a discussion of his earlier claim that political independents vote for president in a reasonable way based on economic performance. John’s original post led to the amazing claim by New Republic writer Jonathan Chait that John wouldn’t “even want to be friends with anybody who” voted in this manner. I’ve been sensitive to discussions of rationality and voting ever since Aaron Edlin, Noah Kaplan, and I wrote our article on voting as a rational choice: why and how people vote to improve the well-being of others. Models of rationality are controversial In politics, just as they are in other fields ranging from economics to criminology. On one side you have people trying to argue that all behavior is rational, from lottery playing to drug addiction to engaging in email with exiled Nigerian royalty. Probably the only behavior that nobody has yet to claim is rational is blogging, but I bet that’s coming too. From the other direction, lots of people poi

3 0.16109067 809 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-19-“One of the easiest ways to differentiate an economist from almost anyone else in society”

Introduction: I think I’m starting to resolve a puzzle that’s been bugging me for awhile. Pop economists (or, at least, pop micro-economists) are often making one of two arguments: 1. People are rational and respond to incentives. Behavior that looks irrational is actually completely rational once you think like an economist. 2. People are irrational and they need economists, with their open minds, to show them how to be rational and efficient. Argument 1 is associated with “why do they do that?” sorts of puzzles. Why do they charge so much for candy at the movie theater, why are airline ticket prices such a mess, why are people drug addicts, etc. The usual answer is that there’s some rational reason for what seems like silly or self-destructive behavior. Argument 2 is associated with “we can do better” claims such as why we should fire 80% of public-schools teachers or Moneyball-style stories about how some clever entrepreneur has made a zillion dollars by exploiting some inefficienc

4 0.1577528 1758 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-11-Yes, the decision to try (or not) to have a child can be made rationally

Introduction: Philosopher L. A. Paul and sociologist Kieran Healy write : Choosing to have a child involves a leap of faith, not a carefully calibrated rational choice. When surprising results surface about the dissatisfaction many parents experience, telling yourself that you knew it wouldn’t be that way for you is simply a rationalization. The same is true if you tell yourself you know you’re happier not being a parent. The standard story of parenthood says it’s a deeply fulfilling event that is like nothing else you’ve ever experienced, and that you should carefully weigh what it will be like before choosing to do it. But in reality you can’t have it both ways. I disagree that you can’t have it both ways, for three reasons: 1. Many potential parents do have an idea of what it will be like to be a parent, having participated in child care as an older sibling, aunt, or uncle. 2. The decision of whether to have a child occurs many times: the decision of whether to have a second child

5 0.14826483 921 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-23-That odd couple, “subjectivity” and “rationality”

Introduction: Nowadays “Bayesian” is often taken to be a synonym for rationality, and I can see how this can irritate thoughtful philosophers and statisticians alike: To start with, lots of rational thinking—even lots of rational statistical inference—does not occur within the Bayesian formalism. And, to look at it from the other direction, lots of self-proclaimed Bayesian inference hardly seems rational at all. And in what way is “subjective probability” a model for rational scientific inquiry? On the contrary, subjectivity and rationality are in many ways opposites! [emphasis added] The goal of this paper is to break the link between Bayesian modeling (good, in my opinion) and subjectivity (bad). From this perspective, the irritation of falsificationists regarding exaggerated claims of Bayesian rationality are my ally. . . . See here for the full article, to appear in the journal Rationality, Markets and Morals.

6 0.11517985 734 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-28-Funniest comment ever

7 0.11076292 792 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-08-The virtues of incoherence?

8 0.10835828 409 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-11-“Tiny,” “Large,” “Very,” “Nice,” “Dumbest”

9 0.10365297 1204 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-08-The politics of economic and statistical models

10 0.10287263 1326 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-17-Question 7 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys

11 0.098455906 1448 andrew gelman stats-2012-08-07-Scientific fraud, double standards and institutions protecting themselves

12 0.098343648 1213 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-15-Economics now = Freudian psychology in the 1950s: More on the incoherence of “economics exceptionalism”

13 0.095844984 92 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-17-Drug testing for recipents of NSF and NIH grants?

14 0.091459952 1851 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-11-Actually, I have no problem with this graph

15 0.087413214 2195 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-02-Microfoundations of macroeconomics

16 0.084109098 1328 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-18-Question 8 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys

17 0.076270938 981 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-30-rms2

18 0.073515438 1514 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-28-AdviseStat 47% Campaign Ad

19 0.072629243 789 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-07-Descriptive statistics, causal inference, and story time

20 0.069184117 719 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-19-Everything is Obvious (once you know the answer)


similar blogs computed by lsi model

lsi for this blog:

topicId topicWeight

[(0, 0.074), (1, -0.007), (2, 0.002), (3, -0.012), (4, -0.033), (5, -0.015), (6, -0.011), (7, 0.012), (8, 0.027), (9, 0.003), (10, -0.026), (11, -0.027), (12, -0.003), (13, -0.012), (14, -0.023), (15, 0.013), (16, 0.019), (17, 0.015), (18, 0.019), (19, -0.026), (20, -0.043), (21, -0.042), (22, -0.001), (23, -0.005), (24, -0.036), (25, -0.013), (26, 0.089), (27, -0.001), (28, -0.032), (29, -0.027), (30, -0.048), (31, 0.031), (32, 0.038), (33, -0.099), (34, 0.026), (35, -0.053), (36, 0.032), (37, 0.019), (38, 0.005), (39, 0.068), (40, 0.01), (41, -0.023), (42, -0.023), (43, -0.009), (44, -0.009), (45, -0.019), (46, -0.007), (47, -0.007), (48, 0.049), (49, -0.015)]

similar blogs list:

simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle

same-blog 1 0.9604435 444 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-02-Rational addiction

Introduction: Ole Rogeberg sends in this: and writes: No idea if this is amusing to non-economists, but I tried my hand at the xtranormal-trend. It’s an attempt to spoof the many standard “incantations” I’ve encountered over the years from economists who don’t want to agree that rational addiction theory lacks justification for some of the claims it makes. More specifically, the claims that the theory can be used to conduct welfare analysis of alternative policies. See here (scroll to Rational Addiction) and here for background.

2 0.74688655 1758 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-11-Yes, the decision to try (or not) to have a child can be made rationally

Introduction: Philosopher L. A. Paul and sociologist Kieran Healy write : Choosing to have a child involves a leap of faith, not a carefully calibrated rational choice. When surprising results surface about the dissatisfaction many parents experience, telling yourself that you knew it wouldn’t be that way for you is simply a rationalization. The same is true if you tell yourself you know you’re happier not being a parent. The standard story of parenthood says it’s a deeply fulfilling event that is like nothing else you’ve ever experienced, and that you should carefully weigh what it will be like before choosing to do it. But in reality you can’t have it both ways. I disagree that you can’t have it both ways, for three reasons: 1. Many potential parents do have an idea of what it will be like to be a parent, having participated in child care as an older sibling, aunt, or uncle. 2. The decision of whether to have a child occurs many times: the decision of whether to have a second child

3 0.74002993 692 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-03-“Rationality” reinforces, does not compete with, other models of behavior

Introduction: John Sides followed up on a discussion of his earlier claim that political independents vote for president in a reasonable way based on economic performance. John’s original post led to the amazing claim by New Republic writer Jonathan Chait that John wouldn’t “even want to be friends with anybody who” voted in this manner. I’ve been sensitive to discussions of rationality and voting ever since Aaron Edlin, Noah Kaplan, and I wrote our article on voting as a rational choice: why and how people vote to improve the well-being of others. Models of rationality are controversial In politics, just as they are in other fields ranging from economics to criminology. On one side you have people trying to argue that all behavior is rational, from lottery playing to drug addiction to engaging in email with exiled Nigerian royalty. Probably the only behavior that nobody has yet to claim is rational is blogging, but I bet that’s coming too. From the other direction, lots of people poi

4 0.68826747 1204 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-08-The politics of economic and statistical models

Introduction: Following up on our recent discussion of the problems of considering utility theory as a foundation for economic analysis (which in turn was a reprise of this post from last September), somebody named Mark pointed me to a 2007 article by Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden, “The road not taken: How psychology was removed from economics, and how it might be brought back,” which begins: This article explores parallels between the debate prompted by Pareto’s reformulation of choice theory at the beginning of the twentieth century and current controversies about the status of behavioural economics. Before Pareto’s reformulation, neoclassical economics was based on theoretical and experimental psychology, as behavioural economics now is. Current discovered preference defences of rational-choice theory echo arguments made by Pareto. Both treat economics as a separate science of rational choice, independent of psychology. Both confront two fundamental problems: to find a defensible defi

5 0.66779029 809 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-19-“One of the easiest ways to differentiate an economist from almost anyone else in society”

Introduction: I think I’m starting to resolve a puzzle that’s been bugging me for awhile. Pop economists (or, at least, pop micro-economists) are often making one of two arguments: 1. People are rational and respond to incentives. Behavior that looks irrational is actually completely rational once you think like an economist. 2. People are irrational and they need economists, with their open minds, to show them how to be rational and efficient. Argument 1 is associated with “why do they do that?” sorts of puzzles. Why do they charge so much for candy at the movie theater, why are airline ticket prices such a mess, why are people drug addicts, etc. The usual answer is that there’s some rational reason for what seems like silly or self-destructive behavior. Argument 2 is associated with “we can do better” claims such as why we should fire 80% of public-schools teachers or Moneyball-style stories about how some clever entrepreneur has made a zillion dollars by exploiting some inefficienc

6 0.65493947 1052 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-11-Rational Turbulence

7 0.63355559 60 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-30-What Auteur Theory and Freshwater Economics have in common

8 0.6219961 1035 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-29-“Tobin’s analysis here is methodologically old-fashioned in the sense that no attempt is made to provide microfoundations for the postulated adjustment processes”

9 0.60984701 765 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-14-How the ignorant idiots win, explained. Maybe.

10 0.60534394 1213 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-15-Economics now = Freudian psychology in the 1950s: More on the incoherence of “economics exceptionalism”

11 0.59169048 1696 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-29-The latest in economics exceptionalism

12 0.58361024 1328 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-18-Question 8 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys

13 0.5542596 792 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-08-The virtues of incoherence?

14 0.53828979 1200 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-06-Some economists are skeptical about microfoundations

15 0.53696334 1051 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-10-Towards a Theory of Trust in Networks of Humans and Computers

16 0.53602397 2195 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-02-Microfoundations of macroeconomics

17 0.52842188 1326 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-17-Question 7 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys

18 0.51795995 1804 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-15-How effective are football coaches?

19 0.51464474 389 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-01-Why it can be rational to vote

20 0.51464474 1565 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-06-Why it can be rational to vote


similar blogs computed by lda model

lda for this blog:

topicId topicWeight

[(7, 0.034), (24, 0.099), (41, 0.032), (44, 0.309), (55, 0.029), (86, 0.023), (98, 0.056), (99, 0.261)]

similar blogs list:

simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle

1 0.92225111 559 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-06-Bidding for the kickoff

Introduction: Steven Brams and James Jorash propose a system for reducing the advantage that comes from winning the coin flip in overtime: Dispensing with a coin toss, the teams would bid on where the ball is kicked from by the kicking team. In the NFL, it’s now the 30-yard line. Under Brams and Jorasch’s rule, the kicking team would be the team that bids the lower number, because it is willing to put itself at a disadvantage by kicking from farther back. However, it would not kick from the number it bids, but from the average of the two bids. To illustrate, assume team A bids to kick from the 38-yard line, while team B bids its 32-yard line. Team B would win the bidding and, therefore, be designated as the kick-off team. But B wouldn’t kick from 32, but instead from the average of 38 and 32–its 35-yard line. This is better for B by 3 yards than the 32-yard line that it proposed, because it’s closer to the end zone it is kicking towards. It’s also better for A by 3 yards to have B kick fr

same-blog 2 0.88280678 444 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-02-Rational addiction

Introduction: Ole Rogeberg sends in this: and writes: No idea if this is amusing to non-economists, but I tried my hand at the xtranormal-trend. It’s an attempt to spoof the many standard “incantations” I’ve encountered over the years from economists who don’t want to agree that rational addiction theory lacks justification for some of the claims it makes. More specifically, the claims that the theory can be used to conduct welfare analysis of alternative policies. See here (scroll to Rational Addiction) and here for background.

3 0.88146722 864 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-21-Going viral — not!

Introduction: Sharad explains : HIV/AIDS, like many other contagious diseases, exemplifies the common view of so-called viral propagation, growing from a few initial cases to millions through close person-to-person interactions. (Ironically, not all viruses in fact exhibit “viral” transmission patterns. For example, Hepatitis A often spreads through contaminated drinking water.[1]) By analogy to such biological epidemics, the diffusion of products and ideas is conventionally assumed to occur “virally” as well, as evidenced by prevailing theoretical frameworks (e.g., the cascade and threshold models) and an obsession in the marketing world for all things social. . . . Despite hundreds of papers written about diffusion, there is surprisingly little work addressing this fundamental empirical question. In a recent study, Duncan Watts, Dan Goldstein, and I [Goel] examined the adoption patterns of several different types of products diffusing over various online platforms — including Twitter, Face

4 0.86709988 1798 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-11-Continuing conflict over conflict statistics

Introduction: Mike Spagat sends along a serious presentation with an ironic title: 18.7 MILLION ANNIHILATED SAYS LEADING EXPERT IN PEER–REVIEWED JOURNAL: AN APPROVED, AUTHORITATIVE, SCIENTIFIC PRESENTATION MADE BY AN EXPERT He’ll be speaking on it at tomorrow’s meeting of the Catastrophes and Conflict Forum of the Royal Society of Medicine in London. All I can say is, it’s a long time since I’ve seen a slide presentation in portrait form. It brings me back to the days of transparency sheets.

5 0.84873307 954 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-12-Benford’s Law suggests lots of financial fraud

Introduction: This post is by Phil. I love this post by Jialan Wang. Wang “downloaded quarterly accounting data for all firms in Compustat, the most widely-used dataset in corporate finance that contains data on over 20,000 firms from SEC filings” and looked at the statistical distribution of leading digits in various pieces of financial information. As expected, the distribution is very close to what is predicted by Benford’s Law . Very close, but not identical. But does that mean anything? Benford’s “Law” isn’t really a law, it’s more of a rule or principle: it’s certainly possible for the distribution of leading digits in financial data — even a massive corpus of it — to deviate from the rule without this indicating massive fraud or error. But, aha, Wang also looks at how the deviation from Benford’s Law has changed with time, and looks at it by industry, and this is where things get really interesting and suggestive. I really can’t summarize any better than Wang did, so click on the first

6 0.83868897 1837 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-03-NYC Data Skeptics Meetup

7 0.82856578 1627 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-17-Stan and RStan 1.1.0

8 0.81167221 748 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-06-Why your Klout score is meaningless

9 0.79608178 2209 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-13-CmdStan, RStan, PyStan v2.2.0

10 0.78931665 1436 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-31-A book on presenting numbers from spreadsheets

11 0.78905141 2150 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-27-(R-Py-Cmd)Stan 2.1.0

12 0.78304565 1145 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-30-A tax on inequality, or a tax to keep inequality at the current level?

13 0.77940977 617 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-17-“Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School”?

14 0.77887422 693 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-04-Don’t any statisticians work for the IRS?

15 0.77576071 111 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-26-Tough love as a style of writing

16 0.76962066 1879 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-01-Benford’s law and addresses

17 0.7387681 30 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-13-Trips to Cleveland

18 0.73385847 865 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-22-Blogging is “destroying the business model for quality”?

19 0.71950221 788 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-06-Early stopping and penalized likelihood

20 0.71881604 2210 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-13-Stopping rules and Bayesian analysis