andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 andrew_gelman_stats-2010-461 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Tyler Cowen links to a “scary comparison” that claims that “a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year.” Kaiser Fung looks into this comparison in more detail. As Kaiser puts it: If we concede that the middle-income person would end up with less disposable income than the lower-income person, then we’d expect that the middle-income people will take lower-paying jobs so as to increase their disposable income. But I have not seen reports of such reverse social mobility. Theory needs to fit reality. This hole in the theory needs to be covered. This argument sounds convincing at first, but I’m not completely sure it’s right. I’d just like to expand on one of Kaiser’s other points, which is that people don’t usually have a choice between a minimum-wage job and a $60,000 job. Also, my impression is that higher-paying jobs are more pleasant than lower-paying jobs. Let me put it another w
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1 Tyler Cowen links to a “scary comparison” that claims that “a one-parent family of three making $14,500 a year (minimum wage) has more disposable income than a family making $60,000 a year. [sent-1, score-0.849]
2 ” Kaiser Fung looks into this comparison in more detail. [sent-2, score-0.099]
3 As Kaiser puts it: If we concede that the middle-income person would end up with less disposable income than the lower-income person, then we’d expect that the middle-income people will take lower-paying jobs so as to increase their disposable income. [sent-3, score-1.361]
4 But I have not seen reports of such reverse social mobility. [sent-4, score-0.173]
5 This argument sounds convincing at first, but I’m not completely sure it’s right. [sent-7, score-0.126]
6 I’d just like to expand on one of Kaiser’s other points, which is that people don’t usually have a choice between a minimum-wage job and a $60,000 job. [sent-8, score-0.303]
7 Also, my impression is that higher-paying jobs are more pleasant than lower-paying jobs. [sent-9, score-0.344]
8 For any particular job, it’s typically less pleasant to work more, so if you can choose your hours, you have a choice between more money and more leisure. [sent-11, score-0.613]
9 But most people can’t typically choose between a minimum-wage job and a $60,000 job. [sent-12, score-0.311]
10 So the short answer to, Why don’t people quit their jobs and work at minimum wage? [sent-13, score-0.491]
11 , is that their working conditions would be less pleasant. [sent-14, score-0.088]
12 The analysis did not actually report what happens at “the very bottom of the entitlement food chain”; rather, it reports a hypothetical calculation of what someone could do. [sent-16, score-0.727]
13 Also, the head of household of “a one-parent family of three” does indeed work and does indeed pay taxes. [sent-17, score-0.467]
14 Unless you think that taking care of two children is not “work” and that sales tax is not a “tax. [sent-18, score-0.189]
15 ” As Kaiser puts it, checking the numbers means more than checking just the numbers. [sent-19, score-0.449]
16 I agree with Cowen that it would be interesting to see a more exact calculation of implicit marginal tax rates. [sent-20, score-0.25]
17 In the meantime, I don’t think I’m going to sit around being offended that some single parent operating the fry machine at the local McDonald’s isn’t suffering enough. [sent-21, score-0.535]
18 The consensus from the commenters who supply actual numbers seems to be that the numbers in the original blog are completely wrong, or maybe just made up. [sent-24, score-0.36]
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Introduction: Bruce McCullough writes: The Sept 2009 issue of Wired had a big article on the increase in the placebo effect, and why it’s been getting bigger. Kaiser Fung has a synopsis . As if you don’t have enough to do, I thought you might be interested in blogging on this. My reply: I thought Kaiser’s discussion was good, especially this point: Effect on treatment group = Effect of the drug + effect of belief in being treated Effect on placebo group = Effect of belief in being treated Thus, the difference between the two groups = effect of the drug, since the effect of belief in being treated affects both groups of patients. Thus, as Kaiser puts it, if the treatment isn’t doing better than placebo, it doesn’t say that the placebo effect is big (let alone “too big”) but that the treatment isn’t showing any additional effect. It’s “treatment + placebo” vs. placebo, not treatment vs. placebo. That said, I’d prefer for Kaiser to make it clear that the additivity he’s assu
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Introduction: Kaiser points to this infoviz from MIT’s Technology Review: Kaiser writes: What makes the designer want to tilt the reader’s head? This chart is unreadable. It also fails the self-sufficiency test. All 13 data points are printed onto the chart. You really don’t need the axis, and the gridlines. A further design flaw is the use of signposts. Our eyes are drawn to the hexagons containing the brand icons but the data is at the other end of the signpost, where it is planted on the surface! Here is a sketch of something not as cute: I [Kaiser] expressed time as years . . . The mobile-related entities are labelled red. The dots could be replaced by the hexagonal brand icons. I agree with all of Kaiser’s criticisms, and I agree that his graph is, from the statistical perspective, a zillion times better than what was published. On the other hand, unusual images can get attention. Recall the famous/notorious clock plot from Florence Nightingale . This is why I’ve move
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Introduction: I keep encountering the word “Groupon”–I think it’s some sort of pets.com-style commercial endeavor where people can buy coupons? I don’t really care, and I’ve avoided googling the word out of a general animosity toward our society’s current glorification of get-rich-quick schemes. (As you can tell, I’m still bitter about that whole stock market thing.) Anyway, even without knowing what Groupon actually is, I enjoyed this blog by Kaiser Fung in which he tries to work out some of its economic consequences. He connects the statistical notion of counterfactuals to the concept of opportunity cost from economics. The comments are interesting too.
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