andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-567 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: It’s not just for Chaucer (or Mad Max) anymore. Peter Frase writes: It’s a shame that we neglect to re-translate older works into English merely because they were originally written in English. Languages change, and our reactions to words and formulations change. This is obvious when you read something like Chaucer, but it’s true to a more subtle degree of more recent writings. There is a pretty good chance that something written in the 19th century won’t mean the same thing to us that it meant to its contemporary readers. Thus it would make sense to re-translate Huckleberry Finn into modern language, in the same way we periodically get new translations of Homer or Dante or Thomas Mann. This is a point that applies equally well to non-fiction and social theory: in some ways, English-speaking sociologists are lucky that our canonical trio of classical theorists-Marx, Weber, and Durkheim-all wrote in another language. The most recent translation of Capital is eminently more readable
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1 Peter Frase writes: It’s a shame that we neglect to re-translate older works into English merely because they were originally written in English. [sent-2, score-0.726]
2 Languages change, and our reactions to words and formulations change. [sent-3, score-0.223]
3 This is obvious when you read something like Chaucer, but it’s true to a more subtle degree of more recent writings. [sent-4, score-0.41]
4 There is a pretty good chance that something written in the 19th century won’t mean the same thing to us that it meant to its contemporary readers. [sent-5, score-0.594]
5 Thus it would make sense to re-translate Huckleberry Finn into modern language, in the same way we periodically get new translations of Homer or Dante or Thomas Mann. [sent-6, score-0.45]
6 This is a point that applies equally well to non-fiction and social theory: in some ways, English-speaking sociologists are lucky that our canonical trio of classical theorists-Marx, Weber, and Durkheim-all wrote in another language. [sent-7, score-0.601]
7 The most recent translation of Capital is eminently more readable than the older ones-and I know I could have used a modern English translation of Talcott Parsons when I was studying contemporary theory. [sent-8, score-1.743]
8 Now, one might respond to this by saying that writing loses much in translation, and that some things just aren’t the same unless you read them in the original un-translated form. [sent-9, score-0.347]
9 But it would still be good to establish the “English-to-English translation” as a legitimate category . [sent-11, score-0.364]
10 I’m hoping someone will translate Bayesian Data Analysis into English. [sent-15, score-0.197]
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Introduction: It’s not just for Chaucer (or Mad Max) anymore. Peter Frase writes: It’s a shame that we neglect to re-translate older works into English merely because they were originally written in English. Languages change, and our reactions to words and formulations change. This is obvious when you read something like Chaucer, but it’s true to a more subtle degree of more recent writings. There is a pretty good chance that something written in the 19th century won’t mean the same thing to us that it meant to its contemporary readers. Thus it would make sense to re-translate Huckleberry Finn into modern language, in the same way we periodically get new translations of Homer or Dante or Thomas Mann. This is a point that applies equally well to non-fiction and social theory: in some ways, English-speaking sociologists are lucky that our canonical trio of classical theorists-Marx, Weber, and Durkheim-all wrote in another language. The most recent translation of Capital is eminently more readable
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Introduction: Deborah Mayo collected some reactions to my recent article , Induction and Deduction in Bayesian Data Analysis. I’m pleased that that everybody (philosopher Mayo, applied statistician Stephen Senn, and theoretical statistician Larry Wasserman) is so positive about my article and that nobody’s defending the sort of hard-core inductivism that’s featured on the Bayesian inference wikipedia page. Here’s the Wikipedia definition, which I disagree with: Bayesian inference uses aspects of the scientific method, which involves collecting evidence that is meant to be consistent or inconsistent with a given hypothesis. As evidence accumulates, the degree of belief in a hypothesis ought to change. With enough evidence, it should become very high or very low. . . . Bayesian inference uses a numerical estimate of the degree of belief in a hypothesis before evidence has been observed and calculates a numerical estimate of the degree of belief in the hypothesis after evidence has been obse
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Introduction: I love reading the kind of English that English people write. It’s the same language as American but just slightly different. I was thinking about this recently after coming across this footnote from “Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop,” by Bob Stanley: Mantovani’s atmospheric arrangement on ‘Care Mia’, I should add, is something else. Genuinely celestial. If anyone with a degree of subtlety was singing, it would be quite a record. It’s hard for me to pin down exactly what makes this passage specifically English, but there’s something about it . . . P.S. Mark Liberman reports that, in combination, several of the words and phrases in the above quote indeed supply strong evidence (“odds of better than 50 to 1 in favor of a British origin”).
Introduction: Here’s the story. P.S. Some sociologists discuss the case here .
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Introduction: It’s not just for Chaucer (or Mad Max) anymore. Peter Frase writes: It’s a shame that we neglect to re-translate older works into English merely because they were originally written in English. Languages change, and our reactions to words and formulations change. This is obvious when you read something like Chaucer, but it’s true to a more subtle degree of more recent writings. There is a pretty good chance that something written in the 19th century won’t mean the same thing to us that it meant to its contemporary readers. Thus it would make sense to re-translate Huckleberry Finn into modern language, in the same way we periodically get new translations of Homer or Dante or Thomas Mann. This is a point that applies equally well to non-fiction and social theory: in some ways, English-speaking sociologists are lucky that our canonical trio of classical theorists-Marx, Weber, and Durkheim-all wrote in another language. The most recent translation of Capital is eminently more readable
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Introduction: Peter Woit reports on the sympathy that well-known physicist Freeman Dyson has with crackpot theorists. The interesting part is that Dyson has positive feelings for these cranks, even while believing that their theories are completely wrong : In my [Dyson's] career as a scientist, I twice had the good fortune to be a personal friend of a famous dissident. One dissident, Sir Arthur Eddington, was an insider like Thomson and Tait. The other, Immanuel Velikovsky, was an outsider like Carter. Both of them were tragic figures, intellectually brilliant and morally courageous, with the same fatal flaw as Carter. Both of them were possessed by fantasies that people with ordinary common sense could recognize as nonsense. I made it clear to both that I did not believe their fantasies, but I admired them as human beings and as imaginative artists. I admired them most of all for their stubborn refusal to remain silent. With the whole world against them, they remained true to their beliefs.
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Introduction: The only thing is, I’m not sure who’s David here and who is Goliath. From the standpoint of book sales, Gladwell is Goliath for sure. On the other hand, Gladwell’s credibility has been weakened over the years by fights with bigshots such as Steven Pinker. Maybe the best analogy is a boxing match where Gladwell stands in the ring and fighter after fighter is sent in to bang him up. At some point the heavyweight gets a little bit tired. (Recently Gladwell had a New Yorker column defending dopers such as Lance Armstrong, so I suspect he’ll have Kaiser Fung coming after him again , once the current lucha with Chabris is over.) Chabris took his swing at Gladwell a few days ago, as I reported here . Yesterday was Gladwell’s turn . I have a lot of sympathy for the Blink-man here: he writes these bestsellers and puts himself out there, so he’s a target. If Gladwell’s books were generic business-bestseller pap of the be-yourself-and-be-tough variety, he wouldn’t get hassled. It
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Introduction: It’s not just for Chaucer (or Mad Max) anymore. Peter Frase writes: It’s a shame that we neglect to re-translate older works into English merely because they were originally written in English. Languages change, and our reactions to words and formulations change. This is obvious when you read something like Chaucer, but it’s true to a more subtle degree of more recent writings. There is a pretty good chance that something written in the 19th century won’t mean the same thing to us that it meant to its contemporary readers. Thus it would make sense to re-translate Huckleberry Finn into modern language, in the same way we periodically get new translations of Homer or Dante or Thomas Mann. This is a point that applies equally well to non-fiction and social theory: in some ways, English-speaking sociologists are lucky that our canonical trio of classical theorists-Marx, Weber, and Durkheim-all wrote in another language. The most recent translation of Capital is eminently more readable
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Introduction: Ole Rogeberg writes: After reading your recent post , I thought you might find this interesting – especially the scanned interview that is included at the bottom of the posting. It’s an old OMNI interview with Walter Stewart that was the first thing I read (at a young and impressionable age ;) about the prevalence of errors, fraud and cheating in science, the institutional barriers to tackling it, the often high personal costs to whistleblowers, the difficulty of accessing scientific data to repeat published analyses, and the surprisingly negative attitude towards criticism within scientific communities. Highly recommended entertaining reading – with some good examples of scientific investigations into implausible effects. The post itself contains the info I once dug up about what happened to him later – he seems like an interesting and very determined guy: when the NIH tried to stop him from investigating scientific errors and fraud he went on a hunger strike. No idea what’s h
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Introduction: Lee Seachrest points to an article , “Life expectancy and disparity: an international comparison of life table data,” by James Vaupel, Zhen Zhang, and Alyson van Raalte. This paper has killer graphs. Here are their results: In 89 of the 170 years from 1840 to 2009, the country with the highest male life expectancy also had the lowest male life disparity. This was true in 86 years for female life expectancy and disparity. In all years, the top several life expectancy leaders were also the top life disparity leaders. Although only 38% of deaths were premature, fully 84% of the increase in life expectancy resulted from averting premature deaths. The reduction in life disparity resulted from reductions in early-life disparity, that is, disparity caused by premature deaths; late-life disparity levels remained roughly constant. The authors also note: Reducing early-life disparities helps people plan their less-uncertain lifetimes. A higher likelihood of surviving to old age
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Introduction: In a thought-provoking article subtitled “Top athletes and singers have coaches. Should you?,” surgeon/journalist Atul Gawande describes how, even after eight years and more than two thousand operations, he benefited from coaching (from a retired surgeon), just as pro athletes and accomplished musicians do. He then talks about proposals to institute coaching for teachers to help them perform better. This all makes sense to me—except that I’m a little worried about expansion of the teacher coaching program. I can imagine it could work pretty well for teachers who are motivated to be coached—for example, I think I would get a lot out of it—but I’m afraid that if teacher coaching became a big business, it would get taken over by McKinsey-style scam artists. But could I use a coach? First, let me get rid of the easy questions. 1. Yes, I could use a squash coach. I enjoy squash and play when I can, but I’m terrible at it. I’m sure a coach would help. On the other hand, I’m h
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