andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-582 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Statisticians are literalists. When someone says that the U.K. boundary commission’s delay in redistricting gave the Tories an advantage equivalent to 10 percent of the vote, we’re the kind of person who looks it up and claims that the effect is less than 0.7 percent. When someone says, “Since 1968, with the single exception of the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Americans have chosen Republican presidents in times of perceived danger and Democrats in times of relative calm,” we’re like, Hey, really? And we go look that one up too. And when someone says that engineers have more sons and nurses have more daughters . . . well, let’s not go there. So, when I was pointed to this blog by Michael O’Hare making the following claim, in the context of K-12 education in the United States: My [O'Hare's] favorite examples of this junk [educational content with no workplace value] are spelling and pencil-and-paper algorithm arithmetic. These are absolutely critical for a clerk
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 boundary commission’s delay in redistricting gave the Tories an advantage equivalent to 10 percent of the vote, we’re the kind of person who looks it up and claims that the effect is less than 0. [sent-4, score-0.219]
2 When someone says, “Since 1968, with the single exception of the election of George W. [sent-6, score-0.155]
3 Bush in 2000, Americans have chosen Republican presidents in times of perceived danger and Democrats in times of relative calm,” we’re like, Hey, really? [sent-7, score-0.214]
4 And when someone says that engineers have more sons and nurses have more daughters . [sent-9, score-0.495]
5 So, when I was pointed to this blog by Michael O’Hare making the following claim, in the context of K-12 education in the United States: My [O'Hare's] favorite examples of this junk [educational content with no workplace value] are spelling and pencil-and-paper algorithm arithmetic. [sent-13, score-0.525]
6 These are absolutely critical for a clerk in an office of fifty years ago, but being good at them is unrelated to any real mental ability (what, for example, would a spelling bee in Chinese be? [sent-14, score-1.156]
7 But these are idiot-savant abilities, genetic oddities like being able to roll your tongue. [sent-17, score-0.636]
8 I also have no systematic data on this, but I strongly doubt that being able to spell and add are “unrelated to any real world abilities” and are “genetic oddities like being able to roll your tongue. [sent-20, score-0.981]
9 ” For one thing, people can learn to spell and add but I think it’s pretty rare for anyone to learn how to roll their tongue! [sent-21, score-0.763]
10 Beyond this, I expect that one way to learn spelling is to do a lot of reading and writing, and one way to learn how to add is to do a lot of adding (by playing Monopoly or whatever). [sent-22, score-0.775]
11 I’d guess that these are indeed related to “real mental ability,” however that is defined. [sent-23, score-0.185]
12 My guess is that, to O’Hare, my reactions would miss the point. [sent-24, score-0.065]
13 He’s arguing that schools should spend less time teaching kids spelling and arithmetic, and his statements about genetics, rolling your tongue, and the rest are just rhetorical claims. [sent-25, score-0.539]
14 That things I write are full of qualifications, which might be a real hindrance if you’re trying to propose policy changes. [sent-27, score-0.352]
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same-blog 1 1.0000002 582 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-20-Statisticians vs. everybody else
Introduction: Statisticians are literalists. When someone says that the U.K. boundary commission’s delay in redistricting gave the Tories an advantage equivalent to 10 percent of the vote, we’re the kind of person who looks it up and claims that the effect is less than 0.7 percent. When someone says, “Since 1968, with the single exception of the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Americans have chosen Republican presidents in times of perceived danger and Democrats in times of relative calm,” we’re like, Hey, really? And we go look that one up too. And when someone says that engineers have more sons and nurses have more daughters . . . well, let’s not go there. So, when I was pointed to this blog by Michael O’Hare making the following claim, in the context of K-12 education in the United States: My [O'Hare's] favorite examples of this junk [educational content with no workplace value] are spelling and pencil-and-paper algorithm arithmetic. These are absolutely critical for a clerk
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Introduction: Commenters here are occasionally bothered that I spend so much time attacking frauds and plagiarists. See, for example, here and here . Why go on and on about these losers, given that there are more important problems in the world such as war, pestilence, hunger, and graphs where the y-axis doesn’t go all the way down to zero? Part of the story is that I do research for a living so I resent people who devalue research through misattribution or fraud, in the same way that rich people don’t like counterfeiters. What really bugs me, though, is when cheaters get caught and still don’t admit it. People like Hauser, Wegman, Fischer, and Weick get under my skin because they have the chutzpah to just deny deny deny. The grainy time-stamped videotape with their hand in the cookie jar is right there, and they’ll still talk around the problem. Makes me want to scream. This happens all the time . All. Over. The. Place. Everybody makes mistakes, and just about everybody does thing
3 0.13149163 2182 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-22-Spell-checking example demonstrates key aspects of Bayesian data analysis
Introduction: One of the new examples for the third edition of Bayesian Data Analysis is a spell-checking story. Here it is (just start at 2/3 down on the first page, with “Spelling correction”). I like this example—it demonstrates the Bayesian algebra, also gives a sense of the way that probability models (both “likelihood” and “prior”) are constructed from existing assumptions and data. The models aren’t just specified as a mathematical exercise, they represent some statement about reality. And the problem is close enough to our experience that we can consider ways in which the model can be criticized and improved, all in a simple example that has only three possibilities.
4 0.10733802 1313 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-11-Question 1 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
Introduction: 1. Suppose that, in a survey of 1000 people in a state, 400 say they voted in a recent primary election. Actually, though, the voter turnout was only 30%. Give an estimate of the probability that a nonvoter will falsely state that he or she voted. (Assume that all voters honestly report that they voted.) P.S. The commenters are picking up some of the unintended “Hare and pineapple” ambiguity in my question!
5 0.1026293 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
Introduction: An interview with me from 2012 : You’re a statistician and wrote a book, Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State , looking at why Americans vote the way they do. In an election year I think it would be a good time to revisit that question, not just for people in the US, but anyone around the world who wants to understand the realities – rather than the stereotypes – of how Americans vote. I regret the title I gave my book. I was too greedy. I wanted it to be an airport bestseller because I figured there were millions of people who are interested in politics and some subset of them are always looking at the statistics. It’s got a very grabby title and as a result people underestimated the content. They thought it was a popularisation of my work, or, at best, an expansion of an article we’d written. But it had tons of original material. If I’d given it a more serious, political science-y title, then all sorts of people would have wanted to read it, because they would
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Introduction: Statisticians are literalists. When someone says that the U.K. boundary commission’s delay in redistricting gave the Tories an advantage equivalent to 10 percent of the vote, we’re the kind of person who looks it up and claims that the effect is less than 0.7 percent. When someone says, “Since 1968, with the single exception of the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Americans have chosen Republican presidents in times of perceived danger and Democrats in times of relative calm,” we’re like, Hey, really? And we go look that one up too. And when someone says that engineers have more sons and nurses have more daughters . . . well, let’s not go there. So, when I was pointed to this blog by Michael O’Hare making the following claim, in the context of K-12 education in the United States: My [O'Hare's] favorite examples of this junk [educational content with no workplace value] are spelling and pencil-and-paper algorithm arithmetic. These are absolutely critical for a clerk
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Introduction: Philip Cohen asks , “Why are mothers becoming moms?” These aren’t just two words for the same thing: in political terms “mother” is merely descriptive while “mom” is more positive. Indeed, we speak of “mom and apple pie” as unquestionable American icons. Cohen points out that motherhood is sometimes but not always respected in political discourse: On the one hand, both President Obama and pundit Hilary Rosen have now called motherhood the world’s hardest job. And with the Romneys flopping onto the all-mothers-work bandwagon, it appears we’re reaching a rare rhetorical consensus. On the other hand, the majority in both major political parties agrees that poor single mothers and their children need one thing above all – a (real) job, one that provides the “dignity of an honest day’s work.” For welfare purposes, taking care of children is not only not the toughest job in the world, it is more akin to nothing at all. When Bill Clinton’s endorsed welfare-to-work he famously decla
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Introduction: The last time we encountered Slate columnist Shankar Vedantam was when he puzzled over why slightly more than half of voters planned to vote for Republican candidates, given that polls show that Americans dislike the Republican Party even more than they dislike the Democrats. Vedantam attributed the new Republican majority to irrationality and “unconscious bias.” But, actually, this voting behavior is perfectly consistent with there being some moderate voters who prefer divided government. The simple, direct explanation (which Vedantam mistakenly dismisses) actually works fine. I was flipping through Slate today and noticed a new article by Vedantam headlined, “If parenthood sucks, why do we love it? Because we’re addicted.” I don’t like this one either. Vedantam starts by reviewing the evidence that people with kids are less happy than people without kids and that parents report that they are unhappy when they are around their young children. Given this, Vedantam asks
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Introduction: In a post entitled, “A holiday message from the creative class to Richard Florida — screw you,” Mark Palko argues that Florida’s famous theories about the rise of the creative class have not held up over time: Florida paints a bright picture of these people and their future, with rapidly increasing numbers, influence and wealth. He goes so far as to say “Places that succeed in attracting and retaining creative class people prosper; those that fail don’t.” . . . But, Palko argues, Except for a few special cases, this may be the worst time to make a living in the arts since the emergence of modern newspapers and general interest magazines and other mass media a hundred and twenty years ago . . . Though we now have tools that make creating and disseminating art easier than ever, no one has come up with a viable business model that supports creation in today’s economy. . . . OK, fine, so individual creatives aren’t doing so well? But what about the larger urban economies? P
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Introduction: Commenters here are occasionally bothered that I spend so much time attacking frauds and plagiarists. See, for example, here and here . Why go on and on about these losers, given that there are more important problems in the world such as war, pestilence, hunger, and graphs where the y-axis doesn’t go all the way down to zero? Part of the story is that I do research for a living so I resent people who devalue research through misattribution or fraud, in the same way that rich people don’t like counterfeiters. What really bugs me, though, is when cheaters get caught and still don’t admit it. People like Hauser, Wegman, Fischer, and Weick get under my skin because they have the chutzpah to just deny deny deny. The grainy time-stamped videotape with their hand in the cookie jar is right there, and they’ll still talk around the problem. Makes me want to scream. This happens all the time . All. Over. The. Place. Everybody makes mistakes, and just about everybody does thing
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same-blog 1 0.92865533 582 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-20-Statisticians vs. everybody else
Introduction: Statisticians are literalists. When someone says that the U.K. boundary commission’s delay in redistricting gave the Tories an advantage equivalent to 10 percent of the vote, we’re the kind of person who looks it up and claims that the effect is less than 0.7 percent. When someone says, “Since 1968, with the single exception of the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Americans have chosen Republican presidents in times of perceived danger and Democrats in times of relative calm,” we’re like, Hey, really? And we go look that one up too. And when someone says that engineers have more sons and nurses have more daughters . . . well, let’s not go there. So, when I was pointed to this blog by Michael O’Hare making the following claim, in the context of K-12 education in the United States: My [O'Hare's] favorite examples of this junk [educational content with no workplace value] are spelling and pencil-and-paper algorithm arithmetic. These are absolutely critical for a clerk
2 0.92467499 418 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-17-ff
Introduction: Can somebody please fix the pdf reader so that it can correctly render “ff” when I cut and paste? This comes up when I’m copying sections of articles on to the blog. Thank you. P.S. I googled “ff pdf” but no help there. P.P.S. It’s a problem with “fi” also. P.P.P.S. Yes, I know about ligatures. But, if you already knew about ligatures, and I already know about ligatures, then presumably the pdf people already know about ligatures too. So why can’t their clever program, which can already find individual f’s, also find the ff’s and separate them? I assume it’s not so simple but I don’t quite understand why not.
3 0.92020369 1211 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-13-A personal bit of spam, just for me!
Introduction: Hi Andrew, I came across your site while searching for blogs and posts around American obesity and wanted to reach out to get your readership’s feedback on an infographic my team built which focuses on the obesity of America and where we could end up at the going rate. If you’re interested, let’s connect. Have a great weekend! Thanks. *** I have to say, that’s pretty pitiful, to wish someone a “great weekend” on a Tuesday! This guy’s gotta ratchet up his sophistication a few notches if he ever wants to get a job as a spammer for a major software company , for example.
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Introduction: Mark Palko writes : Chess derives most of its complexity through differentiated pieces; with checkers the complexity comes from the interaction between pieces. The result is a series of elegant graph problems where the viable paths change with each move of your opponent. To draw an analogy with chess, imagine if moving your knight could allow your opponent’s bishop to move like a rook. Add to that the potential for traps and manipulation that come with forced capture and you have one of the most remarkable games of all time. . . . It’s not unusual to hear masters of both chess and checkers (draughts) to admit that they prefer the latter. So why does chess get all the respect? Why do you never see a criminal mastermind or a Bond villain playing in a checkers tournament? Part of the problem is that we learn the game as children so we tend to think of it as a children’s game. We focus on how simple the rules are and miss how much complexity and subtlety you can get out of those ru
5 0.91178757 2253 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-17-On deck this week: Revisitings
Introduction: Just for fun I thought I’d run a week’s worth of old posts, just some things I came across when searching for various things. Of course I could just post the links right here but instead I’ll repost with my comments on how things have changed in the intervening years. Mon : In the best alternative histories, the real world is what’s ultimately real (from 2005) Tues : Comments on an anti-Bayesian (from 2006) Wed : How Americans vote (from 2012) Thurs : The candy weighing demonstration, or, the unwisdom of crowds (from 2008) Fri : Random matrices in the news (from 2010) Sat : Picking pennies in front of a steamroller: A parable comes to life (from 2011) Sun : Greg Mankiw’s utility function (from 2010)
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