andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-626 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Readers of this bizarre story (in which a dubious claim about reflectivity of food in cooking transmuted into a flat-out wrong claim about the relevance of reflectivity of solar panels) might wonder how genius Nathan Myhrvold (Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton at age 24, postdoc with Stephen Hawking for chrissake) could make such a basic mistake. In an earlier comment, I dismissed this with a flip allusion to Wile E. Coyote. But now I’m thinking there’s something more going on. In our blog discussion (see links above), Phil is surprised I didn’t take a stronger stance on the albedo issue after reading Pierrehumbert’s explanation. Phil asks: Why did I write “experts seem to think the albedo effect is a red herring” instead of something stronger such as, “as Pierrehumbert shows in detail, the albedo effect is a red herring”? I didn’t do this because my physics credentials are no better than Myhrvold’s. And, given that Myhrvold got it wrong, I don’t completely trus
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1 Readers of this bizarre story (in which a dubious claim about reflectivity of food in cooking transmuted into a flat-out wrong claim about the relevance of reflectivity of solar panels) might wonder how genius Nathan Myhrvold (Ph. [sent-1, score-0.853]
2 in theoretical physics from Princeton at age 24, postdoc with Stephen Hawking for chrissake) could make such a basic mistake. [sent-3, score-0.435]
3 In an earlier comment, I dismissed this with a flip allusion to Wile E. [sent-4, score-0.152]
4 In our blog discussion (see links above), Phil is surprised I didn’t take a stronger stance on the albedo issue after reading Pierrehumbert’s explanation. [sent-7, score-0.48]
5 Phil asks: Why did I write “experts seem to think the albedo effect is a red herring” instead of something stronger such as, “as Pierrehumbert shows in detail, the albedo effect is a red herring”? [sent-8, score-0.745]
6 I didn’t do this because my physics credentials are no better than Myhrvold’s. [sent-9, score-0.445]
7 I majored in physics in college and could’ve gone to grad school in physics–I actually almost did so, switching to statistics at the last minute. [sent-11, score-0.52]
8 I could definitely get confused by a slick physics argument. [sent-16, score-0.378]
9 Given what he’s written on albedo, I doubt his physics intuition is anywhere near as good as Phil’s. [sent-18, score-0.378]
10 My guess is that Myhrvold, like me, got good grades and was able to solve physics problems but made a wise choice in leaving physics to do something else. [sent-19, score-0.879]
11 I’m on a Windows machine but my spell checker keeps flagging “Myhrvold. [sent-24, score-0.223]
12 ” I’m surprised that in all his years there, he didn’t use his influence to put his name in the dictionary. [sent-25, score-0.075]
13 Hmm, lemme try some more: “Dukakis” gets flagged. [sent-28, score-0.066]
14 Getting frozen out by Reagan or Roosevelt, fine. [sent-32, score-0.08]
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Introduction: Readers of this bizarre story (in which a dubious claim about reflectivity of food in cooking transmuted into a flat-out wrong claim about the relevance of reflectivity of solar panels) might wonder how genius Nathan Myhrvold (Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton at age 24, postdoc with Stephen Hawking for chrissake) could make such a basic mistake. In an earlier comment, I dismissed this with a flip allusion to Wile E. Coyote. But now I’m thinking there’s something more going on. In our blog discussion (see links above), Phil is surprised I didn’t take a stronger stance on the albedo issue after reading Pierrehumbert’s explanation. Phil asks: Why did I write “experts seem to think the albedo effect is a red herring” instead of something stronger such as, “as Pierrehumbert shows in detail, the albedo effect is a red herring”? I didn’t do this because my physics credentials are no better than Myhrvold’s. And, given that Myhrvold got it wrong, I don’t completely trus
2 0.41770893 622 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-21-A possible resolution of the albedo mystery!
Introduction: Remember that bizarre episode in Freakonomics 2, where Levitt and Dubner went to the Batcave-like lair of a genius billionaire who told them that “the problem with solar panels is that they’re black .” I’m not the only one who wondered at the time: of all the issues to bring up about solar power, why that one? Well, I think I’ve found the answer in this article by John Lanchester: In 2004, Nathan Myhrvold, who had, five years earlier, at the advanced age of forty, retired from his job as Microsoft’s chief technology officer, began to contribute to the culinary discussion board egullet.org . . . At the time he grew interested in sous vide, there was no book in English on the subject, and he resolved to write one. . . . broadened it further to include information about the basic physics of heating processes, then to include the physics and chemistry of traditional cooking techniques, and then to include the science and practical application of the highly inventive new techniq
3 0.41007426 625 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-23-My last post on albedo, I promise
Introduction: After seeing my recent blogs on Nathan Myhrvold, a friend told me that, in the tech world, the albedo-obsessed genius is known as a patent troll. Really? Yup. My friend writes: It’s perhaps indicative that Myhrvold comes up in the top-ten hits on Google for [patent troll]. These blog posts lay it out pretty clearly: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/12/giant_patent_troll_awakens_as.php http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/intellectual-ventures-goes-to-court Just about anyone’s that’s been in the tech game thinks patents are ridiculous. The lab where I used to work wanted us to create an “intellectual mine field” in our field so the companycould block anyone from entering the space. Yes, we made stuff, but the patents were for totally obvious ideas that anyone would have. Even Google’s PageRank was just a simple application of standard social network analysis models of authorities in netw
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Introduction: After seeing my recent blogs on Nathan Myhrvold, a friend told me that, in the tech world, the albedo-obsessed genius is known as a patent troll. Really? Yup. My friend writes: It’s perhaps indicative that Myhrvold comes up in the top-ten hits on Google for [patent troll]. These blog posts lay it out pretty clearly: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100217/1853298215.shtml http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/12/giant_patent_troll_awakens_as.php http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/intellectual-ventures-goes-to-court Just about anyone’s that’s been in the tech game thinks patents are ridiculous. The lab where I used to work wanted us to create an “intellectual mine field” in our field so the companycould block anyone from entering the space. Yes, we made stuff, but the patents were for totally obvious ideas that anyone would have. Even Google’s PageRank was just a simple application of standard social network analysis models of authorities in netw
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Introduction: A statistician friend reports the following conversation at a dinner party: My friend: “So what do you do?” A good looking fellow: “I do modeling. What about you?” My friend: “Actually, I do modeling too…” Which reminds me . . . on Halloween I went out trick-or-treating straight from work. I decided to tell people I was dressed as a “dork.” Everyone was amused. But next year I want to do a real costume.
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Introduction: Christian Robert points to this absurd patent of the Monte Carlo method (which, as Christian notes, was actually invented by Stanislaw Ulam and others in the 1940s). The whole thing is pretty unreadable. I wonder if they first wrote it as a journal article and then it got rejected everywhere, so they decided to submit it as a patent instead. What’s even worse is this bit: This invention was made with government support under Grant Numbers 0612170 and 0347408 awarded by the National Science Foundation. So our tax dollars are being given to IBM so they can try to bring statistics to a halt by patenting one of our most basic tools? I’d say this is just a waste of money, but given that our country is run by lawyers, there must be some outside chance that this patent could actually succeed? Perhaps there’s room for an improvement in the patent that involves albedo in some way?
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Introduction: Readers of this bizarre story (in which a dubious claim about reflectivity of food in cooking transmuted into a flat-out wrong claim about the relevance of reflectivity of solar panels) might wonder how genius Nathan Myhrvold (Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Princeton at age 24, postdoc with Stephen Hawking for chrissake) could make such a basic mistake. In an earlier comment, I dismissed this with a flip allusion to Wile E. Coyote. But now I’m thinking there’s something more going on. In our blog discussion (see links above), Phil is surprised I didn’t take a stronger stance on the albedo issue after reading Pierrehumbert’s explanation. Phil asks: Why did I write “experts seem to think the albedo effect is a red herring” instead of something stronger such as, “as Pierrehumbert shows in detail, the albedo effect is a red herring”? I didn’t do this because my physics credentials are no better than Myhrvold’s. And, given that Myhrvold got it wrong, I don’t completely trus
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Introduction: Kaiser writes : I have read a fair share of bore-them-to-tears compilation of survey research results – you know, those presentations with one multi-colored, stacked or grouped bar chart after another, extending for dozens of pages. I hate those grouped bar charts also—as I’ve written repeatedly, the central role of almost all statistical displays is to make comparisons, and you can make twice as many comparisons with a line plot as a bar plot. But I suspect the real problem with the reports that Kaiser is talking about is the “extending for dozens of pages” part. If they could just print each individual plot smaller and put dozens on a page, you could maybe get through the whole report in two or three pages. Almost always, graphs are too large. I’ve even seen abominations such as a fifty-page report with a single huge pie chart on each page. As Kaiser says, think about communication! A report with one big pie chart or bar plot per page is like a text document with one w
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