andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-645 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: We all have opinions about the federal budget and how it should be spent. Infrequently, those opinions are informed by some knowledge about where the money actually goes. It turns out that most people don’t have a clue. What about you? Here, take this poll/quiz and then compare your answers to (1) what other people said, in a CNN poll that asked about these same items and (2) compare your answers to the real answers. Quiz is below the fold. The questions below are from a CNN poll. ======== Think about all the money that the federal government spent last year. I’m going to name a few federal programs and for each one, I’d like you to estimate what percentage of the federal government’s budget last year was spent on each of those programs. Medicare — the federal health program for the elderly Medicaid — the federal health program for the poor Social Security Military spending by the Department of Defense Aid to foreign countries for international development
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 We all have opinions about the federal budget and how it should be spent. [sent-1, score-0.748]
2 Infrequently, those opinions are informed by some knowledge about where the money actually goes. [sent-2, score-0.329]
3 Here, take this poll/quiz and then compare your answers to (1) what other people said, in a CNN poll that asked about these same items and (2) compare your answers to the real answers. [sent-5, score-0.546]
4 ======== Think about all the money that the federal government spent last year. [sent-8, score-0.783]
5 I’m going to name a few federal programs and for each one, I’d like you to estimate what percentage of the federal government’s budget last year was spent on each of those programs. [sent-9, score-1.156]
6 Answers are below (as best I could determine them by spending 15 minutes Googling), scrambled around to help you avoid looking at them until you’re ready to compare them to yours. [sent-11, score-0.309]
7 1%; 4) 20% Some of these questions don’t seem ideal for me, for the purpose of determining whether people know enough to have an informed opinion about whether various parts of the federal budget should be cut or increased or whatever. [sent-15, score-1.144]
8 For instance, people might have an informed opinion about the total amount of government aid to the poor, without knowing the breakdown of how much goes to food assistance, how much to housing, and how much to direct payments. [sent-16, score-0.879]
9 have really ridiculous ideas about where the government spends its money. [sent-20, score-0.28]
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same-blog 1 1.0000001 645 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-04-Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?
Introduction: We all have opinions about the federal budget and how it should be spent. Infrequently, those opinions are informed by some knowledge about where the money actually goes. It turns out that most people don’t have a clue. What about you? Here, take this poll/quiz and then compare your answers to (1) what other people said, in a CNN poll that asked about these same items and (2) compare your answers to the real answers. Quiz is below the fold. The questions below are from a CNN poll. ======== Think about all the money that the federal government spent last year. I’m going to name a few federal programs and for each one, I’d like you to estimate what percentage of the federal government’s budget last year was spent on each of those programs. Medicare — the federal health program for the elderly Medicaid — the federal health program for the poor Social Security Military spending by the Department of Defense Aid to foreign countries for international development
Introduction: Liz Stuart writes: I am writing to solicit ideas for how we might measure a particular type of political environment, relevant to school districts’ likelihood of participating in federal evaluations (funded by the US Department of Education) of education programs. This is part of a larger project investigating external validity and the generalizability of results from randomized trials to target populations that I am doing with Rob Olsen, Steve Bell, and Larry Orr. In this piece of the work we are trying to model the factors that may impact whether a school district is likely to participate in one of these large-scale evaluations. One factor that occurred to us was the political environment in the state, and how likely a school district might be to want to “go along with” and participate in a federal evaluation. (And that, for example, this might depend on the party alignment between the state politics and the federal government.). We were wondering if you or your readers might
Introduction: Jeff Lax sends along this good catch from Ben Somberg, who noticed this from Washington Post writer Lori Montgomery: If Congress doesn’t provide additional stimulus spending, economists inside and outside the administration warn that the nation risks a prolonged period of high unemployment or, more frightening, a descent back into recession. But a competing threat — the exploding federal budget deficit — seems to be resonating more powerfully in Congress and among voters. Somberg is skeptical, though, at least of the part about “resonating among voters.” He finds that in four out of five recent polls, people are much more concerned about jobs than about the deficit: A Pew Research / National Journal poll from early June asked “Which of the following national economic issues worries you most?” Number one was “job situation” with 41%. “Federal budget deficit” got 23%. An NBC / Wall Street Journal poll from early May asked “Please tell me which one of these items you thi
4 0.12785396 1097 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-03-Libertarians in Space
Introduction: After quoting from a speech where a Republican presidential candidate praises the space program, Mark Palko writes : I [Palko] don’t know what the reaction of the crowd was (the reporting wasn’t that detailed) but I’d imagine it was friendly. You can usually get a warm response from a Republican crowd by coming out in favor of manned space exploration which is, when you think about, strange as hell. If you set out to genetically engineer a program that libertarians ought to object to, you’d probably come up with something like the manned space program. A massive government initiative, tremendously expensive, with no real role for individual initiative. Compared to infrastructure projects the benefits to business are limited. . . . There have been efforts in libertarian-leaning organs (The Wall Street Journal, Reason, John Tierney’s NYT columns) trying to argue that interplanetary exploration can be done on the cheap. These usually rely heavily on the blatant low-balling of Robert
5 0.12268898 805 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-16-Hey–here’s what you missed in the past 30 days!
Introduction: OK, the 30 days of statistics are over. I’ll still be posting regularly on statistical topics, but now it will be mixed in with everything else, as before. Here’s what I put on the sister blogs in the past month: 1. How to write an entire report with fake data. 2. “Life getting shorter for women in hundreds of U.S. counties”: I’d like to see a graph of relative change in death rates, with age on the x-axis. 3. “Not a choice” != “genetic” . 4. Remember when I said I’d never again post on albedo? I was lying . 5. Update on Arrow’s theorem. It’s a Swiss thing , you wouldn’t understand. 6. Dan Ariely can’t read, but don’t blame Johnson and Goldstein. 7. My co-blogger endorses college scholarships for bowling . Which reminds me that my friends and I did “intramural bowling” in high school to get out of going to gym class. Nobody paid us. We even had to rent the shoes! 8. The quest for http://www.freakonomics.com/2008/10/10/my-colleague-casey-mu
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same-blog 1 0.9620524 645 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-04-Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?
Introduction: We all have opinions about the federal budget and how it should be spent. Infrequently, those opinions are informed by some knowledge about where the money actually goes. It turns out that most people don’t have a clue. What about you? Here, take this poll/quiz and then compare your answers to (1) what other people said, in a CNN poll that asked about these same items and (2) compare your answers to the real answers. Quiz is below the fold. The questions below are from a CNN poll. ======== Think about all the money that the federal government spent last year. I’m going to name a few federal programs and for each one, I’d like you to estimate what percentage of the federal government’s budget last year was spent on each of those programs. Medicare — the federal health program for the elderly Medicaid — the federal health program for the poor Social Security Military spending by the Department of Defense Aid to foreign countries for international development
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Introduction: People seeking unemployment benefits or welfare would have to first pass a drug test under a proposal Sen. Orrin Hatch will try to add to legislation extending the social safety net during this time of economic turmoil. Hatch … said his idea would help battle drug addiction and could reduce the nation’s debt. He will try to get the Senate to include his amendment to a $140 billion bill extending tax breaks and social programs this week. “This amendment is a way to help people get off of drugs to become productive and healthy members of society, while ensuring that valuable taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted,” he said after announcing his amendment. “Too many Americans are locked into a life of a dangerous dependency not only on drugs, but the federal assistance that serves to enable their addiction.” I have a horrible vision of NSF and NIH dollars used to support the amphetamine dependencies of students pulling all-nighters in their bio labs. Something’s gotta be done about this
Introduction: Jeff Lax sends along this good catch from Ben Somberg, who noticed this from Washington Post writer Lori Montgomery: If Congress doesn’t provide additional stimulus spending, economists inside and outside the administration warn that the nation risks a prolonged period of high unemployment or, more frightening, a descent back into recession. But a competing threat — the exploding federal budget deficit — seems to be resonating more powerfully in Congress and among voters. Somberg is skeptical, though, at least of the part about “resonating among voters.” He finds that in four out of five recent polls, people are much more concerned about jobs than about the deficit: A Pew Research / National Journal poll from early June asked “Which of the following national economic issues worries you most?” Number one was “job situation” with 41%. “Federal budget deficit” got 23%. An NBC / Wall Street Journal poll from early May asked “Please tell me which one of these items you thi
4 0.74180722 67 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-03-More on that Dartmouth health care study
Introduction: Hank Aaron at the Brookings Institution, who knows a lot more about policy than I do, had some interesting comments on the recent New York Times article about problems with the Dartmouth health care atlas. which I discussed a few hours ago . Aaron writes that much of the criticism in that newspaper article was off-base, but that there are real difficulties in translating the Dartmouth results (finding little relation between spending and quality of care) to cost savings in the real world. Aaron writes: The Dartmouth research, showing huge variation in the use of various medical procedures and large variations in per patient spending under Medicare, has been a revelation and a useful one. There is no way to explain such variation on medical grounds and it is problematic. But readers, including my former colleague Orszag, have taken an oversimplistic view of what the numbers mean and what to do about them. There are three really big problems with the common interpreta
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Introduction: This post is by Phil. This DC Streets Blog post gives a concise summary of a report by “The Tax Foundation”. The money shot is here , a table that shows what fraction spending on roads in each state in the U.S. is covered by local, state, and federal gas taxes, tolls, registration fees, etc. (Click on the ‘rank’ table heading to put it in useful order). The national average is 51%, and in no state do drivers directly pay more than 80% of the cost of the roads and highways. That means that, nationwide, half the cost of the roads is paid out of general government funds. Even if it were 100% this still wouldn’t cover additional government costs of driving (such as military spending to protect the oil supply, and law enforcement costs, etc.) but I’ll ignore those in this post. Of course, most of the general funds that make up the difference are themselves paid by people who drive, so this isn’t as grossly unfair as it seems. But it’s still pretty unfair, and it is a huge “market di
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Introduction: We all have opinions about the federal budget and how it should be spent. Infrequently, those opinions are informed by some knowledge about where the money actually goes. It turns out that most people don’t have a clue. What about you? Here, take this poll/quiz and then compare your answers to (1) what other people said, in a CNN poll that asked about these same items and (2) compare your answers to the real answers. Quiz is below the fold. The questions below are from a CNN poll. ======== Think about all the money that the federal government spent last year. I’m going to name a few federal programs and for each one, I’d like you to estimate what percentage of the federal government’s budget last year was spent on each of those programs. Medicare — the federal health program for the elderly Medicaid — the federal health program for the poor Social Security Military spending by the Department of Defense Aid to foreign countries for international development
2 0.96299171 1307 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-07-The hare, the pineapple, and Ed Wegman
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
Introduction: Thomas Basbøll points to this ten-year-old article from Anne-Wil Harzing on the consequences of sloppy citations. Harzing tells the story of an unsupported claim that is contradicted by published data but has been presented as fact in a particular area of the academic literature. She writes that “high expatriate failure rates [with "expatriate failure" defined as "the expatriate returning home before his/her contractual period of employment abroad expires"] were in fact a myth created by massive misquotations and careless copying of references.” Many papers claimed an expatriate failure rate of 25-40% (according to Harzing, this is much higher than the actual rate as estimated from empirical data), with this overly-high rate supported by a complicated link of references leading to . . . no real data. Hartzing reports the following published claims: Harvey (1996: 103): `The rate of failure of expatriate managers relocating overseas from United States based MNCs has been estima
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Introduction: Our downstairs neighbor hates us. She looks away from us when we see them on the street, if we’re coming into the building at the same time she doesn’t hold open the door, and if we’re in the elevator when it stops on her floor, she refuses to get on. On the other hand, if you’re a sociology professor in Chicago, one of your colleagues might try to run you over in a parking lot. So I guess I’m getting off easy.
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Introduction: Brandon Behlendorf writes: I [Behlendorf] am replicating some previous research using OLS [he's talking about what we call "linear regression"---ed.] to regress a logged rate (to reduce skew) of Y on a number of predictors (Xs). Y is the count of a phenomena divided by the population of the unit of the analysis. The problem that I am encountering is that Y is composite count of a number of distinct phenomena [A+B+C], and these phenomena are not uniformly distributed across the sample. Most of the research in this area has conducted regressions either with Y or with individual phenomena [A or B or C] as the dependent variable. Yet it seems that if [A, B, C] are not uniformly distributed across the sample of units in the same proportion, then the use of Y would be biased, since as a count of [A+B+C] divided by the population, it would treat as equivalent units both [2+0.5+1.5] and [4+0+0]. My goal is trying to find a methodology which allows a researcher to regress Y on a
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