andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-657 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Scott “Dilbert” Adams has met Charlie Sheen and thinks he really is a superbeing. This perhaps relates to some well-known cognitive biases. I’m not sure what this one’s called, but the idea is that Adams is probably overweighting his direct impressions: he saw Sheen-on-the-set, not Sheen-beating-his-wife. Also, everybody else hates Sheen, so Adams can distinguish himself by being tolerant, etc. I’m not sure what this latter phenomenon is called, but I’ve noticed it before. When I come into a new situation and meet some person X, who everybody says is a jerk, and then person X happens to act in a civilized way that day, then there’s a real temptation to say, Hey, X isn’t so bad after all. It makes me feel so tolerant and above-it-all. Perhaps that’s partly what’s going on with Scott Adams here: he can view himself as the objective outsider who can be impressed by Sheen, not like all those silly emotional people who get hung up on the headlines. From here, though, it just ma
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1 Scott “Dilbert” Adams has met Charlie Sheen and thinks he really is a superbeing. [sent-1, score-0.223]
2 This perhaps relates to some well-known cognitive biases. [sent-2, score-0.229]
3 I’m not sure what this one’s called, but the idea is that Adams is probably overweighting his direct impressions: he saw Sheen-on-the-set, not Sheen-beating-his-wife. [sent-3, score-0.182]
4 Also, everybody else hates Sheen, so Adams can distinguish himself by being tolerant, etc. [sent-4, score-0.374]
5 I’m not sure what this latter phenomenon is called, but I’ve noticed it before. [sent-5, score-0.284]
6 When I come into a new situation and meet some person X, who everybody says is a jerk, and then person X happens to act in a civilized way that day, then there’s a real temptation to say, Hey, X isn’t so bad after all. [sent-6, score-0.894]
7 Perhaps that’s partly what’s going on with Scott Adams here: he can view himself as the objective outsider who can be impressed by Sheen, not like all those silly emotional people who get hung up on the headlines. [sent-8, score-0.877]
8 From here, though, it just makes Adams look silly, to be so impressed that Sheen didn’t miss a line of dialogue, etc. [sent-9, score-0.454]
9 The logical next step is the story of how he met John Edwards and was impressed at how statesmanlike he was. [sent-10, score-0.533]
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Introduction: Scott “Dilbert” Adams has met Charlie Sheen and thinks he really is a superbeing. This perhaps relates to some well-known cognitive biases. I’m not sure what this one’s called, but the idea is that Adams is probably overweighting his direct impressions: he saw Sheen-on-the-set, not Sheen-beating-his-wife. Also, everybody else hates Sheen, so Adams can distinguish himself by being tolerant, etc. I’m not sure what this latter phenomenon is called, but I’ve noticed it before. When I come into a new situation and meet some person X, who everybody says is a jerk, and then person X happens to act in a civilized way that day, then there’s a real temptation to say, Hey, X isn’t so bad after all. It makes me feel so tolerant and above-it-all. Perhaps that’s partly what’s going on with Scott Adams here: he can view himself as the objective outsider who can be impressed by Sheen, not like all those silly emotional people who get hung up on the headlines. From here, though, it just ma
Introduction: We were having so much fun on this thread that I couldn’t resist linking to this news item by Adrian Chen. The good news is that Scott Adams (creater of the Dilbert comic strip) “has a certified genius IQ” and that he “can open jars with [his] bare hands.” He is also “able to lift heavy objects.” Cool! In all seriousness, I knew nothing about this aspect of Adams when I wrote the earlier blog. I was just surprised (and remain surprised) that he was so impressed with Charlie Sheen for being good-looking and being able to remember his lines. At the time I thought it was just a matter of Adams being overly-influenced by his direct experience, along with some satisfaction in separating himself from the general mass of Sheen-haters out there. But now I wonder if something more is going on, that maybe he feels that he and Sheen are on the same side in a culture war. In any case, the ultimate topic of interest here is not Sheen or Adams but rather more general questions of what
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Introduction: I was checking the Dilbert blog (sorry! I was just curious what was up after the events of a few weeks ago) and saw this: I [Scott Adams] wonder if any old-time racists still exist. I knew a few racists when I was a kid, back in upstate New York. In my adult life, I don’t think I’ve met one. . . . I certainly understand if you’ve witnessed it, or suffered from it. I’m just saying I haven’t seen it where I live. Clearly that sort of activity is distributed unevenly around the country. Just to be clear: I’m only saying I haven’t personally witnessed overt racism in my adult life. I accept that you have seen it firsthand, if you say so. Classic racism of the old-timey variety is probably only possible in people who don’t own television sets and haven’t gone through grade school. I’ll grant you that racist prison gangs and neo-Nazis exist. But obviously something else is going on with those guys. Let’s call them the exceptions. . . . I assume discrimination must be going on somep
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Introduction: In case you haven’t been following: - Top ten excuses for plagiarism - Why I won’t be sad to see Anthony Weiner retire - U.S. voter participation has not fallen steadily over the past few decades - Scott Adams had an interesting idea
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Introduction: Louis Mittel writes: The premise of the column this guy is starting is interesting: Noah Davis interviews a smart person and then interviews the smartest person that smart person knows and so on. It reminded me of you mentioning survey design strategy of asking people about other people, like “How many people do you know named Stuart?” or “How many people do you know that have had an abortion?” Ignoring the interview aspect of what this guy is doing, I think there’s some cool questions about the distribution/path behavior of smartest-person-I-know chains (say, seeded at random). Do they loop? If so, how long do they run before looping, how large are the loops? What parts of the population do the explore? Do you know of anything that’s been done on something like this? My reply: Interesting question. It could be asked of any referral chain, for example asking a sequence of people, “Who’s the tallest person you know?” or “Who’s the best piano player you know” or “Who’
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Introduction: Scott “Dilbert” Adams has met Charlie Sheen and thinks he really is a superbeing. This perhaps relates to some well-known cognitive biases. I’m not sure what this one’s called, but the idea is that Adams is probably overweighting his direct impressions: he saw Sheen-on-the-set, not Sheen-beating-his-wife. Also, everybody else hates Sheen, so Adams can distinguish himself by being tolerant, etc. I’m not sure what this latter phenomenon is called, but I’ve noticed it before. When I come into a new situation and meet some person X, who everybody says is a jerk, and then person X happens to act in a civilized way that day, then there’s a real temptation to say, Hey, X isn’t so bad after all. It makes me feel so tolerant and above-it-all. Perhaps that’s partly what’s going on with Scott Adams here: he can view himself as the objective outsider who can be impressed by Sheen, not like all those silly emotional people who get hung up on the headlines. From here, though, it just ma
Introduction: We were having so much fun on this thread that I couldn’t resist linking to this news item by Adrian Chen. The good news is that Scott Adams (creater of the Dilbert comic strip) “has a certified genius IQ” and that he “can open jars with [his] bare hands.” He is also “able to lift heavy objects.” Cool! In all seriousness, I knew nothing about this aspect of Adams when I wrote the earlier blog. I was just surprised (and remain surprised) that he was so impressed with Charlie Sheen for being good-looking and being able to remember his lines. At the time I thought it was just a matter of Adams being overly-influenced by his direct experience, along with some satisfaction in separating himself from the general mass of Sheen-haters out there. But now I wonder if something more is going on, that maybe he feels that he and Sheen are on the same side in a culture war. In any case, the ultimate topic of interest here is not Sheen or Adams but rather more general questions of what
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Introduction: I was checking the Dilbert blog (sorry! I was just curious what was up after the events of a few weeks ago) and saw this: I [Scott Adams] wonder if any old-time racists still exist. I knew a few racists when I was a kid, back in upstate New York. In my adult life, I don’t think I’ve met one. . . . I certainly understand if you’ve witnessed it, or suffered from it. I’m just saying I haven’t seen it where I live. Clearly that sort of activity is distributed unevenly around the country. Just to be clear: I’m only saying I haven’t personally witnessed overt racism in my adult life. I accept that you have seen it firsthand, if you say so. Classic racism of the old-timey variety is probably only possible in people who don’t own television sets and haven’t gone through grade school. I’ll grant you that racist prison gangs and neo-Nazis exist. But obviously something else is going on with those guys. Let’s call them the exceptions. . . . I assume discrimination must be going on somep
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Introduction: Brett Keller points us to this feel-good story of the day: A Samurai sword-wielding Mormon bishop helped a neighbor woman escape a Tuesday morning attack by a man who had been stalking her. Kent Hendrix woke up Tuesday to his teenage son pounding on his bedroom door and telling him somebody was being mugged in front of their house. The 47-year-old father of six rushed out the door and grabbed the weapon closest to him — a 29-inch high carbon steel Samurai sword. . . . Hendrix, a pharmaceutical statistician, was one of several neighbors who came to the woman’s aid after she began yelling for help . . . Too bad the whole “statistician” thing got buried in the middle of the article. Fair enough, though: I don’t know what it takes to become a Mormon bishop, but I assume it’s more effort than what it takes to learn statistics.
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Introduction: Jay Livingston writes : I know that in art, quality and value are two very different things. Still, I had to stop and wonder when I read about Domenico and Eleanore De Sole, who in 2004 paid $8.3 million for a painting attributed to Mark Rothko that they now say is a worthless fake. One day a painting is worth $8.3 million; the next day, the same painting – same quality, same capacity to give aesthetic pleasure or do whatever it is that art does – is “worthless.”* Art forgery also makes me wonder about the buyer’s motive. If the buyer wanted only to have and to gaze upon something beautiful, something with artistic merit, then a fake Rothko is no different than a real Rothko. It seems more likely that what the buyer wants is to own something valuable – i.e., something that costs a lot. Displaying your brokerage account statements is just too crude and obvious. What the high-end art market offers is a kind of money laundering. Objects that are rare and therefore expensive
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Introduction: Scott “Dilbert” Adams has met Charlie Sheen and thinks he really is a superbeing. This perhaps relates to some well-known cognitive biases. I’m not sure what this one’s called, but the idea is that Adams is probably overweighting his direct impressions: he saw Sheen-on-the-set, not Sheen-beating-his-wife. Also, everybody else hates Sheen, so Adams can distinguish himself by being tolerant, etc. I’m not sure what this latter phenomenon is called, but I’ve noticed it before. When I come into a new situation and meet some person X, who everybody says is a jerk, and then person X happens to act in a civilized way that day, then there’s a real temptation to say, Hey, X isn’t so bad after all. It makes me feel so tolerant and above-it-all. Perhaps that’s partly what’s going on with Scott Adams here: he can view himself as the objective outsider who can be impressed by Sheen, not like all those silly emotional people who get hung up on the headlines. From here, though, it just ma
Introduction: We were having so much fun on this thread that I couldn’t resist linking to this news item by Adrian Chen. The good news is that Scott Adams (creater of the Dilbert comic strip) “has a certified genius IQ” and that he “can open jars with [his] bare hands.” He is also “able to lift heavy objects.” Cool! In all seriousness, I knew nothing about this aspect of Adams when I wrote the earlier blog. I was just surprised (and remain surprised) that he was so impressed with Charlie Sheen for being good-looking and being able to remember his lines. At the time I thought it was just a matter of Adams being overly-influenced by his direct experience, along with some satisfaction in separating himself from the general mass of Sheen-haters out there. But now I wonder if something more is going on, that maybe he feels that he and Sheen are on the same side in a culture war. In any case, the ultimate topic of interest here is not Sheen or Adams but rather more general questions of what
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