andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-692 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: John Sides followed up on a discussion of his earlier claim that political independents vote for president in a reasonable way based on economic performance. John’s original post led to the amazing claim by New Republic writer Jonathan Chait that John wouldn’t “even want to be friends with anybody who” voted in this manner. I’ve been sensitive to discussions of rationality and voting ever since Aaron Edlin, Noah Kaplan, and I wrote our article on voting as a rational choice: why and how people vote to improve the well-being of others. Models of rationality are controversial In politics, just as they are in other fields ranging from economics to criminology. On one side you have people trying to argue that all behavior is rational, from lottery playing to drug addiction to engaging in email with exiled Nigerian royalty. Probably the only behavior that nobody has yet to claim is rational is blogging, but I bet that’s coming too. From the other direction, lots of people poi
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 John Sides followed up on a discussion of his earlier claim that political independents vote for president in a reasonable way based on economic performance. [sent-1, score-0.428]
2 John’s original post led to the amazing claim by New Republic writer Jonathan Chait that John wouldn’t “even want to be friends with anybody who” voted in this manner. [sent-2, score-0.091]
3 I’ve been sensitive to discussions of rationality and voting ever since Aaron Edlin, Noah Kaplan, and I wrote our article on voting as a rational choice: why and how people vote to improve the well-being of others. [sent-3, score-1.177]
4 Models of rationality are controversial In politics, just as they are in other fields ranging from economics to criminology. [sent-4, score-0.372]
5 On one side you have people trying to argue that all behavior is rational, from lottery playing to drug addiction to engaging in email with exiled Nigerian royalty. [sent-5, score-0.653]
6 Probably the only behavior that nobody has yet to claim is rational is blogging, but I bet that’s coming too. [sent-6, score-0.878]
7 From the other direction, lots of people point to strong evidence of subject matter ignorance in all fields ranging from demography to the Federal budget to demonstrate that, even if voters think they’re being rational, they can’t be making reasoned decisions in any clear senses. [sent-7, score-0.601]
8 In the usual debates, people argue about whether a behavior is rational or not. [sent-9, score-0.948]
9 Or, at a more sophisticated level, people might dispute how rational or irrational a given action is. [sent-10, score-0.766]
10 People have many overlapping reasons for anything they do. [sent-12, score-0.076]
11 For a behavior to be “rational” does not mean that a person does it as the result of a reasoned argument but rather that some aspects of that behavior could be modeled as such. [sent-13, score-0.625]
12 2 of my article with Edlin and Kaplan: To model a behavior as rational does not compete with more traditional psychological explanations; it reinforces them. [sent-15, score-0.912]
13 For example, voter turnout is higher in elections that are anticipated to be close. [sent-16, score-0.238]
14 These two explanations work together, they don’t compete: it’s rational for you to vote, and it’s also rational for the campaigns to try to get you to vote, to make the race more interesting to increase your motivation level. [sent-18, score-1.293]
15 I don’t anticipate that this note will resolve some of the debates about participation of independents in politics but I hope that this clarifies some of the concerns about the “rationality” label. [sent-19, score-0.469]
16 John is better at engaging journalists than I am. [sent-22, score-0.127]
17 When Chait wrote something that I didn’t like and then responded to my response, I grabbed on a key point in his response and emphasized our agreement, thus ending the debate (such as it was), rather than emphasizing our remaining points of disagreement. [sent-23, score-0.38]
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same-blog 1 0.99999994 692 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-03-“Rationality” reinforces, does not compete with, other models of behavior
Introduction: John Sides followed up on a discussion of his earlier claim that political independents vote for president in a reasonable way based on economic performance. John’s original post led to the amazing claim by New Republic writer Jonathan Chait that John wouldn’t “even want to be friends with anybody who” voted in this manner. I’ve been sensitive to discussions of rationality and voting ever since Aaron Edlin, Noah Kaplan, and I wrote our article on voting as a rational choice: why and how people vote to improve the well-being of others. Models of rationality are controversial In politics, just as they are in other fields ranging from economics to criminology. On one side you have people trying to argue that all behavior is rational, from lottery playing to drug addiction to engaging in email with exiled Nigerian royalty. Probably the only behavior that nobody has yet to claim is rational is blogging, but I bet that’s coming too. From the other direction, lots of people poi
2 0.32579774 921 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-23-That odd couple, “subjectivity” and “rationality”
Introduction: Nowadays “Bayesian” is often taken to be a synonym for rationality, and I can see how this can irritate thoughtful philosophers and statisticians alike: To start with, lots of rational thinking—even lots of rational statistical inference—does not occur within the Bayesian formalism. And, to look at it from the other direction, lots of self-proclaimed Bayesian inference hardly seems rational at all. And in what way is “subjective probability” a model for rational scientific inquiry? On the contrary, subjectivity and rationality are in many ways opposites! [emphasis added] The goal of this paper is to break the link between Bayesian modeling (good, in my opinion) and subjectivity (bad). From this perspective, the irritation of falsificationists regarding exaggerated claims of Bayesian rationality are my ally. . . . See here for the full article, to appear in the journal Rationality, Markets and Morals.
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Introduction: I think I can best do my civic duty by running this one every Election Day, just like Art Buchwald on Thanksgiving. . . . With a national election coming up, and with the publicity at its maximum, now is a good time to ask, is it rational for you to vote? And, by extension, wass it worth your while to pay attention to whatever the candidates and party leaders have been saying for the year or so? With a chance of casting a decisive vote that is comparable to the chance of winning the lottery, what is the gain from being a good citizen and casting your vote? The short answer is, quite a lot. First the bad news. With 100 million voters, your chance that your vote will be decisive–even if the national election is predicted to be reasonably close–is, at best, 1 in a million in a battleground district and much less in a noncompetitive district such as where I live. (The calculation is based on the chance that your district’s vote will be exactly tied, along with the chance that your di
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Introduction: I think I can best do my civic duty by running this one every Election Day, just like Art Buchwald on Thanksgiving. . . . With a national election coming up, and with the publicity at its maximum, now is a good time to ask, is it rational for you to vote? And, by extension, wass it worth your while to pay attention to whatever the candidates and party leaders have been saying for the year or so? With a chance of casting a decisive vote that is comparable to the chance of winning the lottery, what is the gain from being a good citizen and casting your vote? The short answer is, quite a lot. First the bad news. With 100 million voters, your chance that your vote will be decisive–even if the national election is predicted to be reasonably close–is, at best, 1 in a million in a battleground district and much less in a noncompetitive district such as where I live. (The calculation is based on the chance that your district’s vote will be exactly tied, along with the chance that you
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Introduction: Philosopher L. A. Paul and sociologist Kieran Healy write : Choosing to have a child involves a leap of faith, not a carefully calibrated rational choice. When surprising results surface about the dissatisfaction many parents experience, telling yourself that you knew it wouldn’t be that way for you is simply a rationalization. The same is true if you tell yourself you know you’re happier not being a parent. The standard story of parenthood says it’s a deeply fulfilling event that is like nothing else you’ve ever experienced, and that you should carefully weigh what it will be like before choosing to do it. But in reality you can’t have it both ways. I disagree that you can’t have it both ways, for three reasons: 1. Many potential parents do have an idea of what it will be like to be a parent, having participated in child care as an older sibling, aunt, or uncle. 2. The decision of whether to have a child occurs many times: the decision of whether to have a second child
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Introduction: John Sides followed up on a discussion of his earlier claim that political independents vote for president in a reasonable way based on economic performance. John’s original post led to the amazing claim by New Republic writer Jonathan Chait that John wouldn’t “even want to be friends with anybody who” voted in this manner. I’ve been sensitive to discussions of rationality and voting ever since Aaron Edlin, Noah Kaplan, and I wrote our article on voting as a rational choice: why and how people vote to improve the well-being of others. Models of rationality are controversial In politics, just as they are in other fields ranging from economics to criminology. On one side you have people trying to argue that all behavior is rational, from lottery playing to drug addiction to engaging in email with exiled Nigerian royalty. Probably the only behavior that nobody has yet to claim is rational is blogging, but I bet that’s coming too. From the other direction, lots of people poi
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Introduction: I think I can best do my civic duty by running this one every Election Day, just like Art Buchwald on Thanksgiving. . . . With a national election coming up, and with the publicity at its maximum, now is a good time to ask, is it rational for you to vote? And, by extension, wass it worth your while to pay attention to whatever the candidates and party leaders have been saying for the year or so? With a chance of casting a decisive vote that is comparable to the chance of winning the lottery, what is the gain from being a good citizen and casting your vote? The short answer is, quite a lot. First the bad news. With 100 million voters, your chance that your vote will be decisive–even if the national election is predicted to be reasonably close–is, at best, 1 in a million in a battleground district and much less in a noncompetitive district such as where I live. (The calculation is based on the chance that your district’s vote will be exactly tied, along with the chance that you
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Introduction: Actually, $100,000 auction. I learned about it after seeing the following email which was broadcast to a couple of mailing lists: Dear all, I am now writing about something completely different! I need your help “voting” for our project, and sending this e-mail to others so that they can also vote for our project. As you will see from the video, the project would fund *** Project: I am a finalist for a $100,000 prize from Brigham and Women’s Hospital. My project is to understand how ***. Ultimately, we want to develop a ***. We expect that this ** can be used to *** Here are the instructions: 1. Go to the web page: http://brighamandwomens.org/research/BFF/default.aspx 2. scroll to the bottom and follow the link to “Vote” 3. select project #** 4. FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN. Best regards, ** I love that step 4 is in ALL CAPS, just to give it that genuine chain-letter aura. Isn’t this weird? First, that this foundation would give ou
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same-blog 1 0.98244572 692 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-03-“Rationality” reinforces, does not compete with, other models of behavior
Introduction: John Sides followed up on a discussion of his earlier claim that political independents vote for president in a reasonable way based on economic performance. John’s original post led to the amazing claim by New Republic writer Jonathan Chait that John wouldn’t “even want to be friends with anybody who” voted in this manner. I’ve been sensitive to discussions of rationality and voting ever since Aaron Edlin, Noah Kaplan, and I wrote our article on voting as a rational choice: why and how people vote to improve the well-being of others. Models of rationality are controversial In politics, just as they are in other fields ranging from economics to criminology. On one side you have people trying to argue that all behavior is rational, from lottery playing to drug addiction to engaging in email with exiled Nigerian royalty. Probably the only behavior that nobody has yet to claim is rational is blogging, but I bet that’s coming too. From the other direction, lots of people poi
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Introduction: The other day we had a fun little discussion in the comments section of the sister blog about the appropriateness of stating forecast probabilities to the nearest tenth of a percentage point. It started when Josh Tucker posted this graph from Nate Silver : My first reaction was: this looks pretty but it’s hyper-precise. I’m a big fan of Nate’s work, but all those little wiggles on the graph can’t really mean anything. And what could it possibly mean to compute this probability to that level of precision? In the comments, people came at me from two directions. From one side, Jeffrey Friedman expressed a hard core attitude that it’s meaningless to give a probability forecast of a unique event: What could it possibly mean, period, given that this election will never be repeated? . . . I know there’s a vast literature on this, but I’m still curious, as a non-statistician, what it could mean for there to be a meaningful 65% probability (as opposed to a non-quantifiab
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