andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-849 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Mike Spagat sends in an interesting explanation for the noted problems with conflict mortality studies (a topic we’ve discussed on occasion on this blog). Spagat writes: This analysis is based on the fact that conflict violence does not spread out at all uniformly across a map but, rather, tends to concentrate in a few areas. This means that small, headline-grabbing violence surveys are extremely unreliable. There is a second point, based on the work of David Hemenway which you’ve also cited on your blog. Even within exceptionally violent environments most households will still not have a violent death. So a very small false positive rate in a household survey will cause substantial upward bias in violence estimates.
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1 Mike Spagat sends in an interesting explanation for the noted problems with conflict mortality studies (a topic we’ve discussed on occasion on this blog). [sent-1, score-1.146]
2 Spagat writes: This analysis is based on the fact that conflict violence does not spread out at all uniformly across a map but, rather, tends to concentrate in a few areas. [sent-2, score-1.66]
3 This means that small, headline-grabbing violence surveys are extremely unreliable. [sent-3, score-0.721]
4 There is a second point, based on the work of David Hemenway which you’ve also cited on your blog. [sent-4, score-0.275]
5 Even within exceptionally violent environments most households will still not have a violent death. [sent-5, score-1.214]
6 So a very small false positive rate in a household survey will cause substantial upward bias in violence estimates. [sent-6, score-1.511]
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same-blog 1 0.99999988 849 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-11-The Reliability of Cluster Surveys of Conflict Mortality: Violent Deaths and Non-Violent Deaths
Introduction: Mike Spagat sends in an interesting explanation for the noted problems with conflict mortality studies (a topic we’ve discussed on occasion on this blog). Spagat writes: This analysis is based on the fact that conflict violence does not spread out at all uniformly across a map but, rather, tends to concentrate in a few areas. This means that small, headline-grabbing violence surveys are extremely unreliable. There is a second point, based on the work of David Hemenway which you’ve also cited on your blog. Even within exceptionally violent environments most households will still not have a violent death. So a very small false positive rate in a household survey will cause substantial upward bias in violence estimates.
Introduction: Mike Spagat points to this interview , which, he writes, covers themes that are discussed on the blog such as wrong ideas that don’t die, peer review and the statistics of conflict deaths. I agree. It’s good stuff. Here are some of the things that Spagat says (he’s being interviewed by Joel Wing): In fact, the standard excess-deaths concept leads to an interesting conundrum when combined with an interesting fact exposed in the next-to-latest Human Security Report ; in most countries child mortality rates decline during armed conflict (chapter 6). So if you believe the usual excess-death causality story then you’re forced to conclude that many conflicts actually save the lives of many children. Of course, the idea of wars savings lives is pretty hard to swallow. A much more sensible understanding is that there are a variety of factors that determine child deaths and that in many cases the factors that save the lives of children are stronger than the negative effects that confli
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Introduction: Mike Spagat writes: Here is yet another debunking article I’ve written, this one in the latest issue of Significance. It shows the Lancet once again publishing spectacularly wrong information that has misinformed public discussion on a crucial issue with ongoing reverberations. For example, there is Tony Blair’s recent justification for the Iraq war offered in front of the Chilcot Inquiry in the UK quoted at the beginning of the paper. I haven’t had a chance to look at this one, but here’s a link to some related Spagat work.
Introduction: Earlier today, Nate criticized a U.S. military survey that asks troops the question, “Do you currently serve with a male or female Service member you believe to be homosexual.” [emphasis added] As Nate points out, by asking this question in such a speculative way, “it would seem that you’ll be picking up a tremendous number of false positives–soldiers who are believed to be gay, but aren’t–and that these false positives will swamp any instances in which soldiers (in spite of DADT) are actually somewhat open about their same-sex attractions.” This is a general problem in survey research. In an article in Chance magazine in 1997, “The myth of millions of annual self-defense gun uses: a case study of survey overestimates of rare events” [see here for related references], David Hemenway uses the false-positive, false-negative reasoning to explain this bias in terms of probability theory. Misclassifications that induce seemingly minor biases in estimates of certain small probab
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Introduction: Michael Spagat notifies me that his article criticizing the 2006 study of Burnham, Lafta, Doocy and Roberts has just been published . The Burnham et al. paper (also called, to my irritation (see the last item here ), “the Lancet survey”) used a cluster sample to estimate the number of deaths in Iraq in the three years following the 2003 invasion. In his newly-published paper, Spagat writes: [The Spagat article] presents some evidence suggesting ethical violations to the survey’s respondents including endangerment, privacy breaches and violations in obtaining informed consent. Breaches of minimal disclosure standards examined include non-disclosure of the survey’s questionnaire, data-entry form, data matching anonymised interviewer identifications with households and sample design. The paper also presents some evidence relating to data fabrication and falsification, which falls into nine broad categories. This evidence suggests that this survey cannot be considered a reliable or
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Introduction: Mike Spagat sends in an interesting explanation for the noted problems with conflict mortality studies (a topic we’ve discussed on occasion on this blog). Spagat writes: This analysis is based on the fact that conflict violence does not spread out at all uniformly across a map but, rather, tends to concentrate in a few areas. This means that small, headline-grabbing violence surveys are extremely unreliable. There is a second point, based on the work of David Hemenway which you’ve also cited on your blog. Even within exceptionally violent environments most households will still not have a violent death. So a very small false positive rate in a household survey will cause substantial upward bias in violence estimates.
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Introduction: Andrew Mack writes: There was a brief commentary from the Benetech folk on the Human Security Report Project’s, “The Shrinking Costs of War” report on your blog in January. But the report has since generated a lot of public controversy . Since the report–like the current discussion in your blog on Mike Spagat’s new paper on Iraq–deals with controversies generated by survey-based excess death estimates, we thought your readers might be interested. Our responses to the debate were posted on our website last week. “Shrinking Costs” had discussed the dramatic decline in death tolls from wartime violence since the end of World War II –and its causes. We also argued that deaths from war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition had declined. (The exec. summary is here .) One of the most striking findings was that mortality rates (we used under-five mortality data) decline during most wars. Indeed our latest research indicates that of the total number of years that countries w
Introduction: Earlier today, Nate criticized a U.S. military survey that asks troops the question, “Do you currently serve with a male or female Service member you believe to be homosexual.” [emphasis added] As Nate points out, by asking this question in such a speculative way, “it would seem that you’ll be picking up a tremendous number of false positives–soldiers who are believed to be gay, but aren’t–and that these false positives will swamp any instances in which soldiers (in spite of DADT) are actually somewhat open about their same-sex attractions.” This is a general problem in survey research. In an article in Chance magazine in 1997, “The myth of millions of annual self-defense gun uses: a case study of survey overestimates of rare events” [see here for related references], David Hemenway uses the false-positive, false-negative reasoning to explain this bias in terms of probability theory. Misclassifications that induce seemingly minor biases in estimates of certain small probab
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Introduction: Michael Spagat notifies me that his article criticizing the 2006 study of Burnham, Lafta, Doocy and Roberts has just been published . The Burnham et al. paper (also called, to my irritation (see the last item here ), “the Lancet survey”) used a cluster sample to estimate the number of deaths in Iraq in the three years following the 2003 invasion. In his newly-published paper, Spagat writes: [The Spagat article] presents some evidence suggesting ethical violations to the survey’s respondents including endangerment, privacy breaches and violations in obtaining informed consent. Breaches of minimal disclosure standards examined include non-disclosure of the survey’s questionnaire, data-entry form, data matching anonymised interviewer identifications with households and sample design. The paper also presents some evidence relating to data fabrication and falsification, which falls into nine broad categories. This evidence suggests that this survey cannot be considered a reliable or
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Introduction: Sam Roberts writes : The Census Bureau [reported] that though New York City’s population reached a record high of 8,175,133 in 2010, the gain of 2 percent, or 166,855 people, since 2000 fell about 200,000 short of what the bureau itself had estimated. Public officials were incredulous that a city that lures tens of thousands of immigrants each year and where a forest of new buildings has sprouted could really have recorded such a puny increase. How, they wondered, could Queens have grown by only one-tenth of 1 percent since 2000? How, even with a surge in foreclosures, could the number of vacant apartments have soared by nearly 60 percent in Queens and by 66 percent in Brooklyn? That does seem a bit suspicious. So the newspaper did its own survey: Now, a house-to-house New York Times survey of three representative square blocks where the Census Bureau said vacancies had increased and the population had declined since 2000 suggests that the city’s outrage is somewhat ju
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Introduction: I just want to share with you the best comment we’ve every had in the nearly ten-year history of this blog. Also it has statistical content! Here’s the story. After seeing an amusing article by Tom Scocca relating how reporter John Lee Anderson called someone as a “little twerp” on twitter: I conjectured that Anderson suffered from “tall person syndrome,” that problem that some people of above-average height have, that they think they’re more important than other people because they literally look down on them. But I had no idea of Anderson’s actual height. Commenter Gary responded with this impressive bit of investigative reporting: Based on this picture: he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit: And he doesn’t appear
2 0.91144919 915 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-17-(Worst) graph of the year
Introduction: This (forwarded to me from Jeff, from a powerpoint by Willam Gawthrop) wins not on form but on content: Really this graph should stand alone but it’s so wonderful that I can’t resist pointing out a few things: - The gap between 610 and 622 A.D. seems to be about the same as the previous 600 years, and only a little less than the 1400 years before that. - “Pious and devout” Jews are portrayed as having steadily increased in nonviolence up to the present day. Been to Israel lately? - I assume the line labeled “Bible” is referring to Christians? I’m sort of amazed to see pious and devout Christians listed as being maximally violent at the beginning. Huh? I thought Christ was supposed to be a nonviolent, mellow dude. The line starts at 3 B.C., implying that baby Jesus was at the extreme of violence. Gong forward, we can learn from the graph that pious and devout Christians in 1492 or 1618, say, were much more peaceful than Jesus and his crew. - Most amusingly g
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Introduction: Best blog comment ever , following up on our post, How tall is Jon Lee Anderson?: Based on this picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2235/1640569735_05337bb974.jpg he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Jon_Lee_Anderson.sflb.ashx he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Philippe_Petite.sflb.ashx. And he doesn’t appear to be that tall… about the same height as Claire Danes: http://cdn.theatermania.com/photo-gallery/Petit_Danes_Daldry_2421_4700.jpg – who according to Google is 5′ 6″. So if Jon Lee Anderson is 10″ taller than Catalina Garcia, who is 2″ shorter than Philippe Petit, who is the same height as Claire Danes, then he is 6′ 2″ tall. I have no idea who Catal
4 0.88226449 1057 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-14-Hey—I didn’t know that!
Introduction: From Wikipedia (via Jay Livingston ): Newsweek sells only about 40,000 newsstand copies compared with 1.5 million subscriptions. (Both figures are substantially lower than they were a decade ago.) The figures for Time are about double those of Newsweek, but the ratio of newsstand sales to subscriptions is about the same. I guess I’m not surprised that most of the sales are from subscriptions, but I’m surprised the fraction is so close to 100%.
Introduction: Elsewhere: 1. They asked me to write about my “favorite election- or campaign-related movie, novel, or TV show” (Salon) 2. The shopping period is over; the time for buying has begun (NYT) 3. If anybody’s gonna be criticizing my tax plan, I want it to be this guy (Monkey Cage) 4. The 4 key qualifications to be a great president; unfortunately George W. Bush satisfies all four, and Ronald Reagan doesn’t match any of them (Monkey Cage) 5. The politics of eyeliner (Monkey Cage)
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