andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-895 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Felix Salmon offers some suggestions . (For some background, see this news article by Steven Greenhouse.) I have no management expertise but about fifteen years ago I did some work on a project for the Postal Service, and I remember noticing some structural problems back then: Everyone would always get annoyed about the way the price of a first class stamp would go up in awkward increments, from 29 cents to 32 cents to 33 cents to 34 cents etc. Why couldn’t they just jump to the next round number (for example, 35 cents) and keep it there for a few years? The answer, I was told, was that the Postal Service was trapped by a bunch of rules. They were required to price everything exactly at cost. If they charged too much for first class mail, then UPS and Fed-Ex would sue and say the PO was illegally cross-subsidizing their bulk mail. If they charged too little, then the publishers and junk mailers would sue. Maybe I’m getting the details wrong here but that was the basic id
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Why couldn’t they just jump to the next round number (for example, 35 cents) and keep it there for a few years? [sent-4, score-0.139]
2 The answer, I was told, was that the Postal Service was trapped by a bunch of rules. [sent-5, score-0.086]
3 They were required to price everything exactly at cost. [sent-6, score-0.219]
4 If they charged too much for first class mail, then UPS and Fed-Ex would sue and say the PO was illegally cross-subsidizing their bulk mail. [sent-7, score-0.605]
5 If they charged too little, then the publishers and junk mailers would sue. [sent-8, score-0.4]
6 There was actually a system of postal courts (it probably still exists) to adjudicate these fights. [sent-10, score-0.73]
7 Basically, the post office is always broke because it’s legally required to be broke. [sent-11, score-0.304]
8 It’s not like other utilities which are regulated in a gentle way to allow them to make profits. [sent-12, score-0.339]
9 Looking at this from a political direction, things must somehow be set up so that the Postal Service’s customers have more clout than the Postal Service itself. [sent-13, score-0.14]
10 I don’t really have a sense of why this would happen for mail more than for gas, electricity, water, etc. [sent-14, score-0.218]
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Introduction: Felix Salmon offers some suggestions . (For some background, see this news article by Steven Greenhouse.) I have no management expertise but about fifteen years ago I did some work on a project for the Postal Service, and I remember noticing some structural problems back then: Everyone would always get annoyed about the way the price of a first class stamp would go up in awkward increments, from 29 cents to 32 cents to 33 cents to 34 cents etc. Why couldn’t they just jump to the next round number (for example, 35 cents) and keep it there for a few years? The answer, I was told, was that the Postal Service was trapped by a bunch of rules. They were required to price everything exactly at cost. If they charged too much for first class mail, then UPS and Fed-Ex would sue and say the PO was illegally cross-subsidizing their bulk mail. If they charged too little, then the publishers and junk mailers would sue. Maybe I’m getting the details wrong here but that was the basic id
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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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Introduction: Tyler Cowen links to a blog by Greg Mankiw with further details on his argument that his anticipated 90% marginal tax rate will reduce his work level. Having already given my thoughts on Mankiw’s column, I merely have a few things to add/emphasize. 1. Cowen frames the arguments in terms of the “status” of George Bush, Greg Mankiw, Barack Obama, and their proposed policies. I hadn’t thought of the arguments as being about status, but I think I see what Cowen is saying. By being a well-known economist and having a column in the New York Times, Mankiw is trading some of his status for political advocacy (just as Krugman does, from the opposite direction). If Mankiw didn’t have the pre-existing status, I doubt this particular column would’ve made it into the newspaper. (Again, ditto with many of Krugman’s columns.) So it makes sense that arguments about the substance of Mankiw’s remarks will get tied into disputes about his status. 2. Neither Cowen nor Mankiw address
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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: Kaiser writes thoughtfully about the costs, benefits, and incentives for different policy recommendation options regarding a recent water crisis. Good stuff: it’s solid “freakonomics”–and I mean this in positive way: a mix of economic and statistical analysis, with assumptions stated clearly. Kaiser writes: Using the framework from Chapter 4, we should think about the incentives facing the Mass. Water Resources Authority: A false positive error (people asked to throw out water when water is clean) means people stop drinking tap water temporarily, perhaps switching to bottled water, and the officials claim victory when no one falls sick, and businesses that produce bottled water experience a jump in sales. It is also very difficult to prove a “false positive” when people have stopped drinking the water. So this type of error is easy to hide behind. A false negative error (people told it’s safe to drink water when water is polluted) becomes apparent when someone falls sick
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Introduction: Felix Salmon offers some suggestions . (For some background, see this news article by Steven Greenhouse.) I have no management expertise but about fifteen years ago I did some work on a project for the Postal Service, and I remember noticing some structural problems back then: Everyone would always get annoyed about the way the price of a first class stamp would go up in awkward increments, from 29 cents to 32 cents to 33 cents to 34 cents etc. Why couldn’t they just jump to the next round number (for example, 35 cents) and keep it there for a few years? The answer, I was told, was that the Postal Service was trapped by a bunch of rules. They were required to price everything exactly at cost. If they charged too much for first class mail, then UPS and Fed-Ex would sue and say the PO was illegally cross-subsidizing their bulk mail. If they charged too little, then the publishers and junk mailers would sue. Maybe I’m getting the details wrong here but that was the basic id
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Introduction: Xian points me to an article by retired college professor David Rubinstein who argues that college professors are underworked and overpaid: After 34 years of teaching sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I [Rubinstein] recently retired at age 64 at 80 percent of my pay for life. . . . But that’s not all: There’s a generous health insurance plan, a guaranteed 3 percent annual cost of living increase, and a few other perquisites. . . . I was also offered the opportunity to teach as an emeritus for three years, receiving $8,000 per course . . . which works out to over $200 an hour. . . . You will perhaps not be surprised to hear that I had two immediate and opposite reactions to this: 1. Hey–somebody wants to cut professors’ salaries. Stop him! 2. Hey–this guy’s making big bucks and doesn’t do any work–that’s not fair! (I went online to find David Rubinstein’s salary but it didn’t appear in the database. So I did the next best thing and looked up the sala
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Introduction: A couple things in this interview by Andrew Goldman of Larry Summers currently irritated me. I’ll give the quotes and then explain my annoyance. 1. Goldman: What would the economy look like now if $1.2 trillion had been spent? Summers: I think it’s an artificial question because there would have been all kinds of problems in actually moving $1.2 trillion dollars through the system — finding enough bridge projects that were ready to go and the like. But the recovery probably would have proceeded more rapidly if the fiscal program had been larger. . . . 2. Goldman: You’re aware of — and were making light of — the fact that you occasionally rub people the wrong way. Summers: In meetings, I’m more focused on trying to figure out what the right answer is than making everybody feel validated. In Washington and at Harvard, that sometimes rubs people the wrong way. OK, now my reactions: 1. Not enough bridge projects, huh? I don’t believe it. We’ve been hearing fo
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Introduction: There’s a lot of free advice out there. As I wrote a couple years ago, it’s usually presented as advice to individuals, but it’s also interesting to consider the possible total effects if the advice is taken. For example, Nassim Taleb has a webpage that includes a bunch of one-line bits of advice (scroll to item 132 on the linked page). Here’s his final piece of advice: If you dislike someone, leave him alone or eliminate him; don’t attack him verbally. I’m a big Taleb fan (search this blog to see), but this seems like classic negative-sum advice. I can see how it can be a good individual strategy to keep your mouth shut, bide your time, and then sandbag your enemies. But it can’t be good if lots of people are doing this. Verbal attacks are great, as long as there’s a chance to respond. I’ve been in environments where people follow Taleb’s advice, saying nothing and occasionally trying to “eliminate” people, and it’s not pretty. I much prefer for people to be open
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Introduction: Sciencedaily has posted an article titled Apes Unwilling to Gamble When Odds Are Uncertain : The apes readily distinguished between the different probabilities of winning: they gambled a lot when there was a 100 percent chance, less when there was a 50 percent chance, and only rarely when there was no chance In some trials, however, the experimenter didn’t remove a lid from the bowl, so the apes couldn’t assess the likelihood of winning a banana The odds from the covered bowl were identical to those from the risky option: a 50 percent chance of getting the much sought-after banana. But apes of both species were less likely to choose this ambiguous option. Like humans, they showed “ambiguity aversion” — preferring to gamble more when they knew the odds than when they didn’t. Given some of the other differences between chimps and bonobos, Hare and Rosati had expected to find the bonobos to be more averse to ambiguity, but that didn’t turn out to be the case. Thanks to Sta
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Introduction: Felix Salmon offers some suggestions . (For some background, see this news article by Steven Greenhouse.) I have no management expertise but about fifteen years ago I did some work on a project for the Postal Service, and I remember noticing some structural problems back then: Everyone would always get annoyed about the way the price of a first class stamp would go up in awkward increments, from 29 cents to 32 cents to 33 cents to 34 cents etc. Why couldn’t they just jump to the next round number (for example, 35 cents) and keep it there for a few years? The answer, I was told, was that the Postal Service was trapped by a bunch of rules. They were required to price everything exactly at cost. If they charged too much for first class mail, then UPS and Fed-Ex would sue and say the PO was illegally cross-subsidizing their bulk mail. If they charged too little, then the publishers and junk mailers would sue. Maybe I’m getting the details wrong here but that was the basic id
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Introduction: A University of Delaware press release reports : This month, the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports will feature the article “An Estimate of How Hitting, Pitching, Fielding, and Base-stealing Impact Team Winning Percentages in Baseball.” In it, University of Delaware Prof. Charles Pavitt of the Department of Communication defines the perfect “formula” for Major League Baseball (MLB) teams to use to build the ultimate winning team. Pavitt found hitting accounts for more than 45 percent of teams’ winning records, fielding for 25 percent and pitching for 25 percent. And that the impact of stolen bases is greatly overestimated. He crunched hitting, pitching, fielding and base-stealing records for every MLB team over a 48-year period from 1951-1998 with a method no other researcher has used in this area. In statistical parlance, he used a conceptual decomposition of offense and defense into its component parts and then analyzed recombinations of the parts in intuitively mea
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