andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-941 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Here’s the story. P.S. Some sociologists discuss the case here .
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same-blog 1 0.99999994 941 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-03-“It was the opinion of the hearing that the publication of the article had brought the School into disrepute.”
Introduction: Here’s the story. P.S. Some sociologists discuss the case here .
2 0.20161271 1793 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-08-The Supreme Court meets the fallacy of the one-sided bet
Introduction: Doug Hartmann writes ( link from Jay Livingston): Justice Antonin Scalia’s comment in the Supreme Court hearings on the U.S. law defining marriage that “there’s considerable disagreement among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not.” Hartman argues that Scalia is factually incorrect—there is not actually “considerable disagreement among sociologists” on this issue—and quotes a recent report from the American Sociological Association to this effect. Assuming there’s no other considerable group of sociologists (Hartman knows of only one small group) arguing otherwise, it seems that Hartman has a point. Scalia would’ve been better off omitting the phrase “among sociologists”—then he’d have been on safe ground, because you can always find somebody to take a position on the issue. Jerry Falwell’s no longer around but there’s a lot more where he came from. Even among scientists, there’s
Introduction: One of the most satisfying experiences for an academic is when someone asks a question that you’ve already answered. This happened in the comments today. Daniel Gotthardt wrote : So for applied stat courses like for sociologists, political scientists, psychologists and maybe also for economics, what do we actually want to accomplish with our intro courses? And how would it help to include Bayesian Statistics in them? And I was like, hey! This reminds me of a paper I published a few years ago, “Teaching Bayesian applied statistics to graduate students in political science, sociology, public health, education, economics, . . .” Here it is , and it begins as follows: I was trying to draw Bert and Ernie the other day, and it was really difficult. I had pictures of them right next to me, but my drawings were just incredibly crude, more “linguistic” than “visual” in the sense that I was portraying key aspects of Bert and Ernie but in pictures that didn’t look anything like t
4 0.093299396 567 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-10-English-to-English translation
Introduction: It’s not just for Chaucer (or Mad Max) anymore. Peter Frase writes: It’s a shame that we neglect to re-translate older works into English merely because they were originally written in English. Languages change, and our reactions to words and formulations change. This is obvious when you read something like Chaucer, but it’s true to a more subtle degree of more recent writings. There is a pretty good chance that something written in the 19th century won’t mean the same thing to us that it meant to its contemporary readers. Thus it would make sense to re-translate Huckleberry Finn into modern language, in the same way we periodically get new translations of Homer or Dante or Thomas Mann. This is a point that applies equally well to non-fiction and social theory: in some ways, English-speaking sociologists are lucky that our canonical trio of classical theorists-Marx, Weber, and Durkheim-all wrote in another language. The most recent translation of Capital is eminently more readable
5 0.089543767 423 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-20-How to schedule projects in an introductory statistics course?
Introduction: John Haubrick writes: Next semester I want to center my statistics class around independent projects that they will present at the end of the semester. My question is, by centering around a project and teaching for the different parts that they need at the time, should topics such as hypothesis testing be moved toward the beginning of the course? Or should I only discuss setting up a research hypothesis and discuss the actual testing later after they have the data? My reply: I’m not sure. There always is a difficulty of what can be covered in a project. My quick thought is that a project will perhaps work better if it is focused on data collection or exploratory data analysis rather than on estimation and hypothesis testing, which are topics that get covered pretty well in the course as a whole.
6 0.089024723 2330 andrew gelman stats-2014-05-12-Historical Arc of Universities
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15 0.054619998 297 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-27-An interesting education and statistics blog
16 0.054288339 745 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-04-High-level intellectual discussions in the Columbia statistics department
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19 0.0476164 114 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-28-More on Bayesian deduction-induction
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same-blog 1 0.96568608 941 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-03-“It was the opinion of the hearing that the publication of the article had brought the School into disrepute.”
Introduction: Here’s the story. P.S. Some sociologists discuss the case here .
2 0.46846828 1852 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-12-Crime novels for economists
Introduction: Following up on this post by Noah Smith on economics in science fiction, Mark Palko writes on economics in crime fiction. Just as almost all science fiction is ultimately about politics, one could say that just about all crime fiction is about economics. But if I had to pick one crime novelist with an economics focus, I’d pick George V. Higgins. In one of his novels, his character Jerry Kennedy had a riff on the difference between guys who get a salary and guys who have to work for every dollar. But, really, almost all his novels are full of economics.
3 0.4545294 47 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-23-Of home runs and grand slams
Introduction: I’ve occasionally mocked academic economists for their discussions of research papers as “singles” or “home runs” (a world in which, counter to the findings of sabermetrics, one of the latter is worth more than four of the former). The best thing, of course, is a “grand slam,” a term that I always found particularly silly as it depends not just on the quality of the hit but also on external considerations (“men on base”). But then I was thinking about this again, and I decided the analogy isn’t so bad: For a research paper to be really influential and important, it has to come at the right time, and the field has to be ready for it. That’s what turns a home run into a grand slam. So in this case the reasoning works pretty well.
4 0.43386474 185 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-04-Why does anyone support private macroeconomic forecasts?
Introduction: Tyler Cowen asks the above question. I don’t have a full answer, but, in the Economics section of A Quantitative Tour of the Social Sciences , Richard Clarida discusses in detail the ways that researchers have tried to estimate the extent to which government or private forecasts supply additional information.
5 0.42697513 60 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-30-What Auteur Theory and Freshwater Economics have in common
Introduction: Mark Palko writes : We’ll define freshwater economics as the theory that economic behavior (and perhaps most non-economic behavior) can be explained using the concepts of rational actors and efficient markets and auteur theory as the idea that most films (particularly great films) represent the artistic vision of a single author (almost always the director) and the best way to approach one of those films is through the body of work of its author. Both of these definitions are oversimplified and a bit unfair but they will get the discussion started. . . . Compared to their nearest neighbors, film criticism and economics (particularly macroeconomics) are both difficult, messy fields. Films are collaborative efforts where individual contributions defy attribution and creative decisions often can’t be distinguished from accidents of filming. Worse yet, most films are the product of large corporations which means that dozens of VPs and executives might have played a role (sometimes
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20 0.3746008 1266 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-16-Another day, another plagiarist
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1 0.99730295 1431 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-27-Overfitting
Introduction: Ilya Esteban writes: In traditional machine learning and statistical learning techniques, you spend a lot of time selecting your input features, fiddling with model parameter values, etc., all of which leads to the problem of overfitting the data and producing overly optimistic estimates for how good the model really is. You can use techniques such as cross-validation and out-of-sample validation data to try to limit the damage, but they are imperfect solutions at best. While Bayesian models have the great advantage of not forcing you to manually select among the various weights and input features, you still often end up trying different priors and model structures (especially with hierarchical models), before coming up with a “final” model. When applying Bayesian modeling to real world data sets, how does should you evaluate alternate priors and topologies for the model without falling into the same overfitting trap as you do with non-Bayesian models? If you try several different
Introduction: I think I’m starting to resolve a puzzle that’s been bugging me for awhile. Pop economists (or, at least, pop micro-economists) are often making one of two arguments: 1. People are rational and respond to incentives. Behavior that looks irrational is actually completely rational once you think like an economist. 2. People are irrational and they need economists, with their open minds, to show them how to be rational and efficient. Argument 1 is associated with “why do they do that?” sorts of puzzles. Why do they charge so much for candy at the movie theater, why are airline ticket prices such a mess, why are people drug addicts, etc. The usual answer is that there’s some rational reason for what seems like silly or self-destructive behavior. Argument 2 is associated with “we can do better” claims such as why we should fire 80% of public-schools teachers or Moneyball-style stories about how some clever entrepreneur has made a zillion dollars by exploiting some inefficienc
3 0.9968701 1670 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-13-More Bell Labs happy talk
Introduction: Mort Panish writes: I just read your review of Gertner’s book. I agree with most of what you say re Bell labs. I worked in the research area from 1964 to 1992 having arrived in what I regarded as a sort of heaven after 10 years in industrial research elsewhere. For much of that time I headed the Materials Science Research Dept. in the Solid State Electronics Laboratory. For a large number of the senior staff the eight hour day was the exception, not the rule, and even on weekends the parking lot was often 1/4 full. Most of the people I worked with were self driven and loved their work and the opportunities the Labs. provided to be maximally scientifically productive. Even during lunch in the cafeteria productive interactions were a common occurrence. I could go on and on, but just wanted to thank you for bring back pleasant memories of a long and productive career at Bell Labs after 20 years in retirement. Also, for thsoe who missed it, my personal reminiscences of Bell Labs
4 0.99677861 1585 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-20-“I know you aren’t the plagiarism police, but . . .”
Introduction: Someone I don’t know writes in: I have followed your thoughts on plagiarism rather closely, and I ran across something in the Economics literature that I felt might interest you (and if you were to share this, I’d rather remain anonymous as a junior faculty not looking to step on toes anywhere). I know you aren’t the plagiarism police, but figured you would have some input. I’ve been reading up on some literature regarding all-pay auctions for some research I have been working on and came across an interesting paper in J. Political Economy (1998) with the following intro: “Many economic allocations are decided by competition for a prize on the basis of costly activities. For example, monopoly licenses may be awarded to the person (or group) that lobbies the hardest (Tullock, 1967), or tickets may be given to those who wait in line the longest (Holt and Sherman 1982). In such contests, losers’ efforts are costly and are generally not compensated. These situations, which are esp
5 0.99664903 1425 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-23-Examples of the use of hierarchical modeling to generalize to new settings
Introduction: In a link to our back-and-forth on causal inference and the use of hierarchical models to bridge between different inferential settings, Elias Bareinboim (a computer scientist who is working with Judea Pearl) writes : In the past week, I have been engaged in a discussion with Andrew Gelman and his blog readers regarding causal inference, selection bias, confounding, and generalizability. I was trying to understand how his method which he calls “hierarchical modeling” would handle these issues and what guarantees it provides. . . . If anyone understands how “hierarchical modeling” can solve a simple toy problem (e.g., M-bias, control of confounding, mediation, generalizability), please share with us. In his post, Bareinboim raises a direct question about hierarchical modeling and also indirectly brings up larger questions about what is convincing evidence when evaluating a statistical method. As I wrote earlier, Bareinboim believes that “The only way investigators can decide w
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14 0.99403208 521 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-17-“the Tea Party’s ire, directed at Democrats and Republicans alike”
15 0.9938395 153 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-17-Tenure-track position at U. North Carolina in survey methods and social statistics
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