andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-959 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I don’t know when I’ve seen political writing quote so misinformed as this. It’s a bizarre mixture of cliches, non-sequitors, and outright mistakes. The author is Gregg Easterbrook and he’s writing for Reuters . First, the cliches: Right now Romney seems to be the frontrunner, which, of course, is a mixed blessing. His aura of experience and reasonableness could prove quite appealing to voters. Perry continues to have the potential to light a populist fire. . . . Of all the 2012 candidates, Huntsman is the one who is Not Just Another Politician. And now the errors. At this point in the 1992 election cycle, the elder George Bush held an 89 percent approval rating. . . . Clinton beat a popular incumbent with a fantastic approval rating. For the 2012 election, Barack Obama is just as vulnerable as the elder Bush, if not even more so. Obama currently has an approval rating of 23 percent. This is all fine, except that: 1. It’s not true that at this point in the 1992 elec
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 At this point in the 1992 election cycle, the elder George Bush held an 89 percent approval rating. [sent-12, score-0.7]
2 Clinton beat a popular incumbent with a fantastic approval rating. [sent-16, score-0.32]
3 For the 2012 election, Barack Obama is just as vulnerable as the elder Bush, if not even more so. [sent-17, score-0.151]
4 Obama currently has an approval rating of 23 percent. [sent-18, score-0.44]
5 It’s not true that at this point in the 1992 election cycle, the elder George Bush held an 89 percent approval rating. [sent-20, score-0.7]
6 It’s not true that Obama currently has an approval rating of 23 percent. [sent-22, score-0.44]
7 Bush’s ratings (data from the Roper Center ) were 66% approve, 28% disapprove, 7% no opinion (not adding to exactly 100% due to roundoff error, I assume). [sent-27, score-0.125]
8 Gallup estimates Obama’s job approval as of 11 Oct 2011 as 38%. [sent-29, score-0.32]
9 Bush’s highest approval rate ever , and it was at the beginning of March 1991. [sent-33, score-0.32]
10 As for Obama’s 23%, this comes from a Rasmussen report that Easterbrook linked to but misread: 28% “strongly approve” of Obama’s job performance but about 45% approve in total, according to Rasmussen’s own graph. [sent-34, score-0.119]
11 Easterbrook is listed as “a contributing editor to The Atlantic, The New Republic and The Washington Monthly, a former visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and distinguished fellow of the Fulbright Foundation, and writes the Tuesday Morning Quarterback column for ESPN. [sent-50, score-0.191]
12 ” He’s ok at a football writer but I think his editors should keep him away from the politics. [sent-51, score-0.059]
13 Bush approval ratings by Googling **george h w bush approval**. [sent-56, score-0.632]
14 Maybe one of Easterbrook’s editors at Reuters could tell him about it. [sent-59, score-0.059]
15 A tenured professor can do (almost) anything he wants and still get paid to teach classes. [sent-66, score-0.053]
16 I can only assume that nobody edits his pieces for content, just as nobody sits in on my classes to check that I’m actually teaching what I say I am. [sent-68, score-0.144]
17 I know some people criticize Thomas Friedman (say) on the same grounds, that he can just publish whatever half-baked ideas he wants and get it in the New York Times. [sent-70, score-0.053]
18 Friedman’s speculations are often interesting, whereas Easterbrook is just spouting cliches that would make Theodore H. [sent-72, score-0.204]
19 And supporting it with numbers that are so wrong as to be beyond garbled. [sent-74, score-0.055]
20 So for strategic reasons I probably should’ve been super-polite to Easterbrook here and then let the commenters rip him to shreds. [sent-86, score-0.1]
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Introduction: I don’t know when I’ve seen political writing quote so misinformed as this. It’s a bizarre mixture of cliches, non-sequitors, and outright mistakes. The author is Gregg Easterbrook and he’s writing for Reuters . First, the cliches: Right now Romney seems to be the frontrunner, which, of course, is a mixed blessing. His aura of experience and reasonableness could prove quite appealing to voters. Perry continues to have the potential to light a populist fire. . . . Of all the 2012 candidates, Huntsman is the one who is Not Just Another Politician. And now the errors. At this point in the 1992 election cycle, the elder George Bush held an 89 percent approval rating. . . . Clinton beat a popular incumbent with a fantastic approval rating. For the 2012 election, Barack Obama is just as vulnerable as the elder Bush, if not even more so. Obama currently has an approval rating of 23 percent. This is all fine, except that: 1. It’s not true that at this point in the 1992 elec
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Introduction: Gregg Easterbrook : Gingrich is a wild card. He probably would end up a flaming wreckage in electoral terms, but there’s a chance he could become seen as the man unafraid to bring sweeping change to an ossified Washington, D.C. There’s perhaps a 90 percent likelihood Obama would wipe the floor with Gingrich, versus a 10 percent likelihood Gingrich would stage an historic upset. This is the dumbest thing I’ve seen since . . . ummm, I dunno, how bout this ? It actually gets worse because Easterbrook then invokes game theory. What next? Catastrophe theory? Intelligent design? P.S. Maybe I should explain for readers without an education in probability theory. Let’s suppose “wipe the floor” means that Obama gets 55%+ of the two-party vote, and let’s suppose that “an historic upset” means that Obama gets less than 50% of the vote. Now try to draw a forecast distribution that has 90% of its probability above 0.55 and 10% of it’s probability below 0.50. It’s a pretty weird-loo
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Introduction: Dear Reuters editor: Thanks for reading my blog and correcting the erroneous numbers in Easterbrook’s column from the other day. I’m pretty sure you got the corrections from my blog because in your corrections you used the exact same links that I posted. I think your readers will like that you gave links to the sources of your numbers. But I’d appreciate if you cite me! It’s considered polite to credit your sources rather than just copying over numbers and links with no mention of where they came from. Unlike Easterbrook, I’m not expecting to be paid for this material but I’d still like to be thanked. (See the last paragraph of this post by Felix Salmon for more on the desirability of linking to your sources.) Also, since you’re correcting the article anyway, maybe you could go back and change this sentence too: But don’t sell Huntsman short because he is low in the polls – Obama had been at that point, too. As I noted earlier, As of 14 Oct 2011, Gallup gi
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