andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-966 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
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
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Dear Reuters editor: Thanks for reading my blog and correcting the erroneous numbers in Easterbrook’s column from the other day. [sent-1, score-0.44]
2 I’m pretty sure you got the corrections from my blog because in your corrections you used the exact same links that I posted. [sent-2, score-0.636]
3 I think your readers will like that you gave links to the sources of your numbers. [sent-3, score-0.43]
4 It’s considered polite to credit your sources rather than just copying over numbers and links with no mention of where they came from. [sent-5, score-0.6]
5 Unlike Easterbrook, I’m not expecting to be paid for this material but I’d still like to be thanked. [sent-6, score-0.079]
6 (See the last paragraph of this post by Felix Salmon for more on the desirability of linking to your sources. [sent-7, score-0.186]
7 ) 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. [sent-8, score-0.176]
8 As I noted earlier, As of 14 Oct 2011, Gallup gives Huntsman 2% support among Republicans. [sent-9, score-0.091]
9 He was in second place with 21% support (compared to Hillary Clinton at 50%). [sent-15, score-0.091]
10 Finally, you might want to follow another one of the links on my blog post and explain to your readers that the idea that Obama might lose in 2012 is not new, that political scientist Doug Hibbs floated the idea (with supporting evidence) several months ago. [sent-17, score-0.561]
11 I know this is a lot of editing, but now that you’ve started, why not finish the job? [sent-18, score-0.092]
12 First, the mistakes appeared in Reuters, which I think of as a news organization that tries to get its facts right. [sent-23, score-0.077]
13 Second, electoral politics is one of my areas of research and it bugs me when people get things wrong. [sent-24, score-0.078]
14 I don’t want to start a side career pointing out that “something is wrong on the internet” (as xkcd put it), but now that I happened to notice this one, I’d like to follow it up. [sent-25, score-0.216]
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same-blog 1 0.99999982 966 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-20-A qualified but incomplete thanks to Gregg Easterbrook’s editor at Reuters
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
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: After I recently criticized Gregg Easterbrook for assigning Obama an implausible 90+% chance of beating Mitt Romney, some commenters thought I was being too critical, that I should cut Easterbrook some slack because he just was speaking metaphorically. In other words, Easterbrook is a “qual.” He uses numbers in his writing because that’s what everyone is supposed to do nowadays, but he doesn’t intend those numbers to be meant literally. Similarly, he presumably didn’t really mean it when he wrote that Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren “couldn’t be more different — personally or politically.” And he had no problem typing that Obama’s approval rating was 23% because, to him, “23%” is just another word for “low.” He’s a qual, that’s all. Similarly, when Samantha Power was just being a qual when she wrote the meaningful-sounding but actually empty statement, “Since 1968, with the single exception of the election of George W. Bush in 2000, Americans have chosen Republican pres
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Introduction: This post is by Phil Price. Bill Kristol notes that “Four presidents in the last century have won more than 51 percent of the vote twice: Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Reagan and Obama”. I’m not sure why Kristol, a conservative, is promoting the idea that Obama has a mandate, but that’s up to him. I’m more interested in the remarkable bit of cherry-picking that led to this “only four presidents” statistic. There was one way in which Obama’s victory was large: he won the electoral college 332-206. That’s a thrashing. But if you want to claim that Obama has a “popular mandate” — which people seem to interpret as an overwhelming preference of The People such that the opposition is morally obligated to give way — you can’t make that argument based on the electoral college, you have to look at the popular vote. That presents you with a challenge for the 2012 election, since Obama’s 2.7-point margin in the popular vote was the 12th-smallest out of the 57 elections we’ve had. There’s a nice sor
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same-blog 1 0.94343841 966 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-20-A qualified but incomplete thanks to Gregg Easterbrook’s editor at Reuters
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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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: Barack Obama’s win has a potentially huge effect on policy. The current budget negotiations will affect the level and direction of government spending and on the mix of taxes paid by different groups of Americans. We can guess that a President Romney would have fought hard against upper-income tax increases. Other areas of long-term impact include the government’s stance on global warming, foreign policy, and the likelihood that Obama will nominate new Supreme Court justices who will uphold the right to abortion announced in Roe v. Wade. When it comes to public opinion, the story is different. The Democrats may well benefit in 2014 and 2016 from the anticipated slow but steady recovery of the economy over the next few years—but, as of November 6, 2012, the parties are essentially tied, with Barack Obama receiving 51% of the two-party vote, compared to Mitt Romney’s 49%, a split comparable to Al Gore’s narrow victory in 2000, Richard Nixon’s in 1968, and John Kennedy’s in 1960.
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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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