andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-983 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: A group of University of California professors headed by physicist Richard Muller recently released a report confirming global warming. Then geophysicist Judith Curry, a coauthor on the papers produced by the Muller group, turned around and said that their data actually show that global warming has stopped. (Also see clarification here .) Curry is described in the news article as the second author on the papers, but the authors are listed alphabetically so it’s probably more accurate to describe her as one of the ten authors. Muller’s one, Curry’s another, . . . now I want to know what 7 of the other 8 authors think! (One of the authors is Richard Muller’s daughter Elizabeth, so maybe we shouldn’t count her as an independent view.) Some enterprising reporter should really interview the other 7 authors of that report . Just a quick question like, “Is there scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped?” To add some fuel to the fire, let me repost what my ph
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 A group of University of California professors headed by physicist Richard Muller recently released a report confirming global warming. [sent-1, score-0.454]
2 Then geophysicist Judith Curry, a coauthor on the papers produced by the Muller group, turned around and said that their data actually show that global warming has stopped. [sent-2, score-0.495]
3 ) Curry is described in the news article as the second author on the papers, but the authors are listed alphabetically so it’s probably more accurate to describe her as one of the ten authors. [sent-4, score-0.216]
4 ) Some enterprising reporter should really interview the other 7 authors of that report . [sent-10, score-0.231]
5 Just a quick question like, “Is there scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped? [sent-11, score-0.299]
6 ” To add some fuel to the fire, let me repost what my physicist friend Phil Price wrote after seeing Richard Muller speak at Berkeley: On Friday, I [Phil] saw a seminar by UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Muller. [sent-12, score-0.318]
7 Here’s the abstract of his talk: “Because of its huge economic and political implications, Climate Change is rarely presented without spin. [sent-14, score-0.143]
8 I’ll discuss the physics of the greenhouse effect, and the data that indicate global warming. [sent-16, score-0.54]
9 I’ll also report on new results of our “Berkeley Earth” project — a detailed re-analysis of the evidence for global warming; see http://www. [sent-24, score-0.348]
10 " I was not the only one to roll my eyes at the first lines of the abstract: does he really think nobody gives talks about climate change without “spin”? [sent-27, score-0.365]
11 (He did not discuss the physics of the greenhouse effect, did not discuss Copenhagen, did not discuss Climategate, did not discuss IPCC standards). [sent-33, score-0.689]
12 And he did present a very cursory sketch of some of the data about global warming, including a list of difficulties in interpreting/analyzing land-surface data. [sent-35, score-0.196]
13 And through it all, he dropped the name of Louis Alvarez — a Nobel Laureate physicist with whom he worked decades ago — about every five or ten minutes. [sent-40, score-0.182]
14 I mentioned the old saw that the flaws that are most irritating on others are the ones that one has oneself, and that I saw some application here. [sent-45, score-0.164]
15 I have sometimes started talks by pointing out ethical transgressions by others, or by showing plots and results from the literature and discussing the ways in which they’re wrong. [sent-46, score-0.231]
16 And I’ve sometimes intentionally implied or stated that people were distorting scientific results, or the ways in which those results are presented (i. [sent-47, score-0.245]
17 ) Muller being an obnoxious speaker doesn’t invalidate global warming (any more than the silliness of Daily Mail article is evidence in favor of it). [sent-54, score-0.434]
18 For reasons I’ve discussed elsewhere on this blog , I go with the scientific consensus on climate change, and I’m speaking as someone who’s worked (a bit) with climate models and knows about their weaknesses. [sent-55, score-0.417]
19 In any case, this is an ideal Halloween post: climate change is scary! [sent-56, score-0.262]
20 Phil summarizes the immediate controversy well here : The earth is somewhat warmer now than it was 50 years ago, and will be much warmer in 50 years than it is now. [sent-59, score-0.343]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('muller', 0.485), ('warming', 0.238), ('curry', 0.2), ('global', 0.196), ('climate', 0.178), ('ipcc', 0.133), ('phil', 0.131), ('richard', 0.129), ('earth', 0.125), ('copenhagen', 0.121), ('physics', 0.12), ('physicist', 0.116), ('discuss', 0.115), ('climategate', 0.114), ('berkeley', 0.111), ('greenhouse', 0.109), ('sheen', 0.109), ('warmer', 0.109), ('talks', 0.103), ('charlie', 0.097), ('authors', 0.089), ('abstract', 0.087), ('report', 0.085), ('change', 0.084), ('saw', 0.082), ('talk', 0.081), ('hasn', 0.074), ('smart', 0.071), ('standards', 0.067), ('results', 0.067), ('ten', 0.066), ('discussing', 0.061), ('scientific', 0.061), ('alvarez', 0.061), ('exemplar', 0.061), ('geophysicist', 0.061), ('alphabetically', 0.061), ('distorting', 0.061), ('laureate', 0.061), ('nope', 0.061), ('timescale', 0.061), ('treaty', 0.061), ('undergoing', 0.061), ('enterprising', 0.057), ('headed', 0.057), ('ill', 0.057), ('judith', 0.057), ('spun', 0.057), ('rest', 0.056), ('presented', 0.056)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0 983 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-31-Skepticism about skepticism of global warming skepticism skepticism
Introduction: A group of University of California professors headed by physicist Richard Muller recently released a report confirming global warming. Then geophysicist Judith Curry, a coauthor on the papers produced by the Muller group, turned around and said that their data actually show that global warming has stopped. (Also see clarification here .) Curry is described in the news article as the second author on the papers, but the authors are listed alphabetically so it’s probably more accurate to describe her as one of the ten authors. Muller’s one, Curry’s another, . . . now I want to know what 7 of the other 8 authors think! (One of the authors is Richard Muller’s daughter Elizabeth, so maybe we shouldn’t count her as an independent view.) Some enterprising reporter should really interview the other 7 authors of that report . Just a quick question like, “Is there scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped?” To add some fuel to the fire, let me repost what my ph
2 0.20550001 180 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-03-Climate Change News
Introduction: I. State of the Climate report The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released their “State of the Climate Report” for 2009 . The report has chapters discussing global climate (temperatures, water vapor, cloudiness, alpine glaciers,…); oceans (ocean heat content, sea level, sea surface temperatures, etc.); the arctic (sea ice extent, permafrost, vegetation, and so on); Antarctica (weather observations, sea ice extent,…), and regional climates. NOAA also provides a nice page that lets you display any of 11 relevant time-series datasets (land-surface air temperature, sea level, ocean heat content, September arctic sea-ice extent, sea-surface temperature, northern hemisphere snow cover, specific humidity, glacier mass balance, marine air temperature, tropospheric temperature, and stratospheric temperature). Each of the plots overlays data from several databases (not necessarily indepenedent of each other), and you can select which ones to include or leave
Introduction: My friend Seth, whom I know from Berkeley (we taught a course together on left-handedness), has a blog on topics ranging from thoughtful discussions of scientific evidence, to experiences with his unconventional weight-loss scheme, offbeat self-experimentation, and advocacy of fringe scientific theories, leavened with occasional dollops of cynicism and political extremism . I agree with Seth on some things but not others. ( Here’s Seth’s reason for not attempting a clinical trial of his diet.) Recently I was disturbed (but, I’m sorry to say, not surprised) to see Seth post the following: Predictions of climate models versus reality . I [Seth] have only seen careful prediction-vs-reality comparisons made by AGW [anthropogenic global warming] skeptics. Those who believe humans are dangerously warming the planet appear to be silent on this subject. In response, Phil commented : Funny, on the day you [Seth] made your post saying that you haven’t seen comparis
4 0.16155735 837 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-04-Is it rational to vote?
Introduction: Hear me interviewed on the topic here . P.S. The interview was fine but I don’t agree with everything on the linked website. For example, this bit: Global warming is not the first case of a widespread fear based on incomplete knowledge turned out to be false or at least greatly exaggerated. Global warming has many of the characteristics of a popular delusion, an irrational fear or cause that is embraced by millions of people because, well, it is believed by millions of people! All right, then.
5 0.15788662 1201 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-07-Inference = data + model
Introduction: A recent article on global warming reminded me of the difficulty of letting the data speak. William Nordhaus shows the following graph: And then he writes: One of the reasons that drawing conclusions on temperature trends is tricky is that the historical temperature series is highly volatile, as can be seen in the figure. The presence of short-term volatility requires looking at long-term trends. A useful analogy is the stock market. Suppose an analyst says that because real stock prices have declined over the last decade (which is true), it follows that there is no upward trend. Here again, an examination of the long-term data would quickly show this to be incorrect. The last decade of temperature and stock market data is not representative of the longer-term trends. The finding that global temperatures are rising over the last century-plus is one of the most robust findings of climate science and statistics. I see what he’s saying, but first, I don’t find the st
7 0.13305707 219 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-20-Some things are just really hard to believe: more on choosing your facts.
8 0.12840673 758 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-11-Hey, good news! Your p-value just passed the 0.05 threshold!
10 0.12330926 427 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-23-Bayesian adaptive methods for clinical trials
11 0.11910621 108 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-24-Sometimes the raw numbers are better than a percentage
12 0.10568574 1424 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-22-Extreme events as evidence for differences in distributions
13 0.10353919 170 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-29-When is expertise relevant?
14 0.092734158 722 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-20-Why no Wegmania?
15 0.091236904 1848 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-09-A tale of two discussion papers
16 0.090294957 390 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-02-Fragment of statistical autobiography
17 0.087602258 626 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-23-Physics is hard
18 0.087068565 751 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-08-Another Wegman plagiarism
19 0.082992174 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
20 0.081724145 2148 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-25-Spam!
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.187), (1, -0.073), (2, -0.029), (3, -0.005), (4, -0.005), (5, -0.013), (6, 0.025), (7, -0.02), (8, 0.014), (9, -0.012), (10, -0.033), (11, 0.012), (12, 0.014), (13, -0.004), (14, 0.008), (15, -0.002), (16, 0.027), (17, 0.003), (18, 0.063), (19, -0.023), (20, -0.044), (21, 0.005), (22, -0.032), (23, 0.008), (24, 0.017), (25, -0.033), (26, -0.046), (27, -0.074), (28, 0.071), (29, 0.019), (30, -0.004), (31, 0.04), (32, -0.046), (33, -0.061), (34, -0.065), (35, -0.025), (36, 0.027), (37, -0.017), (38, 0.059), (39, -0.023), (40, -0.017), (41, 0.01), (42, -0.011), (43, 0.005), (44, -0.022), (45, -0.031), (46, -0.055), (47, -0.019), (48, -0.059), (49, -0.003)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.94722557 983 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-31-Skepticism about skepticism of global warming skepticism skepticism
Introduction: A group of University of California professors headed by physicist Richard Muller recently released a report confirming global warming. Then geophysicist Judith Curry, a coauthor on the papers produced by the Muller group, turned around and said that their data actually show that global warming has stopped. (Also see clarification here .) Curry is described in the news article as the second author on the papers, but the authors are listed alphabetically so it’s probably more accurate to describe her as one of the ten authors. Muller’s one, Curry’s another, . . . now I want to know what 7 of the other 8 authors think! (One of the authors is Richard Muller’s daughter Elizabeth, so maybe we shouldn’t count her as an independent view.) Some enterprising reporter should really interview the other 7 authors of that report . Just a quick question like, “Is there scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped?” To add some fuel to the fire, let me repost what my ph
Introduction: My friend Seth, whom I know from Berkeley (we taught a course together on left-handedness), has a blog on topics ranging from thoughtful discussions of scientific evidence, to experiences with his unconventional weight-loss scheme, offbeat self-experimentation, and advocacy of fringe scientific theories, leavened with occasional dollops of cynicism and political extremism . I agree with Seth on some things but not others. ( Here’s Seth’s reason for not attempting a clinical trial of his diet.) Recently I was disturbed (but, I’m sorry to say, not surprised) to see Seth post the following: Predictions of climate models versus reality . I [Seth] have only seen careful prediction-vs-reality comparisons made by AGW [anthropogenic global warming] skeptics. Those who believe humans are dangerously warming the planet appear to be silent on this subject. In response, Phil commented : Funny, on the day you [Seth] made your post saying that you haven’t seen comparis
3 0.82249671 180 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-03-Climate Change News
Introduction: I. State of the Climate report The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently released their “State of the Climate Report” for 2009 . The report has chapters discussing global climate (temperatures, water vapor, cloudiness, alpine glaciers,…); oceans (ocean heat content, sea level, sea surface temperatures, etc.); the arctic (sea ice extent, permafrost, vegetation, and so on); Antarctica (weather observations, sea ice extent,…), and regional climates. NOAA also provides a nice page that lets you display any of 11 relevant time-series datasets (land-surface air temperature, sea level, ocean heat content, September arctic sea-ice extent, sea-surface temperature, northern hemisphere snow cover, specific humidity, glacier mass balance, marine air temperature, tropospheric temperature, and stratospheric temperature). Each of the plots overlays data from several databases (not necessarily indepenedent of each other), and you can select which ones to include or leave
4 0.77101892 622 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-21-A possible resolution of the albedo mystery!
Introduction: Remember that bizarre episode in Freakonomics 2, where Levitt and Dubner went to the Batcave-like lair of a genius billionaire who told them that “the problem with solar panels is that they’re black .” I’m not the only one who wondered at the time: of all the issues to bring up about solar power, why that one? Well, I think I’ve found the answer in this article by John Lanchester: In 2004, Nathan Myhrvold, who had, five years earlier, at the advanced age of forty, retired from his job as Microsoft’s chief technology officer, began to contribute to the culinary discussion board egullet.org . . . At the time he grew interested in sous vide, there was no book in English on the subject, and he resolved to write one. . . . broadened it further to include information about the basic physics of heating processes, then to include the physics and chemistry of traditional cooking techniques, and then to include the science and practical application of the highly inventive new techniq
Introduction: I came across a document [updated link here ], “Applying structured analogies to the global warming alarm movement,” by Kesten Green and Scott Armstrong. The general approach is appealing to me, but the execution seemed disturbingly flawed. Here’s how they introduce the project: The structured analogies procedure we [Green and Armstrong] used for this study was as follows: 1. Identify possible analogies by searching the literature and by asking experts with different viewpoints to nominate analogies to the target situation: alarm over dangerous manmade global warming. 2. Screen the possible analogies to ensure they meet the stated criteria and that the outcomes are known. 3. Code the relevant characteristics of the analogous situations. 4. Forecast target situation outcomes by using a predetermined mechanical rule to select the outcomes of the analogies. Here is how we posed the question to the experts: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other organizat
7 0.74590343 837 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-04-Is it rational to vote?
8 0.73954475 513 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-12-“Tied for Warmest Year On Record”
9 0.73219526 1201 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-07-Inference = data + model
10 0.73183686 2313 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-30-Seth Roberts
11 0.72224075 1734 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-23-Life in the C-suite: A graph that is both ugly and bad, and an unrelated story
12 0.71639597 1623 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-14-GiveWell charity recommendations
13 0.70583159 2230 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-02-What is it with Americans in Olympic ski teams from tropical countries?
14 0.70011425 108 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-24-Sometimes the raw numbers are better than a percentage
15 0.69903046 1501 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-18-More studies on the economic effects of climate change
16 0.69585586 489 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-28-Brow inflation
17 0.68598217 626 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-23-Physics is hard
18 0.68477613 2341 andrew gelman stats-2014-05-20-plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
19 0.68322039 514 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-13-News coverage of statistical issues…how did I do?
20 0.67468369 945 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-06-W’man < W’pedia, again
topicId topicWeight
[(1, 0.012), (15, 0.032), (16, 0.074), (21, 0.026), (24, 0.093), (53, 0.018), (63, 0.019), (69, 0.015), (76, 0.01), (82, 0.181), (86, 0.016), (89, 0.012), (95, 0.02), (99, 0.334)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
1 0.98177731 940 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-03-It depends upon what the meaning of the word “firm” is.
Introduction: David Hogg pointed me to this news article by Angela Saini: It’s not often that the quiet world of mathematics is rocked by a murder case. But last summer saw a trial that sent academics into a tailspin, and has since swollen into a fevered clash between science and the law. At its heart, this is a story about chance. And it begins with a convicted killer, “T”, who took his case to the court of appeal in 2010. Among the evidence against him was a shoeprint from a pair of Nike trainers, which seemed to match a pair found at his home. While appeals often unmask shaky evidence, this was different. This time, a mathematical formula was thrown out of court. The footwear expert made what the judge believed were poor calculations about the likelihood of the match, compounded by a bad explanation of how he reached his opinion. The conviction was quashed. . . . “The impact will be quite shattering,” says Professor Norman Fenton, a mathematician at Queen Mary, University of London.
2 0.97708046 340 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-13-Randomized experiments, non-randomized experiments, and observational studies
Introduction: In the spirit of Dehejia and Wahba: Three Conditions under Which Experiments and Observational Studies Produce Comparable Causal Estimates: New Findings from Within-Study Comparisons , by Cook, Shadish, and Wong. Can Nonrandomized Experiments Yield Accurate Answers? A Randomized Experiment Comparing Random and Nonrandom Assignments, by Shadish, Clark, and Steiner. I just talk about causal inference. These people do it. The second link above is particularly interesting because it includes discussions by some causal inference heavyweights. WWJD and all that.
3 0.975604 1440 andrew gelman stats-2012-08-02-“A Christmas Carol” as applied to plagiarism
Introduction: John Mashey sends me this delightful video (not in English but it has subtitles) from the University of Bergen (link comes from this page from Elsevier but I don’t see any direct connection between the controversial academic publisher and the Bergen group). Part of me believes, deep down, that if someone were to send this link to Edward Wegman , he will repent, that he’ll just break down, confess, and apologize to everybody involved. I can’t understand the psychology of such people. I mean, I can understand someone being lazy enough to plagiarize and to deny if accused. But to keep denying after you’ve been caught and everyone knows you did it—I simply can’t see how someone can do that. But this surely reflects my nerd-like lack of understanding of human nature, more than anything else. It’s a bit scary that someone such as myself who has such poor intuitions about human behavior can become a prominent social scientist, but I suppose it takes all kinds. P.S. At least I’m
4 0.9744004 335 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-11-How to think about Lou Dobbs
Introduction: I was unsurprised to read that Lou Dobbs, the former CNN host who crusaded against illegal immigrants, had actually hired a bunch of them himself to maintain his large house and his horse farm. (OK, I have to admit I was surprised by the part about the horse farm.) But I think most of the reactions to this story missed the point. Isabel Macdonald’s article that broke the story was entitled, “Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite,” and most of the discussion went from there, with some commenters piling on Dobbs and others defending him by saying that Dobbs hired his laborers through contractors and may not have known they were in the country illegally. To me, though, the key issue is slightly different. And Macdonald’s story is relevant whether or not Dobbs knew he was hiring illegals. My point is not that Dobbs is a bad guy, or a hypocrite, or whatever. My point is that, in his setting, it would take an extraordinary effort to not hire illegal immigrants to take care of his house
5 0.97347152 699 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-06-Another stereotype demolished
Introduction: I’ve heard from various sources that when you give a talk in an econ dept that they eat you alive: typically the audience showers you with questions and you are lucky to get past the second slide in your presentation. So far, though, I’ve given seminar talks in three economics departments–George Mason University a few years ago, Sciences Po last year, and Hunter College yesterday–and all three times the audiences have been completely normal. They did not interrupt unduly and they asked a bunch of good questions at the end. n=3, sure. But still.
7 0.96787322 178 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-03-(Partisan) visualization of health care legislation
8 0.96703482 1958 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-27-Teaching is hard
9 0.96434361 193 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-09-Besag
10 0.95822275 1772 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-20-Stan at Google this Thurs and at Berkeley this Fri noon
11 0.95399696 1749 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-04-Stan in L.A. this Wed 3:30pm
12 0.95238554 1553 andrew gelman stats-2012-10-30-Real rothko, fake rothko
13 0.95194811 67 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-03-More on that Dartmouth health care study
14 0.95149136 326 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-07-Peer pressure, selection, and educational reform
15 0.94693273 1134 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-21-Lessons learned from a recent R package submission
same-blog 16 0.94691294 983 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-31-Skepticism about skepticism of global warming skepticism skepticism
17 0.94627559 2003 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-30-Stan Project: Continuous Relaxations for Discrete MRFs
18 0.94481003 606 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-10-It’s no fun being graded on a curve