andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-986 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: In reply to my question , David MacKay writes: You said that can imagine rounding up 9 to 10 – which would be elegant if we worked in base 10. But in the UK we haven’t switched to base 10 yet, we still work in dozens and grosses. (One gross = 12^2 = 144.) So I was taught (by John Skilling, probably) “a dozen samples are plenty”. Probably in an earlier draft of the book in 2001 I said “a dozen”, rather than “12″. Then some feedbacker may have written and said “I don’t know what a dozen is”; so then I sacrificed elegant language and replaced “dozen” by “12″, which leads to your mystification. PS – please send the winner of your competition a free copy of my other book ( sewtha ) too, from me. PPS I see that Mikkel Schmidt [in your comments] has diligently found the correct answer, which I guessed above. I suggest you award the prizes to him. OK, we’re just giving away books here! P.S. See here for my review of MacKay’s book on sustainable energy.
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 In reply to my question , David MacKay writes: You said that can imagine rounding up 9 to 10 – which would be elegant if we worked in base 10. [sent-1, score-0.905]
2 But in the UK we haven’t switched to base 10 yet, we still work in dozens and grosses. [sent-2, score-0.444]
3 ) So I was taught (by John Skilling, probably) “a dozen samples are plenty”. [sent-4, score-0.675]
4 Probably in an earlier draft of the book in 2001 I said “a dozen”, rather than “12″. [sent-5, score-0.472]
5 Then some feedbacker may have written and said “I don’t know what a dozen is”; so then I sacrificed elegant language and replaced “dozen” by “12″, which leads to your mystification. [sent-6, score-1.441]
6 PS – please send the winner of your competition a free copy of my other book ( sewtha ) too, from me. [sent-7, score-0.671]
7 PPS I see that Mikkel Schmidt [in your comments] has diligently found the correct answer, which I guessed above. [sent-8, score-0.217]
8 See here for my review of MacKay’s book on sustainable energy. [sent-13, score-0.35]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('dozen', 0.489), ('mackay', 0.296), ('elegant', 0.282), ('base', 0.201), ('ps', 0.175), ('sacrificed', 0.175), ('pps', 0.165), ('schmidt', 0.165), ('said', 0.15), ('sustainable', 0.148), ('prizes', 0.148), ('guessed', 0.148), ('uk', 0.138), ('book', 0.137), ('switched', 0.131), ('rounding', 0.131), ('gross', 0.124), ('plenty', 0.118), ('draft', 0.118), ('winner', 0.117), ('award', 0.114), ('dozens', 0.112), ('probably', 0.111), ('replaced', 0.11), ('competition', 0.104), ('energy', 0.098), ('copy', 0.097), ('taught', 0.095), ('samples', 0.091), ('leads', 0.088), ('language', 0.083), ('send', 0.08), ('suggest', 0.074), ('giving', 0.073), ('please', 0.072), ('worked', 0.072), ('books', 0.07), ('haven', 0.07), ('imagine', 0.069), ('correct', 0.069), ('earlier', 0.067), ('yet', 0.066), ('review', 0.065), ('away', 0.065), ('david', 0.064), ('free', 0.064), ('written', 0.064), ('john', 0.062), ('ok', 0.06), ('comments', 0.056)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0 986 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-01-MacKay update: where 12 comes from
Introduction: In reply to my question , David MacKay writes: You said that can imagine rounding up 9 to 10 – which would be elegant if we worked in base 10. But in the UK we haven’t switched to base 10 yet, we still work in dozens and grosses. (One gross = 12^2 = 144.) So I was taught (by John Skilling, probably) “a dozen samples are plenty”. Probably in an earlier draft of the book in 2001 I said “a dozen”, rather than “12″. Then some feedbacker may have written and said “I don’t know what a dozen is”; so then I sacrificed elegant language and replaced “dozen” by “12″, which leads to your mystification. PS – please send the winner of your competition a free copy of my other book ( sewtha ) too, from me. PPS I see that Mikkel Schmidt [in your comments] has diligently found the correct answer, which I guessed above. I suggest you award the prizes to him. OK, we’re just giving away books here! P.S. See here for my review of MacKay’s book on sustainable energy.
2 0.24940026 984 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-01-David MacKay sez . . . 12??
Introduction: I’ve recently been reading David MacKay’s 2003 book , Information Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms. It’s great background for my Bayesian computation class because he has lots of pictures and detailed discussions of the algorithms. (Regular readers of this blog will not be surprised to hear that I hate all the Occam -factor stuff that MacKay talks about, but overall it’s a great book.) Anyway, I happened to notice the following bit, under the heading, “How many samples are needed?”: In many problems, we really only need about twelve independent samples from P(x). Imagine that x is an unknown vector such as the amount of corrosion present in each of 10 000 underground pipelines around Cambridge, and φ(x) is the total cost of repairing those pipelines. The distribution P(x) describes the probability of a state x given the tests that have been carried out on some pipelines and the assumptions about the physics of corrosion. The quantity Φ is the expected cost of the repa
3 0.13866298 710 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-14-Missed Friday the 13th Zombie Plot Update
Introduction: The revised paper plot13.pdf Slightly improved figures figure13.pdf And just the history part from my thesis – that some find interesting. (And to provide a selfish wiki meta-analysis entry pointer) JustHistory.pdf I have had about a dozen friends read this or earlier versions – they split into finding it interesting (and pragmatic) versus incomprehensible. The reason for that may or may not point to ways to make it clearer. K?
4 0.10864573 1041 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-04-David MacKay and Occam’s Razor
Introduction: In my comments on David MacKay’s 2003 book on Bayesian inference, I wrote that I hate all the Occam-factor stuff that MacKay talks about, and I linked to this quote from Radford Neal: Sometimes a simple model will outperform a more complex model . . . Nevertheless, I believe that deliberately limiting the complexity of the model is not fruitful when the problem is evidently complex. Instead, if a simple model is found that outperforms some particular complex model, the appropriate response is to define a different complex model that captures whatever aspect of the problem led to the simple model performing well. MacKay replied as follows: When you said you disagree with me on Occam factors I think what you meant was that you agree with me on them. I’ve read your post on the topic and completely agreed with you (and Radford) that we should be using models the size of a house, models that we believe in, and that anyone who thinks it is a good idea to bias the model toward
5 0.084102154 1010 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-14-“Free energy” and economic resources
Introduction: By “free energy” I don’t mean perpetual motion machines, cars that run on water and get 200 mpg, or the latest cold-fusion hype. No, I’m referring to the term from physics. The free energy of a system is, roughly, the amount of energy that can be directly extracted from it. For example, a rock at room temperature is just full of energy—not just the energy locked in its nuclei, but basic thermal energy—but at room temperature you can’t extract any of it. To the physicists in the audience: Yes, I realize that free energy has a technical meaning in statistical mechanics and that my above definition is sloppy. Please bear with me. And, to the non-physicists: feel free to head to Wikipedia or a physics textbook for a more careful treatment. I was thinking about free energy the other day when hearing someone on the radio say something about China bailing out the E.U. I did a double-take. Huh? The E.U. is rich, China’s not so rich. How can a middle-income country bail out a
6 0.082036808 1378 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-13-Economists . . .
7 0.079966165 1119 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-15-Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award
8 0.078375041 2151 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-27-Should statistics have a Nobel prize?
9 0.077094406 939 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-03-DBQQ rounding for labeling charts and communicating tolerances
10 0.072774872 253 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-03-Gladwell vs Pinker
11 0.072633266 1526 andrew gelman stats-2012-10-09-Little Data: How traditional statistical ideas remain relevant in a big-data world
12 0.064512752 1339 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-23-Learning Differential Geometry for Hamiltonian Monte Carlo
13 0.063983902 658 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-11-Statistics in high schools: Towards more accessible conceptions of statistical inference
14 0.062020488 2021 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-13-Swiss Jonah Lehrer
15 0.060385227 1642 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-28-New book by Stef van Buuren on missing-data imputation looks really good!
16 0.059956267 258 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-05-A review of a review of a review of a decade
17 0.058219317 1289 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-29-We go to war with the data we have, not the data we want
19 0.057683691 216 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-18-More forecasting competitions
20 0.057150088 2009 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-05-A locally organized online BDA course on G+ hangout?
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.092), (1, -0.033), (2, -0.031), (3, 0.029), (4, 0.024), (5, 0.038), (6, 0.048), (7, -0.022), (8, 0.043), (9, 0.002), (10, 0.034), (11, -0.048), (12, 0.025), (13, -0.02), (14, 0.063), (15, -0.005), (16, -0.024), (17, 0.006), (18, 0.045), (19, -0.043), (20, 0.029), (21, 0.011), (22, 0.022), (23, -0.01), (24, 0.007), (25, 0.03), (26, 0.023), (27, 0.007), (28, 0.026), (29, -0.013), (30, -0.032), (31, -0.014), (32, 0.024), (33, 0.001), (34, -0.024), (35, 0.01), (36, 0.029), (37, -0.022), (38, 0.03), (39, 0.025), (40, -0.009), (41, -0.003), (42, -0.006), (43, 0.017), (44, -0.012), (45, -0.041), (46, 0.019), (47, -0.018), (48, 0.009), (49, 0.009)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.97442508 986 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-01-MacKay update: where 12 comes from
Introduction: In reply to my question , David MacKay writes: You said that can imagine rounding up 9 to 10 – which would be elegant if we worked in base 10. But in the UK we haven’t switched to base 10 yet, we still work in dozens and grosses. (One gross = 12^2 = 144.) So I was taught (by John Skilling, probably) “a dozen samples are plenty”. Probably in an earlier draft of the book in 2001 I said “a dozen”, rather than “12″. Then some feedbacker may have written and said “I don’t know what a dozen is”; so then I sacrificed elegant language and replaced “dozen” by “12″, which leads to your mystification. PS – please send the winner of your competition a free copy of my other book ( sewtha ) too, from me. PPS I see that Mikkel Schmidt [in your comments] has diligently found the correct answer, which I guessed above. I suggest you award the prizes to him. OK, we’re just giving away books here! P.S. See here for my review of MacKay’s book on sustainable energy.
2 0.81893384 2021 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-13-Swiss Jonah Lehrer
Introduction: Psychology researcher Chris Chabris writes : Rolf Dobelli, a Swiss writer, published a book called The Art of Thinking Clearly earlier this year with HarperCollins in the U.S. The book’s original German edition was a #1 bestseller, and the book has sold over one million copies worldwide. In perusing Mr. Dobelli’s book, we noticed several familiar-sounding passages. On closer examination, we found five instances of unattributed material that is either reproduced verbatim or closely paraphrased from text and arguments in our book, The Invisible Gorilla (Crown, 2010). They are listed at the end of this note. Apparently he ripped off Nassim Taleb too . A million copies, huh? I guess crime really does pay! Maybe he could get an appointment at Harvard Law School or, if that falls through, a position as writer-in-residence at the statistics department of George Mason University [no link needed for that one -- ed.]. P.S. Chabris notes that there’s an odd coincidence regardin
3 0.80194795 1179 andrew gelman stats-2012-02-21-“Readability” as freedom from the actual sensation of reading
Introduction: In her essay on Margaret Mitchell and Gone With the Wind, Claudia Roth Pierpoint writes: The much remarked “readability” of the book must have played a part in this smooth passage from the page to the screen, since “readability” has to do not only with freedom from obscurity but, paradoxically, with freedom from the actual sensation of reading [emphasis added]—of the tug and traction of words as they move thoughts into place in the mind. Requiring, in fact, the least reading, the most “readable” book allows its characters to slip easily through nets of words and into other forms. Popular art has been well defined by just this effortless movement from medium to medium, which is carried out, as Leslie Fiedler observed in relation to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “without loss of intensity or alteration of meaning.” Isabel Archer rises from the page only in the hanging garments of Henry James’s prose, but Scarlett O’Hara is a free woman. Well put. I wish Pierpoint would come out with ano
4 0.79841793 127 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-04-Inequality and health
Introduction: Several people asked me for my thoughts on Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book, “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.” I’ve outsourced my thinking on the topic to Lane Kenworthy .
5 0.7950694 517 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-14-Bayes in China update
Introduction: Some clarification on the Bayes-in-China issue raised last week : 1. We heard that the Chinese publisher cited the following pages that might contain politically objectionable materials: 3, 5, 21, 73, 112, 201. 2. It appears that, as some commenters suggested, the objection was to some of the applications, not to the Bayesian methods. 3. Our book is not censored in China. In fact, as some commenters mentioned, it is possible to buy it there, and it is also available in university libraries there. The edition of the book which was canceled was intended to be a low-cost reprint of the book. The original book is still available. I used the phrase “Banned in China” as a joke and I apologize if it was misinterpreted. 4. I have no quarrel with the Chinese government or with any Chinese publishers. They can publish whatever books they would like. I found this episode amusing only because I do not think my book on regression and multilevel models has any strong political co
6 0.79155415 1642 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-28-New book by Stef van Buuren on missing-data imputation looks really good!
7 0.78669202 1641 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-27-The Möbius strip, or, marketing that is impervious to criticism
8 0.78378606 1782 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-30-“Statistical Modeling: A Fresh Approach”
9 0.78057092 115 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-28-Whassup with those crappy thrillers?
10 0.77820873 258 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-05-A review of a review of a review of a decade
11 0.77784425 432 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-27-Neumann update
12 0.77623272 46 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-21-Careers, one-hit wonders, and an offer of a free book
13 0.76137501 1382 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-17-How to make a good fig?
14 0.76137429 31 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-13-Visualization in 1939
15 0.75733018 881 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-30-Rickey Henderson and Peter Angelos, together again
16 0.7520436 285 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-18-Fiction is not for tirades? Tell that to Saul Bellow!
17 0.75180286 1436 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-31-A book on presenting numbers from spreadsheets
18 0.75172395 2168 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-12-Things that I like that almost nobody else is interested in
19 0.74972248 1977 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-11-Debutante Hill
20 0.74548239 57 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-29-Roth and Amsterdam
topicId topicWeight
[(8, 0.021), (9, 0.017), (12, 0.017), (16, 0.083), (21, 0.033), (22, 0.04), (24, 0.037), (56, 0.041), (57, 0.033), (62, 0.158), (79, 0.019), (86, 0.037), (94, 0.028), (99, 0.32)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.9592911 986 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-01-MacKay update: where 12 comes from
Introduction: In reply to my question , David MacKay writes: You said that can imagine rounding up 9 to 10 – which would be elegant if we worked in base 10. But in the UK we haven’t switched to base 10 yet, we still work in dozens and grosses. (One gross = 12^2 = 144.) So I was taught (by John Skilling, probably) “a dozen samples are plenty”. Probably in an earlier draft of the book in 2001 I said “a dozen”, rather than “12″. Then some feedbacker may have written and said “I don’t know what a dozen is”; so then I sacrificed elegant language and replaced “dozen” by “12″, which leads to your mystification. PS – please send the winner of your competition a free copy of my other book ( sewtha ) too, from me. PPS I see that Mikkel Schmidt [in your comments] has diligently found the correct answer, which I guessed above. I suggest you award the prizes to him. OK, we’re just giving away books here! P.S. See here for my review of MacKay’s book on sustainable energy.
2 0.92528749 704 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-10-Multiple imputation and multilevel analysis
Introduction: Robert Birkelbach: I am writing my Bachelor Thesis in which I want to assess the reading competencies of German elementary school children using the PIRLS2006 data. My levels are classrooms and the individuals. However, my dependent variable is a multiple imputed (m=5) reading test. The problem I have is, that I do not know, whether I can just calculate 5 linear multilevel models and then average all the results (the coefficients, standard deviation, bic, intra class correlation, R2, t-statistics, p-values etc) or if I need different formulas for integrating the results of the five models into one because it is a multilevel analysis? Do you think there’s a better way in solving my problem? I would greatly appreciate if you could help me with a problem regarding my analysis — I am quite a newbie to multilevel modeling and especially to multiple imputation. Also: Is it okay to use frequentist models when the multiple imputation was done bayesian? Would the different philosophies of sc
3 0.91802001 260 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-07-QB2
Introduction: Dave Berri writes: Saw you had a post on the research I did with Rob Simmons on the NFL draft. I have attached the article. This article has not officially been published, so please don’t post this on-line. The post you linked to states the following: “On his blog, Berri says he restricts the analysis to QBs who have played more than 500 downs, or for 5 years. He also looks at per-play statistics, like touchdowns per game, to counter what he considers an opportunity bias.” Two points: First of all, we did not look at touchdowns per game (that is not a per play stat). More importantly — as this post indicates — we did far more than just look at data after five years. We did mention the five year result, but directly below that discussion (and I mean, directly below), the following sentences appear. Our data set runs from 1970 to 2007 (adjustments were made for how performance changed over time). We also looked at career performance after 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 8 years
4 0.91617954 715 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-16-“It doesn’t matter if you believe in God. What matters is if God believes in you.”
Introduction: Mark Chaves sent me this great article on religion and religious practice: After reading a book or article in the scientific study of religion, I [Chaves] wonder if you ever find yourself thinking, “I just don’t believe it.” I have this experience uncomfortably often, and I think it’s because of a pervasive problem in the scientific study of religion. I want to describe that problem and how to overcome it. The problem is illustrated in a story told by Meyer Fortes. He once asked a rainmaker in a native culture he was studying to perform the rainmaking ceremony for him. The rainmaker refused, replying: “Don’t be a fool, whoever makes a rain-making ceremony in the dry season?” The problem is illustrated in a different way in a story told by Jay Demerath. He was in Israel, visiting friends for a Sabbath dinner. The man of the house, a conservative rabbi, stopped in the middle of chanting the prayers to say cheerfully: “You know, we don’t believe in any of this. But then in Judai
5 0.90770298 339 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-13-Battle of the NYT opinion-page economists
Introduction: Meow! Wow–economists are under a lot of pressure. Not only do they have to keep publishing after they get tenure; they have to be funny, too! It’s a lot easier in statistics and political science. Nobody expects us to be funny, so any little witticism always gets a big laugh. P.S. I think no one will deny that Levitt has a sense of humor. For example, he ran this item with a straight face, relaying to NYT readers in October 2008 that “the current unemployment rate of 6.1 percent is not alarming.” P.P.S. I think this will keep me safe for awhile.
6 0.89561379 156 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-20-Burglars are local
7 0.88890743 1832 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-29-The blogroll
8 0.88679212 1904 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-18-Job opening! Come work with us!
9 0.88389558 1220 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-19-Sorry, no ARM solutions
10 0.87961948 1804 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-15-How effective are football coaches?
11 0.87927365 1139 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-26-Suggested resolution of the Bem paradox
12 0.87819779 2070 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-20-The institution of tenure
13 0.87741375 2289 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-11-“More research from the lunatic fringe”
14 0.87730014 989 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-03-This post does not mention Wegman
15 0.87626553 767 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-15-Error in an attribution of an error
16 0.87579829 430 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-25-The von Neumann paradox
17 0.87443656 2107 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-20-NYT (non)-retraction watch
18 0.8737728 2368 andrew gelman stats-2014-06-11-Bayes in the research conversation
19 0.87355512 239 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-28-The mathematics of democracy
20 0.87349546 452 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-06-Followup questions