andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-1057 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: From Wikipedia (via Jay Livingston ): Newsweek sells only about 40,000 newsstand copies compared with 1.5 million subscriptions. (Both figures are substantially lower than they were a decade ago.) The figures for Time are about double those of Newsweek, but the ratio of newsstand sales to subscriptions is about the same. I guess I’m not surprised that most of the sales are from subscriptions, but I’m surprised the fraction is so close to 100%.
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same-blog 1 1.0 1057 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-14-Hey—I didn’t know that!
Introduction: From Wikipedia (via Jay Livingston ): Newsweek sells only about 40,000 newsstand copies compared with 1.5 million subscriptions. (Both figures are substantially lower than they were a decade ago.) The figures for Time are about double those of Newsweek, but the ratio of newsstand sales to subscriptions is about the same. I guess I’m not surprised that most of the sales are from subscriptions, but I’m surprised the fraction is so close to 100%.
2 0.099287078 2111 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-23-Tables > figures yet again
Introduction: I received the following email from someone who would like to remain anonymous: A journal editor made me change all my figures into tables. I complied, but I sent along one of your papers on the topic of figures versus tables. I got the following email in response which I thought you’d find funny: Yes, statisticians prefer figures over tables. However, you are not writing this manuscript for statisticians. Your audience will be clinicians, nurses, epidemiologists and public health professionals. The funny thing is, I think of biomedical journals (Jama, etc) as being pretty good about using graphs to convey their main results. They’re not as good as physicists, but they’re often better than statisticians!
Introduction: Ratio estimates are common in statistics. In survey sampling, the ratio estimate is when you use y/x to estimate Y/X (using the notation in which x,y are totals of sample measurements and X,Y are population totals). In textbook sampling examples, the denominator X will be an all-positive variable, something that is easy to measure and is, ideally, close to proportional to Y. For example, X is last year’s sales and Y is this year’s sales, or X is the number of people in a cluster and Y is some count. Ratio estimation doesn’t work so well if X can be either positive or negative. More generally we can consider any estimate of a ratio, with no need for a survey sampling context. The problem with estimating Y/X is that the very interpretation of Y/X can change completely if the sign of X changes. Everything is ok for a point estimate: you get X.hat and Y.hat, you can take the ratio Y.hat/X.hat, no problem. But the inference falls apart if you have enough uncertainty in X.hat th
4 0.072149187 685 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-29-Data mining and allergies
Introduction: With all this data floating around, there are some interesting analyses one can do. I came across “The Association of Tree Pollen Concentration Peaks and Allergy Medication Sales in New York City: 2003-2008″ by Perry Sheffield . There they correlate pollen counts with anti-allergy medicine sales – and indeed find that two days after high pollen counts, the medicine sales are the highest. Of course, it would be interesting to play with the data to see *what* tree is actually causing the sales to increase the most. Perhaps this would help the arborists what trees to plant. At the moment they seem to be following a rather sexist approach to tree planting: Ogren says the city could solve the problem by planting only female trees, which don’t produce pollen like male trees do. City arborists shy away from females because many produce messy – or in the case of ginkgos, smelly – fruit that litters sidewalks. In Ogren’s opinion, that’s a mistake. He says the females only pro
5 0.065548055 1119 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-15-Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award
Introduction: The American Statistical Association is seeking nominations for its annual Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award . The award was created in 2004 to encourage and recognize members of the communications media who have best displayed an informed interest in the science of statistics and its role in public life. The award can be given for a single statistical article or for a body of work. Former winners of the award include: Felix Salmon , financial blogger, 2010; Sharon Begley , Newsweek, 2009; Mark Buchanan, New York Times, 2008; John Berry, Bloomberg News, 2005; and Gina Kolata, New York Times, 2004. If anyone has any suggestions for the 2012 award, feel free to post in the comments or email me.
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same-blog 1 0.9449451 1057 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-14-Hey—I didn’t know that!
Introduction: From Wikipedia (via Jay Livingston ): Newsweek sells only about 40,000 newsstand copies compared with 1.5 million subscriptions. (Both figures are substantially lower than they were a decade ago.) The figures for Time are about double those of Newsweek, but the ratio of newsstand sales to subscriptions is about the same. I guess I’m not surprised that most of the sales are from subscriptions, but I’m surprised the fraction is so close to 100%.
2 0.64797068 474 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-18-The kind of frustration we could all use more of
Introduction: Nate writes : The Yankees have offered Jeter $45 million over three years — or $15 million per year. . . But that doesn’t mean that the process won’t be frustrating for Jeter, or that there won’t be a few hurt feelings along the way. . . . $45 million, huh? Even after taxes , that’s a lot of money!
3 0.59949934 1147 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-30-Statistical Murder
Introduction: Image via Wikipedia Robert Zubrin writes in “How Much Is an Astronaut’s Life Worth?” ( Reason , Feb 2012 ): …policy analyst John D. Graham and his colleagues at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis found in 1997 that the median cost for lifesaving expenditures and regulations by the U.S. government in the health care, residential, transportation, and occupational areas ranges from about $1 million to $3 million spent per life saved in today’s dollars. The only marked exception to this pattern occurs in the area of environmental health protection (such as the Superfund program) which costs about $200 million per life saved. Graham and his colleagues call the latter kind of inefficiency “ statistical murder ,” since thousands of additional lives could be saved each year if the money were used more cost-effectively. To avoid such deadly waste, the Department of Transportation has a policy of rejecting any proposed safety expenditure that costs more than $3
4 0.59171188 1086 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-27-The most dangerous jobs in America
Introduction: Robin Hanson writes: On the criteria of potential to help people avoid death, this would seem to be among the most important news I’ve ever heard. [In his recent Ph.D. thesis , Ken Lee finds that] death rates depend on job details more than on race, gender, marriage status, rural vs. urban, education, and income combined ! Now for the details. The US Department of Labor has described each of 807 occupations with over 200 detailed features on how jobs are done, skills required, etc.. Lee looked at seven domains of such features, each containing 16 to 57 features, and for each domain Lee did a factor analysis of those features to find the top 2-4 factors. This gave Lee a total of 22 domain factors. Lee also found four overall factors to describe his total set of 225 job and 9 demographic features. (These four factors explain 32%, 15%, 7%, and 4% of total variance.) Lee then tried to use these 26 job factors, along with his other standard predictors (age, race, gender, m
5 0.58694768 68 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-03-…pretty soon you’re talking real money.
Introduction: A New York Times article reports the opening of a half-mile section of bike path, recently built along the west side of Manhattan at a cost of $16M, or roughly $30 million per mile. That’s about $5700 per linear foot. Kinda sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Well, $30 million per mile for about one car-lane mile is a lot, but it’s not out of line compared to other urban highway construction costs. The Doyle Drive project in San Francisco — a freeway to replace the current old and deteriorating freeway approach to the Golden Gate Bridge — is currently under way at $1 billion for 1.6 miles…but hey, it will have six lanes each way, so that isn’t so bad, at $50 million per lane-mile. And there are other components to the project, too, not just building the highway (there will also be bike paths, landscaping, on- and off-ramps, and so on). All in all it seems roughly in line with the New York bike lane project. Speaking of the Doyle Drive project, one expense was the cost of movin
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same-blog 1 0.95865726 1057 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-14-Hey—I didn’t know that!
Introduction: From Wikipedia (via Jay Livingston ): Newsweek sells only about 40,000 newsstand copies compared with 1.5 million subscriptions. (Both figures are substantially lower than they were a decade ago.) The figures for Time are about double those of Newsweek, but the ratio of newsstand sales to subscriptions is about the same. I guess I’m not surprised that most of the sales are from subscriptions, but I’m surprised the fraction is so close to 100%.
2 0.9491905 2250 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-16-“I have no idea who Catalina Garcia is, but she makes a decent ruler”
Introduction: Best blog comment ever , following up on our post, How tall is Jon Lee Anderson?: Based on this picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2235/1640569735_05337bb974.jpg he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Jon_Lee_Anderson.sflb.ashx he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Philippe_Petite.sflb.ashx. And he doesn’t appear to be that tall… about the same height as Claire Danes: http://cdn.theatermania.com/photo-gallery/Petit_Danes_Daldry_2421_4700.jpg – who according to Google is 5′ 6″. So if Jon Lee Anderson is 10″ taller than Catalina Garcia, who is 2″ shorter than Philippe Petit, who is the same height as Claire Danes, then he is 6′ 2″ tall. I have no idea who Catal
Introduction: I just want to share with you the best comment we’ve every had in the nearly ten-year history of this blog. Also it has statistical content! Here’s the story. After seeing an amusing article by Tom Scocca relating how reporter John Lee Anderson called someone as a “little twerp” on twitter: I conjectured that Anderson suffered from “tall person syndrome,” that problem that some people of above-average height have, that they think they’re more important than other people because they literally look down on them. But I had no idea of Anderson’s actual height. Commenter Gary responded with this impressive bit of investigative reporting: Based on this picture: he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit: And he doesn’t appear
Introduction: Elsewhere: 1. They asked me to write about my “favorite election- or campaign-related movie, novel, or TV show” (Salon) 2. The shopping period is over; the time for buying has begun (NYT) 3. If anybody’s gonna be criticizing my tax plan, I want it to be this guy (Monkey Cage) 4. The 4 key qualifications to be a great president; unfortunately George W. Bush satisfies all four, and Ronald Reagan doesn’t match any of them (Monkey Cage) 5. The politics of eyeliner (Monkey Cage)
5 0.76131046 915 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-17-(Worst) graph of the year
Introduction: This (forwarded to me from Jeff, from a powerpoint by Willam Gawthrop) wins not on form but on content: Really this graph should stand alone but it’s so wonderful that I can’t resist pointing out a few things: - The gap between 610 and 622 A.D. seems to be about the same as the previous 600 years, and only a little less than the 1400 years before that. - “Pious and devout” Jews are portrayed as having steadily increased in nonviolence up to the present day. Been to Israel lately? - I assume the line labeled “Bible” is referring to Christians? I’m sort of amazed to see pious and devout Christians listed as being maximally violent at the beginning. Huh? I thought Christ was supposed to be a nonviolent, mellow dude. The line starts at 3 B.C., implying that baby Jesus was at the extreme of violence. Gong forward, we can learn from the graph that pious and devout Christians in 1492 or 1618, say, were much more peaceful than Jesus and his crew. - Most amusingly g
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