andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2011 andrew_gelman_stats-2011-1085 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: June Carbone points out sometimes people want laws to express a sentiment. This isn’t just about Congress passing National Smoked Meats Week or San Francisco establishing itself as a nuclear-free zone, it also includes things such as laws against gay marriage, where, as Carbone writes, “we ‘care too much,’ when in fact we can do so little.” I don’t have anything to add here, and I expect many of you are familiar with this idea, but it’s new to me. I’d always been puzzled by people who want to use the law to express a sentiment, but perhaps it makes sense to be open-minded and to consider this as one of the purposes of the legislative process.
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2 This isn’t just about Congress passing National Smoked Meats Week or San Francisco establishing itself as a nuclear-free zone, it also includes things such as laws against gay marriage, where, as Carbone writes, “we ‘care too much,’ when in fact we can do so little. [sent-2, score-1.091]
3 ” I don’t have anything to add here, and I expect many of you are familiar with this idea, but it’s new to me. [sent-3, score-0.455]
4 I’d always been puzzled by people who want to use the law to express a sentiment, but perhaps it makes sense to be open-minded and to consider this as one of the purposes of the legislative process. [sent-4, score-1.435]
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same-blog 1 0.99999988 1085 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-27-Laws as expressive
Introduction: June Carbone points out sometimes people want laws to express a sentiment. This isn’t just about Congress passing National Smoked Meats Week or San Francisco establishing itself as a nuclear-free zone, it also includes things such as laws against gay marriage, where, as Carbone writes, “we ‘care too much,’ when in fact we can do so little.” I don’t have anything to add here, and I expect many of you are familiar with this idea, but it’s new to me. I’d always been puzzled by people who want to use the law to express a sentiment, but perhaps it makes sense to be open-minded and to consider this as one of the purposes of the legislative process.
2 0.18009758 1397 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-27-Stand Your Ground laws and homicides
Introduction: Jeff points me to a paper by Chandler McClellan and Erdal Tekin which begins as follows: The controversies surrounding Stand Your Ground laws have recently captured the nation’s attention. Since 2005, eighteen states have passed laws extending the right to self-defense with no duty to retreat to any place a person has a legal right to be, and several additional states are debating the adoption of similar legislation. Despite the implications that these laws may have for public safety, there has been little empirical investigation of their impact on crime and victimization. In this paper, we use monthly data from the U.S. Vital Statistics to examine how Stand Your Ground laws affect homicides. We identify the impact of these laws by exploiting variation in the effective date of these laws across states. Our results indicate that Stand Your Ground laws are associated with a significant increase in the number of homicides among whites, especially white males. According to our estimat
3 0.13990307 1011 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-15-World record running times vs. distance
Introduction: Julyan Arbel plots world record running times vs. distance (on the log-log scale): The line has a slope of 1.1. I think it would be clearer to plot speed vs. distance—then you’d get a slope of -0.1, and the numbers would be more directly interpretable. Indeed, this paper by Sandra Savaglio and Vincenzo Carbone (referred to in the comments on Julyan’s blog) plots speed vs. time. Graphing by speed gives more resolution: The upper-left graph in the grid corresponds to the human running records plotted by Arbel. It’s funny that Arbel sees only one line whereas Savaglio and Carbone see two—but if you remove the 100m record at one end and the 100km at the other end, you can see two lines in Arbel’s graph as well. The bottom two graphs show swimming records. Knut would probably have something to say about all this.
4 0.10435617 688 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-30-Why it’s so relaxing to think about social issues
Introduction: I was invited by the Columbia University residence halls to speak at an event on gay marriage. (I’ve assisted my colleagues Jeff Lax and Justin Phillips in their research on the topic.) The event sounded fun–unfortunately I’ll be out of town that weekend so can’t make it–but it got me thinking about how gay marriage and other social issues are so relaxing to think about because there’s no need for doubt. About half of Americans support same-sex marriage and about half oppose it. And the funny thing is, you can be absolutely certain in your conviction, from either direction. If you support, it’s a simple matter of human rights, and it’s a bit ridiculous to suppose that if gay marriage is allowed, it will somehow wreck all the straight marriages out there. Conversely, you can oppose on the clear rationale of wanting to keep marriage the same as it’s always been, and suggest that same-sex couples can be free to get together outside of marriage, as they always could. (Hey, it was g
5 0.10135237 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 0.93153805 1085 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-27-Laws as expressive
Introduction: June Carbone points out sometimes people want laws to express a sentiment. This isn’t just about Congress passing National Smoked Meats Week or San Francisco establishing itself as a nuclear-free zone, it also includes things such as laws against gay marriage, where, as Carbone writes, “we ‘care too much,’ when in fact we can do so little.” I don’t have anything to add here, and I expect many of you are familiar with this idea, but it’s new to me. I’d always been puzzled by people who want to use the law to express a sentiment, but perhaps it makes sense to be open-minded and to consider this as one of the purposes of the legislative process.
2 0.78219539 707 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-12-Human nature can’t be changed (except when it can)
Introduction: I was checking the Dilbert blog (sorry! I was just curious what was up after the events of a few weeks ago) and saw this: I [Scott Adams] wonder if any old-time racists still exist. I knew a few racists when I was a kid, back in upstate New York. In my adult life, I don’t think I’ve met one. . . . I certainly understand if you’ve witnessed it, or suffered from it. I’m just saying I haven’t seen it where I live. Clearly that sort of activity is distributed unevenly around the country. Just to be clear: I’m only saying I haven’t personally witnessed overt racism in my adult life. I accept that you have seen it firsthand, if you say so. Classic racism of the old-timey variety is probably only possible in people who don’t own television sets and haven’t gone through grade school. I’ll grant you that racist prison gangs and neo-Nazis exist. But obviously something else is going on with those guys. Let’s call them the exceptions. . . . I assume discrimination must be going on somep
Introduction: Sandeep Baliga writes : [In a recent study , Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner write:] For interstate highways in metropolitan areas we [Duranton and Turner] find that VKT (vehicle kilometers traveled) increases one for one with interstate highways, confirming the fundamental law of highway congestion.’ Provision of public transit also simply leads to the people taking public transport being replaced by drivers on the road. Therefore: These findings suggest that both road capacity expansions and extensions to public transit are not appropriate policies with which to combat traffic congestion. This leaves congestion pricing as the main candidate tool to curb traffic congestion. To which I reply: Sure, if your goal is to curb traffic congestion . But what sort of goal is that? Thinking like a microeconomist, my policy goal is to increase people’s utility. Sure, traffic congestion is annoying, but there must be some advantages to driving on that crowded road or pe
4 0.72818625 477 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-20-Costless false beliefs
Introduction: From the Gallup Poll : Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago. They’ve been asking the question since 1982 and it’s been pretty steady at 45%, so in some sense this is good news! (I’m saying this under the completely unsupported belief that it’s better for people to believe truths than falsehoods.) One way to think of this is that, for the overwhelming majority of people, a personal belief in young-earth creationism (or whatever you want to call it) is costless. Or, to put it another way, the discomfort involved in holding a belief that contradicts everything you were taught in school is greater than the discomfort involved in holding a belief that seems to contradict your religious values (keeping in mind that, even among those who report attending church seldom or never, a quarter of these people agree that “God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago”).
5 0.72705942 2119 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-01-Separated by a common blah blah blah
Introduction: I love reading the kind of English that English people write. It’s the same language as American but just slightly different. I was thinking about this recently after coming across this footnote from “Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop,” by Bob Stanley: Mantovani’s atmospheric arrangement on ‘Care Mia’, I should add, is something else. Genuinely celestial. If anyone with a degree of subtlety was singing, it would be quite a record. It’s hard for me to pin down exactly what makes this passage specifically English, but there’s something about it . . . P.S. Mark Liberman reports that, in combination, several of the words and phrases in the above quote indeed supply strong evidence (“odds of better than 50 to 1 in favor of a British origin”).
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Introduction: Greg Mankiw writes (link from Tyler Cowen ): Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I [Mankiw] turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered? By contrast, without the tax increases advocated by the Obama administration, the numbers would look quite different. I would face a lower income tax rate, a lower Medicare tax rate, and no deduction phaseout or estate tax. Taking that writing assignment would yield my kids about $2,000. I would have twice the incentive to keep working. First, the good news Obama’s tax rates are much lower than Mankiw had anticipated! According to the above quote, his marginal tax rate is currently 80% but threatens to rise to 90%. But, in October 2008, Mankiw calculated that Obama’s would tax his m
2 0.86469853 140 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-10-SeeThroughNY
Introduction: From Ira Stoll , a link to this cool data site , courtesy of the Manhattan Institute, with all sorts of state budget information including the salaries of all city and state employees.
3 0.85181963 2261 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-23-Greg Mankiw’s utility function
Introduction: From 2010 : Greg Mankiw writes (link from Tyler Cowen ): Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I [Mankiw] turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered? By contrast, without the tax increases advocated by the Obama administration, the numbers would look quite different. I would face a lower income tax rate, a lower Medicare tax rate, and no deduction phaseout or estate tax. Taking that writing assignment would yield my kids about $2,000. I would have twice the incentive to keep working. First, the good news Obama’s tax rates are much lower than Mankiw had anticipated! According to the above quote, his marginal tax rate is currently 80% but threatens to rise to 90%. But, in October 2008, Mankiw calculated that Obama’s
same-blog 4 0.83700609 1085 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-27-Laws as expressive
Introduction: June Carbone points out sometimes people want laws to express a sentiment. This isn’t just about Congress passing National Smoked Meats Week or San Francisco establishing itself as a nuclear-free zone, it also includes things such as laws against gay marriage, where, as Carbone writes, “we ‘care too much,’ when in fact we can do so little.” I don’t have anything to add here, and I expect many of you are familiar with this idea, but it’s new to me. I’d always been puzzled by people who want to use the law to express a sentiment, but perhaps it makes sense to be open-minded and to consider this as one of the purposes of the legislative process.
5 0.81076735 366 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-24-Mankiw tax update
Introduction: I was going through the blog and noticed this note on an article by Mankiw and Weinzierl who implied that the state only has a right to tax things that are “unjustly wrestled from someone else.” This didn’t make much sense to me–whether it’s the sales tax, the income tax, or whatever, I see taxes as a way to raise money, not as a form of punishment. At the time, I conjectured this was a general difference in attitude between political scientists and economists, but in retrospect I realize I’m dealing with n=1 in each case. See here for further discussion of taxing “justly acquired endowments.” The only reason I’m bringing this all up now is that I think it is relevant to our recent discussion here and here of Mankiw’s work incentives. Mankiw objected to paying a higher marginal tax rate, and I think part of this is that he sees taxes as a form of punishment, and since he came by his income honestly he doesn’t think it’s fair to have to pay taxes on it. My perspective i
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