andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1325 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: A couple months ago, in discussing Charles Murray’s argument that America’s social leaders should “preach what they practice” (Murray argues that they—we!—tend to lead good lives of hard work and moderation but are all too tolerant of antisocial and unproductive behavior among the lower classes), I wrote : Murray does not consider the case of Joe Paterno, but in many ways the Penn State football coach fits his story well. Paterno was said to live an exemplary personal and professional life, combining traditional morality with football success—but, by his actions, he showed little concern about the morality of his players and coaches. At a professional level, Paterno rose higher and higher, and in his personal life he was a responsible adult. But he had an increasing disconnect with the real world, to the extent that horrible crimes were occurring nearby (in the physical and social senses) but he was completely insulated from the consequences for many years. Paterno’s story is s
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 A couple months ago, in discussing Charles Murray’s argument that America’s social leaders should “preach what they practice” (Murray argues that they—we! [sent-1, score-0.114]
2 —tend to lead good lives of hard work and moderation but are all too tolerant of antisocial and unproductive behavior among the lower classes), I wrote : Murray does not consider the case of Joe Paterno, but in many ways the Penn State football coach fits his story well. [sent-2, score-0.418]
3 Paterno was said to live an exemplary personal and professional life, combining traditional morality with football success—but, by his actions, he showed little concern about the morality of his players and coaches. [sent-3, score-0.526]
4 At a professional level, Paterno rose higher and higher, and in his personal life he was a responsible adult. [sent-4, score-0.168]
5 But he had an increasing disconnect with the real world, to the extent that horrible crimes were occurring nearby (in the physical and social senses) but he was completely insulated from the consequences for many years. [sent-5, score-0.18]
6 Paterno’s story is symbolic of upper-income America: you can live an ordinary life in an ordinary house and still feel like a regular guy but still live in a bubble. [sent-6, score-0.429]
7 Joe Paterno is an extreme example, but I think his story is relevant, to explain the difficulty of the “preach what you practice” guideline. [sent-10, score-0.06]
8 My claim is that “preaching,” to make a difference, requires actions as well as words. [sent-11, score-0.113]
9 While Paterno did not espouse a nonjudgmental stance on rape, assault, etc. [sent-12, score-0.101]
10 I see no reason to think that Paterno believed these crimes committed by his coach and players were OK, he just didn’t seem to think it was his role to do anything about it. [sent-14, score-0.219]
11 In response, Murray wrote, “the Paterno case is utterly inapropos for illustrating my argument. [sent-16, score-0.046]
12 ” One complication was that Paterno was a small-town icon and outspoken conservative Republican. [sent-17, score-0.107]
13 So here’s another example that I read about : Charles Hynes, a NYC district attorney who has been colluding with local orthodox Jewish religious leaders to allow child molesters to avoid prosecution. [sent-19, score-0.537]
14 What this story has in common with the Paterno case is not just the crime but also active coverup, with accusers being attacked for reporting the crimes. [sent-20, score-0.115]
15 From the outside, this is hard for me to understand—Who’s out there protecting child abusers? [sent-21, score-0.127]
16 Here’s Charles Hynes, a Democrat from Brooklyn, and he has the same problem that Joe Paterno’s colleagues had at Penn State: they went easy on child molesters, thus directly letting them abuse more kids. [sent-24, score-0.199]
17 The crew at Penn State had a squeaky-clean reputation to protect, and I suppose they talked themselves into believing that the molester in their midst would not offend again. [sent-28, score-0.055]
18 Sure, they could’ve prosecuted a bunch of child abusers but they would’ve had to pay politically. [sent-30, score-0.247]
19 Of course I think (based on what I’ve read in the papers) that, in all these cases, openness would’ve been the best policy, rather than shielding the criminals and letting them do more harm. [sent-31, score-0.12]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('paterno', 0.714), ('murray', 0.229), ('hynes', 0.219), ('child', 0.127), ('penn', 0.121), ('abusers', 0.12), ('molesters', 0.12), ('actions', 0.113), ('joe', 0.111), ('preaching', 0.109), ('attorney', 0.103), ('charles', 0.103), ('brooklyn', 0.099), ('preach', 0.088), ('morality', 0.082), ('crimes', 0.078), ('coach', 0.078), ('live', 0.077), ('ordinary', 0.075), ('letting', 0.072), ('district', 0.072), ('football', 0.07), ('leaders', 0.067), ('life', 0.065), ('practice', 0.065), ('players', 0.063), ('story', 0.06), ('lives', 0.057), ('professional', 0.056), ('state', 0.055), ('offend', 0.055), ('antisocial', 0.055), ('insulated', 0.055), ('accusers', 0.055), ('complication', 0.055), ('america', 0.053), ('moderation', 0.052), ('nonjudgmental', 0.052), ('senses', 0.052), ('outspoken', 0.052), ('espouse', 0.049), ('isolated', 0.049), ('assault', 0.049), ('exemplary', 0.049), ('orthodox', 0.048), ('criminals', 0.048), ('social', 0.047), ('personal', 0.047), ('illustrating', 0.046), ('tolerant', 0.046)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0 1325 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-17-More on the difficulty of “preaching what you practice”
Introduction: A couple months ago, in discussing Charles Murray’s argument that America’s social leaders should “preach what they practice” (Murray argues that they—we!—tend to lead good lives of hard work and moderation but are all too tolerant of antisocial and unproductive behavior among the lower classes), I wrote : Murray does not consider the case of Joe Paterno, but in many ways the Penn State football coach fits his story well. Paterno was said to live an exemplary personal and professional life, combining traditional morality with football success—but, by his actions, he showed little concern about the morality of his players and coaches. At a professional level, Paterno rose higher and higher, and in his personal life he was a responsible adult. But he had an increasing disconnect with the real world, to the extent that horrible crimes were occurring nearby (in the physical and social senses) but he was completely insulated from the consequences for many years. Paterno’s story is s
2 0.45351279 1169 andrew gelman stats-2012-02-15-Charles Murray on the new upper class
Introduction: The other day I posted some comments on the voting patterns of rich and poor in the context of Charles Murray’s recent book, “Coming Apart.” My graphs on income and voting are just fine, but I mischaracterized Murray’s statements. So I want to fix that right away. After that I have some thoughts on the book itself. In brief: 1. I was unfair to call him a Tucker Carlson. 2. Murray talks a lot about upper-class liberals. That’s fine but I think his discussion would be improved by also considering upper-class conservatives, given that I see the big culture war occurring within the upper class. 3. Using the case of Joe Paterno as an example, I discuss why Murray’s “preach what you practice” advice could be difficult to carry out in practice. Murray on the top 5% David Frum quoted Murray as writing that the top 5% “tends to be liberal—right? There’s no getting around it. Every way of answering this question produces a yes.” In response, Frum and I both pointed out t
Introduction: Eric Tassone writes: Probably not blog-worthy/blog-appropriate, but have you heard Bill James discussing the Sandusky & Paterno stuff? I think you discussed once his stance on the Dowd Report, and this seems to be from the same part of his personality—which goes beyond contrarian . . . I have in fact blogged on James ( many times ) and on Paterno , so yes I think this is blogworthy. On the other hand, most readers of this blog probably don’t care about baseball, football, or William James, so I’ll put the rest below the fold. What is legendary baseball statistician Bill James doing, defending the crime-coverups of legendary coach Joe Paterno? As I wrote in my earlier blog on Paterno, it isn’t always easy to do the right thing, and I have no idea if I’d behave any better if I were in such a situation. The characteristics of a good coach do not necessarily provide what it takes to make good decisions off the field. In this sense even more of the blame should go
4 0.19261551 1836 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-02-Culture clash
Introduction: I had no idea this sort of thing even existed: I’m reminded of our discussion of Charles Murray’s recent book on social divisions among Americans. Murray talked about differences between upper and lower class, but I thought he was really talking more about differences between liberals and conservatives among the elite. (More discussion here .) In this particular case, Murray’s story about irresponsible elites seems to fit pretty well. At the elite level, you have well-connected D.C. gun lobbyists opposing any restrictions on personal weapons. As Murray might put it, the elites (Phil Spector aside) may be able to handle their guns, but some lower-class Americans cannot—they do things like give real rifles to 5-year-olds (!). As Murray writes, it’s a combination of cultural ignorance and a permissive ideology: I assume the senators who voted against the recent gun control bill wouldn’t give live weapons to their kids (or live in neighborhoods in which kids have acces
Introduction: Following up on our blog discussions a year ago, I published a review of Charles Murray’s recent book, “Coming Apart,” for the journal Statistics, Politics, and Policy. I invited Murray to publish a response, and he did so. Here’s the abstract to my review : This article examines some claims made in a recent popular book of political sociology, with the intent not being to debunk any claims but rather to connect some important social and policy positions to statistical data on income, social class, and political attitudes. The thesis of Charles Murray’s book is that America’s upper and lower classes have become increasingly separate, with elites living more disciplined, orderly lives (characterized by marriage, work, and stable families) while being largely unaware of the lifestyles of the majority of Americans. I argue that some of Murray’s conclusions are sensitive to particular choices of whom to label as elite or upper-class. From my analysis of survey data, I see the big
7 0.12327398 1034 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-29-World Class Speakers and Entertainers
10 0.072831385 1804 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-15-How effective are football coaches?
11 0.067732096 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
12 0.067057222 1758 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-11-Yes, the decision to try (or not) to have a child can be made rationally
13 0.066450067 526 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-19-“If it saves the life of a single child…” and other nonsense
14 0.063462384 716 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-17-Is the internet causing half the rapes in Norway? I wanna see the scatterplot.
15 0.062198672 389 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-01-Why it can be rational to vote
16 0.062198672 1565 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-06-Why it can be rational to vote
17 0.06146517 668 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-19-The free cup and the extra dollar: A speculation in philosophy
20 0.054850895 1547 andrew gelman stats-2012-10-25-College football, voting, and the law of large numbers
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.107), (1, -0.06), (2, 0.034), (3, 0.024), (4, -0.034), (5, -0.0), (6, 0.016), (7, 0.016), (8, 0.02), (9, 0.023), (10, -0.034), (11, 0.007), (12, -0.037), (13, 0.022), (14, 0.058), (15, 0.01), (16, 0.024), (17, -0.009), (18, 0.031), (19, -0.035), (20, -0.017), (21, -0.041), (22, -0.041), (23, -0.033), (24, 0.025), (25, 0.001), (26, -0.016), (27, 0.009), (28, -0.011), (29, -0.042), (30, 0.032), (31, -0.023), (32, -0.007), (33, 0.02), (34, 0.026), (35, -0.007), (36, -0.003), (37, -0.012), (38, 0.003), (39, 0.05), (40, 0.019), (41, 0.01), (42, -0.104), (43, -0.039), (44, -0.009), (45, 0.038), (46, -0.005), (47, -0.007), (48, -0.002), (49, -0.0)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.90903682 1325 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-17-More on the difficulty of “preaching what you practice”
Introduction: A couple months ago, in discussing Charles Murray’s argument that America’s social leaders should “preach what they practice” (Murray argues that they—we!—tend to lead good lives of hard work and moderation but are all too tolerant of antisocial and unproductive behavior among the lower classes), I wrote : Murray does not consider the case of Joe Paterno, but in many ways the Penn State football coach fits his story well. Paterno was said to live an exemplary personal and professional life, combining traditional morality with football success—but, by his actions, he showed little concern about the morality of his players and coaches. At a professional level, Paterno rose higher and higher, and in his personal life he was a responsible adult. But he had an increasing disconnect with the real world, to the extent that horrible crimes were occurring nearby (in the physical and social senses) but he was completely insulated from the consequences for many years. Paterno’s story is s
2 0.89034951 1836 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-02-Culture clash
Introduction: I had no idea this sort of thing even existed: I’m reminded of our discussion of Charles Murray’s recent book on social divisions among Americans. Murray talked about differences between upper and lower class, but I thought he was really talking more about differences between liberals and conservatives among the elite. (More discussion here .) In this particular case, Murray’s story about irresponsible elites seems to fit pretty well. At the elite level, you have well-connected D.C. gun lobbyists opposing any restrictions on personal weapons. As Murray might put it, the elites (Phil Spector aside) may be able to handle their guns, but some lower-class Americans cannot—they do things like give real rifles to 5-year-olds (!). As Murray writes, it’s a combination of cultural ignorance and a permissive ideology: I assume the senators who voted against the recent gun control bill wouldn’t give live weapons to their kids (or live in neighborhoods in which kids have acces
3 0.8648774 1169 andrew gelman stats-2012-02-15-Charles Murray on the new upper class
Introduction: The other day I posted some comments on the voting patterns of rich and poor in the context of Charles Murray’s recent book, “Coming Apart.” My graphs on income and voting are just fine, but I mischaracterized Murray’s statements. So I want to fix that right away. After that I have some thoughts on the book itself. In brief: 1. I was unfair to call him a Tucker Carlson. 2. Murray talks a lot about upper-class liberals. That’s fine but I think his discussion would be improved by also considering upper-class conservatives, given that I see the big culture war occurring within the upper class. 3. Using the case of Joe Paterno as an example, I discuss why Murray’s “preach what you practice” advice could be difficult to carry out in practice. Murray on the top 5% David Frum quoted Murray as writing that the top 5% “tends to be liberal—right? There’s no getting around it. Every way of answering this question produces a yes.” In response, Frum and I both pointed out t
Introduction: Following up on our blog discussions a year ago, I published a review of Charles Murray’s recent book, “Coming Apart,” for the journal Statistics, Politics, and Policy. I invited Murray to publish a response, and he did so. Here’s the abstract to my review : This article examines some claims made in a recent popular book of political sociology, with the intent not being to debunk any claims but rather to connect some important social and policy positions to statistical data on income, social class, and political attitudes. The thesis of Charles Murray’s book is that America’s upper and lower classes have become increasingly separate, with elites living more disciplined, orderly lives (characterized by marriage, work, and stable families) while being largely unaware of the lifestyles of the majority of Americans. I argue that some of Murray’s conclusions are sensitive to particular choices of whom to label as elite or upper-class. From my analysis of survey data, I see the big
5 0.71378076 1300 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-05-Recently in the sister blog
Introduction: Culture war: The rules You can only accept capital punishment if you’re willing to have innocent people executed every now and then The politics of America’s increasing economic inequality
8 0.66707516 1504 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-20-Could someone please lock this guy and Niall Ferguson in a room together?
10 0.66060317 1789 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-05-Elites have alcohol problems too!
11 0.65871823 1370 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-07-Duncan Watts and the Titanic
12 0.65847969 1587 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-21-Red state blue state, or, states and counties are not persons
14 0.65360177 456 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-07-The red-state, blue-state war is happening in the upper half of the income distribution
15 0.63706952 1621 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-13-Puzzles of criminal justice
16 0.63283134 666 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-18-American Beliefs about Economic Opportunity and Income Inequality
17 0.63231826 633 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-28-“The New Tyranny: Carbon Monoxide Detectors?”
19 0.622482 1731 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-21-If a lottery is encouraging addictive gambling, don’t expand it!
20 0.60559165 201 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-12-Are all rich people now liberals?
topicId topicWeight
[(2, 0.018), (9, 0.027), (16, 0.064), (21, 0.014), (22, 0.012), (24, 0.086), (45, 0.252), (53, 0.016), (63, 0.019), (82, 0.047), (86, 0.026), (89, 0.026), (90, 0.014), (95, 0.016), (97, 0.016), (98, 0.034), (99, 0.193)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
1 0.94593185 1407 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-06-Statistical inference and the secret ballot
Introduction: Ring Lardner, Jr.: [In 1936] I was already settled in Southern California, and it may have been that first exercise of the franchise that triggered the FBI surveillance of me that would last for decades. I had assumed, of course, that I was enjoying the vaunted American privilege of the secret ballot. On a wall outside my polling place on Wilshire Boulevard, however, was a compilation of the district’s registered voters: Democrats, a long list of names; Republicans, a somewhat lesser number; and “Declines to State,” one, “Ring W. Lardner, Jr.” The day after the election, alongside those lists were published the results: Roosevelt, so many; Landon, so many; Browder, one.
2 0.90066791 999 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-09-I was at a meeting a couple months ago . . .
Introduction: . . . and I decided to amuse myself by writing down all the management-speak words I heard: “grappling” “early prototypes” “technology platform” “building block” “machine learning” “your team” “workspace” “tagging” “data exhaust” “monitoring a particular population” “collective intelligence” “communities of practice” “hackathon” “human resources . . . technologies” Any one or two or three of these phrases might be fine, but put them all together and what you have is a festival of jargon. A hackathon, indeed.
3 0.88008344 543 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-28-NYT shills for personal DNA tests
Introduction: Kaiser nails it . The offending article , by John Tierney, somehow ended up in the Science section rather than the Opinion section. As an opinion piece (or, for that matter, a blog), Tierney’s article would be nothing special. But I agree with Kaiser that it doesn’t work as a newspaper article. As Kaiser notes, this story involves a bunch of statistical and empirical claims that are not well resolved by P.R. and rhetoric.
same-blog 4 0.8707462 1325 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-17-More on the difficulty of “preaching what you practice”
Introduction: A couple months ago, in discussing Charles Murray’s argument that America’s social leaders should “preach what they practice” (Murray argues that they—we!—tend to lead good lives of hard work and moderation but are all too tolerant of antisocial and unproductive behavior among the lower classes), I wrote : Murray does not consider the case of Joe Paterno, but in many ways the Penn State football coach fits his story well. Paterno was said to live an exemplary personal and professional life, combining traditional morality with football success—but, by his actions, he showed little concern about the morality of his players and coaches. At a professional level, Paterno rose higher and higher, and in his personal life he was a responsible adult. But he had an increasing disconnect with the real world, to the extent that horrible crimes were occurring nearby (in the physical and social senses) but he was completely insulated from the consequences for many years. Paterno’s story is s
5 0.83664942 791 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-08-Censoring on one end, “outliers” on the other, what can we do with the middle?
Introduction: This post was written by Phil. A medical company is testing a cancer drug. They get a 16 genetically identical (or nearly identical) rats that all have the same kind of tumor, give 8 of them the drug and leave 8 untreated…or maybe they give them a placebo, I don’t know; is there a placebo effect in rats?. Anyway, after a while the rats are killed and examined. If the tumors in the treated rats are smaller than the tumors in the untreated rats, then all of the rats have their blood tested for dozens of different proteins that are known to be associated with tumor growth or suppression. If there is a “significant” difference in one of the protein levels, then the working assumption is that the drug increases or decreases levels of that protein and that may be the mechanism by which the drug affects cancer. All of the above is done on many different cancer types and possibly several different types of rats. It’s just the initial screening: if things look promising, many more tests an
6 0.8304255 1031 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-27-Richard Stallman and John McCarthy
7 0.82773054 310 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-02-The winner’s curse
8 0.8190726 206 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-13-Indiemapper makes thematic mapping easy
9 0.81665051 69 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-04-A Wikipedia whitewash
10 0.81509435 1504 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-20-Could someone please lock this guy and Niall Ferguson in a room together?
11 0.79629576 673 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-20-Upper-income people still don’t realize they’re upper-income
12 0.79257262 1012 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-16-Blog bribes!
13 0.79108888 2189 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-28-History is too important to be left to the history professors
14 0.790362 192 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-08-Turning pages into data
15 0.78987479 362 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-22-A redrawing of the Red-Blue map in November 2010?
16 0.77846283 1121 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-15-R-squared for multilevel models
17 0.7743932 1089 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-28-Path sampling for models of varying dimension
18 0.7680496 573 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-14-Hipmunk < Expedia, again
19 0.76709056 1015 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-17-Good examples of lurking variables?
20 0.7658788 735 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-28-New app for learning intro statistics