andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1347 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: More and more I feel like economics reporting is based on crude principles of adding up “good news” and “bad news.” Sometimes this makes sense: by almost any measure, an unemployment rate of 10% is bad news compared to an unemployment rate of 5%. Other times, though, the good/bad news framework seems so tangled. For example: house prices up is considered good news but inflation is considered bad news. A strong dollar is considered good news but it’s also an unfavorable exchange rate, which is bad news. When facebook shares go down, that’s bad news, but if they automatically go up, that means they were underpriced which doesn’t seem so good either. Pundits are torn between rooting for the euro to fail (which means our team (the U.S.) is better than Europe (their team)) and rooting for it to survive (because a collapse in Europe is bad news for the U.S. economy). China’s economy doing well is bad news—but if their economy slips, that’s bad news too. I think you get the picture
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1 ” Sometimes this makes sense: by almost any measure, an unemployment rate of 10% is bad news compared to an unemployment rate of 5%. [sent-2, score-1.002]
2 Other times, though, the good/bad news framework seems so tangled. [sent-3, score-0.304]
3 For example: house prices up is considered good news but inflation is considered bad news. [sent-4, score-0.933]
4 A strong dollar is considered good news but it’s also an unfavorable exchange rate, which is bad news. [sent-5, score-0.908]
5 When facebook shares go down, that’s bad news, but if they automatically go up, that means they were underpriced which doesn’t seem so good either. [sent-6, score-0.735]
6 Pundits are torn between rooting for the euro to fail (which means our team (the U. [sent-7, score-0.499]
7 ) is better than Europe (their team)) and rooting for it to survive (because a collapse in Europe is bad news for the U. [sent-9, score-0.874]
8 China’s economy doing well is bad news—but if their economy slips, that’s bad news too. [sent-12, score-1.092]
9 Surowiecki writes: Dual-class share structures used to be rare and confined largely to family-run enterprises or media companies, such as the New York Times, where they could be justified as protecting the company’s public mission. [sent-15, score-0.456]
10 The received wisdom was that active investors are good for companies and for the market as a whole, and that companies need to put shareholders first. [sent-16, score-0.966]
11 s of most public companies have to spend time kowtowing to investors, Zuckerberg and his peers are insisting on the right to say, “Thanks for your money. [sent-23, score-0.601]
12 if the damn stock is such a bad idea, nobody’s forcing you to buy it! [sent-29, score-0.489]
13 Zuckerberg and his peers aren’t “insisting on the right” to do anything; they’re offering a financial product in the market. [sent-30, score-0.15]
14 Surowiecki continues: There’s reason to be concerned at the spread of the dual-class structure. [sent-31, score-0.161]
15 One study that examined a large sample of dual-class firms from 1994 to 2001 found that they notably underperformed the market. [sent-32, score-0.473]
16 As a New Yorker subscriber, am I supposed to be concerned that dual-class firms underperformed the market? [sent-35, score-0.6]
17 If the shares underperform the market, people can buy a piece of Facebook for less. [sent-38, score-0.232]
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Introduction: This news article by Ryan Tate is an amazing bit of sociology: If you want Facebook to spend millions of dollars hiring you, it helps to be a talented engineer, as the New York Times today [18 May 2011] suggests. But it also helps to carouse with Facebook honchos, invite them to your dad’s Mediterranean party palace, and get them introduced to your father’s venture capital pals, like Sam Lessin did. Lessin is the poster boy for today’s Times story on Facebook “talent acquisitions.” Facebook spent several million dollars to buy Lessin’s drop.io, only to shut it down and put Lessin to work on internal projects. To the Times, Lessin is an example of how “the best talent” fetches tons of money these days. “Engineers are worth half a million to one million,” a Facebook executive told the paper. We’ll let you in on a few things the Times left out: Lessin is not an engineer, but a Harvard social studies major and a former Bain consultant. His file-sharing startup drop.io was an also-r
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Introduction: I was reading this news article by famed business reporter James Stewart: Measured by market capitalization, Apple is the world’s biggest public company. . . . Sales for the quarter that ended Dec. 31 . . . totaled $46.33 billion, up 73 percent from the year before. Earnings more than doubled. . . . Here is the rub: Apple is so big, it’s running up against the law of large numbers. Huh? At this point I sat up, curious. Stewart continued: Also known as the golden theorem, with a proof attributed to the 17th-century Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli, the law states that a variable will revert to a mean over a large sample of results. In the case of the largest companies, it suggests that high earnings growth and a rapid rise in share price will slow as those companies grow ever larger. If Apple’s share price grew even 20 percent a year for the next decade, which is far below its current blistering pace, its $500 billion market capitalization would be more than $3 tri
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Introduction: Respected political scientist Tim Groseclose just came out with a book, “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” I was familiar with Groseclose’s article (with Jeffrey Milyo) on media bias that came out several years ago–it was an interesting study but I was not convinced by its central claim that they were measuring an absolute level of bias–and then recently heard about this new book in the context of some intemperate things Groseclose said in a interview on the conservative Fox TV network. Groseclose’s big conclusion is that in the absence of media bias, the average American voter would be positioned at around 25 on a 0-100 scale, where 0 is a right-wing Republican and 100 is a left-wing Democrat. (Seeing as the number line is conventionally drawn from left to right, I think it would make more sense for 0 to represent the left and 100 to be on the right, but I guess it’s too late for him to change now.) Groseclose places the average voter now at around
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Introduction: If being cantankerous and potty-mouthed is a bad thing, I’m in big trouble !
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Introduction: Neil Malhotra writes: I just wanted to alert to this completely misinformed Politico article by Roger Simon, equating sampling theory with “magic.” Normally, I wouldn’t send you this, but I sent him a helpful email and he was a complete jerk about it. Wow—this is really bad. It’s so bad I refuse to link to it. I don’t know who this dude is, but it’s pitiful. Andy Rooney could do better. And I don’t mean Andy Rooney in his prime, I mean Andy Rooney right now. The piece appears to be an attempt at jocularity, but it’s about 10 million times worse than whatever the worst thing is that Dave Barry has ever written. My question to Neil Malhotra is . . . what made you click on this in the first place? P.S. John Sides piles on with some Gallup quotes.
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Introduction: George Leckie writes: The Centre for Multilevel Modelling at the University of Bristol is seeking to appoint an applied statistician to work on a new ESRC-funded project, Longitudinal Effects, Multilevel Modelling and Applications (LEMMA 3). LEMMA 3 is one of six Nodes of the National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM). The LEMMA 3 Node will focus on methods for the analysis of longitudinal data. The appointment, at Research Assistant or Research Associate level, will be for 2.5 years with likelihood of extension to the end of September 2014. For further details, including information on how to apply online, please go to http://www.bris.ac.uk/boris/jobs/feeds/ads?ID=100571 By “modelling,” I think he means “modeling.” And by “centre,” I think he means “center.” But I think you get the basic idea. It looks like a great place to do research.
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