andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1364 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I read this front-page New York Times article and was immediately suspicious. Here’s the story (from reporter Gina Kolata): Could exercise actually be bad for some healthy people? A well-known group of researchers, including one who helped write the scientific paper justifying national guidelines that promote exercise for all, say the answer may be a qualified yes. By analyzing data from six rigorous exercise studies involving 1,687 people, the group found that about 10 percent actually got worse on at least one of the measures related to heart disease: blood pressure and levels of insulin, HDL cholesterol or triglycerides. About 7 percent got worse on at least two measures. And the researchers say they do not know why. “It is bizarre,” said Claude Bouchard, lead author of the paper , published on Wednesday in the journal PLoS One . . . Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the lead federal
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1 Here’s the story (from reporter Gina Kolata): Could exercise actually be bad for some healthy people? [sent-2, score-0.493]
2 A well-known group of researchers, including one who helped write the scientific paper justifying national guidelines that promote exercise for all, say the answer may be a qualified yes. [sent-3, score-0.546]
3 By analyzing data from six rigorous exercise studies involving 1,687 people, the group found that about 10 percent actually got worse on at least one of the measures related to heart disease: blood pressure and levels of insulin, HDL cholesterol or triglycerides. [sent-4, score-1.392]
4 About 7 percent got worse on at least two measures. [sent-5, score-0.315]
5 Michael Lauer, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the lead federal research institute on heart disease and strokes, was among the experts not involved in the provocative study who applauded it. [sent-11, score-0.717]
6 First, I didn’t see why the researcher described it as “bizarre” that some people could get less healthy under an exercise regimen. [sent-15, score-0.632]
7 Bouchard stumbled upon the adverse exercise effects when he looked at data from his own study that examined genetics and responses to exercise. [sent-19, score-0.962]
8 He noticed that about 8 percent seemed to be getting worse on at least one measure of heart disease risk. [sent-20, score-0.786]
9 Benjamin Levine, a cardiologist and professor of exercise sciences at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, asked whether the adverse responses represented just random fluctuations in heart risk measures. [sent-24, score-1.217]
10 Would the same proportion of people who did not exercise also get worse over the same periods of time? [sent-25, score-0.647]
11 Maybe the adverse effects just reflected the time of year when people entered the study. [sent-27, score-0.325]
12 Here’s what they had: A fundamental question is whether there are individuals who experience one or several adverse responses (ARs) in terms of exercise-induced changes in common risk factors. [sent-35, score-0.546]
13 For the four traits studied, some subjects experienced changes in an opposite, unfavorable direction compared to the expected beneficial effects. [sent-43, score-0.294]
14 For the four traits in the present study, twice the value of TE ["the technical error (TE), defined as the within-subject standard deviation as derived from repeated measures"] would mean that ARs would be reached if the exercise training-induced increases are ≥10 mm Hg for SBP, ≥0. [sent-48, score-0.554]
15 42 mmol/L for plasma TG, and ≥24 pmol/L for plasma FI or if there is a decrease of ≤0. [sent-49, score-0.272]
16 The question remains: can’t such a decline occur, even in the absence of an exercise regimen? [sent-56, score-0.482]
17 Here’s all that I could find: The percentages of adverse responders for each trait for each study are depicted in Figure 2. [sent-59, score-0.495]
18 It is remarkable that such cases were found in each study, even though the age and health status of the subjects were widely divergent and the exercise programs were quite heterogeneous. [sent-60, score-0.476]
19 As noted above, can’t some people just be getting better and some people getting worse? [sent-62, score-0.302]
20 They make a big deal of the idea that exercise may increase heart risk, but it seems uncontroversial to me that an activity that helps most could be harmful to some . [sent-64, score-0.756]
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Introduction: I read this front-page New York Times article and was immediately suspicious. Here’s the story (from reporter Gina Kolata): Could exercise actually be bad for some healthy people? A well-known group of researchers, including one who helped write the scientific paper justifying national guidelines that promote exercise for all, say the answer may be a qualified yes. By analyzing data from six rigorous exercise studies involving 1,687 people, the group found that about 10 percent actually got worse on at least one of the measures related to heart disease: blood pressure and levels of insulin, HDL cholesterol or triglycerides. About 7 percent got worse on at least two measures. And the researchers say they do not know why. “It is bizarre,” said Claude Bouchard, lead author of the paper , published on Wednesday in the journal PLoS One . . . Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the lead federal
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Introduction: This post is by Phil Price. The New York Times recently ran an article entitled “How Exercise Can Help Us Eat Less,” which begins with this: “Strenuous exercise seems to dull the urge to eat afterward better than gentler workouts, several new studies show, adding to a growing body of science suggesting that intense exercise may have unique benefits.” The article is based on a couple of recent studies in which moderately overweight volunteers participated in different types of exercise, and had their food intake monitored at a subsequent meal. The article also says “[The volunteers] also displayed significantly lower levels of the hormone ghrelin, which is known to stimulate appetite, and elevated levels of both blood lactate and blood sugar, which have been shown to lessen the drive to eat, after the most vigorous interval session than after the other workouts. And the appetite-suppressing effect of the highly intense intervals lingered into the next day, according to food diarie
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Introduction: This post is by Phil. A little over three years ago I wrote a post about exercise and weight loss in which I described losing a fair amount of weight due to (I believe) an exercise regime, with no effort to change my diet; this contradicted the prediction of studies that had recently been released. The comment thread on that post is quite interesting: a lot of people had had similar experiences — losing weight, or keeping it off, with an exercise program that includes very short periods of exercise at maximal intensity — while other people expressed some skepticism about my claims. Some commenters said that I risked injury; others said it was too early to judge anything because my weight loss might not last. The people who predicted injury were right: running the curve during a 200m sprint a month or two after that post, I strained my Achilles tendon. Nothing really serious, but it did keep me off the track for a couple of months, and rather than go back to sprinting I switched t
Introduction: Sanjay Kaul writes: I am sure you must be aware of the recent controversy ignited by the 2013 American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Cholesterol Treatment Guidelines that were released last month. They have been the subject of several newspaper articles and blogs , most of them missing the thrust of the guidelines. There is much to admire about these guidelines as they are more faithfully aligned with high-quality ‘actionable’ evidence than the 3 previous iterations. However, the controversy is focused on the performance of the risk calculator introduced for initiating treatment in individuals without established atherosclerotic disease or diabetes (so-called primary prevention cohort). The guidelines recommend statins for primary prevention in individuals who have a 10-year risk estimated to be 7.5%. The risk calculator was derived from population cohorts studied in the 1990s. The discrimination for predicting the risk of atherosclerotic cardiovascular events
5 0.16310565 2367 andrew gelman stats-2014-06-10-Spring forward, fall back, drop dead?
Introduction: Antonio Rinaldi points me to a press release describing a recent paper by Amneet Sandhu, Milan Seth, and Hitinder Gurm, where I got the above graphs (sorry about the resolution, that’s the best I could do). Here’s the press release: Data from the largest study of its kind in the U.S. reveal a 25 percent jump in the number of heart attacks occurring the Monday after we “spring forward” compared to other Mondays during the year – a trend that remained even after accounting for seasonal variations in these events. But the study showed the opposite effect is also true. Researchers found a 21 percent drop in the number of heart attacks on the Tuesday after returning to standard time in the fall when we gain an hour back. Rinaldi thinks: “On Tuesday? No multiple comparisons here???” The press release continues: “What’s interesting is that the total number of heart attacks didn’t change the week after daylight saving time,” said Amneet Sandhu, M.D., cardiology fellow, Univer
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Introduction: I read this front-page New York Times article and was immediately suspicious. Here’s the story (from reporter Gina Kolata): Could exercise actually be bad for some healthy people? A well-known group of researchers, including one who helped write the scientific paper justifying national guidelines that promote exercise for all, say the answer may be a qualified yes. By analyzing data from six rigorous exercise studies involving 1,687 people, the group found that about 10 percent actually got worse on at least one of the measures related to heart disease: blood pressure and levels of insulin, HDL cholesterol or triglycerides. About 7 percent got worse on at least two measures. And the researchers say they do not know why. “It is bizarre,” said Claude Bouchard, lead author of the paper , published on Wednesday in the journal PLoS One . . . Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the lead federal
2 0.88473004 1766 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-16-“Nightshifts Linked to Increased Risk for Ovarian Cancer”
Introduction: Zosia Chustecka writes : Much of the previous work on the link between cancer and nightshifts has focused on breast cancer . . . The latest report, focusing on ovarian cancer, was published in the April issue of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. This increase in the risk for ovarian cancer with nightshift work is consistent with, and of similar magnitude to, the risk for breast cancer, say lead author Parveen Bhatti, PhD, and colleagues from the epidemiology program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington. The researchers examined data from a local population-based cancer registry that is part of the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program. They identified 1101 women with advanced epithelial ovarian cancer, 389 with borderline disease, and 1832 without ovarian cancer (control group). The women, who were 35 to 74 years of age, were asked about the hours they worked, and specifically whether they had ever worked the nig
3 0.85861814 1741 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-27-Thin scientists say it’s unhealthy to be fat
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Introduction: The (U.S.) “President’s Cancer Panel” has released its 2008-2009 annual report, which includes a cover letter that says “the true burden of environmentally induced cancer has been grossly underestimated.” The report itself discusses exposures to various types of industrial chemicals, some of which are known carcinogens, in some detail, but gives nearly no data or analysis to suggest that these exposures are contributing to significant numbers of cancers. In fact, there is pretty good evidence that they are not. The plot above shows age-adjusted cancer mortality for men, by cancer type, in the U.S. The plot below shows the same for women. In both cases, the cancers with the highest mortality rates are shown, but not all cancers (e.g. brain cancer is not shown). For what it’s worth, I’m not sure how trustworthy the rates are from the 1930s — it seems possible that reporting, autopsies, or both, were less careful during the Great Depression — so I suggest focusing on the r
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Introduction: This post is by Phil Price. The New York Times recently ran an article entitled “How Exercise Can Help Us Eat Less,” which begins with this: “Strenuous exercise seems to dull the urge to eat afterward better than gentler workouts, several new studies show, adding to a growing body of science suggesting that intense exercise may have unique benefits.” The article is based on a couple of recent studies in which moderately overweight volunteers participated in different types of exercise, and had their food intake monitored at a subsequent meal. The article also says “[The volunteers] also displayed significantly lower levels of the hormone ghrelin, which is known to stimulate appetite, and elevated levels of both blood lactate and blood sugar, which have been shown to lessen the drive to eat, after the most vigorous interval session than after the other workouts. And the appetite-suppressing effect of the highly intense intervals lingered into the next day, according to food diarie
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Introduction: A link from Simon Jackman’s blog led me to an article by James Heckman, Hedibert Lopes, and Remi Piatek from 2011, “Treatment effects: A Bayesian perspective.” I was pleasantly surprised to see this, partly because I didn’t know that Heckman was working on Bayesian methods, and partly because the paper explicitly refers to the “potential outcomes model,” a term I associate with Don Rubin. I’ve had the impression that Heckman and Rubin don’t like each other (I was a student of Rubin and have never met Heckman, so I’m only speaking at second hand here), so I was happy to see some convergence. I was curious how Heckman et al. would source the potential outcome model. They do not refer to Rubin’s 1974 paper or to Neyman’s 1923 paper (which was republished in 1990 and is now taken to be the founding document of the Neyman-Rubin approach to causal inference). Nor, for that matter, do Heckman et al. refer to the more recent developments of these theories by Robins, Pearl, and other
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Introduction: I read this front-page New York Times article and was immediately suspicious. Here’s the story (from reporter Gina Kolata): Could exercise actually be bad for some healthy people? A well-known group of researchers, including one who helped write the scientific paper justifying national guidelines that promote exercise for all, say the answer may be a qualified yes. By analyzing data from six rigorous exercise studies involving 1,687 people, the group found that about 10 percent actually got worse on at least one of the measures related to heart disease: blood pressure and levels of insulin, HDL cholesterol or triglycerides. About 7 percent got worse on at least two measures. And the researchers say they do not know why. “It is bizarre,” said Claude Bouchard, lead author of the paper , published on Wednesday in the journal PLoS One . . . Dr. Michael Lauer, director of the Division of Cardiovascular Sciences at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, the lead federal
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Introduction: I was asked by Sophie Roell, an editor at The Browser , where every day they ask an expert in a field to recommend the top five books, not by them, in their subject. I was asked to recommend five books on how Americans vote. The trouble is that I’m really pretty unfamiliar with the academic literature of political science, but it seemed sort of inappropriate for a political scientist such as myself to recommend non-scholarly books that I like (for example, “Style vs. Substance” by George V. Higgins, “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” by James Loewen, “The Rascal King” by Jack Beatty, “Republican Party Reptile” by P. J. O’Rourke, and, of course, “All the King’s Men,” by Robert Penn Warren). I mean, what’s the point of that? Nobody needs me to recommend books like that. Instead, I moved sideways and asked if I could discuss five books on statistics instead. Roell said that would be fine, so I sent her a quick description, which appears below. The actual interview turned out much bett
Introduction: This link on education reform send me to this blog on foreign languages in Canadian public schools: The demand for French immersion education in Vancouver so far outstrips the supply that the school board allocates places by lottery. But why? Is it because French is a useful employment skill? Because learning to speak French makes you a better person? Or is it because parents know intuitively what economists can show econometrically: peer effects matter. Being with high achieving peers raises a student’s own achievement level. . . . Several studies have found that Anglophones who can speak French enjoy an earning premium. The question is: do bilingual Anglophones earn more because speaking French is a valuable skill in the workplace? Or do they earn more because they’re on average smarter and more capable people (after all, they’ve mastered two languages)? And the blog features this comments like this : French immersion classes (as opposed to science, maths or any
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Introduction: Sophie Roell, who interviewed me for 5books (background here ), reports that 5books has become a book. Or, to be precise, that they have released a collection of the 5books interviews as an ebook . Interviewees include me, some people I’d never heard of, and a bunch of legitimate bigshots such as Ian McEwen and Steven Pinker. I’d say it’s fun and often unexpected bathroom reading, but then you’d need a book tablet (a “kindle”? What do you call these things generically?) in that special room. But then again, maybe you already do! P.S. You might be also interested in this list (from a few years ago). Comments are closed on that entry (I know there’s a way to get them unclosed but I can’t figure out how), so feel free to leave your comments/suggestions here if you want to opine on the best nonfiction books.
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