andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1378 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Catherine Rampell writes : On Monday the Nobel Foundation, which bestows the world’s most prestigious academic, literary and humanitarian prizes, said it was reducing the cash awarded with Nobel Prizes by about 20 percent. . . . Peter A. Diamond, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also received the Nobel in economic science in 2010, observed that over the long run, cutting the cash award could dilute the prize’s prestige. But he added that Monday’s news overstates the financial blow to future laureates. “One of the things that comes with the prize, besides the prestige and the money,” he said, “is the opportunities to make more money.” I wouldn’t think these guys need the money, but I suppose it’s part of their professional code that they have to say that? (Recall our earlier discussion of the economist who said he’d stop working once his marginal tax rate reached the anticipated value of 93%.)
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1 Catherine Rampell writes : On Monday the Nobel Foundation, which bestows the world’s most prestigious academic, literary and humanitarian prizes, said it was reducing the cash awarded with Nobel Prizes by about 20 percent. [sent-1, score-1.204]
2 Diamond, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also received the Nobel in economic science in 2010, observed that over the long run, cutting the cash award could dilute the prize’s prestige. [sent-6, score-1.025]
3 But he added that Monday’s news overstates the financial blow to future laureates. [sent-7, score-0.356]
4 “One of the things that comes with the prize, besides the prestige and the money,” he said, “is the opportunities to make more money. [sent-8, score-0.366]
5 ” I wouldn’t think these guys need the money, but I suppose it’s part of their professional code that they have to say that? [sent-9, score-0.311]
6 (Recall our earlier discussion of the economist who said he’d stop working once his marginal tax rate reached the anticipated value of 93%. [sent-10, score-0.856]
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same-blog 1 0.99999988 1378 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-13-Economists . . .
Introduction: Catherine Rampell writes : On Monday the Nobel Foundation, which bestows the world’s most prestigious academic, literary and humanitarian prizes, said it was reducing the cash awarded with Nobel Prizes by about 20 percent. . . . Peter A. Diamond, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also received the Nobel in economic science in 2010, observed that over the long run, cutting the cash award could dilute the prize’s prestige. But he added that Monday’s news overstates the financial blow to future laureates. “One of the things that comes with the prize, besides the prestige and the money,” he said, “is the opportunities to make more money.” I wouldn’t think these guys need the money, but I suppose it’s part of their professional code that they have to say that? (Recall our earlier discussion of the economist who said he’d stop working once his marginal tax rate reached the anticipated value of 93%.)
2 0.2031582 2151 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-27-Should statistics have a Nobel prize?
Introduction: Xiao-Li says yes: The most compelling reason for having highly visible awards in any field is to enhance its ability to attract future talent. Virtually all the media and public attention our profession received in recent years has been on the utility of statistics in all walks of life. We are extremely happy for and proud of this recognition—it is long overdue. However, the media and public have given much more attention to the Fields Medal than to the COPSS Award, even though the former has hardly been about direct or even indirect impact on everyday life. Why this difference? . . . these awards arouse media and public interest by featuring how ingenious the awardees are and how difficult the problems they solved, much like how conquering Everest bestows admiration not because the admirers care or even know much about Everest itself but because it represents the ultimate physical feat. In this sense, the biggest winner of the Fields Medal is mathematics itself: enticing the brig
3 0.13320646 673 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-20-Upper-income people still don’t realize they’re upper-income
Introduction: Catherine Rampell highlights this stunning Gallup Poll result: 6 percent of Americans in households earning over $250,000 a year think their taxes are “too low.” Of that same group, 26 percent said their taxes were “about right,” and a whopping 67 percent said their taxes were “too high.” OK, fine. Most people don’t like taxes. No surprise there. But get this next part: And yet when this same group of high earners was asked whether “upper-income people” paid their fair share in taxes, 30 percent said “upper-income people” paid too little, 30 percent said it was a “fair share,” and 38 percent said it was too much. 30 percent of these upper-income people say that upper-income people pay too little, but only 6 percent say that they personally pay too little. 38% say that upper-income people pay too much, but 67% say they personally pay too much. Rampell attributes this to people’s ignorance about population statistics–these 250K+ families just don’t realize t
4 0.1163535 952 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-11-More reason to like Sims besides just his name
Introduction: John Horton points to Sims ‘s comment on Angrist and Pischke : Top of page 8—he criticizes economists for using clustered standard errors—suggests using multilevel models instead. Awesome! So now there are at least two Nobel prize winners in economics who’ve expressed skepticism about controlled experiments. (I wonder if Sims is such a danger in a parking lot.) P.S. I’m still miffed that this journal didn’t invite me to comment on that article!
5 0.11185715 950 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-10-“Causality is almost always in doubt”
Introduction: Dave Backus writes: We macroeconomists are thrilled with the Nobel prize for Sargent and Sims. But on causality: they spent more time showing how hard it was to identify causality than showing how to do it. And that’s a fair assessment of our field [economics]: causality is almost always in doubt. More here . If I were in a snarky mood, I’d say something like, Causality is always in doubt in economics . . . unless you’re talking about abortion and crime, in which case you can be absolutely certain. But I’m in a good mood right now so I won’t say that. Instead I’ll just remark that, as a statistician, I’m positively thrilled that somebody named “Sims” received a major award.
6 0.10842859 1003 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-11-$
8 0.10519715 2261 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-23-Greg Mankiw’s utility function
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10 0.082036808 986 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-01-MacKay update: where 12 comes from
11 0.081143431 366 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-24-Mankiw tax update
12 0.080484673 737 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-30-Memorial Day question
13 0.079412445 922 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-24-Economists don’t think like accountants—but maybe they should
14 0.079177663 1119 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-15-Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award
16 0.074633986 943 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-04-Flip it around
17 0.074339293 2118 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-30-???
18 0.074268579 912 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-15-n = 2
19 0.067536332 1435 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-30-Retracted articles and unethical behavior in economics journals?
20 0.064961277 1616 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-10-John McAfee is a Heinlein hero
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same-blog 1 0.96595526 1378 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-13-Economists . . .
Introduction: Catherine Rampell writes : On Monday the Nobel Foundation, which bestows the world’s most prestigious academic, literary and humanitarian prizes, said it was reducing the cash awarded with Nobel Prizes by about 20 percent. . . . Peter A. Diamond, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also received the Nobel in economic science in 2010, observed that over the long run, cutting the cash award could dilute the prize’s prestige. But he added that Monday’s news overstates the financial blow to future laureates. “One of the things that comes with the prize, besides the prestige and the money,” he said, “is the opportunities to make more money.” I wouldn’t think these guys need the money, but I suppose it’s part of their professional code that they have to say that? (Recall our earlier discussion of the economist who said he’d stop working once his marginal tax rate reached the anticipated value of 93%.)
Introduction: Given Grandma Mankiw’s hypothetical distaste for Sonia Sotomayor’s spending habits (recall that Grandma “would have been shocked and appalled” by the judge’s lack of savings), I expect she (the grandmother) would be even more irritated by the success of Sotomayor’s recent book: Now that Sotomayor has a ton of money coming in, in addition to a well-paying job and pension for life, that would almost seem to validate Sotomayor’s foolish, foolish decision to enjoy herself in middle age rather than sock hundreds of thousands of dollars into a retirement account she likely would never touch during her lifetime. One interesting thing about this example is that Mankiw apparently holds within himself a descriptive and normative view of economics. Descriptively, he models people as “spenders” or “savers.” But, normatively, he seems to attribute higher values to the “savers.” (He also seems to be confused about the relation between saving to intertemporal preference (see my long p
3 0.77195448 338 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-12-Update on Mankiw’s work incentives
Introduction: Tyler Cowen links to a blog by Greg Mankiw with further details on his argument that his anticipated 90% marginal tax rate will reduce his work level. Having already given my thoughts on Mankiw’s column, I merely have a few things to add/emphasize. 1. Cowen frames the arguments in terms of the “status” of George Bush, Greg Mankiw, Barack Obama, and their proposed policies. I hadn’t thought of the arguments as being about status, but I think I see what Cowen is saying. By being a well-known economist and having a column in the New York Times, Mankiw is trading some of his status for political advocacy (just as Krugman does, from the opposite direction). If Mankiw didn’t have the pre-existing status, I doubt this particular column would’ve made it into the newspaper. (Again, ditto with many of Krugman’s columns.) So it makes sense that arguments about the substance of Mankiw’s remarks will get tied into disputes about his status. 2. Neither Cowen nor Mankiw address
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
5 0.76934093 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
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9 0.70509058 1037 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-01-Lamentably common misunderstanding of meritocracy
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20 0.59670895 1271 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-20-Education could use some systematic evaluation
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1 0.94069612 1822 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-24-Samurai sword-wielding Mormon bishop pharmaceutical statistician stops mugger
Introduction: Brett Keller points us to this feel-good story of the day: A Samurai sword-wielding Mormon bishop helped a neighbor woman escape a Tuesday morning attack by a man who had been stalking her. Kent Hendrix woke up Tuesday to his teenage son pounding on his bedroom door and telling him somebody was being mugged in front of their house. The 47-year-old father of six rushed out the door and grabbed the weapon closest to him — a 29-inch high carbon steel Samurai sword. . . . Hendrix, a pharmaceutical statistician, was one of several neighbors who came to the woman’s aid after she began yelling for help . . . Too bad the whole “statistician” thing got buried in the middle of the article. Fair enough, though: I don’t know what it takes to become a Mormon bishop, but I assume it’s more effort than what it takes to learn statistics.
same-blog 2 0.93992829 1378 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-13-Economists . . .
Introduction: Catherine Rampell writes : On Monday the Nobel Foundation, which bestows the world’s most prestigious academic, literary and humanitarian prizes, said it was reducing the cash awarded with Nobel Prizes by about 20 percent. . . . Peter A. Diamond, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who also received the Nobel in economic science in 2010, observed that over the long run, cutting the cash award could dilute the prize’s prestige. But he added that Monday’s news overstates the financial blow to future laureates. “One of the things that comes with the prize, besides the prestige and the money,” he said, “is the opportunities to make more money.” I wouldn’t think these guys need the money, but I suppose it’s part of their professional code that they have to say that? (Recall our earlier discussion of the economist who said he’d stop working once his marginal tax rate reached the anticipated value of 93%.)
3 0.91242588 1128 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-19-Sharon Begley: Worse than Stephen Jay Gould?
Introduction: Commenter Tggp links to a criticism of science journalist Sharon Begley by science journalist Matthew Hutson. I learned of this dispute after reporting that Begley had received the American Statistical Association’s Excellence in Statistical Reporting Award, a completely undeserved honor, if Hutson is to believed. The two journalists have somewhat similar profiles: Begley was science editor at Newsweek (she’s now at Reuters) and author of “Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain: How a New Science Reveals Our Extraordinary Potential to Transform Ourselves,” and Hutson was news editor at Psychology Today and wrote the similarly self-helpy-titled, “The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane.” Hutson writes : Psychological Science recently published a fascinating new study on jealousy. I was interested to read Newsweek’s 1300-word article covering the research by their science editor, Sharon Begley. But part-way through the article, I
4 0.9053576 916 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-18-Multimodality in hierarchical models
Introduction: Jim Hodges posted a note to the Bugs mailing list that I thought could be of more general interest: Is multi-modality a common experience? I [Hodges] think the answer is “nobody knows in any generality”. Here are some examples of bimodality that certainly do *not* involve the kind of labeling problems that arise in mixture models. The only systematic study of multimodality I know of is Liu J, Hodges JS (2003). Posterior bimodality in the balanced one-way random effects model. J.~Royal Stat.~Soc., Ser.~B, 65:247-255. The surprise of this paper is that in the simplest possible hierarchical model (analyzed using the standard inverse-gamma priors for the two variances), bimodality occurs quite readily, although it is much less common to have two modes that are big enough so that you’d actually get a noticeable fraction of MCMC draws from both of them. Because the restricted likelihood (= the marginal posterior for the two variances, if you’ve put flat priors on them) is
5 0.88595891 575 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-15-What are the trickiest models to fit?
Introduction: John Salvatier writes: What do you and your readers think are the trickiest models to fit? If I had an algorithm that I claimed could fit many models with little fuss, what kinds of models would really impress you? I am interested in testing different MCMC sampling methods to evaluate their performance and I want to stretch the bounds of their abilities. I don’t know what’s the trickiest, but just about anything I work on in a serious way gives me some troubles. This reminds me that we should finish our Bayesian Benchmarks paper already.
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