andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1483 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I don’t have much sympathy for well-paid academic plagiarists who are too lazy to do their jobs, but I actually can feel for the author in this story who posted fake positive Amazon reviews of his own books and negative reviews of his competitors’. I mean, sure, this is despicable behavior, I won’t deny that, but it’s gotta be harder and harder to make money writing books. Even a so-called bestselling author must feel under a lot of pressure. I was recently reading a book by Jonathan Coe—he’s just great, and famous, and celebrated, but I doubt he’s getting rich from his books. Not that there’s any reason that he has to get rich, but if even Jonathan Coe isn’t living the high life, that’s not good for authors in general. It’s a far cry from the days in which Updike, Styron, etc., could swagger around like bigshots.
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1 I don’t have much sympathy for well-paid academic plagiarists who are too lazy to do their jobs, but I actually can feel for the author in this story who posted fake positive Amazon reviews of his own books and negative reviews of his competitors’. [sent-1, score-1.911]
2 I mean, sure, this is despicable behavior, I won’t deny that, but it’s gotta be harder and harder to make money writing books. [sent-2, score-0.939]
3 Even a so-called bestselling author must feel under a lot of pressure. [sent-3, score-0.384]
4 I was recently reading a book by Jonathan Coe—he’s just great, and famous, and celebrated, but I doubt he’s getting rich from his books. [sent-4, score-0.492]
5 Not that there’s any reason that he has to get rich, but if even Jonathan Coe isn’t living the high life, that’s not good for authors in general. [sent-5, score-0.38]
6 It’s a far cry from the days in which Updike, Styron, etc. [sent-6, score-0.351]
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same-blog 1 1.0000001 1483 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-04-“Bestselling Author Caught Posting Positive Reviews of His Own Work on Amazon”
Introduction: I don’t have much sympathy for well-paid academic plagiarists who are too lazy to do their jobs, but I actually can feel for the author in this story who posted fake positive Amazon reviews of his own books and negative reviews of his competitors’. I mean, sure, this is despicable behavior, I won’t deny that, but it’s gotta be harder and harder to make money writing books. Even a so-called bestselling author must feel under a lot of pressure. I was recently reading a book by Jonathan Coe—he’s just great, and famous, and celebrated, but I doubt he’s getting rich from his books. Not that there’s any reason that he has to get rich, but if even Jonathan Coe isn’t living the high life, that’s not good for authors in general. It’s a far cry from the days in which Updike, Styron, etc., could swagger around like bigshots.
2 0.16396497 1641 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-27-The Möbius strip, or, marketing that is impervious to criticism
Introduction: Johnny Carson had this great trick where, after a joke bombed, he’d do such a good double-take that he’d end up getting a huge laugh. This gimmick could never have worked as his sole shtick—at some point, Johnny had to tell some good jokes—but it was a reliable way to limit the downside. For the purpose of our discussion here, the point is that, even when the joke failed, Carson had a way out. I thought of this today after following a link from a commenter that led to this blog on publicity-minded author Tim Ferriss. I’ve never read anything by Ferriss but I’ve read about him on occasion: his gimmick is he promotes his book using ingenious marketing strategies. Sort of like how Madonna is famous for being famous, and Paris Hilton is famous for being famous for being famous, Ferriss is famous for self-promotion. Matt Metzgar writes : I [Metzgar] saw a bunch of ads on the internet today for Tim Ferriss’ new book. Even though the book was released today, it already has all
3 0.14993516 836 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-03-Another plagiarism mystery
Introduction: Nick Cox comments : I heard of a leading U.S. statistician who delegates some of his book reviews to smart graduate students. The (very grateful) ex-student who told me said, in effect, it’s just his way of working. He makes the deal evident beforehand and makes it up to you in other ways by superb mentoring. I don’t understand this at all! If the student wrote the review, he or she should be sole author, no? The thing that puzzles me about this story is that if you’re a “leading statistician,” you don’t really get any credit for reviewing. If anything, people probably think you’re writing reviews as a way to avoid doing real work. If there’s some concern that the journal won’t publish a review under the sole authorship of obscure student X, they could always compromise and include the senior prof as a second author on the review (in which case the prof should at least read the review and vet it, but that can’t take much time). I guess what I’m saying is that it makes pe
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Introduction: Tyler Cowen reviews a recent book, “Lifecyle Investing,” by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff, two professors of management at Yale. The book recommends that young adults take out loans to buy stocks and then hold these stocks for many years to prepare for retirement. What I’m wondering is: What’s the goal of writing this sort of book? The main audience has got to be young adults (and their parents) who are already pretty well fixed, financially. Students at Yale, for example. And the book must be intended for people who are already beyond the standard recommendations of personal-investment books (pay off your credit card debt, don’t waste so much money on restaurant meals and fancy clothes, buy 1 used car instead of 2 new ones, etc). Basically it sounds like they’re talking to people who have a lot of money but want to make sure that they retire rich rather than merely middle-class. I can’t say that I’m morally opposed to helping the rich get richer. After all, I’m not out the
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Introduction: Jenny writes : The Possessed made me [Jenny] think about an interesting workshop-style class I’d like to teach, which would be an undergraduate seminar for students who wanted to find out non-academic ways of writing seriously about literature. The syllabus would include some essays from this book, Geoff Dyer’s Out of Sheer Rage, Jonathan Coe’s Like a Fiery Elephant – and what else? I agree with the commenters that this would be a great class, but . . . I’m confused on the premise. Isn’t there just a huge, huge amount of excellent serious non-academic writing about literature? George Orwell, Mark Twain, Bernard Shaw, T. S. Eliot (if you like that sort of thing), Anthony Burgess , Mary McCarthy (I think you’d call her nonacademic even though she taught the occasional college course), G. K. Chesterton , etc etc etc? Teaching a course about academic ways of writing seriously about literature would seem much tougher to me.
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same-blog 1 0.97787946 1483 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-04-“Bestselling Author Caught Posting Positive Reviews of His Own Work on Amazon”
Introduction: I don’t have much sympathy for well-paid academic plagiarists who are too lazy to do their jobs, but I actually can feel for the author in this story who posted fake positive Amazon reviews of his own books and negative reviews of his competitors’. I mean, sure, this is despicable behavior, I won’t deny that, but it’s gotta be harder and harder to make money writing books. Even a so-called bestselling author must feel under a lot of pressure. I was recently reading a book by Jonathan Coe—he’s just great, and famous, and celebrated, but I doubt he’s getting rich from his books. Not that there’s any reason that he has to get rich, but if even Jonathan Coe isn’t living the high life, that’s not good for authors in general. It’s a far cry from the days in which Updike, Styron, etc., could swagger around like bigshots.
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Introduction: Tyler Cowen reviews a recent book, “Lifecyle Investing,” by Ian Ayres and Barry Nalebuff, two professors of management at Yale. The book recommends that young adults take out loans to buy stocks and then hold these stocks for many years to prepare for retirement. What I’m wondering is: What’s the goal of writing this sort of book? The main audience has got to be young adults (and their parents) who are already pretty well fixed, financially. Students at Yale, for example. And the book must be intended for people who are already beyond the standard recommendations of personal-investment books (pay off your credit card debt, don’t waste so much money on restaurant meals and fancy clothes, buy 1 used car instead of 2 new ones, etc). Basically it sounds like they’re talking to people who have a lot of money but want to make sure that they retire rich rather than merely middle-class. I can’t say that I’m morally opposed to helping the rich get richer. After all, I’m not out the
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Introduction: J. Robert Lennon writes : At the moment I [Lennon] am simultaneously working on two magazine articles, each requiring me to assess not just a book, but (briefly) a writer’s entire career. The writers in question are both prominent, both widely published, read, and appreciated. And yet neither, I think, enjoys a full appreciation of their career–its real scope, with all its twists and turns, its eccentricities intact. In one case, the writer had one smash hit, and one notorious book everyone hates. In the other, the writer has somehow become known as the author of one really serious book that gets taught a lot in college classes, and a bunch of other stuff generally thought to be a little bit frivolous. But close readings of each (hell, not even that close) reveals these reputations to be woefully inadequate. Both writers are much more interesting than their hits and bombs would suggest. This naturally got me thinking about statisticians. Some statisticians are famous (within
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Introduction: Johnny Carson had this great trick where, after a joke bombed, he’d do such a good double-take that he’d end up getting a huge laugh. This gimmick could never have worked as his sole shtick—at some point, Johnny had to tell some good jokes—but it was a reliable way to limit the downside. For the purpose of our discussion here, the point is that, even when the joke failed, Carson had a way out. I thought of this today after following a link from a commenter that led to this blog on publicity-minded author Tim Ferriss. I’ve never read anything by Ferriss but I’ve read about him on occasion: his gimmick is he promotes his book using ingenious marketing strategies. Sort of like how Madonna is famous for being famous, and Paris Hilton is famous for being famous for being famous, Ferriss is famous for self-promotion. Matt Metzgar writes : I [Metzgar] saw a bunch of ads on the internet today for Tim Ferriss’ new book. Even though the book was released today, it already has all
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Introduction: I don’t have much sympathy for well-paid academic plagiarists who are too lazy to do their jobs, but I actually can feel for the author in this story who posted fake positive Amazon reviews of his own books and negative reviews of his competitors’. I mean, sure, this is despicable behavior, I won’t deny that, but it’s gotta be harder and harder to make money writing books. Even a so-called bestselling author must feel under a lot of pressure. I was recently reading a book by Jonathan Coe—he’s just great, and famous, and celebrated, but I doubt he’s getting rich from his books. Not that there’s any reason that he has to get rich, but if even Jonathan Coe isn’t living the high life, that’s not good for authors in general. It’s a far cry from the days in which Updike, Styron, etc., could swagger around like bigshots.
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Introduction: Christian Robert points to this absurd patent of the Monte Carlo method (which, as Christian notes, was actually invented by Stanislaw Ulam and others in the 1940s). The whole thing is pretty unreadable. I wonder if they first wrote it as a journal article and then it got rejected everywhere, so they decided to submit it as a patent instead. What’s even worse is this bit: This invention was made with government support under Grant Numbers 0612170 and 0347408 awarded by the National Science Foundation. So our tax dollars are being given to IBM so they can try to bring statistics to a halt by patenting one of our most basic tools? I’d say this is just a waste of money, but given that our country is run by lawyers, there must be some outside chance that this patent could actually succeed? Perhaps there’s room for an improvement in the patent that involves albedo in some way?
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Introduction: What can we learn about an author from his or her fiction? This is an old, old question, I know. But I still can’t help thinking about it when I read a book. John Updike ‘s stories are full of male characters whom women find irresistibly attractive. I can only assume that this reflects Updike’s own experiences, to some extent. If he had not been, in reality, catnip to women, I imagine he’d have made more of a big deal about the episodes in his books where women kept falling into his protagonists’ laps. Same for John D. Macdonald , although there I suppose it’s possible he was just throwing in the sex to sell books. And even more so for Richard Ford . This guy’s male characters are so smooth, there’s no way that Ford isn’t/wasn’t like that too. What about Lorrie Moore? I think she must have had a very frustrating life (so far). I say this because her stories always seem to be centered around a female character who is witty, thoughtful, and refined, and surrounded by re
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