andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2012 andrew_gelman_stats-2012-1591 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Reading these news articles that slam more and more nails into the (perhaps unfairly) already-dead reputation of Hewlett Packard executive Meg Whitman, I keep thinking: what if she’d won her election a couple years ago and was now governor or senator or whatever she was running for? Then nobody would care that her company was falling apart! Conversely, when Jon Corzine lost his reelection and reentered the business world, he left himself open to charges of acts of corruption that wouldn’t have been possible in congress or from the governor’s office. But sometimes the immunity can go the other way. Jack Welch still has the street-cred to write Wall Street Journal editorials despite his history of data manipulation, but it’s hard to imagine he could be elected to public office, even if he wanted to. For another example, Al Sharpton was caught out on his lies in a well-publicized court case but that does not stop him from being bankrolled as a quasi-public figure. Big name
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Reading these news articles that slam more and more nails into the (perhaps unfairly) already-dead reputation of Hewlett Packard executive Meg Whitman, I keep thinking: what if she’d won her election a couple years ago and was now governor or senator or whatever she was running for? [sent-1, score-1.153]
2 Then nobody would care that her company was falling apart! [sent-2, score-0.319]
3 Conversely, when Jon Corzine lost his reelection and reentered the business world, he left himself open to charges of acts of corruption that wouldn’t have been possible in congress or from the governor’s office. [sent-3, score-1.094]
4 Jack Welch still has the street-cred to write Wall Street Journal editorials despite his history of data manipulation, but it’s hard to imagine he could be elected to public office, even if he wanted to. [sent-5, score-0.513]
5 For another example, Al Sharpton was caught out on his lies in a well-publicized court case but that does not stop him from being bankrolled as a quasi-public figure. [sent-6, score-0.455]
6 Big names in politics and business get away with so much that it’s notable when the magic dries up and their statements get taken with the same skepticism as would be applied, for example, to leaders of foreign countries that are not our allies. [sent-7, score-1.229]
7 I have no systematic thoughts on this right now but it seems worthy of study. [sent-8, score-0.24]
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Introduction: Reading these news articles that slam more and more nails into the (perhaps unfairly) already-dead reputation of Hewlett Packard executive Meg Whitman, I keep thinking: what if she’d won her election a couple years ago and was now governor or senator or whatever she was running for? Then nobody would care that her company was falling apart! Conversely, when Jon Corzine lost his reelection and reentered the business world, he left himself open to charges of acts of corruption that wouldn’t have been possible in congress or from the governor’s office. But sometimes the immunity can go the other way. Jack Welch still has the street-cred to write Wall Street Journal editorials despite his history of data manipulation, but it’s hard to imagine he could be elected to public office, even if he wanted to. For another example, Al Sharpton was caught out on his lies in a well-publicized court case but that does not stop him from being bankrolled as a quasi-public figure. Big name
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Introduction: I opened the paper today and saw this from Paul Krugman, on Jack Welch, the former chairman of General Electric, who posted an assertion on Twitter that the [recent unemployment data] had been cooked to help President Obama’s re-election campaign. His claim was quickly picked up by right-wing pundits and media personalities. It was nonsense, of course. Job numbers are prepared by professional civil servants, at an agency that currently has no political appointees. But then maybe Mr. Welch — under whose leadership G.E. reported remarkably smooth earnings growth, with none of the short-term fluctuations you might have expected (fluctuations that reappeared under his successor) — doesn’t know how hard it would be to cook the jobs data. I was curious so I googled *general electric historical earnings*. It was surprisingly difficult to find the numbers! Most of the links just went back to 2011, or to 2008. Eventually I came across this blog by Barry Ritholtz that showed this
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Introduction: A couple years ago, upon the selection of Sarah Palin as vice-presidential nominee, I made some graphs of the popularity of governors of different-sized states: As I wrote at the time : It seems to be easier to maintain high approval in a small state. What’s going on? Some theories: in a large state, there will be more ambitious politicians on the other side, eager to knock off the incumbent governor; small states often have part-time legislatures and thus the governor is involved in less political conflict; small states (notably Alaska) tend to get more funds per capita from the federal government, and it’s easier to be popular when you can disburse more funds; large states tend to be more heterogeneous and so it’s harder to keep all the voters happy. I was curious how things have been going more recently, and Hanfei made an updated graph using data from this archive . Here’s the story: There’s lots of variation–clearly there are many other factors than state popu
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Introduction: This American Life reporter Gabriel Rhodes says : This is one of the big differences between Jon and Anthony, between scientist and non-scientist. For Jon, having a year’s worth of work suddenly thrown into question is a normal day at the office. But for Anthony, that’s not normal. And it’s not OK. The time in Jon’s lab was a year of his life, where he felt like Jon kept moving the goal posts. . . . But now, Anthony wants to know, before he starts turning his life upside down again, what will count as proof enough for Jon? How many experiments? Anthony Holland: So let’s say I do three weeks of experiment, and I only concentrate on these leukemia cells. And if I can kill at least 20% every single time, every week, will that do it? Would that be enough? Or do you want to see pancreatic die, or do you want to see—I mean, what exact buttons do I have to hit? This captures a big problem with the research enterprise, as I see it. There’s this attitude that if you can reach som
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Introduction: Reading these news articles that slam more and more nails into the (perhaps unfairly) already-dead reputation of Hewlett Packard executive Meg Whitman, I keep thinking: what if she’d won her election a couple years ago and was now governor or senator or whatever she was running for? Then nobody would care that her company was falling apart! Conversely, when Jon Corzine lost his reelection and reentered the business world, he left himself open to charges of acts of corruption that wouldn’t have been possible in congress or from the governor’s office. But sometimes the immunity can go the other way. Jack Welch still has the street-cred to write Wall Street Journal editorials despite his history of data manipulation, but it’s hard to imagine he could be elected to public office, even if he wanted to. For another example, Al Sharpton was caught out on his lies in a well-publicized court case but that does not stop him from being bankrolled as a quasi-public figure. Big name
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Introduction: I was checking the Dilbert blog (sorry! I was just curious what was up after the events of a few weeks ago) and saw this: I [Scott Adams] wonder if any old-time racists still exist. I knew a few racists when I was a kid, back in upstate New York. In my adult life, I don’t think I’ve met one. . . . I certainly understand if you’ve witnessed it, or suffered from it. I’m just saying I haven’t seen it where I live. Clearly that sort of activity is distributed unevenly around the country. Just to be clear: I’m only saying I haven’t personally witnessed overt racism in my adult life. I accept that you have seen it firsthand, if you say so. Classic racism of the old-timey variety is probably only possible in people who don’t own television sets and haven’t gone through grade school. I’ll grant you that racist prison gangs and neo-Nazis exist. But obviously something else is going on with those guys. Let’s call them the exceptions. . . . I assume discrimination must be going on somep
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Introduction: False-Positive Psychology: Undisclosed Flexibility in Data Collection and Analysis Allows Presenting Anything as Significant [I]t is unacceptably easy to publish “statistically significant” evidence consistent with any hypothesis. The culprit is a construct we refer to as researcher degrees of freedom. In the course of collecting and analyzing data, researchers have many decisions to make: Should more data be collected? Should some observations be excluded? Which conditions should be combined and which ones compared? Which control variables should be considered? Should specific measures be combined or transformed or both? It is rare, and sometimes impractical, for researchers to make all these decisions beforehand. Rather, it is common (and accepted practice) for researchers to explore various analytic alternatives, to search for a combination that yields “statistical significance,” and to then report only what “worked.” The problem, of course, is that the likelihood of at leas
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Introduction: “A small group of mathematicians” Jenny Davidson points to this article by Krugman on Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. Given the silliness of the topic, Krugman’s piece is disappointingly serious (“Maybe the first thing to say about Foundation is that it’s not exactly science fiction – not really. Yes, it’s set in the future, there’s interstellar travel, people shoot each other with blasters instead of pistols and so on. But these are superficial details . . . the story can sound arid and didactic. . . . you’ll also be disappointed if you’re looking for shoot-em-up action scenes, in which Han Solo and Luke Skywalker destroy the Death Star in the nick of time. . . .”). What really jumped out at me from Krugman’s piece, though, was this line: In Foundation, we learn that a small group of mathematicians have developed “psychohistory”, the aforementioned rigorous science of society. Like Davidson (and Krugman), I read the Foundation books as a child. I remember the “psychohisto
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