andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1677 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Americans (including me) don’t know much about other countries. Jeff Lax sent me to this blog post by Myrddin pointing out that Belgium has a higher murder rate than the rest of Western Europe. I have no particular take on this, but it’s a good reminder that other countries differ from each other. Here in the U.S., we tend to think all western European countries are the same, all eastern European countries are the same, etc. In reality, Sweden is not Finland . P.S. According to the Wiki , Greenland is one tough town. I guess there’s nothing much to do out there but watch satellite TV, chew the blubber, and kill people.
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Americans (including me) don’t know much about other countries. [sent-1, score-0.11]
2 Jeff Lax sent me to this blog post by Myrddin pointing out that Belgium has a higher murder rate than the rest of Western Europe. [sent-2, score-0.799]
3 I have no particular take on this, but it’s a good reminder that other countries differ from each other. [sent-3, score-0.84]
4 , we tend to think all western European countries are the same, all eastern European countries are the same, etc. [sent-6, score-1.385]
5 According to the Wiki , Greenland is one tough town. [sent-10, score-0.158]
6 I guess there’s nothing much to do out there but watch satellite TV, chew the blubber, and kill people. [sent-11, score-0.931]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('western', 0.353), ('countries', 0.352), ('european', 0.313), ('belgium', 0.2), ('sweden', 0.2), ('eastern', 0.2), ('satellite', 0.2), ('chew', 0.2), ('wiki', 0.19), ('reminder', 0.19), ('finland', 0.179), ('greenland', 0.177), ('murder', 0.167), ('lax', 0.163), ('kill', 0.156), ('watch', 0.152), ('tv', 0.148), ('differ', 0.136), ('tough', 0.135), ('pointing', 0.131), ('reality', 0.127), ('jeff', 0.122), ('rest', 0.11), ('americans', 0.105), ('tend', 0.102), ('according', 0.097), ('rate', 0.093), ('higher', 0.093), ('sent', 0.092), ('guess', 0.076), ('nothing', 0.075), ('including', 0.075), ('much', 0.072), ('particular', 0.062), ('post', 0.061), ('take', 0.061), ('blog', 0.052), ('good', 0.039), ('know', 0.038), ('people', 0.032), ('think', 0.026), ('one', 0.023)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0 1677 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-16-Greenland is one tough town
Introduction: Americans (including me) don’t know much about other countries. Jeff Lax sent me to this blog post by Myrddin pointing out that Belgium has a higher murder rate than the rest of Western Europe. I have no particular take on this, but it’s a good reminder that other countries differ from each other. Here in the U.S., we tend to think all western European countries are the same, all eastern European countries are the same, etc. In reality, Sweden is not Finland . P.S. According to the Wiki , Greenland is one tough town. I guess there’s nothing much to do out there but watch satellite TV, chew the blubber, and kill people.
2 0.16377558 670 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-20-Attractive but hard-to-read graph could be made much much better
Introduction: Matthew Yglesias shares this graph from the Economist : I hate this graph. OK, sure, I don’t hate hate hate hate it: it’s not a 3-d exploding pie chart or anything. It’s not misleading, it’s just extremely difficult to read. Basically, you have to go back and forth between the colors and the labels and the countries and read it like a table. OK, so here’s the table: Average Hours Per Day Spent in Each Activity Work, Unpaid Eating, Personal Country study work sleeping care Leisure Other France 4 3 11 1 2 2 Germany 4 3 10 1 3 3 Japan 6 2 10 1 2 2 Britain 4 3 10 1 3 3 USA 5 3 10 1 3 2 Turkey 4 3 11 1 3 2 Hmm, that didn’t work too well. Let’s try subtracting the average from each column (for these six countries,
3 0.13024394 829 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-29-Infovis vs. statgraphics: A clear example of their different goals
Introduction: I recently came across a data visualization that perfectly demonstrates the difference between the “infovis” and “statgraphics” perspectives. Here’s the image ( link from Tyler Cowen): That’s the infovis. The statgraphic version would simply be a dotplot, something like this: (I purposely used the default settings in R with only minor modifications here to demonstrate what happens if you just want to plot the data with minimal effort.) Let’s compare the two graphs: From a statistical graphics perspective, the second graph dominates. The countries are directly comparable and the numbers are indicated by positions rather than area. The first graph is full of distracting color and gives the misleading visual impression that the total GDP of countries 5-10 is about equal to that of countries 1-4. If the goal is to get attention , though, it’s another story. There’s nothing special about the top graph above except how it looks. It represents neither a dat
4 0.10921139 1829 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-28-Plain old everyday Bayesianism!
Introduction: Sam Behseta writes: There is a report by Martin Tingley and Peter Huybers in Nature on the unprecedented high temperatures at northern latitudes (Russia, Greenland, etc). What is more interesting is the authors are have used a straightforward hierarchical Bayes model, and for the first time (as far as I can remember) the results are reported with a probability attached to them (P>0.99), as opposed to the usual p-value<0.01 business. This might be a sign that editors of big time science journals are welcoming Bayesian approaches. I agree. This is a good sign for statistical communication. Here are the key sentences from the abstract: Here, using a hierarchical Bayesian analysis of instrumental, tree-ring, ice-core and lake-sediment records, we show that the magnitude and frequency of recent warm temperature extremes at high northern latitudes are unprecedented in the past 600 years. The summers of 2005, 2007, 2010 and 2011 were warmer than those of all prior years back to 1
5 0.09897662 1713 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-08-P-values and statistical practice
Introduction: From my new article in the journal Epidemiology: Sander Greenland and Charles Poole accept that P values are here to stay but recognize that some of their most common interpretations have problems. The casual view of the P value as posterior probability of the truth of the null hypothesis is false and not even close to valid under any reasonable model, yet this misunderstanding persists even in high-stakes settings (as discussed, for example, by Greenland in 2011). The formal view of the P value as a probability conditional on the null is mathematically correct but typically irrelevant to research goals (hence, the popularity of alternative—if wrong—interpretations). A Bayesian interpretation based on a spike-and-slab model makes little sense in applied contexts in epidemiology, political science, and other fields in which true effects are typically nonzero and bounded (thus violating both the “spike” and the “slab” parts of the model). I find Greenland and Poole’s perspective t
6 0.096539721 1845 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-07-Is Felix Salmon wrong on free TV?
7 0.089914545 1386 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-21-Belief in hell is associated with lower crime rates
8 0.087495908 1040 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-03-Absolutely last Niall Ferguson post ever, in which I offer him serious advice
10 0.082239419 2135 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-15-The UN Plot to Force Bayesianism on Unsuspecting Americans (penalized B-Spline edition)
11 0.081835724 89 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-16-A historical perspective on financial bailouts
12 0.081424132 2074 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-23-Can’t Stop Won’t Stop Mister P Beatdown
13 0.080845289 1010 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-14-“Free energy” and economic resources
14 0.078198217 2289 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-11-“More research from the lunatic fringe”
15 0.076176092 1669 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-12-The power of the puzzlegraph
17 0.073451743 352 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-19-Analysis of survey data: Design based models vs. hierarchical modeling?
18 0.071541332 1342 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-24-The Used TV Price is Too Damn High
19 0.068424456 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
20 0.067313671 2192 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-30-History is too important to be left to the history professors, Part 2
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.067), (1, -0.043), (2, 0.021), (3, 0.011), (4, 0.001), (5, -0.02), (6, 0.007), (7, -0.002), (8, 0.009), (9, 0.004), (10, -0.024), (11, -0.018), (12, -0.008), (13, 0.053), (14, 0.006), (15, -0.0), (16, 0.029), (17, -0.016), (18, -0.027), (19, -0.013), (20, 0.024), (21, 0.002), (22, -0.031), (23, -0.0), (24, 0.012), (25, -0.017), (26, -0.003), (27, 0.011), (28, 0.014), (29, 0.028), (30, 0.032), (31, -0.026), (32, -0.009), (33, -0.041), (34, 0.006), (35, -0.001), (36, 0.039), (37, -0.016), (38, 0.019), (39, 0.001), (40, -0.016), (41, -0.013), (42, -0.016), (43, -0.01), (44, 0.02), (45, -0.014), (46, -0.005), (47, 0.011), (48, 0.001), (49, -0.017)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.92596918 1677 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-16-Greenland is one tough town
Introduction: Americans (including me) don’t know much about other countries. Jeff Lax sent me to this blog post by Myrddin pointing out that Belgium has a higher murder rate than the rest of Western Europe. I have no particular take on this, but it’s a good reminder that other countries differ from each other. Here in the U.S., we tend to think all western European countries are the same, all eastern European countries are the same, etc. In reality, Sweden is not Finland . P.S. According to the Wiki , Greenland is one tough town. I guess there’s nothing much to do out there but watch satellite TV, chew the blubber, and kill people.
Introduction: Uberbloggers Andrew Sullivan and Matthew Yglesias were kind enough to link to my five-year-old post with graphs from Red State Blue State on time trends of average income by state. Here are the graphs : Yglesias’s take-home point: There isn’t that much change over time in states’ economic well-being. All things considered the best predictor of how rich a state was in 2000 was simply how rich it was in 1929…. Massachusetts and Connecticut have always been rich and Arkansas and Mississippi have always been poor. I’d like to point to a different feature of the graphs, which is that, although the rankings of the states haven’t changed much (as can be seen from the “2000 compared to 1929″ scale), the relative values of the incomes have converged quite a bit—at least, they converged from about 1930 to 1980 before hitting some level of stability. And the rankings have changed a bit. My impression (without checking the numbers) is that New York and Connecticut were
3 0.66163135 743 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-03-An argument that can’t possibly make sense
Introduction: Tyler Cowen writes : Texas has begun to enforce [a law regarding parallel parking] only recently . . . Up until now, of course, there has been strong net mobility into the state of Texas, so was the previous lack of enforcement so bad? I care not at all about the direction in which people park their cars and I have no opinion on this law, but I have to raise an alarm at Cowen’s argument here. Let me strip it down to its basic form: 1. Until recently, state X had policy A. 2. Up until now, there has been strong net mobility into state X 3. Therefore, the presumption is that policy A is ok. In this particular case, I think we can safely assume that parallel parking regulations have had close to zero impact on the population flows into and out of Texas. More generally, I think logicians could poke some holes into the argument that 1 and 2 above imply 3. For one thing, you could apply this argument to any policy in any state that’s had positive net migration. Hai
4 0.6565969 12 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-30-More on problems with surveys estimating deaths in war zones
Introduction: Andrew Mack writes: There was a brief commentary from the Benetech folk on the Human Security Report Project’s, “The Shrinking Costs of War” report on your blog in January. But the report has since generated a lot of public controversy . Since the report–like the current discussion in your blog on Mike Spagat’s new paper on Iraq–deals with controversies generated by survey-based excess death estimates, we thought your readers might be interested. Our responses to the debate were posted on our website last week. “Shrinking Costs” had discussed the dramatic decline in death tolls from wartime violence since the end of World War II –and its causes. We also argued that deaths from war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition had declined. (The exec. summary is here .) One of the most striking findings was that mortality rates (we used under-five mortality data) decline during most wars. Indeed our latest research indicates that of the total number of years that countries w
5 0.64922625 636 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-29-The Conservative States of America
Introduction: After noting the increasing political conservatism of people in the poorer states, Richard Florida writes : The current economic crisis only appears to have deepened conservatism’s hold on America’s states. This trend stands in sharp contrast to the Great Depression, when America embraced FDR and the New Deal. Liberalism, which is stronger in richer, better-educated, more-diverse, and, especially, more prosperous places, is shrinking across the board and has fallen behind conservatism even in its biggest strongholds. This obviously poses big challenges for liberals, the Obama administration, and the Democratic Party moving forward. But the much bigger, long-term danger is economic rather than political. This ideological state of affairs advantages the policy preferences of poorer, less innovative states over wealthier, more innovative, and productive ones. American politics is increasingly disconnected from its economic engine. And this deepening political divide has become pe
6 0.6443063 1386 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-21-Belief in hell is associated with lower crime rates
8 0.63794667 1693 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-25-Subsidized driving
9 0.63353431 187 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-05-Update on state size and governors’ popularity
11 0.62735599 2308 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-27-White stripes and dead armadillos
12 0.62376368 630 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-27-What is an economic “conspiracy theory”?
13 0.60495287 68 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-03-…pretty soon you’re talking real money.
14 0.60264105 915 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-17-(Worst) graph of the year
15 0.60075432 536 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-24-Trends in partisanship by state
16 0.59920168 1504 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-20-Could someone please lock this guy and Niall Ferguson in a room together?
17 0.59902078 495 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-31-“Threshold earners” and economic inequality
18 0.59469956 179 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-03-An Olympic size swimming pool full of lithium water
19 0.59427965 670 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-20-Attractive but hard-to-read graph could be made much much better
20 0.58962762 1548 andrew gelman stats-2012-10-25-Health disparities are associated with low life expectancy
topicId topicWeight
[(16, 0.053), (24, 0.073), (51, 0.027), (53, 0.35), (87, 0.026), (89, 0.025), (95, 0.058), (98, 0.03), (99, 0.22)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
1 0.96665037 413 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-14-Statistics of food consumption
Introduction: Visual Economics shows statistics on average food consumption in America: My brief feedback is that water is confounded with these results. They should have subtracted water content from the weight of all dietary items, as it inflates the proportion of milk, vegetable and fruit items that contain more water. They did that for soda (which is represented as sugar/corn syrup), amplifying the inconsistency. Time Magazine had a beautiful gallery that visualizes diets around the world in a more appealing way.
2 0.91151404 1589 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-25-Life as a blogger: the emails just get weirder and weirder
Introduction: In the email the other day, subject line “Casting blogger, writer, journalist to host cable series”: Hi there Andrew, I’m casting a male journalist, writer, blogger, documentary filmmaker or comedian with a certain type personality for a television pilot along with production company, Pipeline39. See below: A certain type of character – no cockiness, no ego, a person who is smart, savvy, dry humor, but someone who isn’t imposing, who can infiltrate these organizations. This person will be hosting his own show and covering alternative lifestyles and secret societies around the world. If you’re interested in hearing more or would like to be considered for this project, please email me a photo and a bio of yourself, along with contact information. I’ll respond to you ASAP. I’m looking forward to hearing from you. *** Casting Producer (646) ***.**** ***@gmail.com I was with them until I got to the “no ego” part. . . . Also, I don’t think I could infiltrate any org
same-blog 3 0.89900947 1677 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-16-Greenland is one tough town
Introduction: Americans (including me) don’t know much about other countries. Jeff Lax sent me to this blog post by Myrddin pointing out that Belgium has a higher murder rate than the rest of Western Europe. I have no particular take on this, but it’s a good reminder that other countries differ from each other. Here in the U.S., we tend to think all western European countries are the same, all eastern European countries are the same, etc. In reality, Sweden is not Finland . P.S. According to the Wiki , Greenland is one tough town. I guess there’s nothing much to do out there but watch satellite TV, chew the blubber, and kill people.
Introduction: Tapen Sinha writes: Living in Mexico, I have been witness to many strange (and beautiful) things. Perhaps the strangest happened during the first outbreak of A(H1N1) in Mexico City. We had our university closed, football (soccer) was played in empty stadiums (or should it be stadia) because the government feared a spread of the virus. The Metro was operating and so were the private/public buses and taxis. Since the university was closed, we took the opportunity to collect data on facemask use in the public transport systems. It was a simple (but potentially deadly!) exercise in first hand statistical data collection that we teach our students (Although I must admit that I did not dare sending my research assistant to collect data – what if she contracted the virus?). I believe it was a unique experiment never to be repeated. The paper appeared in the journal Health Policy. From the abstract: At the height of the influenza epidemic in Mexico City in the spring of 2009, the f
5 0.86576939 1856 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-14-GPstuff: Bayesian Modeling with Gaussian Processes
Introduction: I think it’s part of my duty as a blogger to intersperse, along with the steady flow of jokes, rants, and literary criticism, some material that will actually be useful to you. So here goes. Jarno Vanhatalo, Jaakko Riihimäki, Jouni Hartikainen, Pasi Jylänki, Ville Tolvanen, and Aki Vehtari write : The GPstuff toolbox is a versatile collection of Gaussian process models and computational tools required for Bayesian inference. The tools include, among others, various inference methods, sparse approximations and model assessment methods. We can actually now fit Gaussian processes in Stan . But for big problems (or even moderately-sized problems), full Bayes can be slow. GPstuff uses EP, which is faster. At some point we’d like to implement EP in Stan. (Right now we’re working with Dave Blei to implement VB.) GPstuff really works. I saw Aki use it to fit a nonparametric version of the Bangladesh well-switching example in ARM. He was sitting in his office and just whip
6 0.84402925 1468 andrew gelman stats-2012-08-24-Multilevel modeling and instrumental variables
7 0.84025681 1802 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-14-Detecting predictability in complex ecosystems
8 0.83353114 46 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-21-Careers, one-hit wonders, and an offer of a free book
9 0.81141478 1905 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-18-There are no fat sprinters
10 0.80215728 991 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-04-Insecure researchers aren’t sharing their data
11 0.79812771 1902 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-17-Job opening at new “big data” consulting firm!
12 0.79355848 733 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-27-Another silly graph
13 0.7777909 2022 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-13-You heard it here first: Intense exercise can suppress appetite
15 0.77082253 2067 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-18-EP and ABC
16 0.75773048 1047 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-08-I Am Too Absolutely Heteroskedastic for This Probit Model
17 0.75514179 495 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-31-“Threshold earners” and economic inequality
18 0.74954176 880 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-30-Annals of spam
19 0.73787522 354 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-19-There’s only one Amtrak
20 0.73648709 2356 andrew gelman stats-2014-06-02-On deck this week