andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1729 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: I was thinking more about David Brooks’s anti-data column from yesterday, and I realized what is really bothering me. Brooks expresses skepticism about numbers, about the limitations of raw data, about the importance of human thinking. Fine, I agree with all of this, to some extent. But then Brooks turns around uses numbers and unquestioningly and uncritically (OK, not completely uncritically; see P.S. below). In a notorious recent case, Brooks wrote, in the context of college admissions: You’re going to want to argue with Unz’s article all the way along, especially for its narrow, math-test-driven view of merit. But it’s potentially ground-shifting. Unz’s other big point is that Jews are vastly overrepresented at elite universities and that Jewish achievement has collapsed. In the 1970s, for example, 40 percent of top scorers in the Math Olympiad had Jewish names. Now 2.5 percent do. But these numbers are incorrect, as I learned from a professor of oncology at the Univ
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 I was thinking more about David Brooks’s anti-data column from yesterday, and I realized what is really bothering me. [sent-1, score-0.122]
2 But then Brooks turns around uses numbers and unquestioningly and uncritically (OK, not completely uncritically; see P. [sent-4, score-0.482]
3 In the 1970s, for example, 40 percent of top scorers in the Math Olympiad had Jewish names. [sent-10, score-0.144]
4 It turns out that the numbers Brooks was reported had been constructed from some sloppy counting. [sent-15, score-0.334]
5 My beef here, though, is not with Ron Unz, who did the sloppy counting. [sent-16, score-0.253]
6 And my beef is not with David Brooks for including some faulty numbers in his column. [sent-20, score-0.398]
7 No, my beef is with David Brooks for not correcting his numbers. [sent-23, score-0.185]
8 Janet Mertz contacted him and the Times to report that his published numbers were in error, and I also contacted Brooks (both directly and through an intermediary). [sent-24, score-0.349]
9 The funny thing is, yesterday’s column would’ve been the perfect place for Brooks to make his correction. [sent-26, score-0.128]
10 He could’ve just added a paragraph such as the following: One trouble with numbers is they can be spuriously confusing. [sent-27, score-0.311]
11 ” In my column, I uncritically presented Unz’s claim that the percentage of top scorers in the American high school math Olympiad team had declined to 2. [sent-29, score-0.528]
12 My point is that, if Brooks wants to talk about the limitations of data, he could start with himself. [sent-36, score-0.115]
13 To put it another way, if Brooks wants to claim, of American Jews, that “the fanatical generations of immigrant strivers have been replaced by a more comfortable generation of preprofessionals,” then, hey, go for it. [sent-39, score-0.145]
14 The problem comes in when he supports this claim with bad data. [sent-40, score-0.134]
15 I have a beef with Brooks because I think he can do better. [sent-42, score-0.185]
16 I added additional sentences to the inline Brooks quote above in order to provide more context, to clarify that Brooks was presenting the numbers as coming from a particular outside source. [sent-47, score-0.364]
17 It was not right for me to say he was presenting these numbers “unquestioningly,” as he does express some concerns. [sent-48, score-0.269]
18 Brooks expressed some potential criticism of Unz’s conclusions but not of Unz’s numbers . [sent-49, score-0.213]
19 The reason I still think a New York Times correction is in order is that the numbers appear to me to be presented as facts rather than as Unz’s claims. [sent-50, score-0.358]
20 And, as noted above, I think such a correction is in keeping with Brooks’s larger message, which I support, that numbers can be misleading when we don’t know where they are coming from. [sent-53, score-0.311]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('brooks', 0.638), ('unz', 0.356), ('numbers', 0.213), ('beef', 0.185), ('olympiad', 0.169), ('jewish', 0.145), ('mertz', 0.127), ('uncritically', 0.124), ('correction', 0.098), ('scorers', 0.097), ('unquestioningly', 0.092), ('claim', 0.089), ('activist', 0.087), ('mathematics', 0.085), ('wisconsin', 0.079), ('column', 0.077), ('math', 0.076), ('jews', 0.075), ('janet', 0.073), ('collapse', 0.072), ('ron', 0.069), ('sloppy', 0.068), ('contacted', 0.068), ('limitations', 0.064), ('presenting', 0.056), ('david', 0.056), ('american', 0.056), ('turns', 0.053), ('quals', 0.051), ('spuriously', 0.051), ('perfect', 0.051), ('wants', 0.051), ('yesterday', 0.05), ('times', 0.049), ('strivers', 0.048), ('madison', 0.048), ('explainable', 0.048), ('inline', 0.048), ('percentage', 0.048), ('presented', 0.047), ('learned', 0.047), ('added', 0.047), ('team', 0.047), ('percent', 0.047), ('operates', 0.046), ('immigrant', 0.046), ('refuted', 0.046), ('bad', 0.045), ('bothering', 0.045), ('oncology', 0.045)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0 1729 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-20-My beef with Brooks: the alternative to “good statistics” is not “no statistics,” it’s “bad statistics”
Introduction: I was thinking more about David Brooks’s anti-data column from yesterday, and I realized what is really bothering me. Brooks expresses skepticism about numbers, about the limitations of raw data, about the importance of human thinking. Fine, I agree with all of this, to some extent. But then Brooks turns around uses numbers and unquestioningly and uncritically (OK, not completely uncritically; see P.S. below). In a notorious recent case, Brooks wrote, in the context of college admissions: You’re going to want to argue with Unz’s article all the way along, especially for its narrow, math-test-driven view of merit. But it’s potentially ground-shifting. Unz’s other big point is that Jews are vastly overrepresented at elite universities and that Jewish achievement has collapsed. In the 1970s, for example, 40 percent of top scorers in the Math Olympiad had Jewish names. Now 2.5 percent do. But these numbers are incorrect, as I learned from a professor of oncology at the Univ
2 0.4946675 1751 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-06-Janet Mertz’s response to “The Myth of American Meritocracy”
Introduction: The following is source material regarding our recent discussion of Jewish admission to Ivy League colleges. I’m posting it for the same reason that I earlier posted a message from Ron Unz, out of a goal to allow the data and arguments to be made as clearly as possible. Janet Mertz writes: I became involved in the discussion of Ron Unz’s Meritocracy article because I am a leading expert on the demographics of top-scoring participants in the high school International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) and the US/Canadian inter-collegiate Putnam Mathematics Competition. I have published three peer-reviewed articles that include data directly related to this topic . . . Had Unz read my 2008 Notices article, he would have known his claim that Jewish achievement in these two competitions had collapsed in the 21st century (which was cited by David Brooks in the New York Times) was simply not true. . . . The primary questions addressed in this article are the following: (i) Do the Ivy
3 0.46037528 1743 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-28-Different modes of discourse
Introduction: Political/business negotiation vs. scholarly communication. In a negotiation you hold back, you only make concessions if you have to or in exchange for something else. In scholarly communication you look for your own mistakes, you volunteer information to others, and if someone points out a mistake, you learn from it. (Just a couple days ago, in fact, someone sent me an email showing a problem with bayesglm. I ran and altered his code, and it turned out we had a problem. Based on this information, Yu-Sung found and fixed the code. I was grateful to be informed of the problem.) Not all scholarly exchange goes like this, but that’s the ideal. In contrast, openness and transparency are not ideals in politics and business; in many cases they’re not even desired. If Barack Obama and John Boehner are negotiating on the budget, would it be appropriate for one of them to just start off the negotiations by making a bunch of concessions for free? No, of course not. Negotiation doesn
Introduction: A few months ago we discussed Ron Unz’s claim that Jews are massively overrepresented in Ivy League college admissions, not just in comparison to the general population of college-age Americans, but even in comparison to other white kids with comparable academic ability and preparation. Most of Unz’s article concerns admissions of Asian-Americans, and he also has a proposal to admit certain students at random (see my discussion in the link above). In the present post, I concentrate on the statistics about Jewish students, because this is where I have learned that his statistics are particularly suspect, with various numbers being off by factors of 2 or 4 or more. Unz’s article was discussed, largely favorably, by academic bloggers Tyler Cowen , Steve Hsu , and . . . me! Hsu writes: “Don’t miss the statistical supplement.” But a lot of our trust in those statistics seems to be misplaced. Some people have sent me some information showing serious problems with Unz’s methods
5 0.42704281 1768 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-18-Mertz’s reply to Unz’s response to Mertz’s comments on Unz’s article
Introduction: Here. And here’s the story so far: Ron Unz posted a long article on college admissions of Asians and Jews with some numbers and comparisons that made their way into some blogs (including here ) and also a David Brooks NYT column which was read by many people, including Janet Mertz, who’d done previous research on ethnic composition of high-end math students. Mertz contacted me (she’d earlier tried Brooks and others but received no helpful reply), and I posted her findings along with those of another correspondent. Unz then replied , motivating Mertz to write a seven-page document expanding on her earlier emails. Unz responded to that, characterizing Mertz as maybe “emotional” but not actually disputing any of her figures. Unz did, however, make the unconvincing (to me) implication that his original numbers were basically OK even in light of Mertz’s corrections. So Mertz responded once more . (There’s also a side discussion about women’s representation in m
6 0.4132798 2073 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-22-Ivy Jew update
7 0.33375466 1025 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-24-Always check your evidence
8 0.33306548 2280 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-03-As the boldest experiment in journalism history, you admit you made a mistake
10 0.29027894 1271 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-20-Education could use some systematic evaluation
11 0.28757867 1730 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-20-Unz on Unz
12 0.26170406 1727 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-19-Beef with data
13 0.25911179 1587 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-21-Red state blue state, or, states and counties are not persons
14 0.22463474 1595 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-28-Should Harvard start admitting kids at random?
15 0.21868797 2107 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-20-NYT (non)-retraction watch
16 0.16724204 2269 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-27-Beyond the Valley of the Trolls
17 0.14182068 2337 andrew gelman stats-2014-05-18-Never back down: The culture of poverty and the culture of journalism
18 0.11939935 844 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-07-Update on the new Handbook of MCMC
19 0.10972451 1866 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-21-Recently in the sister blog
20 0.1014192 2259 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-22-Picking pennies in front of a steamroller: A parable comes to life
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.163), (1, -0.089), (2, 0.021), (3, -0.007), (4, -0.005), (5, 0.001), (6, 0.06), (7, 0.089), (8, -0.075), (9, -0.058), (10, 0.003), (11, 0.126), (12, -0.343), (13, 0.093), (14, 0.011), (15, 0.375), (16, -0.216), (17, -0.037), (18, 0.12), (19, 0.009), (20, -0.041), (21, -0.012), (22, 0.088), (23, 0.038), (24, -0.069), (25, 0.041), (26, -0.023), (27, -0.034), (28, 0.007), (29, 0.026), (30, -0.023), (31, 0.015), (32, 0.007), (33, -0.043), (34, -0.013), (35, -0.01), (36, -0.022), (37, -0.001), (38, -0.001), (39, 0.002), (40, 0.026), (41, 0.052), (42, -0.018), (43, -0.012), (44, -0.035), (45, 0.037), (46, 0.043), (47, -0.041), (48, 0.05), (49, -0.01)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.9555881 1729 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-20-My beef with Brooks: the alternative to “good statistics” is not “no statistics,” it’s “bad statistics”
Introduction: I was thinking more about David Brooks’s anti-data column from yesterday, and I realized what is really bothering me. Brooks expresses skepticism about numbers, about the limitations of raw data, about the importance of human thinking. Fine, I agree with all of this, to some extent. But then Brooks turns around uses numbers and unquestioningly and uncritically (OK, not completely uncritically; see P.S. below). In a notorious recent case, Brooks wrote, in the context of college admissions: You’re going to want to argue with Unz’s article all the way along, especially for its narrow, math-test-driven view of merit. But it’s potentially ground-shifting. Unz’s other big point is that Jews are vastly overrepresented at elite universities and that Jewish achievement has collapsed. In the 1970s, for example, 40 percent of top scorers in the Math Olympiad had Jewish names. Now 2.5 percent do. But these numbers are incorrect, as I learned from a professor of oncology at the Univ
2 0.94828802 1751 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-06-Janet Mertz’s response to “The Myth of American Meritocracy”
Introduction: The following is source material regarding our recent discussion of Jewish admission to Ivy League colleges. I’m posting it for the same reason that I earlier posted a message from Ron Unz, out of a goal to allow the data and arguments to be made as clearly as possible. Janet Mertz writes: I became involved in the discussion of Ron Unz’s Meritocracy article because I am a leading expert on the demographics of top-scoring participants in the high school International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) and the US/Canadian inter-collegiate Putnam Mathematics Competition. I have published three peer-reviewed articles that include data directly related to this topic . . . Had Unz read my 2008 Notices article, he would have known his claim that Jewish achievement in these two competitions had collapsed in the 21st century (which was cited by David Brooks in the New York Times) was simply not true. . . . The primary questions addressed in this article are the following: (i) Do the Ivy
3 0.93855143 2073 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-22-Ivy Jew update
Introduction: Nurit Baytch posted a document, A Critique of Ron Unz’s Article “The Myth of American Meritocracy” , that is relevant to an ongoing discussion we had on this blog. Baytch’s article begins: In “The Myth of American Meritocracy,” Ron Unz, the publisher of The American Conservative, claimed that Harvard discriminates against non-Jewish white and Asian students in favor of Jewish students. I [Baytch] shall demonstrate that Unz’s conclusion that Jews are over-admitted to Harvard was erroneous, as he relied on faulty assumptions and spurious data: Unz substantially overestimated the percentage of Jews at Harvard while grossly underestimating the percentage of Jews among high academic achievers, when, in fact, there is no discrepancy, as my analysis will show. In addition, Unz’s arguments have proven to be untenable in light of a recent survey of incoming Harvard freshmen conducted by The Harvard Crimson, which found that students who identified as Jewish reported a mean SAT score of 2289
4 0.9320522 1768 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-18-Mertz’s reply to Unz’s response to Mertz’s comments on Unz’s article
Introduction: Here. And here’s the story so far: Ron Unz posted a long article on college admissions of Asians and Jews with some numbers and comparisons that made their way into some blogs (including here ) and also a David Brooks NYT column which was read by many people, including Janet Mertz, who’d done previous research on ethnic composition of high-end math students. Mertz contacted me (she’d earlier tried Brooks and others but received no helpful reply), and I posted her findings along with those of another correspondent. Unz then replied , motivating Mertz to write a seven-page document expanding on her earlier emails. Unz responded to that, characterizing Mertz as maybe “emotional” but not actually disputing any of her figures. Unz did, however, make the unconvincing (to me) implication that his original numbers were basically OK even in light of Mertz’s corrections. So Mertz responded once more . (There’s also a side discussion about women’s representation in m
Introduction: A few months ago we discussed Ron Unz’s claim that Jews are massively overrepresented in Ivy League college admissions, not just in comparison to the general population of college-age Americans, but even in comparison to other white kids with comparable academic ability and preparation. Most of Unz’s article concerns admissions of Asian-Americans, and he also has a proposal to admit certain students at random (see my discussion in the link above). In the present post, I concentrate on the statistics about Jewish students, because this is where I have learned that his statistics are particularly suspect, with various numbers being off by factors of 2 or 4 or more. Unz’s article was discussed, largely favorably, by academic bloggers Tyler Cowen , Steve Hsu , and . . . me! Hsu writes: “Don’t miss the statistical supplement.” But a lot of our trust in those statistics seems to be misplaced. Some people have sent me some information showing serious problems with Unz’s methods
6 0.88824999 1743 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-28-Different modes of discourse
7 0.81769025 1730 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-20-Unz on Unz
8 0.74449754 1595 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-28-Should Harvard start admitting kids at random?
10 0.57272166 1025 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-24-Always check your evidence
11 0.55975705 1727 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-19-Beef with data
12 0.55001587 2107 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-20-NYT (non)-retraction watch
13 0.51872838 2280 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-03-As the boldest experiment in journalism history, you admit you made a mistake
14 0.48352066 135 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-09-Rasmussen sez: “108% of Respondents Say . . .”
15 0.47336814 1271 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-20-Education could use some systematic evaluation
16 0.44166815 1587 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-21-Red state blue state, or, states and counties are not persons
17 0.43741694 598 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-03-Is Harvard hurting poor kids by cutting tuition for the upper middle class?
18 0.42147452 677 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-24-My NOAA story
19 0.40734658 1830 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-29-Giving credit where due
20 0.38835883 1866 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-21-Recently in the sister blog
topicId topicWeight
[(2, 0.019), (8, 0.079), (15, 0.05), (16, 0.155), (21, 0.02), (24, 0.111), (30, 0.028), (47, 0.015), (53, 0.015), (82, 0.01), (86, 0.015), (90, 0.018), (92, 0.055), (95, 0.015), (99, 0.247)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.95274091 1729 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-20-My beef with Brooks: the alternative to “good statistics” is not “no statistics,” it’s “bad statistics”
Introduction: I was thinking more about David Brooks’s anti-data column from yesterday, and I realized what is really bothering me. Brooks expresses skepticism about numbers, about the limitations of raw data, about the importance of human thinking. Fine, I agree with all of this, to some extent. But then Brooks turns around uses numbers and unquestioningly and uncritically (OK, not completely uncritically; see P.S. below). In a notorious recent case, Brooks wrote, in the context of college admissions: You’re going to want to argue with Unz’s article all the way along, especially for its narrow, math-test-driven view of merit. But it’s potentially ground-shifting. Unz’s other big point is that Jews are vastly overrepresented at elite universities and that Jewish achievement has collapsed. In the 1970s, for example, 40 percent of top scorers in the Math Olympiad had Jewish names. Now 2.5 percent do. But these numbers are incorrect, as I learned from a professor of oncology at the Univ
2 0.94048679 411 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-13-Ethical concerns in medical trials
Introduction: I just read this article on the treatment of medical volunteers, written by doctor and bioethicist Carl Ellliott. As a statistician who has done a small amount of consulting for pharmaceutical companies, I have a slightly different perspective. As a doctor, Elliott focuses on individual patients, whereas, as a statistician, I’ve been trained to focus on the goal of accurately estimate treatment effects. I’ll go through Elliott’s article and give my reactions. Elliott: In Miami, investigative reporters for Bloomberg Markets magazine discovered that a contract research organisation called SFBC International was testing drugs on undocumented immigrants in a rundown motel; since that report, the motel has been demolished for fire and safety violations. . . . SFBC had recently been named one of the best small businesses in America by Forbes magazine. The Holiday Inn testing facility was the largest in North America, and had been operating for nearly ten years before inspecto
3 0.93751961 1712 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-07-Philosophy and the practice of Bayesian statistics (with all the discussions!)
Introduction: My article with Cosma Shalizi has appeared in the British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology. I’m so glad this paper has come out. I’d been thinking about writing such a paper for almost 20 years. What got me to actually do it was an invitation a few years ago to write a chapter on Bayesian statistics for a volume on the philosophy of social sciences. Once I started doing that, I realized I had enough for a journal article. I contacted Cosma because he, unlike me, was familiar with the post-1970 philosophy literature (my knowledge went only up to Popper, Kuhn, and Lakatos). We submitted it to a couple statistics journals that didn’t want it (for reasons that weren’t always clear ), but ultimately I think it ended up in the right place, as psychologists have been as serious as anyone in thinking about statistical foundations in recent years. Here’s the issue of the journal , which also includes an introduction, several discussions, and a rejoinder: Prior app
4 0.93363941 960 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-15-The bias-variance tradeoff
Introduction: Joshua Vogelstein asks for my thoughts as a Bayesian on the above topic. So here they are (briefly): The concept of the bias-variance tradeoff can be useful if you don’t take it too seriously. The basic idea is as follows: if you’re estimating something, you can slice your data finer and finer, or perform more and more adjustments, each time getting a purer—and less biased—estimate. But each subdivision or each adjustment reduces your sample size or increases potential estimation error, hence the variance of your estimate goes up. That story is real. In lots and lots of examples, there’s a continuum between a completely unadjusted general estimate (high bias, low variance) and a specific, focused, adjusted estimate (low bias, high variance). Suppose, for example, you’re using data from a large experiment to estimate the effect of a treatment on a fairly narrow group, say, white men between the ages of 45 and 50. At one extreme, you could just take the estimated treatment e
5 0.93208981 159 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-23-Popular governor, small state
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
7 0.92918426 1378 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-13-Economists . . .
8 0.92614579 177 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-02-Reintegrating rebels into civilian life: Quasi-experimental evidence from Burundi
9 0.92594123 503 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-04-Clarity on my email policy
10 0.92406136 609 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-13-Coauthorship norms
11 0.92398876 1751 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-06-Janet Mertz’s response to “The Myth of American Meritocracy”
12 0.92293465 2179 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-20-The AAA Tranche of Subprime Science
13 0.92007446 2137 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-17-Replication backlash
14 0.91987556 321 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-05-Racism!
15 0.91981936 722 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-20-Why no Wegmania?
16 0.91979545 1016 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-17-I got 99 comparisons but multiplicity ain’t one
17 0.91976917 2 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-23-Modeling heterogenous treatment effects
18 0.91967666 2073 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-22-Ivy Jew update
19 0.91909122 2280 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-03-As the boldest experiment in journalism history, you admit you made a mistake
20 0.9186933 317 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-04-Rob Kass on statistical pragmatism, and my reactions