andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1762 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I just want to share with you the best comment we’ve every had in the nearly ten-year history of this blog. Also it has statistical content! Here’s the story. After seeing an amusing article by Tom Scocca relating how reporter John Lee Anderson called someone as a “little twerp” on twitter: I conjectured that Anderson suffered from “tall person syndrome,” that problem that some people of above-average height have, that they think they’re more important than other people because they literally look down on them. But I had no idea of Anderson’s actual height. Commenter Gary responded with this impressive bit of investigative reporting: Based on this picture: he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit: And he doesn’t appear
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1 I just want to share with you the best comment we’ve every had in the nearly ten-year history of this blog. [sent-1, score-0.06]
2 Commenter Gary responded with this impressive bit of investigative reporting: Based on this picture: he appears to be fairly tall. [sent-6, score-0.305]
3 Based on this picture: he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. [sent-8, score-0.309]
4 Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit: And he doesn’t appear to be that tall . [sent-10, score-1.122]
5 about the same height as Claire Danes: who according to Google is 5′ 6″. [sent-13, score-0.228]
6 So if Jon Lee Anderson is 10″ taller than Catalina Garcia, who is 2″ shorter than Philippe Petit, who is the same height as Claire Danes, then he is 6′ 2″ tall. [sent-14, score-0.514]
7 I have no idea who Catalina Garcia is, but she makes a decent ruler. [sent-15, score-0.115]
8 In a followup comment, Gary laments that his analysis does not account for footwear-induced height variation. [sent-16, score-0.43]
9 But that additional uncertainty could be incorporated into the above analysis via a simple Stan model, with an error term for each observation. [sent-17, score-0.069]
10 Just to be clear, I don’t think all or even most tall people suffer from “tall person syndrome,” nor do I think that most short people have a “Napoleon complex. [sent-20, score-0.711]
11 ” But I do think some tall people have this problem. [sent-21, score-0.522]
12 My message to Anderson: (1) Don’t drink and tweet (or, as he would say, Tweet), (2) When you tweet something you shouldn’t, just apologize. [sent-22, score-0.486]
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Introduction: I just want to share with you the best comment we’ve every had in the nearly ten-year history of this blog. Also it has statistical content! Here’s the story. After seeing an amusing article by Tom Scocca relating how reporter John Lee Anderson called someone as a “little twerp” on twitter: I conjectured that Anderson suffered from “tall person syndrome,” that problem that some people of above-average height have, that they think they’re more important than other people because they literally look down on them. But I had no idea of Anderson’s actual height. Commenter Gary responded with this impressive bit of investigative reporting: Based on this picture: he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit: And he doesn’t appear
2 0.81390142 2250 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-16-“I have no idea who Catalina Garcia is, but she makes a decent ruler”
Introduction: Best blog comment ever , following up on our post, How tall is Jon Lee Anderson?: Based on this picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2235/1640569735_05337bb974.jpg he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Jon_Lee_Anderson.sflb.ashx he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Philippe_Petite.sflb.ashx. And he doesn’t appear to be that tall… about the same height as Claire Danes: http://cdn.theatermania.com/photo-gallery/Petit_Danes_Daldry_2421_4700.jpg – who according to Google is 5′ 6″. So if Jon Lee Anderson is 10″ taller than Catalina Garcia, who is 2″ shorter than Philippe Petit, who is the same height as Claire Danes, then he is 6′ 2″ tall. I have no idea who Catal
3 0.43795058 1759 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-12-How tall is Jon Lee Anderson?
Introduction: The second best thing about this story (from Tom Scocca) is that Anderson spells “Tweets” with a capital T. But the best thing is that Scocca is numerate—he compares numbers on the logarithmic scale: Reminding Lake that he only had 169 Twitter followers was the saddest gambit of all. Jon Lee Anderson has 17,866 followers. And Kim Kardashian has, as I write this, 17,489,892 followers. That is: Jon Lee Anderson is 1/1,000 as important on Twitter, by his own standard, as Kim Kardashian. He is 10 times closer to Mitch Lake than he is to Kim Kardashian. How often do we see a popular journalist who understands orders of magnitude? Good job, Tom Scocca! P.S. Based on his “little twerp” comment, I also wonder if Anderson suffers from tall person syndrome—that’s the problem that some people of above-average height have, that they think they’re more important than other people because they literally look down on them. Don’t get me wrong—I have lots of tall friends who are complete
4 0.19885835 2204 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-09-Keli Liu and Xiao-Li Meng on Simpson’s paradox
Introduction: XL sent me this paper , “A Fruitful Resolution to Simpson’s Paradox via Multi-Resolution Inference.” I told Keli and Xiao-Li that I wasn’t sure I fully understood the paper—as usual, XL is subtle and sophisticated, also I only get about half of his jokes—but I sent along these thoughts: 1. I do not think counterfactuals or potential outcomes are necessary for Simpson’s paradox. I say this because one can set up Simpson’s paradox with variables that cannot be manipulated, or for which manipulations are not directly of interest. 2. Simpson’s paradox is part of a more general issue that regression coefs change if you add more predictors, the flipping of sign is not really necessary. Here’s an example that I use in my teaching that illustrates both points: I can run a regression predicting income from sex and height. I find that the coef of sex is $10,000 (i.e., comparing a man and woman of the same height, on average the man will make $10,000 more) and the coefficient of h
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Introduction: John Cook and Joseph Delaney point to an article by Yurii Aulchenko et al., who write: 54 loci showing strong statistical evidence for association to human height were described, providing us with potential genomic means of human height prediction. In a population-based study of 5748 people, we find that a 54-loci genomic profile explained 4-6% of the sex- and age-adjusted height variance, and had limited ability to discriminate tall/short people. . . . In a family-based study of 550 people, with both parents having height measurements, we find that the Galtonian mid-parental prediction method explained 40% of the sex- and age-adjusted height variance, and showed high discriminative accuracy. . . . The message is that the simple approach of predicting child’s height using a regression model given parents’ average height performs much better than the method they have based on combining 54 genes. They also find that, if you start with the prediction based on parents’ heigh
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Introduction: I just want to share with you the best comment we’ve every had in the nearly ten-year history of this blog. Also it has statistical content! Here’s the story. After seeing an amusing article by Tom Scocca relating how reporter John Lee Anderson called someone as a “little twerp” on twitter: I conjectured that Anderson suffered from “tall person syndrome,” that problem that some people of above-average height have, that they think they’re more important than other people because they literally look down on them. But I had no idea of Anderson’s actual height. Commenter Gary responded with this impressive bit of investigative reporting: Based on this picture: he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit: And he doesn’t appear
2 0.79136473 2250 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-16-“I have no idea who Catalina Garcia is, but she makes a decent ruler”
Introduction: Best blog comment ever , following up on our post, How tall is Jon Lee Anderson?: Based on this picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2235/1640569735_05337bb974.jpg he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Jon_Lee_Anderson.sflb.ashx he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Philippe_Petite.sflb.ashx. And he doesn’t appear to be that tall… about the same height as Claire Danes: http://cdn.theatermania.com/photo-gallery/Petit_Danes_Daldry_2421_4700.jpg – who according to Google is 5′ 6″. So if Jon Lee Anderson is 10″ taller than Catalina Garcia, who is 2″ shorter than Philippe Petit, who is the same height as Claire Danes, then he is 6′ 2″ tall. I have no idea who Catal
3 0.75129479 1759 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-12-How tall is Jon Lee Anderson?
Introduction: The second best thing about this story (from Tom Scocca) is that Anderson spells “Tweets” with a capital T. But the best thing is that Scocca is numerate—he compares numbers on the logarithmic scale: Reminding Lake that he only had 169 Twitter followers was the saddest gambit of all. Jon Lee Anderson has 17,866 followers. And Kim Kardashian has, as I write this, 17,489,892 followers. That is: Jon Lee Anderson is 1/1,000 as important on Twitter, by his own standard, as Kim Kardashian. He is 10 times closer to Mitch Lake than he is to Kim Kardashian. How often do we see a popular journalist who understands orders of magnitude? Good job, Tom Scocca! P.S. Based on his “little twerp” comment, I also wonder if Anderson suffers from tall person syndrome—that’s the problem that some people of above-average height have, that they think they’re more important than other people because they literally look down on them. Don’t get me wrong—I have lots of tall friends who are complete
4 0.58713734 157 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-21-Roller coasters, charity, profit, hmmm
Introduction: Dan Kahan writes: Here is a very interesting article form Science that reports result of experiment that looked at whether people bought a product (picture of themselves screaming or vomiting on roller coaster) or paid more for it when told “1/2 to charity.” Answer was “buy more” but “pay lots less” than when alternative was fixed price w/ or w/o charity; and “buy more” & “pay more” if consumer could name own price & 1/2 went to charity than if none went to charity. Pretty interesting. But . . . What’s odd, I [Kahan] think, is the measure used to report the result. The paper (written by some really amazingly good social psychologists; I know this from other studies) goes on & on, w/ figures & tables, about how the amusement park’s “revenue,” “revenue per ride” & “profit” went up by large amount when it used “name your own price & 1/2 to charity.” Yet that result is dominated by random effects — the marginal cost & volume of sales are peculiar to the product being sold &
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Introduction: XL sent me this paper , “A Fruitful Resolution to Simpson’s Paradox via Multi-Resolution Inference.” I told Keli and Xiao-Li that I wasn’t sure I fully understood the paper—as usual, XL is subtle and sophisticated, also I only get about half of his jokes—but I sent along these thoughts: 1. I do not think counterfactuals or potential outcomes are necessary for Simpson’s paradox. I say this because one can set up Simpson’s paradox with variables that cannot be manipulated, or for which manipulations are not directly of interest. 2. Simpson’s paradox is part of a more general issue that regression coefs change if you add more predictors, the flipping of sign is not really necessary. Here’s an example that I use in my teaching that illustrates both points: I can run a regression predicting income from sex and height. I find that the coef of sex is $10,000 (i.e., comparing a man and woman of the same height, on average the man will make $10,000 more) and the coefficient of h
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Introduction: Best blog comment ever , following up on our post, How tall is Jon Lee Anderson?: Based on this picture: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2235/1640569735_05337bb974.jpg he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Jon_Lee_Anderson.sflb.ashx he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit http://www.catalinagarcia.com/cata/Libraries/BLOG_Images/Cata_w_Philippe_Petite.sflb.ashx. And he doesn’t appear to be that tall… about the same height as Claire Danes: http://cdn.theatermania.com/photo-gallery/Petit_Danes_Daldry_2421_4700.jpg – who according to Google is 5′ 6″. So if Jon Lee Anderson is 10″ taller than Catalina Garcia, who is 2″ shorter than Philippe Petit, who is the same height as Claire Danes, then he is 6′ 2″ tall. I have no idea who Catal
Introduction: I just want to share with you the best comment we’ve every had in the nearly ten-year history of this blog. Also it has statistical content! Here’s the story. After seeing an amusing article by Tom Scocca relating how reporter John Lee Anderson called someone as a “little twerp” on twitter: I conjectured that Anderson suffered from “tall person syndrome,” that problem that some people of above-average height have, that they think they’re more important than other people because they literally look down on them. But I had no idea of Anderson’s actual height. Commenter Gary responded with this impressive bit of investigative reporting: Based on this picture: he appears to be fairly tall. But the perspective makes it hard to judge. Based on this picture: he appears to be about 9-10 inches taller than Catalina Garcia. But how tall is Catalina Garcia? Not that tall – she’s shorter than the high-wire artist Phillipe Petit: And he doesn’t appear
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Introduction: From Wikipedia (via Jay Livingston ): Newsweek sells only about 40,000 newsstand copies compared with 1.5 million subscriptions. (Both figures are substantially lower than they were a decade ago.) The figures for Time are about double those of Newsweek, but the ratio of newsstand sales to subscriptions is about the same. I guess I’m not surprised that most of the sales are from subscriptions, but I’m surprised the fraction is so close to 100%.
Introduction: Elsewhere: 1. They asked me to write about my “favorite election- or campaign-related movie, novel, or TV show” (Salon) 2. The shopping period is over; the time for buying has begun (NYT) 3. If anybody’s gonna be criticizing my tax plan, I want it to be this guy (Monkey Cage) 4. The 4 key qualifications to be a great president; unfortunately George W. Bush satisfies all four, and Ronald Reagan doesn’t match any of them (Monkey Cage) 5. The politics of eyeliner (Monkey Cage)
5 0.79257488 915 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-17-(Worst) graph of the year
Introduction: This (forwarded to me from Jeff, from a powerpoint by Willam Gawthrop) wins not on form but on content: Really this graph should stand alone but it’s so wonderful that I can’t resist pointing out a few things: - The gap between 610 and 622 A.D. seems to be about the same as the previous 600 years, and only a little less than the 1400 years before that. - “Pious and devout” Jews are portrayed as having steadily increased in nonviolence up to the present day. Been to Israel lately? - I assume the line labeled “Bible” is referring to Christians? I’m sort of amazed to see pious and devout Christians listed as being maximally violent at the beginning. Huh? I thought Christ was supposed to be a nonviolent, mellow dude. The line starts at 3 B.C., implying that baby Jesus was at the extreme of violence. Gong forward, we can learn from the graph that pious and devout Christians in 1492 or 1618, say, were much more peaceful than Jesus and his crew. - Most amusingly g
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