andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1780 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I was reading a book of Alfred Kazin’s letters—I don’t know if they’d be so interesting to someone who hadn’t already read a bunch of his stuff , but I found them pretty interesting—and came across this amazing bit, dated August 11, 1957: No, really, Al. Tell us what you really feel. This was in his private diary, so I can’t really criticize him for it. And all of us have private thoughts, sometimes publicly expressed, that are unworthy of our better self. For example, once I was crossing a street and a taxi driver came dangerously close, and I screamed at him, “Go back to your own country, you #&@#%*^&.” So I’m not claiming that I’m any better than Kazin. I just thought that quote was pretty amazing. I guess that’s how (some) people thought, back in the fifties. Also interesting that he wrote “ass-hole” in that context. The hyphen surprised me, also I don’t think people would use that word in this way anymore. Nowadays I think of an asshole as a person, not a place.
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1 I was reading a book of Alfred Kazin’s letters—I don’t know if they’d be so interesting to someone who hadn’t already read a bunch of his stuff , but I found them pretty interesting—and came across this amazing bit, dated August 11, 1957: No, really, Al. [sent-1, score-1.384]
2 This was in his private diary, so I can’t really criticize him for it. [sent-3, score-0.537]
3 And all of us have private thoughts, sometimes publicly expressed, that are unworthy of our better self. [sent-4, score-0.724]
4 For example, once I was crossing a street and a taxi driver came dangerously close, and I screamed at him, “Go back to your own country, you #&@#%*^&. [sent-5, score-1.406]
5 ” So I’m not claiming that I’m any better than Kazin. [sent-6, score-0.237]
6 I guess that’s how (some) people thought, back in the fifties. [sent-8, score-0.265]
7 Also interesting that he wrote “ass-hole” in that context. [sent-9, score-0.181]
8 The hyphen surprised me, also I don’t think people would use that word in this way anymore. [sent-10, score-0.339]
9 Nowadays I think of an asshole as a person, not a place. [sent-11, score-0.205]
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same-blog 1 0.99999994 1780 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-28-Racism!
Introduction: I was reading a book of Alfred Kazin’s letters—I don’t know if they’d be so interesting to someone who hadn’t already read a bunch of his stuff , but I found them pretty interesting—and came across this amazing bit, dated August 11, 1957: No, really, Al. Tell us what you really feel. This was in his private diary, so I can’t really criticize him for it. And all of us have private thoughts, sometimes publicly expressed, that are unworthy of our better self. For example, once I was crossing a street and a taxi driver came dangerously close, and I screamed at him, “Go back to your own country, you #&@#%*^&.” So I’m not claiming that I’m any better than Kazin. I just thought that quote was pretty amazing. I guess that’s how (some) people thought, back in the fifties. Also interesting that he wrote “ass-hole” in that context. The hyphen surprised me, also I don’t think people would use that word in this way anymore. Nowadays I think of an asshole as a person, not a place.
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Introduction: This is pretty amazing.
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Introduction: An interview with me from 2012 : You’re a statistician and wrote a book, Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State , looking at why Americans vote the way they do. In an election year I think it would be a good time to revisit that question, not just for people in the US, but anyone around the world who wants to understand the realities – rather than the stereotypes – of how Americans vote. I regret the title I gave my book. I was too greedy. I wanted it to be an airport bestseller because I figured there were millions of people who are interested in politics and some subset of them are always looking at the statistics. It’s got a very grabby title and as a result people underestimated the content. They thought it was a popularisation of my work, or, at best, an expansion of an article we’d written. But it had tons of original material. If I’d given it a more serious, political science-y title, then all sorts of people would have wanted to read it, because they would
4 0.10885094 1935 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-12-“A tangle of unexamined emotional impulses and illogical responses”
Introduction: Tyler Cowen posts the following note from a taxi driver: I learned very early on to never drive someone to their destination if it was a route they drove themselves, say to their home from the airport . . . Everyone prides themselves on driving the shortest route but they rarely do. . . . When I first started driving a cab, I drove the shortest route—always, I’m ethical—but people would accuse me of taking the long way because it wasn’t the way they drove . . . In the end, experts they consider themselves to be, people are a tangle of unexamined emotional impulses and illogical responses. I take a lot of rides to and from the airport, and I can assure you that a lot of taxi drivers don’t know the good routes. Once I had to start screaming from the back seat to stop the guy from getting on the BQE. I don’t “pride myself” on knowing a good route home from the airport, but I prefer the good route. I’m guessing that the taxi driver quoted above is subject to the same illusions
Introduction: Sander Wagner writes: I just read the post on ethical concerns in medical trials. As there seems to be a lot more pressure on private researchers i thought it might be a nice little exercise to compare p-values from privately funded medical trials with those reported from publicly funded research, to see if confirmation pressure is higher in private research (i.e. p-values are closer to the cutoff levels for significance for the privately funded research). Do you think this is a decent idea or are you sceptical? Also are you aware of any sources listing a large number of representative medical studies and their type of funding? My reply: This sounds like something worth studying. I don’t know where to get data about this sort of thing, but now that it’s been blogged, maybe someone will follow up.
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same-blog 1 0.97078341 1780 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-28-Racism!
Introduction: I was reading a book of Alfred Kazin’s letters—I don’t know if they’d be so interesting to someone who hadn’t already read a bunch of his stuff , but I found them pretty interesting—and came across this amazing bit, dated August 11, 1957: No, really, Al. Tell us what you really feel. This was in his private diary, so I can’t really criticize him for it. And all of us have private thoughts, sometimes publicly expressed, that are unworthy of our better self. For example, once I was crossing a street and a taxi driver came dangerously close, and I screamed at him, “Go back to your own country, you #&@#%*^&.” So I’m not claiming that I’m any better than Kazin. I just thought that quote was pretty amazing. I guess that’s how (some) people thought, back in the fifties. Also interesting that he wrote “ass-hole” in that context. The hyphen surprised me, also I don’t think people would use that word in this way anymore. Nowadays I think of an asshole as a person, not a place.
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Introduction: I read the excerpt in n+1. As one would expect of DeWitt, it was great, while being nothing at all like her other book. THe new book reminded me a bit of Philip K. Dick. Here’s a brief excerpt (which is not actually particularly PKD-like) of the main character talking to himself: “I don’t have what it takes,” he said. He had never said it before because saying it would be like admitting he couldn’t make the grade. I’m not pulling out this quote to sell you on the book. The lines just struck me because of the exquisite distinctions, the idea that “don’t have what it takes” is somehow different than “couldn’t make the grade,” the idea that this character, who expresses his thoughts in empty phrases, ends up assigning to these phrases a set of precise meanings that make sense only to him. One reason Lightning Rods was so fun and refreshing to read is that it’s a non-formula novel that, unlike ChabonFranzenLethemBakerEtc—and, for that matter, unlike Virginia Woolf—is about c
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Introduction: Upon reading this , Susan remarked, “Don’t you think it’s interesting that a guy who promotes smoking has a last name of ‘Huff’? Reminds me of the Dennis/Dentist studies.” Good point. P.S. As discussed in the linked thread, the great statistician R. A. Fisher was notorious for minimizing the risks of smoking. How does this connect to Fisher’s name, one might ask?
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Introduction: I recently finished two enjoyable novels that I was pretty sure I’d like, given that they were both sequels of a sort. The main characters of both books were named Milo, a name that in literature appears only (to my knowledge) in The Phantom Tollbooth and Catch-22. The Milos in the new books I just read are much different than the two classic literary Milos. One, featured in the new thriller by Olen Steinhauer , is a cool, effective CIA killing machine (but of the good-guy variety, also he has some little character flaws to make him tolerable but he’s basically a superhero). The other is not any sort of killing machine, more of more of a Sam Lipsyte character. Which makes sense since he’s the star of The Ask, the follow-up to Lipsyte’s hilarious lovable-loser saga, Home Land. I have two questions about The Ask. 1. The driver of the plot is as follows. Milo has just been fired from his crappy job at a college in NYC. Milo has a rich friend who asks him to do a favor; in re
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Introduction: Helen DeWitt writes about The Ask, the new book by Sam Lipsyte, author of a hilarious book I read a couple years ago about a loser guy who goes to his high school reunion. I haven’t read Lipsyte’s new book but was interested to see that he teaches at Columbia. Perhaps I can take him to lunch (either before or after I work up the courage to call Gary Shteyngart and ask him about my theory that the main character of that book is a symbol of modern-day America). In any case, in the grand tradition of reviewing the review, I have some thoughts inspired by DeWitt, who quotes from this interview : LRS: I was studying writing at college and then this professor showed up, a disciple of Gordon Lish, and we operated according to the Lish method. You start reading your work and then as soon as you hit a false note she made you stop. Lipsyte: Yeah, Lish would say, “That’s bullshit!” If they did this for statistics articles, I think they’d rarely get past the abstract, most of the ti
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Introduction: I was reading a book of Alfred Kazin’s letters—I don’t know if they’d be so interesting to someone who hadn’t already read a bunch of his stuff , but I found them pretty interesting—and came across this amazing bit, dated August 11, 1957: No, really, Al. Tell us what you really feel. This was in his private diary, so I can’t really criticize him for it. And all of us have private thoughts, sometimes publicly expressed, that are unworthy of our better self. For example, once I was crossing a street and a taxi driver came dangerously close, and I screamed at him, “Go back to your own country, you #&@#%*^&.” So I’m not claiming that I’m any better than Kazin. I just thought that quote was pretty amazing. I guess that’s how (some) people thought, back in the fifties. Also interesting that he wrote “ass-hole” in that context. The hyphen surprised me, also I don’t think people would use that word in this way anymore. Nowadays I think of an asshole as a person, not a place.
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Introduction: From Ira Stoll , a link to this cool data site , courtesy of the Manhattan Institute, with all sorts of state budget information including the salaries of all city and state employees.
Introduction: Greg Mankiw writes (link from Tyler Cowen ): Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I [Mankiw] turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered? By contrast, without the tax increases advocated by the Obama administration, the numbers would look quite different. I would face a lower income tax rate, a lower Medicare tax rate, and no deduction phaseout or estate tax. Taking that writing assignment would yield my kids about $2,000. I would have twice the incentive to keep working. First, the good news Obama’s tax rates are much lower than Mankiw had anticipated! According to the above quote, his marginal tax rate is currently 80% but threatens to rise to 90%. But, in October 2008, Mankiw calculated that Obama’s would tax his m
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Introduction: Kaiser Fung was ahead of the curve on Lance Armstrong: The media has gotten the statistics totally backwards. On the one hand, they faithfully report the colorful stories of athletes who fail drug tests pleading their innocence. (I have written about the Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador here.) On the other hand, they unquestioningly report athletes who claim “hundreds of negative tests” prove their honesty. Putting these two together implies that the media believes that negative test results are highly reliable while positive test results are unreliable. The reality is just the opposite. When an athlete tests positive, it’s almost sure that he/she has doped. Sure, most of the clean athletes will test negative but what is often missed is that the majority of dopers will also test negative. We don’t need to do any computation to see that this is true. In most major sports competitions, the proportion of tests declared positive is typically below 1%. If you believe that the pr
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Introduction: From 2010 : Greg Mankiw writes (link from Tyler Cowen ): Without any taxes, accepting that editor’s assignment would have yielded my children an extra $10,000. With taxes, it yields only $1,000. In effect, once the entire tax system is taken into account, my family’s marginal tax rate is about 90 percent. Is it any wonder that I [Mankiw] turn down most of the money-making opportunities I am offered? By contrast, without the tax increases advocated by the Obama administration, the numbers would look quite different. I would face a lower income tax rate, a lower Medicare tax rate, and no deduction phaseout or estate tax. Taking that writing assignment would yield my kids about $2,000. I would have twice the incentive to keep working. First, the good news Obama’s tax rates are much lower than Mankiw had anticipated! According to the above quote, his marginal tax rate is currently 80% but threatens to rise to 90%. But, in October 2008, Mankiw calculated that Obama’s
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