andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1784 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: The most perfect pairing of author and subject since Nicholson Baker and John Updike. Here’s Wolfram on the great researcher of fractals : In his way, Mandelbrot paid me some great compliments. When I was in my 20s, and he in his 60s, he would ask about my scientific work: “How can so many people take someone so young so seriously?” In 2002, my book “A New Kind of Science”—in which I argued that many phenomena across science are the complex results of relatively simple, program-like rules—appeared. Mandelbrot seemed to see it as a direct threat, once declaring that “Wolfram’s ‘science’ is not new except when it is clearly wrong; it deserves to be completely disregarded.” In private, though, several mutual friends told me, he fretted that in the long view of history it would overwhelm his work. In retrospect, I don’t think Mandelbrot had much to worry about on this account. The link from the above review came from Peter Woit, who also points to a review by Brian Hayes wit
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1 The most perfect pairing of author and subject since Nicholson Baker and John Updike. [sent-1, score-0.137]
2 Here’s Wolfram on the great researcher of fractals : In his way, Mandelbrot paid me some great compliments. [sent-2, score-0.429]
3 When I was in my 20s, and he in his 60s, he would ask about my scientific work: “How can so many people take someone so young so seriously? [sent-3, score-0.081]
4 ” In 2002, my book “A New Kind of Science”—in which I argued that many phenomena across science are the complex results of relatively simple, program-like rules—appeared. [sent-4, score-0.443]
5 Mandelbrot seemed to see it as a direct threat, once declaring that “Wolfram’s ‘science’ is not new except when it is clearly wrong; it deserves to be completely disregarded. [sent-5, score-0.299]
6 ” In private, though, several mutual friends told me, he fretted that in the long view of history it would overwhelm his work. [sent-6, score-0.405]
7 In retrospect, I don’t think Mandelbrot had much to worry about on this account. [sent-7, score-0.072]
8 The link from the above review came from Peter Woit, who also points to a review by Brian Hayes with this highly Wolfram-relevant bit: What’s not so endearing is to see some of the supporting actors denied even a listing in the credits. [sent-8, score-0.722]
9 Hubbard made crucial contributions to the understanding of the Mandelbrot set, but they too go unnamed here; this omission is particularly ungracious in that it was Douady and Hubbard who gave the set its name. [sent-13, score-0.559]
10 If only we could get that albedo guy into the picture, we’d be all set. [sent-14, score-0.109]
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same-blog 1 0.99999988 1784 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-01-Wolfram on Mandelbrot
Introduction: The most perfect pairing of author and subject since Nicholson Baker and John Updike. Here’s Wolfram on the great researcher of fractals : In his way, Mandelbrot paid me some great compliments. When I was in my 20s, and he in his 60s, he would ask about my scientific work: “How can so many people take someone so young so seriously?” In 2002, my book “A New Kind of Science”—in which I argued that many phenomena across science are the complex results of relatively simple, program-like rules—appeared. Mandelbrot seemed to see it as a direct threat, once declaring that “Wolfram’s ‘science’ is not new except when it is clearly wrong; it deserves to be completely disregarded.” In private, though, several mutual friends told me, he fretted that in the long view of history it would overwhelm his work. In retrospect, I don’t think Mandelbrot had much to worry about on this account. The link from the above review came from Peter Woit, who also points to a review by Brian Hayes wit
Introduction: Mandelbrot on taxonomy (from 1955; the first publication about fractals that I know of): Searching for Mandelbrot on the blog led me to Akaike , who also recently passed away and also did interesting early work on self-similar stochastic processes. For example, this wonderful opening of his 1962 paper, “On a limiting process which asymptotically produces f^{-2} spectral density”: In the recent papers in which the results of the spectral analyses of roughnesses of runways or roadways are reported, the power spectral densities of approximately the form f^{-2} (f: frequency) are often treated. This fact directed the present author to the investigation of the limiting process which will provide the f^{-2} form under fairly general assumptions. In this paper a very simple model is given which explains a way how the f^{-2} form is obtained asymptotically. Our fundamental model is that the stochastic process, which might be considered to represent the roughness of the runway
Introduction: Matt Taibbi writes : Glenn Hubbard, Leading Academic and Mitt Romney Advisor, Took $1200 an Hour to Be Countrywide’s Expert Witness . . . Hidden among the reams of material recently filed in connection with the lawsuit of monoline insurer MBIA against Bank of America and Countrywide is a deposition of none other than Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard. . . . Hubbard testified on behalf of Countrywide in the MBIA suit. He conducted an “analysis” that essentially concluded that Countrywide’s loans weren’t any worse than the loans produced by other mortgage originators, and that therefore the monstrous losses that investors in those loans suffered were due to other factors related to the economic crisis – and not caused by the serial misrepresentations and fraud in Countrywide’s underwriting. That’s interesting, because I worked on the other side of this case! I was hired by MBIA’s lawyers. It wouldn’t be polite of me to reveal my consulting rate, and I never actually got depose
4 0.14871703 1592 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-27-Art-math
Introduction: This seems like the sort of thing I would like: Drawing from My Mind’s Eye: Dorothea Rockburne in Conversation with David Cohen Introduced by Nina Samuel Thursday, November 29 6 pm BGC, 38 West 86th Street Benoît Mandelbrot, unusual among mathematicians of the twentieth century, harnessed the power of visual images to express his theories and to pursue new lines of thought. In this conversation artist Dorothea Rockburne will share memories of studying with mathematician Max Dehn at Black Mountain College, of meeting Mandelbrot, and discuss her recent work. Exhibition curator Nina Samuel will discuss the related exhibition “The Islands of Benoît Mandelbrot: Fractals, Chaos, and the Materiality of Thinking,” on view in the BGC Focus Gallery through January 27, 2013. David Cohen is editor and publisher of artcritical.com as well as founder and moderator of The Review Panel. Dorothea Rockburne is a distinguished artist whose work has been inspired by her lifelong st
5 0.12843049 1824 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-25-Fascinating graphs from facebook data
Introduction: Yair points us to this page full of wonderful graphs from the Stephen Wolfram blog. Here are a few: And some words: People talk less about video games as they get older, and more about politics and the weather. Men typically talk more about sports and technology than women—and, somewhat surprisingly to me, they also talk more about movies, television and music. Women talk more about pets+animals, family+friends, relationships—and, at least after they reach child-bearing years, health. . . . Some of this is rather depressingly stereotypical. And most of it isn’t terribly surprising to anyone who’s known a reasonable diversity of people of different ages. But what to me is remarkable is how we can see everything laid out in such quantitative detail in the pictures above—kind of a signature of people’s thinking as they go through life. Of course, the pictures above are all based on aggregate data, carefully anonymized. But if we start looking at individuals, we’ll s
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20 0.060517907 258 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-05-A review of a review of a review of a decade
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same-blog 1 0.95992571 1784 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-01-Wolfram on Mandelbrot
Introduction: The most perfect pairing of author and subject since Nicholson Baker and John Updike. Here’s Wolfram on the great researcher of fractals : In his way, Mandelbrot paid me some great compliments. When I was in my 20s, and he in his 60s, he would ask about my scientific work: “How can so many people take someone so young so seriously?” In 2002, my book “A New Kind of Science”—in which I argued that many phenomena across science are the complex results of relatively simple, program-like rules—appeared. Mandelbrot seemed to see it as a direct threat, once declaring that “Wolfram’s ‘science’ is not new except when it is clearly wrong; it deserves to be completely disregarded.” In private, though, several mutual friends told me, he fretted that in the long view of history it would overwhelm his work. In retrospect, I don’t think Mandelbrot had much to worry about on this account. The link from the above review came from Peter Woit, who also points to a review by Brian Hayes wit
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Introduction: I just reviewed the book Bursts, by Albert-László Barabási, for Physics Today. But I had a lot more to say that couldn’t fit into the magazine’s 800-word limit. Here I’ll reproduce what I sent to Physics Today, followed by my additional thoughts. The back cover of Bursts book promises “a revolutionary new theory showing how we can predict human behavior.” I wasn’t fully convinced on that score, but the book does offer a well-written and thought-provoking window into author Albert-László Barabási’s research in power laws and network theory. Power laws–the mathematical pattern that little things are common and large things are rare–have been observed in many different domains, including incomes (as noted by economist Vilfredo Pareto in the nineteenth century), word frequencies (as noted by linguist George Zipf), city sizes, earthquakes, and virtually anything else that can be measured. In the mid-twentieth century, the mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot devoted an influential caree
3 0.78665459 2234 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-05-Plagiarism, Arizona style
Introduction: Last month a history professor sent me a note regarding plagiarism at Arizona State University: Matthew Whitaker, who had received an expedited promotion to full professor and was made Director of a new Center for the Study of Race and Democracy by Provost Elizabeth Capaldi and President Michael Crow, was charged by most of the full professors in the History Faculty with having plagiarized throughout his corpus of work, copying from regular works of scholarship and from web sources. Indeed, in his response, which claimed that the petitioners were racist, Whitaker admitted to plagiarism in his work, defending himself in part by stating that he had not reviewed carefully the research and writing he had hired others to do. . . . What bothered my correspondent was that Whitaker remains an ASU Foundation Professor of History despite all the plaig. According to Whitaker’s webpage , he “is also a highly sought after speaker, having offered commentaries on NPR, PBS, . . . and other medi
4 0.7364071 1505 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-20-“Joseph Anton”
Introduction: I only read the review , not the book. What puzzled me was not any lack of self-awareness but rather this bit: The title of Mr. Rushdie’s new memoir . . . comes from the alias he assumed when British police told him back in 1989 that he needed a pseudonym: the Joseph comes from Joseph Conrad, the Anton from Anton Chekhov. The protection officers issued to him by the British government soon took to calling him “Joe,” an abbreviation he says he detested. The thing that I don’t understand is why he detested the nickname. If I were in a comparable situation, I think I’d appreciate if my security detail gave me a friendly nickname. Then again, with the stress that Rushdie’s been under, I can imagine all sorts of personality transformations.
5 0.73237085 258 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-05-A review of a review of a review of a decade
Introduction: At the sister blog, David Frum writes , of a book by historian Laura Kalman about the politics of the 1970s: As a work of history about the Ford and Carter years, there is nothing seriously wrong with it. The facts are accurate, the writing is clear and the point of view is not tendentious. Once upon a time, such a book might have been useful to somebody. But the question it raises–and it’s not a question about this book alone–is: What’s the point of this kind of history in the age of the Internet? Suppose I’m an undergraduate who stumbles for the first time across the phrase “Proposition 13.” I could, if I were minded, walk over to the university library, pull this book from the shelf and flip to the index. Or I could save myself two hours and Google it. I wouldn’t learn more from a Google search than I’d learn in these pages. But I wouldn’t learn a whole lot less either. As a textbook writer, I think about some of these issues too! I have two things to add to Frum’s rem
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1 0.94252157 230 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-24-Kaggle forcasting update
Introduction: Anthony Goldbloom writes: The Elo rating system is now in 47th position (team Elo Benchmark on the leaderboard). Team Intuition submitted using Microsoft’s Trueskill rating system – Intuition is in 38th position. And for the tourism forecasting competition, the best submission is doing better than the threshold for publication in the International Journal of Forecasting.
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Introduction: The most perfect pairing of author and subject since Nicholson Baker and John Updike. Here’s Wolfram on the great researcher of fractals : In his way, Mandelbrot paid me some great compliments. When I was in my 20s, and he in his 60s, he would ask about my scientific work: “How can so many people take someone so young so seriously?” In 2002, my book “A New Kind of Science”—in which I argued that many phenomena across science are the complex results of relatively simple, program-like rules—appeared. Mandelbrot seemed to see it as a direct threat, once declaring that “Wolfram’s ‘science’ is not new except when it is clearly wrong; it deserves to be completely disregarded.” In private, though, several mutual friends told me, he fretted that in the long view of history it would overwhelm his work. In retrospect, I don’t think Mandelbrot had much to worry about on this account. The link from the above review came from Peter Woit, who also points to a review by Brian Hayes wit
3 0.86795211 1684 andrew gelman stats-2013-01-20-Ugly ugly ugly
Introduction: Denis Cote sends the following , under the heading, “Some bad graphs for your enjoyment”: To start with, they don’t know how to spell “color.” Seriously, though, the graph is a mess. The circular display implies a circular or periodic structure that isn’t actually in the data, the cramped display requires the use of an otherwise-unnecessary color code that makes it difficult to find or make sense of the information, the alphabetical ordering (without even supplying state names, only abbreviations) makes it further difficult to find any patterns. It would be so much better, and even easier, to just display a set of small maps shading states on whether they have different laws. But that’s part of the problem—the clearer graph would also be easier to make! To get a distinctive graph, there needs to be some degree of difficulty. The designers continue with these monstrosities: Here they decide to display only 5 states at a time so that it’s really hard to see any big pi
4 0.85437125 911 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-15-More data tools worth using from Google
Introduction: Speaking of open data and google tools, see this post from Revolution R: How to use a Google Spreadsheet as data in R .
5 0.84145987 978 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-28-Cool job opening with brilliant researchers at Yahoo
Introduction: Duncan Watts writes: The Human Social Dynamics Group in Yahoo Research is seeking highly qualified candidates for a post-doctoral research scientist position. The Human and Social Dynamics group is devoted to understanding the interplay between individual-level behavior (e.g. how people make decisions about what music they like, which dates to go on, or which groups to join) and the social environment in which individual behavior necessarily plays itself out. In particular, we are interested in: * Structure and evolution of social groups and networks * Decision making, social influence, diffusion, and collective decisions * Networking and collaborative problem solving. The intrinsically multi-disciplinary and cross-cutting nature of the subject demands an eclectic range of researchers, both in terms of domain-expertise (e.g. decision sciences, social psychology, sociology) and technical skills (e.g. statistical analysis, mathematical modeling, computer simulations, design o
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