andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1964 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: On a day with four blog posts (and followed by a day with two more), econblogger Mark Thoma wrote : Every once in awhile I [Thoma] kind of need a bit of a break . . . I ran out of energy a few weeks ago . . . I’ll do my best until then, daily links at least somehow and short “echo” posts as usual, but I doubt I’ll have time to say much myself . . . [There's a reason I haven't missed a day posting to the blog in over eight years. When I first started, I was afraid that if I missed a day new readers would bail out . . . I realize a missed day won't kill the blog at this point, but it's still important to me to keep posting every day.] What I do is post once a day; when I write new posts, I schedule them for the future. I currently have approx 2-month lag. Sometimes I post 2 or 3 times in one day, if I have something topical or just something I feel like posting on. Overall, though, I find a benefit to the lag. Posts that are less topical (not tied to the news or to a current o
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1 On a day with four blog posts (and followed by a day with two more), econblogger Mark Thoma wrote : Every once in awhile I [Thoma] kind of need a bit of a break . [sent-1, score-1.541]
2 I’ll do my best until then, daily links at least somehow and short “echo” posts as usual, but I doubt I’ll have time to say much myself . [sent-7, score-0.589]
3 [There's a reason I haven't missed a day posting to the blog in over eight years. [sent-10, score-1.082]
4 When I first started, I was afraid that if I missed a day new readers would bail out . [sent-11, score-0.85]
5 I realize a missed day won't kill the blog at this point, but it's still important to me to keep posting every day. [sent-14, score-1.377]
6 ] What I do is post once a day; when I write new posts, I schedule them for the future. [sent-15, score-0.187]
7 Sometimes I post 2 or 3 times in one day, if I have something topical or just something I feel like posting on. [sent-17, score-0.562]
8 Posts that are less topical (not tied to the news or to a current online discussion) have more of a chance to stand on their own. [sent-19, score-0.598]
9 Thoma’s blog is different from mine; much of its influence comes from him being on top of current debates. [sent-20, score-0.313]
10 Among other things, it would remind people of important discussions from one or two months ago. [sent-22, score-0.323]
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same-blog 1 0.99999982 1964 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-01-Non-topical blogging
Introduction: On a day with four blog posts (and followed by a day with two more), econblogger Mark Thoma wrote : Every once in awhile I [Thoma] kind of need a bit of a break . . . I ran out of energy a few weeks ago . . . I’ll do my best until then, daily links at least somehow and short “echo” posts as usual, but I doubt I’ll have time to say much myself . . . [There's a reason I haven't missed a day posting to the blog in over eight years. When I first started, I was afraid that if I missed a day new readers would bail out . . . I realize a missed day won't kill the blog at this point, but it's still important to me to keep posting every day.] What I do is post once a day; when I write new posts, I schedule them for the future. I currently have approx 2-month lag. Sometimes I post 2 or 3 times in one day, if I have something topical or just something I feel like posting on. Overall, though, I find a benefit to the lag. Posts that are less topical (not tied to the news or to a current o
2 0.18105565 2232 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-03-What is the appropriate time scale for blogging—the day or the week?
Introduction: I post (approximately) once a day and don’t plan to change that. I have enough material to post more often—for example, I could intersperse existing blog posts with summaries of my published papers or of other work that I like; and, beyond this, we currently have a one-to-two-month backlog of posts—but I’m afraid that if the number of posts were doubled, the attention given to each would be roughly halved. Looking at it the other way, I certainly don’t want to reduce my level of posting. Sure, it takes time to blog, but these are things that are important for me to say. If I were to blog less frequently, it would only be because I was pouring all these words into a different vessel, for example a book. For now, though, I think it makes sense to blog and then collect the words later as appropriate. With blogging I get comments, and many of these comments are helpful—either directly (by pointing out errors in my thinking or linking to relevant software or literature) or indirec
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Introduction: I’m trying to temporarily kick the blogging habit as I seem to be addicted. I’m currently on a binge and my plan is to schedule a bunch of already-written entries at one per weekday and not blog anything new for awhile. Yesterday I fell off the wagon and posted 4 items, but maybe now I can show some restraint. P.S. In keeping with the spirit of this blog, I scheduled it to appear on 13 May, even though I wrote it on 15 Apr. Just about everything you’ve been reading on this blog for the past several weeks (and lots of forthcoming items) were written a month ago. The only exceptions are whatever my cobloggers have been posting and various items that were timely enough that I inserted them in the queue afterward. P.P.S I bumped it up to 22 Jun because, as of 14 Apr, I was continuing to write new entries. I hope to slow down soon! P.P.P.S. (20 June) I was going to bump it up again–the horizon’s now in mid-July–but I thought, enough is enough! Right now I think that about ha
4 0.1375286 1311 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-10-My final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
Introduction: We had 28 class periods, so I wrote an exam with an approximate correspondence of one question per class. Rather than dumping the exam in your lap all at once, I’ll post the questions once per day. Then each day I’ll post the answer to yesterday’s questions. So it will be 29 days in all. I’ll post them to appear late in the day so as not to interfere with our main daily posts (which are currently backed up to early June). The course was offered in the political science department and covered a mix of statistical and political topics. Followers of our recent discussion on test questions won’t be surprised to learn that some of the questions are ambiguous. This wasn’t on purpose. I tried my best, but good questions are hard to write. Question 1 will appear tomorrow.
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Introduction: OK, I’ve given up on theme weeks . I have enough saved-up material to do it, and it wouldn’t be too much trouble to group the scheduled posts into themes, but there doesn’t really seem to be a point. I say this because, having looked at the comment threads from the past few weeks, the comments seem pretty much tied to individual posts in any case. So I think I’ll go back to the old system where each post stands alone. Just for fun I thought I’d run a week’s worth of old posts, just some things I came across when searching for various things. Of course I could just post the links right here but instead I’ll repost with my comments on how things have changed in the intervening years. Mon : Empirical implications of Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models Tues : A statistical graphics course and statistical graphics advice Wed : What property is important in a risk prediction model? Discrimination or calibration? Thurs : Beyond the Valley of the Trolls Fri :
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Introduction: On a day with four blog posts (and followed by a day with two more), econblogger Mark Thoma wrote : Every once in awhile I [Thoma] kind of need a bit of a break . . . I ran out of energy a few weeks ago . . . I’ll do my best until then, daily links at least somehow and short “echo” posts as usual, but I doubt I’ll have time to say much myself . . . [There's a reason I haven't missed a day posting to the blog in over eight years. When I first started, I was afraid that if I missed a day new readers would bail out . . . I realize a missed day won't kill the blog at this point, but it's still important to me to keep posting every day.] What I do is post once a day; when I write new posts, I schedule them for the future. I currently have approx 2-month lag. Sometimes I post 2 or 3 times in one day, if I have something topical or just something I feel like posting on. Overall, though, I find a benefit to the lag. Posts that are less topical (not tied to the news or to a current o
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Introduction: I’m trying to temporarily kick the blogging habit as I seem to be addicted. I’m currently on a binge and my plan is to schedule a bunch of already-written entries at one per weekday and not blog anything new for awhile. Yesterday I fell off the wagon and posted 4 items, but maybe now I can show some restraint. P.S. In keeping with the spirit of this blog, I scheduled it to appear on 13 May, even though I wrote it on 15 Apr. Just about everything you’ve been reading on this blog for the past several weeks (and lots of forthcoming items) were written a month ago. The only exceptions are whatever my cobloggers have been posting and various items that were timely enough that I inserted them in the queue afterward. P.P.S I bumped it up to 22 Jun because, as of 14 Apr, I was continuing to write new entries. I hope to slow down soon! P.P.P.S. (20 June) I was going to bump it up again–the horizon’s now in mid-July–but I thought, enough is enough! Right now I think that about ha
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Introduction: I post (approximately) once a day and don’t plan to change that. I have enough material to post more often—for example, I could intersperse existing blog posts with summaries of my published papers or of other work that I like; and, beyond this, we currently have a one-to-two-month backlog of posts—but I’m afraid that if the number of posts were doubled, the attention given to each would be roughly halved. Looking at it the other way, I certainly don’t want to reduce my level of posting. Sure, it takes time to blog, but these are things that are important for me to say. If I were to blog less frequently, it would only be because I was pouring all these words into a different vessel, for example a book. For now, though, I think it makes sense to blog and then collect the words later as appropriate. With blogging I get comments, and many of these comments are helpful—either directly (by pointing out errors in my thinking or linking to relevant software or literature) or indirec
4 0.83229351 2085 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-02-I’ve already written next year’s April Fools post!
Introduction: Good to have gotten that one out of the way already. (Actually, I wrote it a few months ago. This post is itself in the monthlong+ queue.) I don’t know how easy it is to search this blog by date to find the Fools posts from previous years.
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Introduction: In the next few days we’ll be changing the format of the blog and moving it to a new server. If you have difficulty posting comments, just wait and post them in a few days when all should be working well. (But if you can post a comment, go for it. All the old entries and comments should be reappearing in the reconstituted blog.)
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1 0.97981745 448 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-03-This is a footnote in one of my papers
Introduction: In the annals of hack literature, it is sometimes said that if you aim to write best-selling crap, all you’ll end up with is crap. To truly produce best-selling crap, you have to have a conviction, perhaps misplaced, that your writing has integrity. Whether or not this is a good generalization about writing, I have seen an analogous phenomenon in statistics: If you try to do nothing but model the data, you can be in for a wild and unpleasant ride: real data always seem to have one more twist beyond our ability to model (von Neumann’s elephant’s trunk notwithstanding). But if you model the underlying process, sometimes your model can fit surprisingly well as well as inviting openings for future research progress.
2 0.97270846 1398 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-28-Every time you take a sample, you’ll have to pay this guy a quarter
Introduction: Roy Mendelssohn pointed me to this heartwarming story of Jay Vadiveloo, an actuary who got a patent for the idea of statistical sampling. Vadiveloo writes, “the results were astounding: statistical sampling worked.” You may laugh, but wait till Albedo Man buys the patent and makes everybody do his bidding. They’re gonna dig up Laplace and make him pay retroactive royalties. And somehow Clippy will get involved in all this. P.S. Mendelssohn writes: “Yes, I felt it was a heartwarming story also. Perhaps we can get a patent for regression.” I say, forget a patent for regression. I want a patent for the sample mean. That’s where the real money is. You can’t charge a lot for each use, but consider the volume!
3 0.96371162 1037 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-01-Lamentably common misunderstanding of meritocracy
Introduction: Tyler Cowen pointed to an article by business-school professor Luigi Zingales about meritocracy. I’d expect a b-school prof to support the idea of meritocracy, and Zingales does not disappoint. But he says a bunch of other things that to me represent a confused conflation of ideas. Here’s Zingales: America became known as a land of opportunity—a place whose capitalist system benefited the hardworking and the virtuous [emphasis added]. In a word, it was a meritocracy. That’s interesting—and revealing. Here’s what I get when I look up “meritocracy” in the dictionary : 1 : a system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement 2 : leadership selected on the basis of intellectual criteria Nothing here about “hardworking” or “virtuous.” In a meritocracy, you can be as hardworking as John Kruk or as virtuous as Kobe Bryant and you’ll still get ahead—if you have the talent and achievement. Throwing in “hardworking” and “virtuous”
4 0.95802307 1216 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-17-Modeling group-level predictors in a multilevel regression
Introduction: Trey Causey writes: Do you have suggestions as to model selection strategies akin to Bayesian model averaging for multilevel models when level-2 inputs are of substantive interest? I [Causey] have seen plenty of R packages and procedures for non-multilevel models, and tried the glmulti package but found that it did not perform well with more than a few level-2 variables. My quick answer is: with a name like that, you should really be fitting three-level models! My longer answer is: regular readers will be unsurprised to hear that I’m no fan of Bayesian model averaging . Instead I’d prefer to bite the bullet and assign an informative prior distribution on these coefficients. I don’t have a great example of such an analysis but I’m more and more thinking that this is the way to go. I don’t see the point in aiming for the intermediate goal of pruning the predictors; I’d rather have a procedure that includes prior information on the predictors and their interactions.
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Introduction: From the Gallup Poll : Four in 10 Americans, slightly fewer today than in years past, believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago. They’ve been asking the question since 1982 and it’s been pretty steady at 45%, so in some sense this is good news! (I’m saying this under the completely unsupported belief that it’s better for people to believe truths than falsehoods.) One way to think of this is that, for the overwhelming majority of people, a personal belief in young-earth creationism (or whatever you want to call it) is costless. Or, to put it another way, the discomfort involved in holding a belief that contradicts everything you were taught in school is greater than the discomfort involved in holding a belief that seems to contradict your religious values (keeping in mind that, even among those who report attending church seldom or never, a quarter of these people agree that “God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago”).
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