andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-1977 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: I was curious so I ordered a used copy. It was pretty good. It fit in my pocket and I read it on the plane. It was written in a bland, spare manner, not worth reading for any direct insights it would give into human nature, but the plot moved along. And the background material was interesting in the window it gave into the society of the 1950s. It was fun to read a book of pulp fiction that didn’t have any dead bodies in it. I wonder what Jenny Davidson would think of it.
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 It was written in a bland, spare manner, not worth reading for any direct insights it would give into human nature, but the plot moved along. [sent-4, score-1.383]
2 And the background material was interesting in the window it gave into the society of the 1950s. [sent-5, score-0.809]
3 It was fun to read a book of pulp fiction that didn’t have any dead bodies in it. [sent-6, score-1.336]
4 I wonder what Jenny Davidson would think of it. [sent-7, score-0.207]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('pulp', 0.294), ('bodies', 0.294), ('bland', 0.265), ('pocket', 0.248), ('davidson', 0.236), ('jenny', 0.227), ('spare', 0.223), ('fiction', 0.216), ('window', 0.208), ('ordered', 0.205), ('manner', 0.184), ('dead', 0.175), ('insights', 0.173), ('read', 0.152), ('moved', 0.149), ('curious', 0.147), ('society', 0.143), ('plot', 0.141), ('material', 0.134), ('fun', 0.128), ('nature', 0.127), ('background', 0.127), ('direct', 0.125), ('gave', 0.122), ('human', 0.119), ('wonder', 0.11), ('worth', 0.108), ('written', 0.107), ('reading', 0.095), ('fit', 0.095), ('didn', 0.079), ('give', 0.078), ('book', 0.077), ('interesting', 0.075), ('pretty', 0.072), ('used', 0.071), ('would', 0.065), ('think', 0.032)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.99999994 1977 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-11-Debutante Hill
Introduction: I was curious so I ordered a used copy. It was pretty good. It fit in my pocket and I read it on the plane. It was written in a bland, spare manner, not worth reading for any direct insights it would give into human nature, but the plot moved along. And the background material was interesting in the window it gave into the society of the 1950s. It was fun to read a book of pulp fiction that didn’t have any dead bodies in it. I wonder what Jenny Davidson would think of it.
2 0.22438031 115 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-28-Whassup with those crappy thrillers?
Introduction: I was stunned this from Jenny Davidson about mystery writers: The crime fiction community is smart and adult and welcoming, and so many good books are being written (Lee Child was mentioning his peer group – i.e. they were the new kids around the same tie – being Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman – the list speaks for itself) . . . Why was I stunned? Because just a few days earlier I had a look at a book by Robert Crais. It just happened that Phil, when he was visiting, had finished this book (which he described as “pretty good”) and left it with me so he wouldn’t have to take it back with him. I’d never heard of Crais, but it had pretty amazing blurbs on the cover and Phil recommended it, so I took a look. It was bad. From page 1 it was bad. It was like a bad cop show. I could see the seams where the sentences were stitched together. I could see how somebody might like this sort of book, but I certainly can’t understand the blurbs or the i
Introduction: For “humanity, devotion to truth and inspiring leadership” at Columbia College. Reading Jenny’s remarks (“my hugest and most helpful pool of colleagues was to be found not among the ranks of my fellow faculty but in the classroom. . . . we shared a sense of the excitement of the enterprise on which we were all embarked”) reminds me of the comment Seth made once, that the usual goal of university teaching is to make the students into carbon copies of the instructor, and that he found it to me much better to make use of the students’ unique strengths. This can’t always be true–for example, in learning to speak a foreign language, I just want to be able to do it, and my own experiences in other domains is not so relevant. But for a worldly subject such as literature or statistics or political science, then, yes, I do think it would be good for students to get involved and use their own knowledge and experiences. One other statement of Jenny’s caught my eye. She wrote: I [Je
4 0.1228094 831 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-30-A Wikipedia riddle!
Introduction: I was distinguished for over three years and now am renowned. For most of the past year and a half, though, I was neither. Who am I? First person who guesses the right answer in comments gets a free copy of Jenny Davidson’s book, “Breeding”–as soon as she sends it to me, as she promised a couple years ago! You’ll get an extra prize if you can express the answer in an indirect way, without using the person’s name or being too obvious about it but making the identification clear enough that I know you know the answer. P.S. Reading Wikipedia edits . . . that’s a new low in time-wasting!
5 0.11297585 57 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-29-Roth and Amsterdam
Introduction: I used to think that fiction is about making up stories, but in recent years I’ve decided that fiction is really more of a method of telling true stories. One thing fiction allows you to do is explore what-if scenarios. I recently read two books that made me think about this: The Counterlife by Philip Roth and Things We Didn’t See Coming by Steven Amsterdam. Both books are explicitly about contingencies and possibilities: Roth’s tells a sequence of related but contradictory stories involving his Philip Roth-like (of course) protagonist, and Amsterdam’s is based on an alternative present/future. (I picture Amsterdam’s book as being set in Australia, but maybe I’m just imagining this based on my knowledge that the book was written and published in that country.) I found both books fascinating, partly because of the characters’ voices but especially because they both seemed to exemplify George Box’s dictum that to understand a system you have to perturb it. So, yes, literature an
6 0.1048997 684 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-28-Hierarchical ordered logit or probit
7 0.10265226 1852 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-12-Crime novels for economists
8 0.093689278 1616 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-10-John McAfee is a Heinlein hero
9 0.087732308 782 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-29-Putting together multinomial discrete regressions by combining simple logits
10 0.083526529 1827 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-27-Continued fractions!!
11 0.079841807 129 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-05-Unrelated to all else
12 0.079454049 34 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-14-Non-academic writings on literature
13 0.076714188 1843 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-05-The New York Times Book of Mathematics
15 0.071909301 1810 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-17-Subway series
16 0.062575027 1225 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-22-Procrastination as a positive productivity strategy
17 0.059700061 581 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-19-“The best living writer of thrillers”
18 0.058535367 1111 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-10-The blog of the Cultural Cognition Project
19 0.058527634 1994 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-22-“The comment section is open, but I’m not going to read them”
20 0.058227509 285 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-18-Fiction is not for tirades? Tell that to Saul Bellow!
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.083), (1, -0.041), (2, -0.041), (3, 0.037), (4, 0.026), (5, -0.001), (6, 0.031), (7, -0.007), (8, 0.057), (9, 0.011), (10, 0.036), (11, -0.012), (12, 0.024), (13, 0.01), (14, 0.06), (15, -0.023), (16, -0.008), (17, 0.001), (18, 0.041), (19, -0.043), (20, 0.008), (21, -0.034), (22, 0.019), (23, -0.008), (24, 0.013), (25, 0.005), (26, 0.04), (27, -0.028), (28, 0.008), (29, 0.002), (30, -0.027), (31, 0.025), (32, -0.013), (33, -0.031), (34, -0.027), (35, -0.038), (36, 0.028), (37, -0.006), (38, 0.018), (39, -0.048), (40, -0.015), (41, -0.001), (42, 0.058), (43, -0.013), (44, 0.026), (45, -0.033), (46, 0.035), (47, -0.021), (48, 0.035), (49, 0.025)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.97088778 1977 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-11-Debutante Hill
Introduction: I was curious so I ordered a used copy. It was pretty good. It fit in my pocket and I read it on the plane. It was written in a bland, spare manner, not worth reading for any direct insights it would give into human nature, but the plot moved along. And the background material was interesting in the window it gave into the society of the 1950s. It was fun to read a book of pulp fiction that didn’t have any dead bodies in it. I wonder what Jenny Davidson would think of it.
2 0.79006296 115 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-28-Whassup with those crappy thrillers?
Introduction: I was stunned this from Jenny Davidson about mystery writers: The crime fiction community is smart and adult and welcoming, and so many good books are being written (Lee Child was mentioning his peer group – i.e. they were the new kids around the same tie – being Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman – the list speaks for itself) . . . Why was I stunned? Because just a few days earlier I had a look at a book by Robert Crais. It just happened that Phil, when he was visiting, had finished this book (which he described as “pretty good”) and left it with me so he wouldn’t have to take it back with him. I’d never heard of Crais, but it had pretty amazing blurbs on the cover and Phil recommended it, so I took a look. It was bad. From page 1 it was bad. It was like a bad cop show. I could see the seams where the sentences were stitched together. I could see how somebody might like this sort of book, but I certainly can’t understand the blurbs or the i
3 0.77587146 1827 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-27-Continued fractions!!
Introduction: Upon reading this note by John Cook on continued fractions, I wrote: If you like continued fractions, I recommend you read the relevant parts of the classic Numerical Methods That Work. The details are probably obsolete but it’s fun reading (at least, if you think that sort of thing is fun to read). I then looked up Acton in Wikipedia and was surprised to see he’s still alive. And he wrote a second book (published at the age of 77!). I wonder if it’s any good. It’s sobering to read Numerical Methods That Work: it’s so wonderful and so readable, yet in this modern era there’s really not much reason to read it. Perhaps William Goldman (hey, I checked: he’s still alive too!) or some equivalent could prepare a 50-page “good parts” version that could be still be useful as a basic textbook.
4 0.76841873 1925 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-04-“Versatile, affordable chicken has grown in popularity”
Introduction: From two years ago : Awhile ago I was cleaning out the closet and found some old unread magazines. Good stuff. As we’ve discussed before , lots of things are better read a few years late. Today I was reading the 18 Nov 2004 issue of the London Review of Books, which contained (among other things) the following: - A review by Jenny Diski of a biography of Stanley Milgram. Diski appears to want to debunk: Milgram was a whiz at devising sexy experiments, but barely interested in any theoretical basis for them. They all have the same instant attractiveness of style, and then an underlying emptiness. Huh? Michael Jordan couldn’t hit the curveball and he was reportedly an easy mark for golf hustlers but that doesn’t diminish his greatness on the basketball court. She also criticizes Milgram for being “no help at all” for solving international disputes. OK, fine. I haven’t solved any international disputes either. Milgram, though, . . . he conducted an imaginative exp
5 0.76491511 655 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-10-“Versatile, affordable chicken has grown in popularity”
Introduction: Awhile ago I was cleaning out the closet and found some old unread magazines. Good stuff. As we’ve discussed before , lots of things are better read a few years late. Today I was reading the 18 Nov 2004 issue of the London Review of Books, which contained (among other things) the following: - A review by Jenny Diski of a biography of Stanley Milgram. Diski appears to want to debunk: Milgram was a whiz at devising sexy experiments, but barely interested in any theoretical basis for them. They all have the same instant attractiveness of style, and then an underlying emptiness. Huh? Michael Jordan couldn’t hit the curveball and he was reportedly an easy mark for golf hustlers but that doesn’t diminish his greatness on the basketball court. She also criticizes Milgram for being “no help at all” for solving international disputes. OK, fine. I haven’t solved any international disputes either. Milgram, though, . . . he conducted an imaginative experiment whose results stu
6 0.76448804 285 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-18-Fiction is not for tirades? Tell that to Saul Bellow!
7 0.75013375 57 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-29-Roth and Amsterdam
8 0.74706429 1843 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-05-The New York Times Book of Mathematics
9 0.72560155 1222 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-20-5 books book
10 0.71561778 517 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-14-Bayes in China update
11 0.71460831 1381 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-16-The Art of Fielding
12 0.71454841 886 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-02-The new Helen DeWitt novel
13 0.71095091 2168 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-12-Things that I like that almost nobody else is interested in
14 0.71063119 432 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-27-Neumann update
15 0.70296931 986 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-01-MacKay update: where 12 comes from
16 0.6910708 258 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-05-A review of a review of a review of a decade
17 0.68853468 16 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-04-Burgess on Kipling
18 0.68551868 1405 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-04-“Titanic Thompson: The Man Who Would Bet on Everything”
19 0.68197799 127 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-04-Inequality and health
20 0.68175167 240 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-29-ARM solutions
topicId topicWeight
[(16, 0.04), (24, 0.149), (45, 0.029), (55, 0.075), (59, 0.036), (77, 0.034), (80, 0.033), (83, 0.214), (86, 0.024), (90, 0.039), (99, 0.193)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.91666269 1977 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-11-Debutante Hill
Introduction: I was curious so I ordered a used copy. It was pretty good. It fit in my pocket and I read it on the plane. It was written in a bland, spare manner, not worth reading for any direct insights it would give into human nature, but the plot moved along. And the background material was interesting in the window it gave into the society of the 1950s. It was fun to read a book of pulp fiction that didn’t have any dead bodies in it. I wonder what Jenny Davidson would think of it.
2 0.85564327 1307 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-07-The hare, the pineapple, and Ed Wegman
Introduction: Commenters here are occasionally bothered that I spend so much time attacking frauds and plagiarists. See, for example, here and here . Why go on and on about these losers, given that there are more important problems in the world such as war, pestilence, hunger, and graphs where the y-axis doesn’t go all the way down to zero? Part of the story is that I do research for a living so I resent people who devalue research through misattribution or fraud, in the same way that rich people don’t like counterfeiters. What really bugs me, though, is when cheaters get caught and still don’t admit it. People like Hauser, Wegman, Fischer, and Weick get under my skin because they have the chutzpah to just deny deny deny. The grainy time-stamped videotape with their hand in the cookie jar is right there, and they’ll still talk around the problem. Makes me want to scream. This happens all the time . All. Over. The. Place. Everybody makes mistakes, and just about everybody does thing
3 0.83593833 1890 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-09-Frontiers of Science update
Introduction: This is just a local Columbia thing, so I’m posting Sunday night when nobody will read it . . . Samantha Cooney reports in the Spectator (Columbia’s student newspaper): Frontiers of Science may be in for an overhaul. After a year reviewing the course, the Educational Policy and Planning Committee has issued a report detailing its findings and outlining potential ways to make the oft-maligned course more effective. The EPPC’s report, a copy of which was obtained by Spectator, suggests eliminating the lecture portion of the course in favor of small seminars with a standardized curriculum, mirroring other courses in the Core Curriculum. This seems reasonable to me. It sounds like the seminar portion of the class has been much more successful than the lectures. Once the lectures are removed entirely, perhaps it will allow the students to focus on learning during the seminar periods. Also, I appreciate that Cooney did a good job quoting me. As I wrote last month , I respe
4 0.82972068 1613 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-09-Hey—here’s a photo of me making fun of a silly infographic (from last year)
Introduction: Here’s the story of the graph, which was “was shown as part of a training for FBI agents,” and here’s the more recent long form of my presentation.
Introduction: Thomas Basbøll points to this ten-year-old article from Anne-Wil Harzing on the consequences of sloppy citations. Harzing tells the story of an unsupported claim that is contradicted by published data but has been presented as fact in a particular area of the academic literature. She writes that “high expatriate failure rates [with "expatriate failure" defined as "the expatriate returning home before his/her contractual period of employment abroad expires"] were in fact a myth created by massive misquotations and careless copying of references.” Many papers claimed an expatriate failure rate of 25-40% (according to Harzing, this is much higher than the actual rate as estimated from empirical data), with this overly-high rate supported by a complicated link of references leading to . . . no real data. Hartzing reports the following published claims: Harvey (1996: 103): `The rate of failure of expatriate managers relocating overseas from United States based MNCs has been estima
6 0.82230282 1923 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-03-Bayes pays!
7 0.81769621 926 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-26-NYC
8 0.78002167 645 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-04-Do you have any idea what you’re talking about?
9 0.76817214 1456 andrew gelman stats-2012-08-13-Macro, micro, and conflicts of interest
10 0.75464785 1294 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-01-Modeling y = a + b + c
11 0.74223661 1299 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-04-Models, assumptions, and data summaries
12 0.74136323 1042 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-05-Timing is everything!
13 0.73818707 649 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-05-Internal and external forecasting
14 0.73644614 1176 andrew gelman stats-2012-02-19-Standardized writing styles and standardized graphing styles
15 0.73535073 1896 andrew gelman stats-2013-06-13-Against the myth of the heroic visualization
16 0.7323674 2195 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-02-Microfoundations of macroeconomics
17 0.73101795 168 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-28-Colorless green, and clueless
18 0.73037899 2019 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-12-Recently in the sister blog
20 0.72750783 1283 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-26-Let’s play “Guess the smoother”!