andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-2018 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Didier Ruedin writes: Here’s something I’ve been wondering for a while, and I thought your blog might be the right place to get the views from a wider group, too. How would you describe that feeling when—after going through the theory, collecting data, specifying the model, perhaps debugging the code—you hit enter and get the first results (of a new study) on your screen? I find this quite an exciting moment in research, somehow akin making a (silly) bet with a friend, but at the same time more serious as I’m wagering (part) of my view how the world functions. Anyhow, I thought it could be interesting to hear from others how they feel in that moment. For me it’s often an anticlimax, in that once I’ve gone through all the effort to successfully fit a model, then I have to go through another long set of steps to understand what I have in front of me. Every once in awhile the results just jump out and are exciting, but usually it takes a lot of work to see what I’m looking for.
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Didier Ruedin writes: Here’s something I’ve been wondering for a while, and I thought your blog might be the right place to get the views from a wider group, too. [sent-1, score-0.59]
2 How would you describe that feeling when—after going through the theory, collecting data, specifying the model, perhaps debugging the code—you hit enter and get the first results (of a new study) on your screen? [sent-2, score-1.192]
3 I find this quite an exciting moment in research, somehow akin making a (silly) bet with a friend, but at the same time more serious as I’m wagering (part) of my view how the world functions. [sent-3, score-1.457]
4 Anyhow, I thought it could be interesting to hear from others how they feel in that moment. [sent-4, score-0.224]
5 For me it’s often an anticlimax, in that once I’ve gone through all the effort to successfully fit a model, then I have to go through another long set of steps to understand what I have in front of me. [sent-5, score-0.844]
6 Every once in awhile the results just jump out and are exciting, but usually it takes a lot of work to see what I’m looking for. [sent-6, score-0.649]
7 Then when I finally find it, I can often step back and reformulate the problem more directly. [sent-7, score-0.652]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('exciting', 0.266), ('wagering', 0.236), ('reformulate', 0.223), ('anyhow', 0.223), ('debugging', 0.213), ('akin', 0.186), ('specifying', 0.176), ('successfully', 0.167), ('enter', 0.161), ('wider', 0.158), ('screen', 0.156), ('collecting', 0.156), ('bet', 0.143), ('jump', 0.138), ('front', 0.132), ('results', 0.131), ('hit', 0.129), ('moment', 0.127), ('steps', 0.126), ('often', 0.125), ('somehow', 0.124), ('friend', 0.123), ('gone', 0.122), ('views', 0.118), ('thought', 0.117), ('feeling', 0.115), ('find', 0.114), ('awhile', 0.114), ('wondering', 0.111), ('describe', 0.111), ('hear', 0.107), ('silly', 0.106), ('code', 0.103), ('takes', 0.101), ('anyway', 0.096), ('effort', 0.096), ('step', 0.095), ('finally', 0.095), ('view', 0.095), ('model', 0.093), ('serious', 0.09), ('usually', 0.089), ('place', 0.086), ('group', 0.085), ('theory', 0.08), ('ve', 0.08), ('fit', 0.076), ('quite', 0.076), ('looking', 0.076), ('every', 0.073)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 1.0 2018 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-12-Do you ever have that I-just-fit-a-model feeling?
Introduction: Didier Ruedin writes: Here’s something I’ve been wondering for a while, and I thought your blog might be the right place to get the views from a wider group, too. How would you describe that feeling when—after going through the theory, collecting data, specifying the model, perhaps debugging the code—you hit enter and get the first results (of a new study) on your screen? I find this quite an exciting moment in research, somehow akin making a (silly) bet with a friend, but at the same time more serious as I’m wagering (part) of my view how the world functions. Anyhow, I thought it could be interesting to hear from others how they feel in that moment. For me it’s often an anticlimax, in that once I’ve gone through all the effort to successfully fit a model, then I have to go through another long set of steps to understand what I have in front of me. Every once in awhile the results just jump out and are exciting, but usually it takes a lot of work to see what I’m looking for.
2 0.12335829 1289 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-29-We go to war with the data we have, not the data we want
Introduction: This post is by Phil. Psychologists perform experiments on Canadian undergraduate psychology students and draws conclusions that (they believe) apply to humans in general; they publish in Science. A drug company decides to embark on additional trials that will cost tens of millions of dollars based on the results of a careful double-blind study….whose patients are all volunteers from two hospitals. A movie studio holds 9 screenings of a new movie for volunteer viewers and, based on their survey responses, decides to spend another $8 million to re-shoot the ending. A researcher interested in the effect of ventilation on worker performance conducts a months-long study in which ventilation levels are varied and worker performance is monitored…in a single building. In almost all fields of research, most studies are based on convenience samples, or on random samples from a larger population that is itself a convenience sample. The paragraph above gives just a few examples. The benefit
Introduction: David Karger writes: Your recent post on sharing data was of great interest to me, as my own research in computer science asks how to incentivize and lower barriers to data sharing. I was particularly curious about your highlighting of effort as the major dis-incentive to sharing. I would love to hear more, as this question of effort is on we specifically target in our development of tools for data authoring and publishing. As a straw man, let me point out that sharing data technically requires no more than posting an excel spreadsheet online. And that you likely already produced that spreadsheet during your own analytic work. So, in what way does such low-tech publishing fail to meet your data sharing objectives? Our own hypothesis has been that the effort is really quite low, with the problem being a lack of *immediate/tangible* benefits (as opposed to the long-term values you accurately describe). To attack this problem, we’re developing tools (and, since it appear
4 0.11119971 1338 andrew gelman stats-2012-05-23-Advice on writing research articles
Introduction: From a few years ago : Both the papers sent to me appear to have strong research results. Now that the research has been done, I’d recommend rewriting both articles from scratch , using the following template: 1. Start with the conclusions. Write a couple pages on what you’ve found and what you recommend. In writing these conclusions, you should also be writing some of the introduction, in that you’ll need to give enough background so that general readers can understand what you’re talking about and why they should care. But you want to start with the conclusions, because that will determine what sort of background information you’ll need to give. 2. Now step back. What is the principal evidence for your conclusions? Make some graphs and pull out some key numbers that represent your research findings which back up your claims. 3. Back one more step, now. What are the methods and data you used to obtain your research findings. 4. Now go back and write the literature review
5 0.10507457 2172 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-14-Advice on writing research articles
Introduction: From a few years ago : General advice Both the papers sent to me appear to have strong research results. Now that the research has been done, I’d recommend rewriting both articles from scratch, using the following template: 1. Start with the conclusions. Write a couple pages on what you’ve found and what you recommend. In writing these conclusions, you should also be writing some of the introduction, in that you’ll need to give enough background so that general readers can understand what you’re talking about and why they should care. But you want to start with the conclusions, because that will determine what sort of background information you’ll need to give. 2. Now step back. What is the principal evidence for your conclusions? Make some graphs and pull out some key numbers that represent your research findings which back up your claims. 3. Back one more step, now. What are the methods and data you used to obtain your research findings. 4. Now go back and write the l
6 0.10033038 1455 andrew gelman stats-2012-08-12-Probabilistic screening to get an approximate self-weighted sample
7 0.098451078 2244 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-11-What if I were to stop publishing in journals?
8 0.094056129 1392 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-26-Occam
9 0.091796756 1486 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-07-Prior distributions for regression coefficients
10 0.090081774 1817 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-21-More on Bayesian model selection in high-dimensional settings
11 0.086990036 1807 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-17-Data problems, coding errors…what can be done?
12 0.08659815 390 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-02-Fragment of statistical autobiography
13 0.086396568 2245 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-12-More on publishing in journals
14 0.085720211 1561 andrew gelman stats-2012-11-04-Someone is wrong on the internet
15 0.083969295 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
16 0.083722129 1735 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-24-F-f-f-fake data
17 0.082073137 1831 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-29-The Great Race
18 0.082069792 1984 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-16-BDA at 40% off!
19 0.081331596 116 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-29-How to grab power in a democracy – in 5 easy non-violent steps
20 0.080790393 1844 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-06-Against optimism about social science
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.19), (1, -0.009), (2, -0.033), (3, 0.018), (4, 0.018), (5, -0.003), (6, 0.041), (7, -0.035), (8, 0.066), (9, 0.019), (10, 0.002), (11, 0.022), (12, -0.002), (13, -0.038), (14, -0.038), (15, -0.006), (16, 0.014), (17, -0.036), (18, -0.009), (19, 0.025), (20, -0.012), (21, -0.046), (22, -0.067), (23, -0.018), (24, -0.034), (25, -0.026), (26, -0.002), (27, -0.027), (28, -0.002), (29, -0.004), (30, -0.027), (31, -0.026), (32, 0.028), (33, 0.017), (34, -0.009), (35, -0.018), (36, -0.026), (37, 0.033), (38, -0.022), (39, 0.001), (40, 0.046), (41, 0.012), (42, 0.043), (43, -0.016), (44, 0.032), (45, -0.03), (46, -0.003), (47, 0.016), (48, 0.005), (49, 0.025)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.9833982 2018 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-12-Do you ever have that I-just-fit-a-model feeling?
Introduction: Didier Ruedin writes: Here’s something I’ve been wondering for a while, and I thought your blog might be the right place to get the views from a wider group, too. How would you describe that feeling when—after going through the theory, collecting data, specifying the model, perhaps debugging the code—you hit enter and get the first results (of a new study) on your screen? I find this quite an exciting moment in research, somehow akin making a (silly) bet with a friend, but at the same time more serious as I’m wagering (part) of my view how the world functions. Anyhow, I thought it could be interesting to hear from others how they feel in that moment. For me it’s often an anticlimax, in that once I’ve gone through all the effort to successfully fit a model, then I have to go through another long set of steps to understand what I have in front of me. Every once in awhile the results just jump out and are exciting, but usually it takes a lot of work to see what I’m looking for.
2 0.80899167 1412 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-10-More questions on the contagion of obesity, height, etc.
Introduction: AT discusses [link broken; see P.P.S. below] a new paper of his that casts doubt on the robustness of the controversial Christakis and Fowler papers. AT writes that he ran some simulations of contagion on social networks and found that (a) in a simple model assuming the contagion of the sort hypothesized by Christakis and Fowler, their procedure would indeed give the sorts of estimates they found in their papers, but (b) in another simple model assuming a different sort of contagion, the C&F; estimation would give indistinguishable estimates. Thus, if you believe AT’s simulation model, C&F;’s procedure cannot statistically distinguish between two sorts of contagion (directional and simultaneous). I have not looked at AT’s paper so I can’t fully comment, but I don’t fully understand his method for simulating network connections. AT uses what he calls a “rewiring” model. This makes sense: as time progresses, we make new friends and lose old ones—but I am confused by the details
Introduction: Austin Kelly writes: While reading your postings [or here ] on the subject of testing your model by running fake data I was reminded of the fact that I got one of these kinds of tests actually published in a GAO report back in the day. Reading your posts on Unz and political vs. economic discourse made me think of that work again. I thought I’d actually drop you a line on the subject. Back in 2003 GAO was asked to look at Farmer Mac, including a look at the Farm Credit Agency’s regulation of Farmer Mac. As the resident mortgage econometrician back then I was asked to look at FCA’s risk based capital stress test for Farmer Mac. The work was pretty easy. I found a lot of oddities, but the biggest one was that they were using a discrete choice set up (loan goes bad or doesn’t) instead of a hazard model (loan goes bad this period or survives to the next). Not necessarily a problem – lots of mortgage models run that way. But you have to be really careful with your independe
4 0.78329766 1198 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-05-A cloud with a silver lining
Introduction: For the past few weeks I’ve been in pain much of the time, some sort of spasms in my neck and shoulder. Things are mostly better now, but last night I woke up at 5am and my neck was killing me. On the upside, I’d just been having a dream about multiple imputation and in the dream I had a brilliant idea of how to reconcile conditional and joint model specifications. Amazingly enough, when I awoke, I remembered the idea from the dream, and, even more amazingly, it really was a good idea. And, I was in pain and couldn’t fall back asleep. That was good news because that meant I didn’t forget the idea. I mentioned it to Jingchen in our midday meeting today and he didn’t shoot it down. At this point, I don’t really know what will happen. Sometimes I have a sudden inspiration and is works out just as planned or even better than anticipated ; other times, what seems like a brilliant plan goes nowhere. For this new idea, the next step is the hard work of pushing it through and seei
5 0.77514058 49 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-24-Blogging
Introduction: Rajiv Sethi quotes Bentley University economics professor Scott Sumner writing on the first anniversary of his blog: Be careful what you wish for. Last February 2nd I [Sumner] started this blog with very low expectations… I knew I wasn’t a good writer . . . And I was also pretty sure that the content was not of much interest to anyone. Now my biggest problem is time–I spend 6 to 10 hours a day on the blog, seven days a week. Several hours are spent responding to reader comments and the rest is spent writing long-winded posts and checking other economics blogs. . . . I [Sumner] don’t think much of the official methodology in macroeconomics. Many of my fellow economists seem to have a Popperian view of the social sciences. You develop a model. You go out and get some data. And then you try to refute the model with some sort of regression analysis. . . . My problem with this view is that it doesn’t reflect the way macro and finance actually work. Instead the models are
6 0.76672035 1070 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-19-The scope for snooping
7 0.763273 1861 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-17-Where do theories come from?
8 0.76314354 815 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-22-Statistical inference based on the minimum description length principle
9 0.75835991 592 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-26-“Do you need ideal conditions to do great work?”
10 0.75709069 1369 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-06-Your conclusion is only as good as your data
11 0.7506727 1042 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-05-Timing is everything!
12 0.74820787 2053 andrew gelman stats-2013-10-06-Ideas that spread fast and slow
13 0.74702525 1747 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-03-More research on the role of puzzles in processing data graphics
14 0.74606216 865 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-22-Blogging is “destroying the business model for quality”?
15 0.74536258 552 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-03-Model Makers’ Hippocratic Oath
16 0.74400401 166 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-27-The Three Golden Rules for Successful Scientific Research
17 0.74006301 1031 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-27-Richard Stallman and John McCarthy
18 0.7377609 1704 andrew gelman stats-2013-02-03-Heuristics for identifying ecological fallacies?
19 0.7370652 1520 andrew gelman stats-2012-10-03-Advice that’s so eminently sensible but so difficult to follow
20 0.73465747 1831 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-29-The Great Race
topicId topicWeight
[(9, 0.017), (16, 0.078), (21, 0.015), (22, 0.063), (24, 0.148), (34, 0.025), (42, 0.058), (52, 0.019), (53, 0.049), (71, 0.044), (76, 0.039), (86, 0.03), (95, 0.021), (99, 0.299)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.97014564 2018 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-12-Do you ever have that I-just-fit-a-model feeling?
Introduction: Didier Ruedin writes: Here’s something I’ve been wondering for a while, and I thought your blog might be the right place to get the views from a wider group, too. How would you describe that feeling when—after going through the theory, collecting data, specifying the model, perhaps debugging the code—you hit enter and get the first results (of a new study) on your screen? I find this quite an exciting moment in research, somehow akin making a (silly) bet with a friend, but at the same time more serious as I’m wagering (part) of my view how the world functions. Anyhow, I thought it could be interesting to hear from others how they feel in that moment. For me it’s often an anticlimax, in that once I’ve gone through all the effort to successfully fit a model, then I have to go through another long set of steps to understand what I have in front of me. Every once in awhile the results just jump out and are exciting, but usually it takes a lot of work to see what I’m looking for.
2 0.95524114 1804 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-15-How effective are football coaches?
Introduction: Dave Berri writes : A recent study published in the Social Science Quarterly suggests that these moves may not lead to the happiness the fans envision (HT: the Sports Economist). E. Scott Adler, Michael J. Berry, and David Doherty looked at coaching changes from 1997 to 2010. What they found should give pause to people who demanded a coaching change (or still hope for one). Here is how these authors summarize their findings: . . . we use matching techniques to compare the performance of football programs that replaced their head coach to those where the coach was retained. The analysis has two major innovations over existing literature. First, we consider how entry conditions moderate the effects of coaching replacements. Second, we examine team performance for several years following the replacement to assess its effects. We find that for particularly poorly performing teams, coach replacements have little effect on team performance as measured against comparable teams that
3 0.95306486 2323 andrew gelman stats-2014-05-07-Cause he thinks he’s so-phisticated
Introduction: This story (“Yale tells students to keep Kissinger talk secret . . . ‘Dr. Kissinger’s visit to campus will not be publicized, so we appreciate your confidentiality…’”) reminds me of two things: - In the 1980s, I once went to a public lecture at Harvard by Kissinger protogé Ted Koppel, who indeed has that deep Ted Koppel voice even when he’s just chatting (as I overheard). Koppel insisted that the contents of his talk not be reported. It was no great loss; he didn’t really have anything newsworthy to say. The talk was fine, he told us some interesting things, just nothing that would’ve made the news or even the campus newspaper. Still, it seemed kinda tacky for a reporter whose shtick was access to the powerful, to not want his own speech to be reported. - In the 1990s, a colleague of mine in a different dept told us that this professor from another university was coming by to give a lecture. I told my colleague that I’d like to meet with the guy, as I wanted to ask his opin
4 0.95035356 1760 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-12-Misunderstanding the p-value
Introduction: The New York Times has a feature in its Tuesday science section, Take a Number, to which I occasionally contribute (see here and here ). Today’s column , by Nicholas Balakar, is in error. The column begins: When medical researchers report their findings, they need to know whether their result is a real effect of what they are testing, or just a random occurrence. To figure this out, they most commonly use the p-value. This is wrong on two counts. First, whatever researchers might feel, this is something they’ll never know. Second, results are a combination of real effects and chance, it’s not either/or. Perhaps the above is a forgivable simplification, but I don’t think so; I think it’s a simplification that destroys the reason for writing the article in the first place. But in any case I think there’s no excuse for this, later on: By convention, a p-value higher than 0.05 usually indicates that the results of the study, however good or bad, were probably due only
5 0.95013547 117 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-29-Ya don’t know Bayes, Jack
Introduction: I came across this article on the philosophy of statistics by University of Michigan economist John DiNardo. I don’t have much to say about the substance of the article because most of it is an argument against something called “Bayesian methods” that doesn’t have much in common with the Bayesian data analysis that I do. If an quantitative, empirically-minded economist at a top university doesn’t know about modern Bayesian methods, then it’s a pretty good guess that confusion holds in many other quarters as well, so I thought I’d try to clear a couple of things up. (See also here .) In the short term, I know I have some readers at the University of Michigan, so maybe a couple of you could go over to Prof. DiNardo’s office and discuss this with him? For the rest of you, please spread the word. My point here is not to claim that DiNardo should be using Bayesian methods or to claim that he’s doing anything wrong in his applied work. It’s just that he’s fighting against a bu
8 0.94685447 2140 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-19-Revised evidence for statistical standards
9 0.94667816 32 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-14-Causal inference in economics
10 0.94618207 2013 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-08-What we need here is some peer review for statistical graphics
11 0.94603699 499 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-03-5 books
12 0.94561553 1117 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-13-What are the important issues in ethics and statistics? I’m looking for your input!
13 0.94541901 248 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-01-Ratios where the numerator and denominator both change signs
14 0.94523114 594 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-28-Behavioral economics doesn’t seem to have much to say about marriage
15 0.94477779 1936 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-13-Economic policy does not occur in a political vacuum
16 0.94433796 2313 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-30-Seth Roberts
17 0.94373816 385 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-31-Wacky surveys where they don’t tell you the questions they asked
18 0.94361174 1061 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-16-CrossValidated: A place to post your statistics questions
19 0.94344407 2246 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-13-An Economist’s Guide to Visualizing Data
20 0.94272357 446 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-03-Is 0.05 too strict as a p-value threshold?