andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2013 andrew_gelman_stats-2013-2122 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: We have a new “ Objects of the class ,” and it’s a good one! Here’s what happened. I came across a thoughtful discussion by Mark Palko of how it was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ticked off so many people with his recent remarks about “white suburban moms”: To understand why Duncan hit such a nerve, you need to consider the long and complicated role that racial politics have played in this debate. The public face of the education reform movement has always been pictures of eager young African-American and Hispanic children. Not only has the movement been sold as a way of helping these children but people who object to parts of the reform agenda have often been accused, implicitly or explicitly, of not wanting to help children of color. . . . For starters, with certain notable exceptions, the leaders of the reform movement tend to be white or Asian . . . By comparison, the tenured and/or unionized teachers who have paid the highest price in terms of policy changes an
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1 We have a new “ Objects of the class ,” and it’s a good one! [sent-1, score-0.113]
2 The public face of the education reform movement has always been pictures of eager young African-American and Hispanic children. [sent-4, score-0.43]
3 Not only has the movement been sold as a way of helping these children but people who object to parts of the reform agenda have often been accused, implicitly or explicitly, of not wanting to help children of color. [sent-5, score-0.683]
4 For starters, with certain notable exceptions, the leaders of the reform movement tend to be white or Asian . [sent-9, score-0.433]
5 By comparison, the tenured and/or unionized teachers who have paid the highest price in terms of policy changes and school closures have been disproportionately African-American. [sent-12, score-0.188]
6 Under these circumstances, you can imagine the reaction when education reformers make statements like “I think the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans was Hurricane Katrina. [sent-13, score-0.334]
7 My favorite, as a statistician, was this one: I see extraordinary schools where 95 percent of children live below the poverty line, where 95 percent are graduating, and 90 percent of those who graduate are going on to college. [sent-22, score-0.603]
8 Since then, the claims of the 90-90-90 schools (or 95-95-90 schools, in this case) have been challenged so much that we rarely hear about them anymore. [sent-24, score-0.175]
9 A prominent figure who refers to Hurricane Katrina as a good thing is, of course, widely disliked on the left. [sent-25, score-0.357]
10 It should also be no surprise that Duncan, who, after all, is an appointee of Barack Obama, is disliked on the right as well. [sent-26, score-0.361]
11 If you don’t believe me, just google *arne duncan communist*. [sent-27, score-0.387]
12 As regular blog readers know, the one thing Starbucks and Lawrence Summers have in common , beyond containing large doses of caffeine, is that they are widely disliked on the left and the right. [sent-31, score-0.583]
13 Rather, it really seems like people on the left dislike Summers for being so conservative, and people on the right dislike him for being so liberal. [sent-33, score-0.507]
14 Objects of the class “Lawrence Summers” OK, so here’s my official definition. [sent-34, score-0.113]
15 An object is in the class “Lawrence Summers” if it is despised on the left for holding silly right-wing attitudes and simultaneously despised on the right for holding silly left-wing attitudes. [sent-35, score-1.242]
16 (It’s important for the dislike to be simultaneous. [sent-36, score-0.16]
17 It’s not enough to be a left-winger who is despised by the right and then, a few years later, take a hard right turn and get hated by the other side. [sent-37, score-0.537]
18 You have to be hated by both sides, for opposite reasons, at the same time. [sent-38, score-0.114]
19 ) Arne Duncan, like Starbucks, is in the class “Lawrence Summers. [sent-39, score-0.113]
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Introduction: We have a new “ Objects of the class ,” and it’s a good one! Here’s what happened. I came across a thoughtful discussion by Mark Palko of how it was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ticked off so many people with his recent remarks about “white suburban moms”: To understand why Duncan hit such a nerve, you need to consider the long and complicated role that racial politics have played in this debate. The public face of the education reform movement has always been pictures of eager young African-American and Hispanic children. Not only has the movement been sold as a way of helping these children but people who object to parts of the reform agenda have often been accused, implicitly or explicitly, of not wanting to help children of color. . . . For starters, with certain notable exceptions, the leaders of the reform movement tend to be white or Asian . . . By comparison, the tenured and/or unionized teachers who have paid the highest price in terms of policy changes an
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Introduction: Duncan Watts gave his new book the above title, reflecting his irritation with those annoying people who, upon hearing of the latest social science research, reply with: Duh-I-knew-that. (I don’t know how to say Duh in Australian; maybe someone can translate that for me?) I, like Duncan, am easily irritated, and I looked forward to reading the book. I enjoyed it a lot, even though it has only one graph, and that graph has a problem with its y-axis. (OK, the book also has two diagrams and a graph of fake data, but that doesn’t count.) Before going on, let me say that I agree wholeheartedly with Duncan’s central point: social science research findings are often surprising, but the best results cause us to rethink our world in such a way that they seem completely obvious, in retrospect. (Don Rubin used to tell us that there’s no such thing as a “paradox”: once you fully understand a phenomenon, it should not seem paradoxical any more. When learning science, we sometimes speak
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Introduction: A couple things in this interview by Andrew Goldman of Larry Summers currently irritated me. I’ll give the quotes and then explain my annoyance. 1. Goldman: What would the economy look like now if $1.2 trillion had been spent? Summers: I think it’s an artificial question because there would have been all kinds of problems in actually moving $1.2 trillion dollars through the system — finding enough bridge projects that were ready to go and the like. But the recovery probably would have proceeded more rapidly if the fiscal program had been larger. . . . 2. Goldman: You’re aware of — and were making light of — the fact that you occasionally rub people the wrong way. Summers: In meetings, I’m more focused on trying to figure out what the right answer is than making everybody feel validated. In Washington and at Harvard, that sometimes rubs people the wrong way. OK, now my reactions: 1. Not enough bridge projects, huh? I don’t believe it. We’ve been hearing fo
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Introduction: Even if a policymaker is sure of the ideal economic policy, he or she can only implement it with the help of some of the other political players. But I’m saying something different, echoing what I wrote a couple days ago. I thought of this the other day after seeing this recent quote from Paul Krugman ( extracted by Brad DeLong) about Larry “Starbucks” Summers: Summers is . . . indistinguishable from me [Krugman] on macro-policy. And he may be a bit to the left, because he’s even more certain than I am . . . that some extra spending now will actually help us more in fiscal terms. So he published a piece in the Financial Times that was meant to be a big statement about this. But before he got to that, he spend three paragraphs about the importance of dealing with the deficit in the medium term . . . to establish that ‘I am a respectable person; I am not like that rabble-rouser, Krugman.’ . . . Maybe. But, going back to 2009, I still suspect that Summers, or some part of S
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Introduction: We have a new “ Objects of the class ,” and it’s a good one! Here’s what happened. I came across a thoughtful discussion by Mark Palko of how it was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ticked off so many people with his recent remarks about “white suburban moms”: To understand why Duncan hit such a nerve, you need to consider the long and complicated role that racial politics have played in this debate. The public face of the education reform movement has always been pictures of eager young African-American and Hispanic children. Not only has the movement been sold as a way of helping these children but people who object to parts of the reform agenda have often been accused, implicitly or explicitly, of not wanting to help children of color. . . . For starters, with certain notable exceptions, the leaders of the reform movement tend to be white or Asian . . . By comparison, the tenured and/or unionized teachers who have paid the highest price in terms of policy changes an
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Introduction: We have a new “ Objects of the class ,” and it’s a good one! Here’s what happened. I came across a thoughtful discussion by Mark Palko of how it was that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ticked off so many people with his recent remarks about “white suburban moms”: To understand why Duncan hit such a nerve, you need to consider the long and complicated role that racial politics have played in this debate. The public face of the education reform movement has always been pictures of eager young African-American and Hispanic children. Not only has the movement been sold as a way of helping these children but people who object to parts of the reform agenda have often been accused, implicitly or explicitly, of not wanting to help children of color. . . . For starters, with certain notable exceptions, the leaders of the reform movement tend to be white or Asian . . . By comparison, the tenured and/or unionized teachers who have paid the highest price in terms of policy changes an
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