andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2014 andrew_gelman_stats-2014-2166 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Paging Uri Simonsohn . . . January 2014: Alice Robb writes , completely uncritically: “If Your Name is Dennis, You’re More Likely to Become a Dentist The strange science of how names shape careers.” But look what you can learn from a quick google: Hmmmm, maybe worth following up on that second link . . . More details here , from 2011: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a han
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 January 2014: Alice Robb writes , completely uncritically: “If Your Name is Dennis, You’re More Likely to Become a Dentist The strange science of how names shape careers. [sent-4, score-0.343]
2 More details here , from 2011: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al. [sent-8, score-0.287]
3 ] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. [sent-9, score-0.386]
4 These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. [sent-10, score-0.221]
5 The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. [sent-11, score-0.865]
6 From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a handy summary of the claims and the evidence (click on it to enlarge): The Pelham et al. [sent-12, score-0.364]
7 articles have come up several times on the blog, starting with this discussion and this estimate and then more recently here . [sent-13, score-0.09]
8 I’m curious what Pelham and his collaborators think of Simonsohn’s claims. [sent-14, score-0.075]
9 Too bad for the readers of the New Republic that Alice Robb didn’t think to do a Google search. [sent-15, score-0.087]
10 Maybe Pelham’s claims are all correct, but it seems a mistake to report them uncritically. [sent-16, score-0.09]
11 No big deal, we all make mistakes, but I hope the New Republic can run a correction of equal length to the original article, explaining that the claim about names has been shot down, and also educating readers a bit on the uncertainties of this sort of scientific finding. [sent-17, score-0.798]
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same-blog 1 1.0000001 2166 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-10-3 years out of date on the whole Dennis the dentist thing!
Introduction: Paging Uri Simonsohn . . . January 2014: Alice Robb writes , completely uncritically: “If Your Name is Dennis, You’re More Likely to Become a Dentist The strange science of how names shape careers.” But look what you can learn from a quick google: Hmmmm, maybe worth following up on that second link . . . More details here , from 2011: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a han
2 0.78529006 565 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-09-Dennis the dentist, debunked?
Introduction: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a handy summary of the claims and the evidence (click on it to enlarge): The Pelham et al. articles have come up several times on the blog, starting with this discussion and this estimate and then more recently here . I’m curious what Pelham and his collaborators think of Simonsohn’s claims.
3 0.15201809 629 andrew gelman stats-2011-03-26-Is it plausible that 1% of people pick a career based on their first name?
Introduction: In my discussion of dentists-named-Dennis study, I referred to my back-of-the-envelope calculation that the effect (if it indeed exists) corresponds to an approximate 1% aggregate chance that you’ll pick a profession based on your first name. Even if there are nearly twice as many dentist Dennises as would be expected from chance alone, the base rate is so low that a shift of 1% of all Dennises would be enough to do this. My point was that (a) even a small effect could show up when looking at low-frequency events such as the choice to pick a particular career or live in a particular city, and (b) any small effects will inherently be difficult to detect in any direct way. Uri Simonsohn (the author of the recent rebuttal of the original name-choice article by Brett Pelham et al.) wrote: In terms of the effect size. I [Simonsohn] think of it differently and see it as too big to be believable. I don’t find it plausible that I can double the odds that my daughter will marry an
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Introduction: Around these parts we see a continuing flow of unusual claims supported by some statistical evidence. The claims are varyingly plausible a priori. Some examples (I won’t bother to supply the links; regular readers will remember these examples and newcomers can find them by searching): - Obesity is contagious - People’s names affect where they live, what jobs they take, etc. - Beautiful people are more likely to have girl babies - More attractive instructors have higher teaching evaluations - In a basketball game, it’s better to be behind by a point at halftime than to be ahead by a point - Praying for someone without their knowledge improves their recovery from heart attacks - A variety of claims about ESP How should we think about these claims? The usual approach is to evaluate the statistical evidence–in particular, to look for reasons that the claimed results are not really statistically significant. If nobody can shoot down a claim, it survives. The other part of th
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Introduction: I opened the newspaper today (recall that this blog is on an approximately one-month delay) to see a moderately horrifying story about art appraisers who are deterred by fear of lawsuits from expressing an opinion about possible forgeries. Maybe this trend will come to science too? Perhaps Brett Pelham will sue Uri Simonsohn for the pain, suffering, and loss of income occurring from the questioning of his Dennis the dentist paper ? Or maybe I’ll be sued by some rogue sociologist for publicly questioning his data dredging? Anyway, what amused me about the NYT article on art forgery was that two of the artists featured in the discussion were . . . Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein! Warhol is famous for diluting the notion of the unique art object and for making works of art in a “Factory,” and Lichtenstein is famous for ripping off the style and imagery of comic book artists. It’s funny for the two of them, of all people, to come up in a discussion of authenticity. Or maybe it
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same-blog 1 0.96469128 2166 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-10-3 years out of date on the whole Dennis the dentist thing!
Introduction: Paging Uri Simonsohn . . . January 2014: Alice Robb writes , completely uncritically: “If Your Name is Dennis, You’re More Likely to Become a Dentist The strange science of how names shape careers.” But look what you can learn from a quick google: Hmmmm, maybe worth following up on that second link . . . More details here , from 2011: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a han
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Introduction: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a handy summary of the claims and the evidence (click on it to enlarge): The Pelham et al. articles have come up several times on the blog, starting with this discussion and this estimate and then more recently here . I’m curious what Pelham and his collaborators think of Simonsohn’s claims.
3 0.64109886 1416 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-14-Ripping off a ripoff
Introduction: I opened the newspaper today (recall that this blog is on an approximately one-month delay) to see a moderately horrifying story about art appraisers who are deterred by fear of lawsuits from expressing an opinion about possible forgeries. Maybe this trend will come to science too? Perhaps Brett Pelham will sue Uri Simonsohn for the pain, suffering, and loss of income occurring from the questioning of his Dennis the dentist paper ? Or maybe I’ll be sued by some rogue sociologist for publicly questioning his data dredging? Anyway, what amused me about the NYT article on art forgery was that two of the artists featured in the discussion were . . . Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein! Warhol is famous for diluting the notion of the unique art object and for making works of art in a “Factory,” and Lichtenstein is famous for ripping off the style and imagery of comic book artists. It’s funny for the two of them, of all people, to come up in a discussion of authenticity. Or maybe it
4 0.63146961 2211 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-14-The popularity of certain baby names is falling off the clifffffffffffff
Introduction: Ubs writes: I was looking at baby name data last night and I stumbled upon something curious. I follow the baby names blog occasionally but not regularly, so I’m not sure if it’s been noticed before. Let me present it like this: Take the statement… Of the top 100 boys and top 100 girls names, only ___% contain the letter __. I’m using the SSA baby names page, so that’s U.S. births, and I’m looking at the decade of 2000-2009 (so kids currently aged 4 to 13). Which letters would you expect to have the lowest rate of occurrence? As expected, the lowest score is for Q, which appears zero times. (Jacqueline ranks #104 for girls.) It’s the second lowest that surprised me. (… You can pause and try to guess now. Spoilers to follow.) Of the other big-point Scrabble letters, Z appears in four names (Elizabeth, Zachary, Mackenzie, Zoe) and X in six, of which five are closely related (Alexis, Alexander, Alexandra, Alexa, Alex, Xavier). J is heavily overrepresented, especial
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Introduction: There’s something satisfying about seeing the same error being made by commentators on the left and the right. In this case, we’re talking about the one-way street fallacy , which is the implicit assumption of unidirectionality in a setting that actually has underlying symmetry. 1. A month or so ago we reported on an op-ed by conservative New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who was discussing recent research exemplified by the headline, “Study: Having daughters makes parents more likely to be Republican.” Douthat wrote all about different effects of having girls, without realizing that the study was comparing parents of girls to parents of boys. He just as well could have talked about the effects of having sons, and how that is associated with voting for Democrats (according to the study). But he did not do so; he was implicitly considering boy children to be the default. 2. A couple days ago, liberal NYT columnist Charles Blow ( link from commenter Steve Sailer) repo
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Introduction: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a handy summary of the claims and the evidence (click on it to enlarge): The Pelham et al. articles have come up several times on the blog, starting with this discussion and this estimate and then more recently here . I’m curious what Pelham and his collaborators think of Simonsohn’s claims.
same-blog 2 0.89923763 2166 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-10-3 years out of date on the whole Dennis the dentist thing!
Introduction: Paging Uri Simonsohn . . . January 2014: Alice Robb writes , completely uncritically: “If Your Name is Dennis, You’re More Likely to Become a Dentist The strange science of how names shape careers.” But look what you can learn from a quick google: Hmmmm, maybe worth following up on that second link . . . More details here , from 2011: Devah Pager points me to this article by Uri Simonsohn, which begins: Three articles published [by Brett Pelham et al.] have shown that a disproportionate share of people choose spouses, places to live, and occupations with names similar to their own. These findings, interpreted as evidence of implicit egotism, are included in most modern social psychology textbooks and many university courses. The current article successfully replicates the original findings but shows that they are most likely caused by a combination of cohort, geographic, and ethnic confounds as well as reverse causality. From Simonsohn’s article, here’s a han
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Introduction: 1. New Italian production of Life on Mars . 2. Psychological essentialism in everyday thought .
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Introduction: Peter Woit links to Steve Hsu linking to a 1977 interview by Katherine Sopka of physics professor Sidney Coleman. I don’t know anything about Coleman’s research but the interview caught my eye because one of my roommates in grad school was one of Coleman’s advisees. Anyway, here’s the key bit from the interview: Sopka: But you do enjoy working with students or do you? Coleman: No. I hate it. You do it as part of the job. Well, that’s of course false…or maybe more true than false when I say I hate it. Occasionally there’s a student who is a joy to work with. But I certainly would be just as happy if I had no graduate students… Sopka: I guess your remark means then that you would like to avoid teaching undergraduate courses or even required graduate courses… Coleman: Or even special topics courses. Teaching is unpleasant work. No question about it. It has its rewards. One feels happy about having a job well done. Washing the dishes, waxing the floors (things I also
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Introduction: Join Dirk Eddelbuettel for six hours of detailed and hands-on instructions and discussions around Rcpp, RInside, RcppArmadillo, RcppGSL and other packages . . . Rcpp has become the most widely-used language extension for R. Currently deployed by 103 CRAN packages and a further 10 BioConductor packages, it permits users and developers to pass “whole R objects” with ease between R and C++ . . . Morning session: “A Hands-on Introduction to R and C++” . . . Afternoon session: “Advanced R and C++ Topics” . . .
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