andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2014 andrew_gelman_stats-2014-2167 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: The other day on the sister blog we discussed a recent Pew Research survey that seemed to show that Republicans are becoming more partisan about evolution (or, as Paul Krugman put it, “So what happened after 2009 that might be driving Republican views? . . . Republicans are being driven to identify in all ways with their tribe — and the tribal belief system is dominated by anti-science fundamentalists”). We presented some discussion and evidence from Dan Kahan suggesting that the evidence for such a change was not so clear at all. Kahan drew his conclusions from a more detailed analysis of the much-discussed Pew data, along with a comparison to a recent Gallup poll. Also following up on this is sociologist David Wealiem, who pulls some more data into the discussion: Although the Pew report mentions only the 2009 survey, the question has been asked a number of times since 2005. Here are the results—the numbers represent the percent saying “evolved” minus the percent sayin
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 The other day on the sister blog we discussed a recent Pew Research survey that seemed to show that Republicans are becoming more partisan about evolution (or, as Paul Krugman put it, “So what happened after 2009 that might be driving Republican views? [sent-1, score-0.745]
2 Republicans are being driven to identify in all ways with their tribe — and the tribal belief system is dominated by anti-science fundamentalists”). [sent-5, score-0.174]
3 Here are the results—the numbers represent the percent saying “evolved” minus the percent saying “existed in their present form. [sent-9, score-0.126]
4 ” The 2009 survey is an outlier—everyone was more likely to express support for evolution than they were in the surrounding years. [sent-10, score-0.605]
5 I [Weakliem] am not sure why the results from this survey should be so different from the others, but I noticed that it focused on science, while the others had a mix of topics. [sent-11, score-0.251]
6 So perhaps people felt more inclined to go along with the scientific consensus after answering a lot of questions on science and technology. [sent-12, score-0.083]
7 Another possibility is that people who didn’t have much knowledge of science or faith in science were less likely to agree to participate in a survey on science. [sent-13, score-0.506]
8 In any case, any comparison involving the 2009 results should be taken with a grain of salt. [sent-14, score-0.183]
9 If you omit the 2009 survey, partisan differences have become a bit wider over the whole period, not because Republicans have become less likely to believe in evolution, but because Democrats and independents have become substantially more likely to believe in it. [sent-15, score-0.719]
10 But, as Kahan notes, only 36% of surveyed Democrats believed “that humans and other living things have evolved over time due to natural processes”—with another 22% believing in evolution that was guided by a “supreme being. [sent-16, score-0.642]
11 I pointed out that for all we know 2009 evoluton belief was “high,” in which case prior level of belief (in creatonism) is rebounding etc. [sent-20, score-0.218]
12 No one doubts there is partisan divide, but the idea that it could change a lot in 4 yrs, while certainly *possible,* would be pretty amazing. [sent-24, score-0.172]
13 But in any event, now that we have all the data, we can see plainly that the only thing that happened even in Pew data was a reallocation of small # of Repubs between “divine guided evolution” (somethin akin to “intelligent design”) & “creationism. [sent-26, score-0.255]
14 ” There was no meaningful shift in proportion of Repubs rejecting *real* evolution (natural selection kind). [sent-27, score-0.386]
15 In fairness, Pew baited the misunderstanding trap by failing to release the the partisan breakdown for *entire* question in its initial “report”/”press release. [sent-28, score-0.23]
16 Very very very unlike Pew, which is the only “public opinion survey” operation that does real opinion studies rather than “issue du jour. [sent-31, score-0.281]
17 ” I really love Pew precisely because it isn’t in the ‘opinion polling’ business but in the ‘public opinion analysis’ business. [sent-32, score-0.112]
18 It employs super smart researchers who understand what survey items do & don’t measure & who use that understanding to enlarge knowledge of lots of complicated things, particularly relating to public understanding of science. [sent-33, score-0.435]
19 I would label the lines in Weakliem’s graph directly rather than with a legend, also I’d use the conventional red/blue/purple colors rather than black/red/green, and I’d label the y-axis more descriptively. [sent-36, score-0.286]
20 I make these sort of graphing comments not to discourage or intimidate the Weakliems of the world but rather as suggestions so that the future graphs they make can be even more useful. [sent-38, score-0.117]
wordName wordTfidf (topN-words)
[('pew', 0.427), ('evolution', 0.323), ('repubs', 0.303), ('survey', 0.194), ('weakliem', 0.187), ('kahan', 0.181), ('partisan', 0.172), ('punked', 0.152), ('guided', 0.13), ('opinion', 0.112), ('belief', 0.109), ('republicans', 0.106), ('evolved', 0.103), ('gallup', 0.093), ('likely', 0.088), ('label', 0.086), ('natural', 0.086), ('become', 0.084), ('science', 0.083), ('democrats', 0.07), ('heap', 0.069), ('divine', 0.069), ('somethin', 0.069), ('plainly', 0.069), ('monkeys', 0.069), ('public', 0.067), ('ridicule', 0.065), ('grain', 0.065), ('tribal', 0.065), ('concealed', 0.065), ('percent', 0.063), ('selection', 0.063), ('omit', 0.062), ('comparison', 0.061), ('discourage', 0.06), ('nsf', 0.06), ('rejects', 0.058), ('fairness', 0.058), ('enlarge', 0.058), ('breakdown', 0.058), ('employs', 0.058), ('knowledge', 0.058), ('results', 0.057), ('rather', 0.057), ('pulls', 0.057), ('independents', 0.057), ('commentators', 0.057), ('outlier', 0.057), ('happened', 0.056), ('summarized', 0.055)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.99999988 2167 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-10-Do you believe that “humans and other living things have evolved over time”?
Introduction: The other day on the sister blog we discussed a recent Pew Research survey that seemed to show that Republicans are becoming more partisan about evolution (or, as Paul Krugman put it, “So what happened after 2009 that might be driving Republican views? . . . Republicans are being driven to identify in all ways with their tribe — and the tribal belief system is dominated by anti-science fundamentalists”). We presented some discussion and evidence from Dan Kahan suggesting that the evidence for such a change was not so clear at all. Kahan drew his conclusions from a more detailed analysis of the much-discussed Pew data, along with a comparison to a recent Gallup poll. Also following up on this is sociologist David Wealiem, who pulls some more data into the discussion: Although the Pew report mentions only the 2009 survey, the question has been asked a number of times since 2005. Here are the results—the numbers represent the percent saying “evolved” minus the percent sayin
2 0.17979413 477 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-20-Costless false beliefs
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”).
3 0.1322704 544 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-29-Splitting the data
Introduction: Antonio Rangel writes: I’m a neuroscientist at Caltech . . . I’m using the debate on the ESP paper , as I’m sure other labs around the world are, as an opportunity to discuss some basic statistical issues/ideas w/ my lab. Request: Is there any chance you would be willing to share your thoughts about the difference between exploratory “data mining” studies and confirmatory studies? What I have in mind is that one could use a dataset to explore/discover novel hypotheses and then conduct another experiment to test those hypotheses rigorously. It seems that a good combination of both approaches could be the best of both worlds, since the first would lead to novel hypothesis discovery, and the later to careful testing. . . it is a fundamental issue for neuroscience and psychology. My reply: I know that people talk about this sort of thing . . . but in any real setting, I think I’d want all my data right now to answer any questions I have. I like cross-validation and have used
4 0.1306749 678 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-25-Democrats do better among the most and least educated groups
Introduction: These are based on raw Pew data, reweighted to adjust for voter turnout by state, income, and ethnicity. No modeling of vote on age, education, and ethnicity. I think our future estimates based on the 9-way model will be better, but these are basically OK, I think. All but six of the dots in the graph are based on sample sizes greater than 30. I published these last year but they’re still relevant, I think. There’s lots of confusion when it comes to education and voting.
5 0.11929419 761 andrew gelman stats-2011-06-13-A survey’s not a survey if they don’t tell you how they did it
Introduction: Since we’re on the topic of nonreplicable research . . . see here (link from here ) for a story of a survey that’s so bad that the people who did it won’t say how they did it. I know too many cases where people screwed up in a survey when they were actually trying to get the right answer, for me to trust any report of a survey that doesn’t say what they did. I’m reminded of this survey which may well have been based on a sample of size 6 (again, the people who did it refused to release any description of methodology).
7 0.11749745 2255 andrew gelman stats-2014-03-19-How Americans vote
8 0.10939545 1633 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-21-Kahan on Pinker on politics
9 0.10353533 286 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-20-Are the Democrats avoiding a national campaign?
12 0.10013615 1253 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-08-Technology speedup graph
13 0.09931688 1371 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-07-Question 28 of my final exam for Design and Analysis of Sample Surveys
14 0.098073095 1833 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-30-“Tragedy of the science-communication commons”
15 0.09419775 2006 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-03-Evaluating evidence from published research
16 0.092722818 2004 andrew gelman stats-2013-09-01-Post-publication peer review: How it (sometimes) really works
17 0.091927767 1414 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-12-Steven Pinker’s unconvincing debunking of group selection
19 0.086279914 827 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-28-Amusing case of self-defeating science writing
topicId topicWeight
[(0, 0.178), (1, -0.061), (2, 0.089), (3, -0.011), (4, -0.016), (5, -0.013), (6, -0.054), (7, 0.011), (8, -0.037), (9, -0.022), (10, 0.036), (11, -0.037), (12, -0.004), (13, 0.058), (14, -0.007), (15, -0.009), (16, -0.002), (17, 0.005), (18, -0.002), (19, 0.002), (20, -0.015), (21, -0.019), (22, -0.112), (23, -0.012), (24, -0.022), (25, -0.003), (26, 0.052), (27, -0.027), (28, -0.01), (29, 0.022), (30, -0.0), (31, -0.004), (32, -0.013), (33, 0.012), (34, -0.074), (35, -0.001), (36, -0.001), (37, -0.01), (38, 0.031), (39, 0.037), (40, 0.011), (41, 0.04), (42, 0.024), (43, -0.004), (44, -0.003), (45, 0.001), (46, -0.001), (47, 0.007), (48, -0.017), (49, -0.013)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.97029656 2167 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-10-Do you believe that “humans and other living things have evolved over time”?
Introduction: The other day on the sister blog we discussed a recent Pew Research survey that seemed to show that Republicans are becoming more partisan about evolution (or, as Paul Krugman put it, “So what happened after 2009 that might be driving Republican views? . . . Republicans are being driven to identify in all ways with their tribe — and the tribal belief system is dominated by anti-science fundamentalists”). We presented some discussion and evidence from Dan Kahan suggesting that the evidence for such a change was not so clear at all. Kahan drew his conclusions from a more detailed analysis of the much-discussed Pew data, along with a comparison to a recent Gallup poll. Also following up on this is sociologist David Wealiem, who pulls some more data into the discussion: Although the Pew report mentions only the 2009 survey, the question has been asked a number of times since 2005. Here are the results—the numbers represent the percent saying “evolved” minus the percent sayin
Introduction: Everybody knows how you can lie with statistics by manipulating numbers, making inappropriate comparisons, misleading graphs, etc. But, as I like to remind students, the simplest way to lie with statistics is to just lie! You see this all the time, advocates who make up numbers or present numbers with such little justification that they might as well be made up (as in this purported survey of the “super-rich”). Here I’m not talking about the innumeracy of a Samantha Power or a David Runciman, or Michael Barone-style confusion or Gregg Easterbrook-style cluelessness or even Tucker Carlson-style asininity . No, I’m talking about flat-out lying by a professional who has the numbers and deliberately chooses to misrepresent them. The culprit is pollster Doug Schoen, and the catch was made by Jay Livingston. Schoen wrote the following based on a survey he took of Occupy Wall Street participants: On Oct. 10 and 11, Arielle Alter Confino, a senior researcher at my polli
3 0.77601677 385 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-31-Wacky surveys where they don’t tell you the questions they asked
Introduction: Maria Wolters writes: The parenting club Bounty, which distributes their packs through midwives, hospitals, and large UK supermarket and pharmacy chains, commissioned a fun little survey for Halloween from the company OnePoll . Theme: Mothers as tricksters – tricking men into fathering their babies. You can find a full smackdown courtesy of UK-based sex educator and University College London psychologist Petra Boynton here . (One does wonder how a parenting club with such close links to the UK National Health Service thought a survey on this topic was at all appropriate, but that’s another rant.) So far, so awful, but what I [Wolters] thought might grab your attention was the excuse OnePoll offered for their work in their email to Petra. (Petra is very well known in the UK, and so was able to get a statement from the polling company.) Here it is in its full glory, taken from Petra’s post: As the agency which commissioned this research and distributed the resulting new
4 0.77402729 276 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-14-Don’t look at just one poll number–unless you really know what you’re doing!
Introduction: Here’s a good one if you want to tell your students about question wording bias. It’s fun because the data are all on the web–the research is something that students could do on their own–if they know what to look for. Another win for Google. Here’s the story. I found the following graph on the front page of the American Enterprise Institute, a well-known D.C. think tank: My first thought was that they should replace this graph by a time series, which would show so much more information. I did a web search and, indeed, looking at a broad range of poll questions over time gives us a much richer perspective on public opinion about Afghanistan than is revealed in the above graph. I did a quick google search (“polling report afghanistan”) and found this . The quick summary is that roughly 40% of Americans favor the Afghan war (down from about 50% from 2006 through early 2009). The Polling Report page also features the Quninipiac poll featured in the above graph; here it r
5 0.76431936 130 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-07-A False Consensus about Public Opinion on Torture
Introduction: John Sides reports on this finding by Paul Gronke, Darius Rejali, Dustin Drenguis, James Hicks, Peter Miller, and Bryan Nakayama, from a survey in 2008:: Gronke et al. write (as excerpted by Sides): Many journalists and politicians believe that during the Bush administration, a majority of Americans supported torture if they were assured that it would prevent a terrorist attack….But this view was a misperception…we show here that a majority of Americans were opposed to torture throughout the Bush presidency…even when respondents were asked about an imminent terrorist attack, even when enhanced interrogation techniques were not called torture, and even when Americans were assured that torture would work to get crucial information. Opposition to torture remained stable and consistent during the entire Bush presidency. Gronke et al. attribute confusion of beliefs to the so-called false consensus effect studied by cognitive psychologists, in which people tend to assume th
6 0.7594763 1386 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-21-Belief in hell is associated with lower crime rates
7 0.75932032 381 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-30-Sorry, Senator DeMint: Most Americans Don’t Want to Ban Gays from the Classroom
8 0.74688923 12 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-30-More on problems with surveys estimating deaths in war zones
9 0.73993558 1633 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-21-Kahan on Pinker on politics
11 0.71509969 5 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-27-Ethical and data-integrity problems in a study of mortality in Iraq
12 0.70521343 113 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-28-Advocacy in the form of a “deliberative forum”
13 0.70094764 1635 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-22-More Pinker Pinker Pinker
15 0.69340616 958 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-14-The General Social Survey is a great resource
16 0.69272566 477 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-20-Costless false beliefs
17 0.68641925 177 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-02-Reintegrating rebels into civilian life: Quasi-experimental evidence from Burundi
19 0.68455839 666 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-18-American Beliefs about Economic Opportunity and Income Inequality
20 0.68083996 828 andrew gelman stats-2011-07-28-Thoughts on Groseclose book on media bias
topicId topicWeight
[(5, 0.044), (9, 0.026), (12, 0.015), (16, 0.076), (21, 0.021), (22, 0.103), (24, 0.085), (41, 0.014), (44, 0.017), (56, 0.031), (57, 0.019), (63, 0.061), (65, 0.015), (69, 0.029), (79, 0.01), (88, 0.01), (95, 0.013), (98, 0.02), (99, 0.287)]
simIndex simValue blogId blogTitle
same-blog 1 0.96002454 2167 andrew gelman stats-2014-01-10-Do you believe that “humans and other living things have evolved over time”?
Introduction: The other day on the sister blog we discussed a recent Pew Research survey that seemed to show that Republicans are becoming more partisan about evolution (or, as Paul Krugman put it, “So what happened after 2009 that might be driving Republican views? . . . Republicans are being driven to identify in all ways with their tribe — and the tribal belief system is dominated by anti-science fundamentalists”). We presented some discussion and evidence from Dan Kahan suggesting that the evidence for such a change was not so clear at all. Kahan drew his conclusions from a more detailed analysis of the much-discussed Pew data, along with a comparison to a recent Gallup poll. Also following up on this is sociologist David Wealiem, who pulls some more data into the discussion: Although the Pew report mentions only the 2009 survey, the question has been asked a number of times since 2005. Here are the results—the numbers represent the percent saying “evolved” minus the percent sayin
2 0.95547152 477 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-20-Costless false beliefs
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”).
3 0.95284736 385 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-31-Wacky surveys where they don’t tell you the questions they asked
Introduction: Maria Wolters writes: The parenting club Bounty, which distributes their packs through midwives, hospitals, and large UK supermarket and pharmacy chains, commissioned a fun little survey for Halloween from the company OnePoll . Theme: Mothers as tricksters – tricking men into fathering their babies. You can find a full smackdown courtesy of UK-based sex educator and University College London psychologist Petra Boynton here . (One does wonder how a parenting club with such close links to the UK National Health Service thought a survey on this topic was at all appropriate, but that’s another rant.) So far, so awful, but what I [Wolters] thought might grab your attention was the excuse OnePoll offered for their work in their email to Petra. (Petra is very well known in the UK, and so was able to get a statement from the polling company.) Here it is in its full glory, taken from Petra’s post: As the agency which commissioned this research and distributed the resulting new
4 0.94430906 92 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-17-Drug testing for recipents of NSF and NIH grants?
Introduction: People seeking unemployment benefits or welfare would have to first pass a drug test under a proposal Sen. Orrin Hatch will try to add to legislation extending the social safety net during this time of economic turmoil. Hatch … said his idea would help battle drug addiction and could reduce the nation’s debt. He will try to get the Senate to include his amendment to a $140 billion bill extending tax breaks and social programs this week. “This amendment is a way to help people get off of drugs to become productive and healthy members of society, while ensuring that valuable taxpayer dollars aren’t wasted,” he said after announcing his amendment. “Too many Americans are locked into a life of a dangerous dependency not only on drugs, but the federal assistance that serves to enable their addiction.” I have a horrible vision of NSF and NIH dollars used to support the amphetamine dependencies of students pulling all-nighters in their bio labs. Something’s gotta be done about this
5 0.9435519 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”
6 0.94256139 1804 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-15-How effective are football coaches?
8 0.93778557 1964 andrew gelman stats-2013-08-01-Non-topical blogging
9 0.93676937 2123 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-04-Tesla fires!
10 0.93377924 879 andrew gelman stats-2011-08-29-New journal on causal inference
11 0.9330771 448 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-03-This is a footnote in one of my papers
13 0.92892778 1480 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-02-“If our product is harmful . . . we’ll stop making it.”
14 0.92707986 145 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-13-Statistical controversy regarding human rights violations in Colomnbia
15 0.92641759 1398 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-28-Every time you take a sample, you’ll have to pay this guy a quarter
16 0.92262334 2094 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-08-A day with the news!
17 0.918782 666 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-18-American Beliefs about Economic Opportunity and Income Inequality
18 0.91868514 1413 andrew gelman stats-2012-07-11-News flash: Probability and statistics are hard to understand
19 0.91827255 2317 andrew gelman stats-2014-05-04-Honored oldsters write about statistics
20 0.91758937 421 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-19-Just chaid