andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2014 andrew_gelman_stats-2014-2193 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: We recently considered a pair of studies that came out awhile ago involving children and political orientation: Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee found that, in Great Britain, parents of girls were more likely to support left-wing parties, compared to parents of boys. And, in the other direction, Dalton Conley and Emily Rauscher found with survey data from the United States that parents of girls were more likely to support the Republican party, compared to parents of boys. As I discussed the other day, the latest version of the Conley and Raucher study came with some incoherent evolutionary theorizing. There was also some discussion regarding the differences between the two studies. Oswald sent me some relevant comments: It will be hard in cross-sections like the GSS to solve the problem of endogeneity bias. Conservative families may want to have boys, and may use that as a stopping rule. If so, they will end up with disproportionately large number of girls. Without l
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1 We recently considered a pair of studies that came out awhile ago involving children and political orientation: Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee found that, in Great Britain, parents of girls were more likely to support left-wing parties, compared to parents of boys. [sent-1, score-0.376]
2 And, in the other direction, Dalton Conley and Emily Rauscher found with survey data from the United States that parents of girls were more likely to support the Republican party, compared to parents of boys. [sent-2, score-0.376]
3 Oswald sent me some relevant comments: It will be hard in cross-sections like the GSS to solve the problem of endogeneity bias. [sent-5, score-0.26]
4 But Conley and Rauscher only looked at the sex of the first child, so this should not be a problem, right? [sent-9, score-0.356]
5 The problem is that in principle one has to control for the covariate of family size, and that is endogenous, and there is no obvious instrumental variable that satisfies an exclusion restriction. [sent-12, score-0.348]
6 So, just to clarify, if you don’t control for family size, and you only look at sex of first child, then you should be ok. [sent-13, score-0.53]
7 But one then should realize that the effect of a daughter includes many different things, including, possibly, the total number of children. [sent-14, score-0.181]
8 Suppose, for example, a person has a first child and now you consider two branches: (a) First child is a daughter. [sent-15, score-0.739]
9 In that case, there’s an interaction between party identification and the sex of the first child, and one of the outcomes is #kids. [sent-21, score-0.529]
10 So, for example, if having lots of kids (of either sex) has an effect on attitudes, this could show up as an effect of the sex of the first child. [sent-22, score-0.594]
11 I sent the above to Oswald, who added: There is one way to make his result and ours consistent (though not Washington’s I am afraid). [sent-25, score-0.139]
12 We actually, because we are doing a panel analysis on the birth of a child, are picking up the effect of a baby girl or baby boy. [sent-26, score-0.461]
13 It might be that very young daughters turn me Left, and then much older daughters turn me Right. [sent-27, score-0.326]
14 This is related to the famous tradeoffs between internal and external validity . [sent-33, score-0.203]
15 Comparing sex of first child has bulletproof internal validity but it affects the interpretation, in a way similar to “intent to treat” analyses. [sent-34, score-0.87]
16 I sent the above to Dalton Conley, who wrote: I totally agree that what we are doing is a reduced form analysis, essentially. [sent-39, score-0.161]
17 First born girl may affect marital status (which we know it does from literature, hence our control) and other things we cannot control for. [sent-40, score-0.199]
18 Doesn’t mean that the total effect isn’t what it is, though . [sent-41, score-0.181]
19 I think that should be a bigger concern (than reduced form versus direct effects): non random selection into sex of offspring. [sent-45, score-0.485]
20 Panel data, of course, does nothing to solve that problem if it’s correlated with unobservables that are themselves correlated with partisanship…. [sent-46, score-0.329]
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Introduction: We recently considered a pair of studies that came out awhile ago involving children and political orientation: Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee found that, in Great Britain, parents of girls were more likely to support left-wing parties, compared to parents of boys. And, in the other direction, Dalton Conley and Emily Rauscher found with survey data from the United States that parents of girls were more likely to support the Republican party, compared to parents of boys. As I discussed the other day, the latest version of the Conley and Raucher study came with some incoherent evolutionary theorizing. There was also some discussion regarding the differences between the two studies. Oswald sent me some relevant comments: It will be hard in cross-sections like the GSS to solve the problem of endogeneity bias. Conservative families may want to have boys, and may use that as a stopping rule. If so, they will end up with disproportionately large number of girls. Without l
2 0.3697128 2141 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-20-Don’t douthat, man! Please give this fallacy a name.
Introduction: Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m always on the lookout for new items for the lexicon . It’s been a good month on that front. In addition to the Garden of Forking Paths, I’ve encountered two entirely new (to me) fallacies. The first of the two new fallacies has a name that’s quite a mouthful; I’ll hold off on telling you about it right now, as Eric Loken and I are currently finishing a paper on it. Once the paper’s done, I’ll post it in the usual place (or here , once it is scheduled to be published) and I’ll add it to the lexicon as well. What I want to talk about today is a fallacy I noticed a couple days ago. I can’t think of a good name for it. And that’s where you, the readers, come in. Please give this fallacy a name! Here’s the story. The other day on the sister blog I reported on a pair of studies involving children and political orientation: Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee found that, in Great Britain, parents of girls were more likely
3 0.19944368 716 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-17-Is the internet causing half the rapes in Norway? I wanna see the scatterplot.
Introduction: Ryan King writes: This involves causal inference, hierarchical setup, small effect sizes (in absolute terms), and will doubtless be heavily reported in the media. The article is by Manudeep Bhuller, Tarjei Havnes, Edwin Leuven, and Magne Mogstad and begins as follows: Does internet use trigger sex crime? We use unique Norwegian data on crime and internet adoption to shed light on this question. A public program with limited funding rolled out broadband access points in 2000-2008, and provides plausibly exogenous variation in internet use. Our instrumental variables and fixed effect estimates show that internet use is associated with a substantial increase in reported incidences of rape and other sex crimes. We present a theoretical framework that highlights three mechanisms for how internet use may affect reported sex crime, namely a reporting effect, a matching effect on potential offenders and victims, and a direct effect on crime propensity. Our results indicate that the
Introduction: The story starts in September, when psychology professor Fred Oswald wrote me: I [Oswald] wanted to point out this paper in Science (Ramirez & Beilock, 2010) examining how students’ emotional writing improves their test performance in high-pressure situations. Although replication is viewed as the hallmark of research, this paper replicates implausibly large d-values and correlations across studies, leading me to be more suspicious of the findings (not less, as is generally the case). He also pointed me to this paper: Experimental disclosure and its moderators: A meta-analysis. Frattaroli, Joanne Psychological Bulletin, Vol 132(6), Nov 2006, 823-865. Disclosing information, thoughts, and feelings about personal and meaningful topics (experimental disclosure) is purported to have various health and psychological consequences (e.g., J. W. Pennebaker, 1993). Although the results of 2 small meta-analyses (P. G. Frisina, J. C. Borod, & S. J. Lepore, 2004; J. M. Smyth
5 0.16863953 1758 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-11-Yes, the decision to try (or not) to have a child can be made rationally
Introduction: Philosopher L. A. Paul and sociologist Kieran Healy write : Choosing to have a child involves a leap of faith, not a carefully calibrated rational choice. When surprising results surface about the dissatisfaction many parents experience, telling yourself that you knew it wouldn’t be that way for you is simply a rationalization. The same is true if you tell yourself you know you’re happier not being a parent. The standard story of parenthood says it’s a deeply fulfilling event that is like nothing else you’ve ever experienced, and that you should carefully weigh what it will be like before choosing to do it. But in reality you can’t have it both ways. I disagree that you can’t have it both ways, for three reasons: 1. Many potential parents do have an idea of what it will be like to be a parent, having participated in child care as an older sibling, aunt, or uncle. 2. The decision of whether to have a child occurs many times: the decision of whether to have a second child
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Introduction: We recently considered a pair of studies that came out awhile ago involving children and political orientation: Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee found that, in Great Britain, parents of girls were more likely to support left-wing parties, compared to parents of boys. And, in the other direction, Dalton Conley and Emily Rauscher found with survey data from the United States that parents of girls were more likely to support the Republican party, compared to parents of boys. As I discussed the other day, the latest version of the Conley and Raucher study came with some incoherent evolutionary theorizing. There was also some discussion regarding the differences between the two studies. Oswald sent me some relevant comments: It will be hard in cross-sections like the GSS to solve the problem of endogeneity bias. Conservative families may want to have boys, and may use that as a stopping rule. If so, they will end up with disproportionately large number of girls. Without l
2 0.85122871 2141 andrew gelman stats-2013-12-20-Don’t douthat, man! Please give this fallacy a name.
Introduction: Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m always on the lookout for new items for the lexicon . It’s been a good month on that front. In addition to the Garden of Forking Paths, I’ve encountered two entirely new (to me) fallacies. The first of the two new fallacies has a name that’s quite a mouthful; I’ll hold off on telling you about it right now, as Eric Loken and I are currently finishing a paper on it. Once the paper’s done, I’ll post it in the usual place (or here , once it is scheduled to be published) and I’ll add it to the lexicon as well. What I want to talk about today is a fallacy I noticed a couple days ago. I can’t think of a good name for it. And that’s where you, the readers, come in. Please give this fallacy a name! Here’s the story. The other day on the sister blog I reported on a pair of studies involving children and political orientation: Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee found that, in Great Britain, parents of girls were more likely
3 0.84217125 2196 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-03-One-way street fallacy again! in reporting of research on brothers and sisters
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
4 0.80045092 1793 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-08-The Supreme Court meets the fallacy of the one-sided bet
Introduction: Doug Hartmann writes ( link from Jay Livingston): Justice Antonin Scalia’s comment in the Supreme Court hearings on the U.S. law defining marriage that “there’s considerable disagreement among sociologists as to what the consequences of raising a child in a single-sex family, whether that is harmful to the child or not.” Hartman argues that Scalia is factually incorrect—there is not actually “considerable disagreement among sociologists” on this issue—and quotes a recent report from the American Sociological Association to this effect. Assuming there’s no other considerable group of sociologists (Hartman knows of only one small group) arguing otherwise, it seems that Hartman has a point. Scalia would’ve been better off omitting the phrase “among sociologists”—then he’d have been on safe ground, because you can always find somebody to take a position on the issue. Jerry Falwell’s no longer around but there’s a lot more where he came from. Even among scientists, there’s
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Introduction: Andrew has pointed to Jonathan Livengood’s analysis of the correlation between poverty and PISA results, whereby schools with poorer students get poorer test results. I’d have written a comment, but then I couldn’t have inserted a chart. Andrew points out that a causal analysis is needed. This reminds me of an intervention that has been done before: take a child out of poverty, and bring him up in a better-off family. What’s going to happen? There have been several studies examining correlations between adoptive and biological parents’ IQ (assuming IQ is a test analogous to the math and verbal tests, and that parent IQ is analogous to the quality of instruction – but the point is in the analysis not in the metric). This is the result (from Adoption Strategies by Robin P Corley in Encyclopedia of Life Sciences): So, while it did make a difference at an early age, with increasing age of the adopted child, the intelligence of adoptive parents might not be making any difference
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Introduction: We recently considered a pair of studies that came out awhile ago involving children and political orientation: Andrew Oswald and Nattavudh Powdthavee found that, in Great Britain, parents of girls were more likely to support left-wing parties, compared to parents of boys. And, in the other direction, Dalton Conley and Emily Rauscher found with survey data from the United States that parents of girls were more likely to support the Republican party, compared to parents of boys. As I discussed the other day, the latest version of the Conley and Raucher study came with some incoherent evolutionary theorizing. There was also some discussion regarding the differences between the two studies. Oswald sent me some relevant comments: It will be hard in cross-sections like the GSS to solve the problem of endogeneity bias. Conservative families may want to have boys, and may use that as a stopping rule. If so, they will end up with disproportionately large number of girls. Without l
2 0.95426434 1758 andrew gelman stats-2013-03-11-Yes, the decision to try (or not) to have a child can be made rationally
Introduction: Philosopher L. A. Paul and sociologist Kieran Healy write : Choosing to have a child involves a leap of faith, not a carefully calibrated rational choice. When surprising results surface about the dissatisfaction many parents experience, telling yourself that you knew it wouldn’t be that way for you is simply a rationalization. The same is true if you tell yourself you know you’re happier not being a parent. The standard story of parenthood says it’s a deeply fulfilling event that is like nothing else you’ve ever experienced, and that you should carefully weigh what it will be like before choosing to do it. But in reality you can’t have it both ways. I disagree that you can’t have it both ways, for three reasons: 1. Many potential parents do have an idea of what it will be like to be a parent, having participated in child care as an older sibling, aunt, or uncle. 2. The decision of whether to have a child occurs many times: the decision of whether to have a second child
3 0.95042694 1070 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-19-The scope for snooping
Introduction: Macartan Humphreys sent the following question to David Madigan and me: I am working on a piece on the registration of research designs (to prevent snooping). As part of it we want to give some estimates for the “scope for snooping” and how this can be affected by different registration requirements. So we want to answer questions of the form: “Say in truth there is no relation between x and y, you were willing to mess about with models until you found a significant relation between them, what are the chances that you would succeed if: 1. You were free to choose the indicators for x and y 2. You were free to choose h control variable from some group of k possible controls 3. You were free to divide up the sample in k ways to examine heterogeneous treatment effects 4. You were free to select from some set of k reasonable models” People have thought a lot about the first problem of choosing your indicators; we have done a set of simulations to answer the other questions
4 0.94578868 1086 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-27-The most dangerous jobs in America
Introduction: Robin Hanson writes: On the criteria of potential to help people avoid death, this would seem to be among the most important news I’ve ever heard. [In his recent Ph.D. thesis , Ken Lee finds that] death rates depend on job details more than on race, gender, marriage status, rural vs. urban, education, and income combined ! Now for the details. The US Department of Labor has described each of 807 occupations with over 200 detailed features on how jobs are done, skills required, etc.. Lee looked at seven domains of such features, each containing 16 to 57 features, and for each domain Lee did a factor analysis of those features to find the top 2-4 factors. This gave Lee a total of 22 domain factors. Lee also found four overall factors to describe his total set of 225 job and 9 demographic features. (These four factors explain 32%, 15%, 7%, and 4% of total variance.) Lee then tried to use these 26 job factors, along with his other standard predictors (age, race, gender, m
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Introduction: Andrew Mack writes: There was a brief commentary from the Benetech folk on the Human Security Report Project’s, “The Shrinking Costs of War” report on your blog in January. But the report has since generated a lot of public controversy . Since the report–like the current discussion in your blog on Mike Spagat’s new paper on Iraq–deals with controversies generated by survey-based excess death estimates, we thought your readers might be interested. Our responses to the debate were posted on our website last week. “Shrinking Costs” had discussed the dramatic decline in death tolls from wartime violence since the end of World War II –and its causes. We also argued that deaths from war-exacerbated disease and malnutrition had declined. (The exec. summary is here .) One of the most striking findings was that mortality rates (we used under-five mortality data) decline during most wars. Indeed our latest research indicates that of the total number of years that countries w
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