andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2014 andrew_gelman_stats-2014-2194 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: Are we becoming more tolerant of nepotism? Republicans have a 54 percent chance of taking the Senate The denominator fallacy rears its ugly head How better educated whites are driving political polarization Controversial claims about marriage promotion break the statistical rules of evidence The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird
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Introduction: Are we becoming more tolerant of nepotism? Republicans have a 54 percent chance of taking the Senate The denominator fallacy rears its ugly head How better educated whites are driving political polarization Controversial claims about marriage promotion break the statistical rules of evidence The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird
Introduction: It all began with this message from Dan Kahan, a law professor who does psychology experiments: My graphs– what do you think?? I guess what do you think of the result too, but the answer is, “That’s obvious!” If it hadn’t been, then it would have been suspicious in my book. Of course, if we had found the opposite result, that would have been “obvious!” too. We are submitting to LR ≠1 Journa l This is the latest study in series looking at relationship between critical reasoning capacities and “cultural cognition” — the tendency of individuals to conform their perceptions of risk & other policy-relevant facts to their group commitments. The first installment was an observational study that found that cultural polarization ( political too ; the distinction relate not to the mechanism for polarization over decision-relevant science but only about how to measure what is hypothesized to be driving it) increases as people become more science literate. This paper and ano
3 0.094673462 123 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-01-Truth in headlines
Introduction: I came across the following headline: Unemployment Extension Fails: Senate Rejects Jobless Benefits 58-38 Actually, though, the Senate voted 58-38 in favor of the bill. But the opponents did a filibuster. Here’s another try: Congress Fails to Pass an Extension of Jobless Aid But it’s still not clear that the vote was strongly in favor–not even close, in fact. A better headline, I think, would be: Senate Vote on Unemployment Extension: 58-38 in Favor, Not Enough to Beat Filibuster Or maybe someone more journalistic than I can come up with something better?
4 0.090296067 217 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-19-The “either-or” fallacy of believing in discrete models: an example of folk statistics
Introduction: Psychologists talk about “folk psychology”: ideas that make sense to us about how people think and behave, even if these ideas are not accurate descriptions of reality. And physicists talk about “folk physics” (for example, the idea that a thrown ball falls in a straight line and then suddenly drops, rather than following an approximate parabola). There’s also “folk statistics.” Some of the ideas of folk statistics are so strong that even educated people–even well-known researchers–can make these mistakes. One of the ideas of folk statistics that bothers me a lot is what might be called the “either/or fallacy”: the idea that if there are two possible stories, the truth has to be one or the other. I have often encountered the either/or fallacy in Bayesian statistics, for example the vast literature on “model selection” or “variable selection” or “model averaging” in which it is assumed that one of some pre-specified discrete set of models is the truth, and that this true model
5 0.089923941 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
6 0.084242761 1385 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-20-Reconciling different claims about working-class voters
7 0.082954645 647 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-04-Irritating pseudo-populism, backed up by false statistics and implausible speculations
8 0.08247973 108 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-24-Sometimes the raw numbers are better than a percentage
9 0.081217647 707 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-12-Human nature can’t be changed (except when it can)
10 0.07725136 688 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-30-Why it’s so relaxing to think about social issues
12 0.075892493 2108 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-20-That’s crazy talk!
13 0.075071447 549 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-01-“Roughly 90% of the increase in . . .” Hey, wait a minute!
15 0.071540356 286 andrew gelman stats-2010-09-20-Are the Democrats avoiding a national campaign?
16 0.07003323 224 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-22-Mister P gets married
17 0.06952025 993 andrew gelman stats-2011-11-05-The sort of thing that gives technocratic reasoning a bad name
18 0.067788027 673 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-20-Upper-income people still don’t realize they’re upper-income
19 0.064902112 126 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-03-Graphical presentation of risk ratios
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same-blog 1 0.96951991 2194 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-01-Recently in the sister blog
Introduction: Are we becoming more tolerant of nepotism? Republicans have a 54 percent chance of taking the Senate The denominator fallacy rears its ugly head How better educated whites are driving political polarization Controversial claims about marriage promotion break the statistical rules of evidence The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird
2 0.71143132 1385 andrew gelman stats-2012-06-20-Reconciling different claims about working-class voters
Introduction: After our discussions of psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s opinions about working-class voters (see here and here ), a question arose on how to reconcile the analyses of Alan Abramowitz and Tom Edsall (showing an increase in Republican voting among low-education working white southerners), with Larry Bartels’s finding that “there has been no discernible trend in presidential voting behavior among the ‘working white working class.’” Here is my resolution: All the statistics that have been posted seem reasonable to me. Also relevant to the discussion, I believe, are Figures 3.1, 4.2b, 10.1, and 10.2 of Red State Blue State. In short: Republicans continue to do about 20 percentage points better among upper-income voters compared to lower-income, but the compositions of these coalitions have changed over time. As has been noted, low-education white workers have moved toward the Republican party over the past few decades, and at the same time there have been compositional changes
3 0.68810385 967 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-20-Picking on Gregg Easterbrook
Introduction: I don’t want to make a habit of this, but . . . I was curious what Easterbrook would write as a follow-up to his recent Huntsman puff, and here’s what he came up with: Tired of cookie-cutter political contests between hauntingly similar candidates? Then you’re going to like the upcoming race for one of the Senate seats in the late Ted Kennedy’s haunting grounds. Elizabeth Warren, best known for creating and fighting for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is hoping to challenge Republican incumbent Scott Brown. They’re both qualified, but they couldn’t be more different — personally or politically. Um, no. 1. It seems a bit of a stretch to say the two candidates “couldn’t be more different personally.” Brown is a 52-year-old married white lawyer with two children. Warren is a 62-year-old married white lawyer with three children. According to Wikipedia, they both had middle-class backgrounds, Brown in Massachusetts and Warren in Oklahoma, and they suffered some per
Introduction: Conservative data cruncher Charles Murray asks , “Why aren’t Asians Republicans?”: Asians are only half as likely to identify themselves as “conservative” or “very conservative” as whites, and less than half as likely to identify themselves as Republicans. . . . 70% of Asians voted for Barack Obama in the last presidential election. Something’s wrong with this picture. . . . Everyday observation of Asians around the world reveal them to be conspicuously entrepreneurial, industrious, family-oriented, and self-reliant. If you’re looking for a natural Republican constituency, Asians should define “natural.” . . . Asian immigrants overwhelmingly succeeded, another experience that tends to produce conservative immigrants. Beyond that, Asian minorities everywhere in the world, including America, tend to be underrepresented in politics—they’re more interested in getting ahead commercially or in non-political professions than in running for office or organizing advocacy groups. La
5 0.67855293 377 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-28-The incoming moderate Republican congressmembers
Introduction: Boris writes : By nearly all accounts, the Republicans looks set to take over the US House of Representatives in next week’s November 2010 general election. . . . Republicans, in this wave election that recalls 1994, look set to win not just swing districts, but also those districts that have been traditionally Democratic, or those with strong or longtime Democratic incumbents. Naturally, just as in 2008, this has led to overclaiming by jubilant conservatives and distraught liberals-though the adjectives were then reversed-that this portends a realignment in American politics. . . . Republican moderates in Congress are often associated with two factors: 1) a liberal voting record earlier in their career, and 2) a liberal district. Of course, both are related, in the sense that ambitious moderates choose liberal districts to run in, and liberal districts weed out conservative candidates. . . . Given how competitive Republicans are in 2010, even in otherwise unfriendly territory,
7 0.66319066 44 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-20-Boris was right
8 0.6625579 369 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-25-Misunderstanding of divided government
9 0.66211492 201 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-12-Are all rich people now liberals?
10 0.64662611 355 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-20-Andy vs. the Ideal Point Model of Voting
11 0.6346634 130 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-07-A False Consensus about Public Opinion on Torture
14 0.62549758 362 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-22-A redrawing of the Red-Blue map in November 2010?
15 0.62298548 1079 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-23-Surveys show Americans are populist class warriors, except when they aren’t
18 0.60305434 1 andrew gelman stats-2010-04-22-Political Belief Networks: Socio-cognitive Heterogeneity in American Public Opinion
19 0.60182625 1097 andrew gelman stats-2012-01-03-Libertarians in Space
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same-blog 1 0.9627853 2194 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-01-Recently in the sister blog
Introduction: Are we becoming more tolerant of nepotism? Republicans have a 54 percent chance of taking the Senate The denominator fallacy rears its ugly head How better educated whites are driving political polarization Controversial claims about marriage promotion break the statistical rules of evidence The importance of knowing a dodo is a bird
2 0.80713379 1250 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-07-Hangman tips
Introduction: Jeff pointed me to this article by Nick Berry. It’s kind of fun but of course if you know your opponent will be following this strategy you can figure out how to outwit it. Also, Berry writes that ETAOIN SHRDLU CMFWYP VBGKQJ XZ is the “ordering of letter frequency in English language.” Indeed this is the conventional ordering but nobody thinks it’s right anymore. See here (with further discussion here ). I wonder what corpus he’s using. P.S. Klutz was my personal standby.
3 0.80395001 1512 andrew gelman stats-2012-09-27-A Non-random Walk Down Campaign Street
Introduction: Political campaigns are commonly understood as random walks, during which, at any point in time, the level of support for any party or candidate is equally likely to go up or down. Each shift in the polls is then interpreted as the result of some combination of news and campaign strategies. A completely different story of campaigns is the mean reversion model in which the elections are determined by fundamental factors of the economy and partisanship; the role of the campaign is to give voters a chance to reach their predetermined positions. The popularity of the random walk model for polls may be partially explained via analogy to the widespread idea that stock prices reflect all available information, as popularized in Burton Malkiel’s book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Once the idea has sunk in that short-term changes in the stock market are inherently unpredictable, it is natural for journalists to think the same of polls. For example, political analyst Nate Silver wrote
4 0.80209219 422 andrew gelman stats-2010-11-20-A Gapminder-like data visualization package
Introduction: Ossama Hamed writes in with a new dynamic graphing software: I have the pleasure to brief you on our Data Visualization software “Trend Compass”. TC is a new concept in viewing statistics and trends in an animated way by displaying in one chart 5 axis (X, Y, Time, Bubble size & Bubble color) instead of just the traditional X and Y axis. . . .
5 0.79702306 224 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-22-Mister P gets married
Introduction: Jeff, Justin, and I write : Gay marriage is not going away as a highly emotional, contested issue. Proposition 8, the California ballot measure that bans same-sex marriage, has seen to that, as it winds its way through the federal courts. But perhaps the public has reached a turning point. And check out the (mildly) dynamic graphics. The picture below is ok but for the full effect you have to click through and play the movie.
6 0.79670942 123 andrew gelman stats-2010-07-01-Truth in headlines
8 0.79481727 665 andrew gelman stats-2011-04-17-Yes, your wish shall be granted (in 25 years)
9 0.78146315 87 andrew gelman stats-2010-06-15-Statistical analysis and visualization of the drug war in Mexico
10 0.78042567 1286 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-28-Agreement Groups in US Senate and Dynamic Clustering
11 0.77222323 513 andrew gelman stats-2011-01-12-“Tied for Warmest Year On Record”
12 0.76494098 364 andrew gelman stats-2010-10-22-Politics is not a random walk: Momentum and mean reversion in polling
14 0.75033867 228 andrew gelman stats-2010-08-24-A new efficient lossless compression algorithm
15 0.7433511 1841 andrew gelman stats-2013-05-04-The Folk Theorem of Statistical Computing
16 0.74291152 1606 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-05-The Grinch Comes Back
17 0.74171168 951 andrew gelman stats-2011-10-11-Data mining efforts for Obama’s campaign
18 0.73962945 1227 andrew gelman stats-2012-03-23-Voting patterns of America’s whites, from the masses to the elites
19 0.72712755 2225 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-26-A good comment on one of my papers
20 0.72254097 1052 andrew gelman stats-2011-12-11-Rational Turbulence