andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2014 andrew_gelman_stats-2014-2197 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
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Introduction: I saw the trailer for the new Mr. Peabody movie and it looked terrible. They used that weird animation where everything looks round, also the voice had none of the intonations of the “real” Peabody (for some reason, the trailer had the original English voices, maybe they didn’t get their act together to make a dubbed trailer in time for the release here), also the scenes looked pretty stupid. I went back home and checked out Peabody on wikipedia and it turns out that they made 91 episodes! I had no idea. Anyway, here’s my real question: Why bother making a Mr. Peabody movie if you’re not going to do it well? I understand that lots of moviemakers are hacks and there will always be a huge audience for crap in any case, so I’m certainly not demanding that all movies be “good” (in whatever sense that means, from my perceptions). But there are lots and lots of opportunities to make crap movies, there are a million toys and video games and comic book characters and fairy tales and br
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1 I went back home and checked out Peabody on wikipedia and it turns out that they made 91 episodes! [sent-4, score-0.156]
2 Anyway, here’s my real question: Why bother making a Mr. [sent-6, score-0.167]
3 I understand that lots of moviemakers are hacks and there will always be a huge audience for crap in any case, so I’m certainly not demanding that all movies be “good” (in whatever sense that means, from my perceptions). [sent-8, score-0.671]
4 But there are lots and lots of opportunities to make crap movies, there are a million toys and video games and comic book characters and fairy tales and breakfast cereals and whatever that can be used to make a stupid movie and sell millions of tickets. [sent-9, score-1.558]
5 Why take something great like Peabody and screw it up? [sent-10, score-0.085]
6 I’d think that anyone who’d go so far into the wayback machine to dredge up this old cartoon would be doing it out of love. [sent-12, score-0.302]
7 If your only goal is to make money with a generic cartoon project, why bother with Peabody in the first place. [sent-13, score-0.387]
8 I suppose it’s possible that the creators of this movie really are Peabody fans but just have really really bad taste and think that what they’re doing is an improvement. [sent-14, score-0.433]
9 Just like those bozos who colorized Shakespeare etc. [sent-15, score-0.095]
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same-blog 1 0.99999988 2197 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-04-Peabody here.
Introduction: I saw the trailer for the new Mr. Peabody movie and it looked terrible. They used that weird animation where everything looks round, also the voice had none of the intonations of the “real” Peabody (for some reason, the trailer had the original English voices, maybe they didn’t get their act together to make a dubbed trailer in time for the release here), also the scenes looked pretty stupid. I went back home and checked out Peabody on wikipedia and it turns out that they made 91 episodes! I had no idea. Anyway, here’s my real question: Why bother making a Mr. Peabody movie if you’re not going to do it well? I understand that lots of moviemakers are hacks and there will always be a huge audience for crap in any case, so I’m certainly not demanding that all movies be “good” (in whatever sense that means, from my perceptions). But there are lots and lots of opportunities to make crap movies, there are a million toys and video games and comic book characters and fairy tales and br
2 0.10528857 2369 andrew gelman stats-2014-06-11-“I can’t drive home now. Not just yet. First I need to go to Utrecht.”
Introduction: EJ points me to this new techno-thriller . Based on the sentence quoted above, I don’t see it selling lots of copies. It reads like a really boring Raymond Chandler. I still think these two movie ideas would be a better sell.
3 0.094007418 1945 andrew gelman stats-2013-07-18-“How big is your chance of dying in an ordinary play?”
Introduction: At first glance, that’s what I thought Tyler Cowen was asking . I assumed he was asking about the characters, not the audience, as watching a play seems like a pretty safe activity (A. Lincoln excepted). Characters in plays die all the time. I wonder what the chance is? Something between 5% and 10%, I’d guess. I’d guess your chance of dying (as a character) in a movie would be higher. On the other hand, movies have lots of extras who just show up and leave; if you count them maybe the risk isn’t so high. Perhaps the right way to do this is to weight people by screen time? P.S. The Mezzanine aside, works of art and literature tend to focus on the dramatic moments of lives, so it makes sense that death will be overrepresented.
4 0.083900601 2103 andrew gelman stats-2013-11-16-Objects of the class “Objects of the class”
Introduction: Objects of the class “Foghorn Leghorn” : parodies that are more famous than the original. (“It would be as if everybody were familiar with Duchamp’s Mona-Lisa-with-a-moustache while never having heard of Leonardo’s version.”) Objects of the class “Whoopi Goldberg” : actors who are undeniably talented but are almost always in bad movies, or at least movies that aren’t worthy of their talent. (The opposite: William Holden.) Objects of the class “Weekend at Bernie’s” : low-quality movie, nobody’s actually seen it, but everybody knows what it’s about. (Other examples: Heathers and Zelig.) I love these. We need some more.
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Introduction: Dave Berri posted the following at the Freakonomics blog: The “best” picture of 2012 was Argo. At least that’s the film that won the Oscar for best picture. According to the Oscars, the decision to give this award to Argo was made by the nearly 6,000 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. . . . In other words, this choice is made by the “experts.” There is, though, another group that we could have listened to on Sunday night. That group would be the people who actually spend money to go to the movies. . . . According to that group, Marvel’s the Avengers was the “best” picture in 2012. With domestic revenues in excess of $600 million, this filmed earned nearly $200 million more than any other picture. And when we look at world-wide revenues, this film brought in more than $1.5 billion. . . . Despite what seems like a clear endorsement by the customers of this industry, the Avengers was ignored by the Oscars. Perhaps this is just because I am an econo
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same-blog 1 0.95381171 2197 andrew gelman stats-2014-02-04-Peabody here.
Introduction: I saw the trailer for the new Mr. Peabody movie and it looked terrible. They used that weird animation where everything looks round, also the voice had none of the intonations of the “real” Peabody (for some reason, the trailer had the original English voices, maybe they didn’t get their act together to make a dubbed trailer in time for the release here), also the scenes looked pretty stupid. I went back home and checked out Peabody on wikipedia and it turns out that they made 91 episodes! I had no idea. Anyway, here’s my real question: Why bother making a Mr. Peabody movie if you’re not going to do it well? I understand that lots of moviemakers are hacks and there will always be a huge audience for crap in any case, so I’m certainly not demanding that all movies be “good” (in whatever sense that means, from my perceptions). But there are lots and lots of opportunities to make crap movies, there are a million toys and video games and comic book characters and fairy tales and br
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Introduction: In an article headlined, “Hollywood moves away from middlebrow,” Brooks Barnes writes : As Hollywood plowed into 2010, there was plenty of clinging to the tried and true: humdrum remakes like “The Wolfman” and “The A-Team”; star vehicles like “Killers” with Ashton Kutcher and “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp; and shoddy sequels like “Sex and the City 2.” All arrived at theaters with marketing thunder intended to fill multiplexes on opening weekend, no matter the quality of the film. . . . But the audience pushed back. One by one, these expensive yet middle-of-the-road pictures delivered disappointing results or flat-out flopped. Meanwhile, gambles on original concepts paid off. “Inception,” a complicated thriller about dream invaders, racked up more than $825 million in global ticket sales; “The Social Network” has so far delivered $192 million, a stellar result for a highbrow drama. . . . the message that the year sent about quality and originality is real enoug
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Introduction: In old books (and occasionally new books), you see the word “Why” used to indicate a pause or emphasis in dialogue. For example, from 1952: “Why, how perfectly simple!” she said to herself. “The way to save Wilbur’s life is to play a trick on Zuckerman. “If I can fool a bug,” thought Charlotte, “I can surely fool a man. People are not as smart as bugs.” That line about people and bugs was cute, but what really jumped out at me was the “Why.” I don’t think I’ve ever ever heard anyone use “Why” in that way in conversation, but I see it all the time in books, and every time it’s jarring. What’s the deal? Is it that people used to talk that way? Or is a Wasp thing, some regional speech pattern that was captured in books because it was considered standard conversational speech? I suppose one way to learn more would be to watch a bunch of old movies. I could sort of imagine Jimmy Stewart beginning his sentences with “Why” all the time. Does anyone know more? P.S. I use
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Introduction: Ever since I got this new sound system for my bike, I’ve been listening to a lot of podcasts. This American Life is really good. I know, I know, everybody knows that, but it’s true. The only segments I don’t like are the ones that are too “writerly,” when they read a short story aloud. They don’t work for me. Most of the time, though, the show is as great as everyone says it is. Anyway, the other day I listened to program #466: Blackjack . It started with some items on card counting. That stuff is always fun. Then they get to the longer story, which is all about a moderately rich housewife from Iowa who, over a roughly ten-year period, lost her life savings, something like a million dollars, at Harrah’s casinos. Did you know they had casinos in Iowa and Indiana? I didn’t. Anyway, the lady was a gambling addict. That part’s pretty clear. You don’t lose your life savings at a casino by accident. The scary part, though, was how the casino company craftily enabled her to
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Introduction: Logical reasoning typically takes the following form: 1. I know that A is true. 2. I know that A implies B. 3. Therefore, I can conclude that B is true. I, like Lewis Carroll, have problems with this process sometimes, but it’s pretty standard. There is also a statistical version in which the above statements are replaced by averages (“A usually happens,” etc.). But in all these stories, the argument can fall down if you get the facts wrong. Perhaps that’s one reason that statisticians can be obsessed with detail. For example, David Brooks wrote the following, in a column called “Living with Mistakes”: The historian Leslie Hannah identified the ten largest American companies in 1912. None of those companies ranked in the top 100 companies by 1990. Huh? Could that really be? I googled “ten largest american companies 1912″ and found this , from Leslie Hannah: No big deal: two still in the top 10 rather than zero in the top 100, but Brooks’s general
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Introduction: Aureliano Crameri writes: I have questions regarding one technique you and your colleagues described in your papers: the cross validation (Multiple Imputation with Diagnostics (mi) in R: Opening Windows into the Black Box, with reference to Gelman, King, and Liu, 1998). I think this is the technique I need for my purpose, but I am not sure I understand it right. I want to use the multiple imputation to estimate the outcome of psychotherapies based on longitudinal data. First I have to demonstrate that I am able to get unbiased estimates with the multiple imputation. The expected bias is the overestimation of the outcome of dropouts. I will test my imputation strategies by means of a series of simulations (delete values, impute, compare with the original). Due to the complexity of the statistical analyses I think I need at least 200 cases. Now I don’t have so many cases without any missings. My data have missing values in different variables. The proportion of missing values is
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