andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2014 andrew_gelman_stats-2014-2300 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining
Source: html
Introduction: Ooooooh, I never ever thought I’d have a legitimate excuse to tell this story, and now I do! The story took place many years ago, but first I have to tell you what made me think of it: Rasmus Bååth posted the following comment last month: On airplane tickets a Swedish “å” is written as “aa” resulting in Rasmus Baaaath. Once I bought a ticket online and five minutes later a guy from Lufthansa calls me and asks if I misspelled my name… OK, now here’s my story (which is not nearly as good). A long time ago (but when I was already an adult), I was in England for some reason, and I thought I’d take a day trip from London to Bath. So here I am on line, trying to think of what to say at the ticket counter. I remember that in England, they call Bath, Bahth. So, should I ask for “a ticket to Bahth”? I’m not sure, I’m afraid that it will sound silly, like I’m trying to fake an English accent. So, when I get to the front of the line, I say, hesitantly, “I’d like a ticket to Bath?
sentIndex sentText sentNum sentScore
1 Ooooooh, I never ever thought I’d have a legitimate excuse to tell this story, and now I do! [sent-1, score-0.317]
2 The story took place many years ago, but first I have to tell you what made me think of it: Rasmus Bååth posted the following comment last month: On airplane tickets a Swedish “å” is written as “aa” resulting in Rasmus Baaaath. [sent-2, score-0.554]
3 Once I bought a ticket online and five minutes later a guy from Lufthansa calls me and asks if I misspelled my name… OK, now here’s my story (which is not nearly as good). [sent-3, score-1.167]
4 A long time ago (but when I was already an adult), I was in England for some reason, and I thought I’d take a day trip from London to Bath. [sent-4, score-0.288]
5 So here I am on line, trying to think of what to say at the ticket counter. [sent-5, score-0.678]
6 I’m not sure, I’m afraid that it will sound silly, like I’m trying to fake an English accent. [sent-8, score-0.377]
7 So, when I get to the front of the line, I say, hesitantly, “I’d like a ticket to Bath? [sent-9, score-0.757]
8 The ticket agent replies, slightly contemptuously: “Oh, you’d like a ticket to Baaaaaaath. [sent-11, score-1.451]
9 Ok, not my favorite favorite story—that’s the time I saw this guy in Harvard Square and the back of his head looked just like Michael Keaton—but, still, it’s one of my best. [sent-14, score-0.634]
10 Among linguistic-themed stories, it’s second only to the “I speak only English” story (see third paragraph here ). [sent-15, score-0.36]
11 Also, both of these are what might be called “reverse Feynman stories” in that they make me look like a fool. [sent-16, score-0.082]
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same-blog 1 1.0 2300 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-21-Ticket to Baaaath
Introduction: Ooooooh, I never ever thought I’d have a legitimate excuse to tell this story, and now I do! The story took place many years ago, but first I have to tell you what made me think of it: Rasmus Bååth posted the following comment last month: On airplane tickets a Swedish “å” is written as “aa” resulting in Rasmus Baaaath. Once I bought a ticket online and five minutes later a guy from Lufthansa calls me and asks if I misspelled my name… OK, now here’s my story (which is not nearly as good). A long time ago (but when I was already an adult), I was in England for some reason, and I thought I’d take a day trip from London to Bath. So here I am on line, trying to think of what to say at the ticket counter. I remember that in England, they call Bath, Bahth. So, should I ask for “a ticket to Bahth”? I’m not sure, I’m afraid that it will sound silly, like I’m trying to fake an English accent. So, when I get to the front of the line, I say, hesitantly, “I’d like a ticket to Bath?
2 0.23415476 912 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-15-n = 2
Introduction: People in Chicago are nice. The conductor on the train came by and I asked if I could buy a ticket right there. He said yes, $2.50. While I was getting the money he asked if the ticket machine at the station had been broken. I said, I don’t know, I saw the train and ran up the stairs to catch it. He said, that’s not what you’re supposed to say. So I said, that’s right, the machine was broken. It’s just like on that radio show where Peter Sagal hems and haws to clue the contestant in that his guess is wrong so he can try again.
3 0.1969624 2298 andrew gelman stats-2014-04-21-On deck this week
Introduction: Mon : Ticket to Baaaath Tues : Ticket to Baaaaarf Wed : Thinking of doing a list experiment? Here’s a list of reasons why you should think again Thurs : An open site for researchers to post and share papers Fri : Questions about “Too Good to Be True” Sat : Sleazy sock puppet can’t stop spamming our discussion of compressed sensing and promoting the work of Xiteng Liu Sun : White stripes and dead armadillos
4 0.13251106 1245 andrew gelman stats-2012-04-03-Redundancy and efficiency: In praise of Penn Station
Introduction: In reaction to this news article by Michael Kimmelman, I’d like to repost this from four years ago: Walking through Penn Station in New York, I remembered how much I love its open structure. By “open,” I don’t mean bright and airy. I mean “open” in a topological sense. The station has three below-ground levels–the uppermost has ticket counters (and, what is more relevant nowadays, ticket machines), some crappy stores and restaurants, and a crappy waiting area. The middle level has Long Island Rail Road ticket counters, some more crappy stores and restaurants, and entrances to the 7th and 8th Avenue subway lines. The lower level has train tracks and platforms. There are stairs, escalators, and elevators going everywhere. As a result, it’s easy to get around, there are lots of shortcuts, and the train loads fast–some people come down the escalators and elevators from the top level, others take the stairs from the middle level. The powers-that-be keep threatening to spend a coupl
5 0.13191873 562 andrew gelman stats-2011-02-06-Statistician cracks Toronto lottery
Introduction: Christian points me to this amusing story by Jonah Lehrer about Mohan Srivastava, (perhaps the same person as R. Mohan Srivastava, coauthor of a book called Applied Geostatistics) who discovered a flaw in a scratch-off game in which he could figure out which tickets were likely to win based on partial information visible on the ticket. It appears that scratch-off lotteries elsewhere have similar flaws in their design. The obvious question is, why doesn’t the lottery create the patterns on the tickets (including which “teaser” numbers to reveal) completely at random? It shouldn’t be hard to design this so that zero information is supplied from the outside. in which case Srivastava’s trick would be impossible. So why not put down the numbers randomly? Lehrer quotes Srivastava as saying: The tickets are clearly mass-produced, which means there must be some computer program that lays down the numbers. Of course, it would be really nice if the computer could just spit out random
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Introduction: Ooooooh, I never ever thought I’d have a legitimate excuse to tell this story, and now I do! The story took place many years ago, but first I have to tell you what made me think of it: Rasmus Bååth posted the following comment last month: On airplane tickets a Swedish “å” is written as “aa” resulting in Rasmus Baaaath. Once I bought a ticket online and five minutes later a guy from Lufthansa calls me and asks if I misspelled my name… OK, now here’s my story (which is not nearly as good). A long time ago (but when I was already an adult), I was in England for some reason, and I thought I’d take a day trip from London to Bath. So here I am on line, trying to think of what to say at the ticket counter. I remember that in England, they call Bath, Bahth. So, should I ask for “a ticket to Bahth”? I’m not sure, I’m afraid that it will sound silly, like I’m trying to fake an English accent. So, when I get to the front of the line, I say, hesitantly, “I’d like a ticket to Bath?
2 0.82145548 1639 andrew gelman stats-2012-12-26-Impersonators
Introduction: This story of a Cindy Sherman impersonator reminded me of some graffiti I saw in a bathroom of the Whitney Museum many years ago. My friend Kenny and I had gone there for the Biennial which had an exhibit featuring Keith Haring and others of the neo-taggers (or whatever they were called). The bathroom walls were all painted over by Kenny Scharf [no relation to my friend] in his characteristically irritating doodle style. On top of the ugly stylized graffiti was a Sharpie’d scrawl: “Kenny Scharf is a pretentious asshole.” I suspected this last bit was added by someone else, but maybe it was Scharf himself? Ira Glass is a bigshot and can get Cindy Sherman on the phone, but I was just some guy, all I could do was write Scharf a letter, c/o the Whitney Museum. I described the situation and asked if he was the one who had written, “Kenny Scharf is a pretentious asshole.” He did not reply.
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Introduction: Matthew Yglesias and Megan McArdle argue about the economics of landlord/tenant laws in D.C., a topic I know nothing about. But it did remind me of a few stories . . . 1. In grad school, I shared half of a two-family house with three other students. At some point, our landlord (who lived in the other half of the house) decided he wanted to sell the place, so he had a real estate agent coming by occasionally to show the house to people. She was just a flat-out liar (which I guess fits my impression based on screenings of Glengarry Glen Ross). I could never decide, when I was around and she was lying to a prospective buyer, whether to call her on it. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t. 2. A year after I graduated, the landlord actually did sell the place but then, when my friends moved out, he refused to pay back their security deposit. There was some debate about getting the place repainted, I don’t remember the details. So they sued the landlord in Mass. housing court
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Introduction: This post is by Phil. Last summer my wife and I took a 3.5-month vacation that included a wide range of activities. When I got back, people would ask “what were the highlights or your trip?”, and I was somewhat at a loss: we had done so many things that were so different, many of which seemed really great…how could I pick? Someone said, wisely, that in six months or a year I’d be able to answer the question because some memories would be more vivid than others. They were right, and I was recently thinking back on our vacation and putting together a list of highlights — enjoyable in itself, but also worth doing to help plan future vacations. One of the things we did was go to four evenings of track and field events at the London Olympics. After we got back, people would ask what we had seen at the Olympics. I would say “We saw Usain Bolt run the 200m, we saw the women’s 4x100m relay and the men’s 4×400, we saw the last events of the decathlon…lots of great stuff. But my favorite was
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Introduction: From Watership Down: There is a rabbit saying, ‘In the warren, more stories than passages’; and a rabbit can no more refuse to tell a story than an Irishman can refuse to fight. Wow. OK, if someone made a joke about New Yorkers being argumentative or people from Iowa being boring (sorry, Tom!), I wouldn’t see it as being in poor taste. But somehow, to this non-U.K. reader, Adams’s remark about “Irishmen” seems a bit over the top. I’m not criticizing it as offensive, exactly; it just is a bit jarring, and it’s kind of hard for me to believe someone would just write that as a throwaway line anymore. Things have changed a lot since 1971, I guess, or maybe in England an Irish joke is no more offensive/awkward than a joke about corrupt Chicagoans, loopy Californians, or crazy Floridians would be here.
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1 0.93679798 1790 andrew gelman stats-2013-04-06-Calling Jenny Davidson . . .
Introduction: Now that you have some free time again, you’ll have to check out these books and tell us if they’re worth reading. Claire Kirch reports : Lizzie Skurnick Books launches in September with the release of Debutante Hill by Lois Duncan. The novel, which was originally published by Dodd, Mead, in 1958, has been out of print for about three decades. The other books on the initial list, all reissues, are A Long Day in November by Ernest J. Gaines (originally published in 1971), Happy Endings Are All Alike by Sandra Scoppettone (1979), I’ll Love You When You’re More Like Me by M.E. Kerr (1977), Secret Lives by Berthe Amoss (1979), To All My Fans, With Love, From Sylvie by Ellen Conford (1982), and Me and Fat Glenda by Lila Perl (1972). . . . Noting that many of the books of that era beloved by teen boys are still in print – such as Isaac Asimov’s novels and The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier – Skurnick pointed out that, in contrast, many of the books that were embraced by teen gir
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Introduction: Ooooooh, I never ever thought I’d have a legitimate excuse to tell this story, and now I do! The story took place many years ago, but first I have to tell you what made me think of it: Rasmus Bååth posted the following comment last month: On airplane tickets a Swedish “å” is written as “aa” resulting in Rasmus Baaaath. Once I bought a ticket online and five minutes later a guy from Lufthansa calls me and asks if I misspelled my name… OK, now here’s my story (which is not nearly as good). A long time ago (but when I was already an adult), I was in England for some reason, and I thought I’d take a day trip from London to Bath. So here I am on line, trying to think of what to say at the ticket counter. I remember that in England, they call Bath, Bahth. So, should I ask for “a ticket to Bahth”? I’m not sure, I’m afraid that it will sound silly, like I’m trying to fake an English accent. So, when I get to the front of the line, I say, hesitantly, “I’d like a ticket to Bath?
3 0.92047775 912 andrew gelman stats-2011-09-15-n = 2
Introduction: People in Chicago are nice. The conductor on the train came by and I asked if I could buy a ticket right there. He said yes, $2.50. While I was getting the money he asked if the ticket machine at the station had been broken. I said, I don’t know, I saw the train and ran up the stairs to catch it. He said, that’s not what you’re supposed to say. So I said, that’s right, the machine was broken. It’s just like on that radio show where Peter Sagal hems and haws to clue the contestant in that his guess is wrong so he can try again.
4 0.91914409 58 andrew gelman stats-2010-05-29-Stupid legal crap
Introduction: From the website of a journal where I published an article: In Springer journals you have the choice of publishing with or without open access. If you choose open access, your article will be freely available to everyone everywhere. In exchange for an open access fee of â‚Ź 2000 / US $3000 you retain the copyright and your article will carry the Creative Commons License. Please make your choice below. Hmmm . . . pay $3000 so that an article that I wrote and gave to the journal for free can be accessed by others? Sounds like a good deal to me!
5 0.91657859 734 andrew gelman stats-2011-05-28-Funniest comment ever
Introduction: Here (scroll down to the bottom; for some reason the link doesn’t go directly to the comment itself). I’ve never actually seen a Kaypro but I remember the ads. (Background here .)
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