andrew_gelman_stats andrew_gelman_stats-2010 knowledge-graph by maker-knowledge-mining

andrew_gelman_stats 2010 knowledge graph

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1 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-31-“Threshold earners” and economic inequality

Introduction: Reihan Salam discusses a theory of Tyler Cowen regarding “threshold earners,” a sort of upscale version of a slacker. Here’s Cowen : A threshold earner is someone who seeks to earn a certain amount of money and no more. If wages go up, that person will respond by seeking less work or by working less hard or less often. That person simply wants to “get by” in terms of absolute earning power in order to experience other gains in the form of leisure. Salam continues: This clearly reflects the pattern of wage dispersion among my friends, particularly those who attended elite secondary schools and colleges and universities. I [Salam] know many “threshold earners,” including both high and low earners who could earn much more if they chose to make the necessary sacrifices. But they are satisficers. OK, fine so far. But then the claim is made that “threshold earning” behavior increases income inequality. In Cowen’s words: The funny thing is this: For years, many cultural c

2 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-31-Type S error rates for classical and Bayesian single and multiple comparison procedures

Introduction: Type S error: When your estimate is the wrong sign, compared to the true value of the parameter Type M error: When the magnitude of your estimate is far off, compared to the true value of the parameter More here.

3 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-31-Obituaries in 2010

Introduction: David Blackwell . Julian Besag . Arnold Zellner . Benoit Mandelbrot and Hirotugu Akaike (late) . Alfred Kahn .

4 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-30-That puzzle-solving feeling

Introduction: Since this blog in November, I’ve given my talk on infovis vs. statistical graphics about five times: once in person (at the visualization meetup in NYC, a blog away from Num Pang!) and the rest via telephone conferencing or skype. The live presentation was best, but the remote talks have been improving, and I’m looking forward to doing more of these in the future to save time and reduce pollution. Here are the powerpoints of the talk. Now that I’ve got it working well (mostly by cutting lots of words on the slides), my next step will be to improve the interactive experience. At the very least, I need to allocate time after the talk for discussion. People usually don’t ask a lot of questions when I speak, so maybe the best strategy is to allow a half hour following the talk for people to speak with me individually. It could be set up so that I’m talking with one person but the others who are hanging out could hear the conversation too. Anyway, one of the times I gave th

5 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-29-Don’t try this at home

Introduction: Malecki’s right, this is very cool indeed. P.S. Is it really true that “4.5 million Parisians” ride the Metro every day? Even setting aside that not all the riders are Parisians, I’m guessing that 4.5 million is the number of rides, not the number of people who ride.

6 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-29-Brain Structure and the Big Five

Introduction: Many years ago, a research psychologist whose judgment I greatly respect told me that the characterization of personality by the so-called Big Five traits (extraversion, etc.) was old-fashioned. So I’m always surprised to see that the Big Five keeps cropping up. I guess not everyone agrees that it’s a bad idea. For example, Hamdan Azhar wrote to me: I was wondering if you’d seen this recent paper (De Young et al. 2010) that finds significant correlations between brain volume in selected regions and personality trait measures (from the Big Five). This is quite a ground-breaking finding and it was covered extensively in the mainstream media. I think readers of your blog would be interested in your thoughts, statistically speaking, on their methodology and findings. My reply: I’d be interested in my thoughts on this too! But I don’t know enough to say anything useful. From the abstract of the paper under discussion: Controlling for age, sex, and whole-brain volume

7 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-28-Brow inflation

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

8 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-27-Graph of the year

Introduction: From blogger Matthew Yglesias : There are lots of great graphs all over the web (see, for example, here and here for some snappy pictures of unemployment trends from blogger “Geoff”). There’s nothing special about Yglesias’s graph. In fact, the reason I’m singling it out as “graph of the year” is because it’s not special. It’s a display of three numbers, with no subtlety or artistry in its presentation. True, it has some good features: - Clear title - Clearly labeled axes - Vertical axis goes to zero - The cities are in a sensible order (not, for example, alphabetical) - The graphs is readable; none of that 3-D “data visualization” crap that looks cool but distances the reader from the numbers being displayed. What’s impressive about the above graph, what makes it a landmark to me, is that it was made at all. As noted in the text immediately below the image, it’s a display of exactly three numbers which can with little effort be completely presented and e

9 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-27-Alfred Kahn

Introduction: Appointed “inflation czar” in late 1970s, Alfred Kahn is most famous for deregulating the airline industry. At the time this seemed to make sense, although in retrospect I’m less a fan of consumer-driven policies than I used to be. When I was a kid we subscribed to Consumer Reports and so I just assumed that everything that was good for the consumer–lower prices, better products, etc.–was a good thing. Upon reflection, though, I think it’s a mistake to focus too narrowly on the interests of consumers. For example (from my Taleb review a couple years ago): The discussion on page 112 of how Ralph Nader saved lives (mostly via seat belts in cars) reminds me of his car-bumper campaign in the 1970s. My dad subscribed to Consumer Reports then (he still does, actually, and I think reads it for pleasure–it must be one of those Depression-mentality things), and at one point they were pushing heavily for the 5-mph bumpers. Apparently there was some federal regulation about how strong

10 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-26-Age and happiness: The pattern isn’t as clear as you might think

Introduction: A couple people pointed me to this recent news article which discusses “why, beyond middle age, people get happier as they get older.” Here’s the story: When people start out on adult life, they are, on average, pretty cheerful. Things go downhill from youth to middle age until they reach a nadir commonly known as the mid-life crisis. So far, so familiar. The surprising part happens after that. Although as people move towards old age they lose things they treasure–vitality, mental sharpness and looks–they also gain what people spend their lives pursuing: happiness. This curious finding has emerged from a new branch of economics that seeks a more satisfactory measure than money of human well-being. Conventional economics uses money as a proxy for utility–the dismal way in which the discipline talks about happiness. But some economists, unconvinced that there is a direct relationship between money and well-being, have decided to go to the nub of the matter and measure happiness i

11 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-25-Unlogging

Introduction: Catherine Bueker writes: I [Bueker] am analyzing the effect of various contextual factors on the voter turnout of naturalized Latino citizens. I have included the natural log of the number of Spanish Language ads run in each state during the election cycle to predict voter turnout. I now want to calculate the predicted probabilities of turnout for those in states with 0 ads, 500 ads, 1000 ads, etc. The problem is that I do not know how to handle the beta coefficient of the LN(Spanish language ads). Is there someway to “unlog” the coefficient? My reply: Calculate these probabilities for specific values of predictors, then graph the predictions of interest. Also, you can average over the other inputs in your model to get summaries. See this article with Pardoe for further discussion.

12 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-24-Foreign language skills as an intrinsic good; also, beware the tyranny of measurement

Introduction: This link on education reform send me to this blog on foreign languages in Canadian public schools: The demand for French immersion education in Vancouver so far outstrips the supply that the school board allocates places by lottery. But why? Is it because French is a useful employment skill? Because learning to speak French makes you a better person? Or is it because parents know intuitively what economists can show econometrically: peer effects matter. Being with high achieving peers raises a student’s own achievement level. . . . Several studies have found that Anglophones who can speak French enjoy an earning premium. The question is: do bilingual Anglophones earn more because speaking French is a valuable skill in the workplace? Or do they earn more because they’re on average smarter and more capable people (after all, they’ve mastered two languages)? And the blog features this comments like this : French immersion classes (as opposed to science, maths or any

13 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-23-Science, ideology, and human origins

Introduction: A link from Tyler Cowen led me to this long blog article by Razib Khan, discussing some recent genetic findings on human origins in the context of the past twenty-five years of research and popularization of science. I don’t know much about human origins (beyond my ooh-that’s-cool reactions to exhibits at the Natural History Museum, my general statistician’s skepticism at various over-the-top claims I’ve heard over the years about “mitochondrial Eve” and the like, and various bits I’ve read over the years regarding when people came over to Australia, America, etc.), but what particularly interested me about Khan’s article was his discussion about the various controversies among scientists, his own reactions when reading and thinking about these issues as they were happening (Khan was a student at the time), and the interaction between science and political ideology. There’s a limit to how far you can go with this sort of cultural criticism of science, and Khan realizes this

14 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-23-Capitalism as a form of voluntarism

Introduction: Interesting discussion by Alex Tabarrok (following up on an article by Rebecca Solnit) on the continuum between voluntarism (or, more generally, non-cash transactions) and markets with monetary exchange. I just have a few comments of my own: 1. Solnit writes of “the iceberg economy,” which she characterizes as “based on gift economies, barter, mutual aid, and giving without hope of return . . . the relations between friends, between family members, the activities of volunteers or those who have chosen their vocation on principle rather than for profit.” I just wonder whether “barter” completely fits in here. Maybe it depends on context. Sometimes barter is an informal way of keeping track (you help me and I help you), but in settings of low liquidity I could imagine barter being simply an inefficient way of performing an economic transaction. 2. I am no expert on capitalism but my impression is that it’s not just about “competition and selfishness” but also is related to the

15 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-22-The Jumpstart financial literacy survey and the different purposes of tests

Introduction: Mark Palko comments on the (presumably) well-intentioned but silly Jumpstart test of financial literacy , which was given to 7000 high school seniors Given that, as we heard a few years back, most high school seniors can’t locate Miami on a map of the U.S., you won’t be surprised to hear that they flubbed item after item on this quiz. But, as Palko points out, the concept is better than the execution: With the complex, unstable economy, the shift away from traditional pensions and the constant flood of new financial products, financial literacy might be more important now than it has been for decades. You could even make the case for financial illiteracy being a major cause of the economic crisis. But if the supporters of financial literacy need a good measure of how well we’re doing, they’ll need to find a better instrument than the Jump$tart survey. The ‘test’ part of the survey consists of thirty-one questions. That’s not very long but that many questions should be su

16 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-21-Instead of “confidence interval,” let’s say “uncertainty interval”

Introduction: I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with the term “confidence interval,” for several reasons: - The well-known difficulties in interpretation (officially the confidence statement can be interpreted only on average, but people typically implicitly give the Bayesian interpretation to each case), - The ambiguity between confidence intervals and predictive intervals. (See the footnote in BDA where we discuss the difference between “inference” and “prediction” in the classical framework.) - The awkwardness of explaining that confidence intervals are big in noisy situations where you have less confidence, and confidence intervals are small when you have more confidence. So here’s my proposal. Let’s use the term “uncertainty interval” instead. The uncertainty interval tells you how much uncertainty you have. That works pretty well, I think. P.S. As of this writing, “confidence interval” outGoogles “uncertainty interval” by the huge margin of 9.5 million to 54000. So we

17 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-20-WWJD? U can find out!

Introduction: Two positions open in the statistics group at the NYU education school. If you get the job, you get to work with Jennifer HIll! One position is a postdoctoral fellowship, and the other is a visiting professorship. The latter position requires “the demonstrated ability to develop a nationally recognized research program,” which seems like a lot to ask for a visiting professor. Do they expect the visiting prof to develop a nationally recognized research program and then leave it there at NYU after the visit is over? In any case, Jennifer and her colleagues are doing excellent work, both applied and methodological, and this seems like a great opportunity.

18 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-20-More on why “all politics is local” is an outdated slogan

Introduction: Yesterday I wrote that Mickey Kaus was right to point out that it’s time to retire Tip O’Neill’s famous dictum that “all politics are local.” As Kaus points out, all the congressional elections in recent decades have been nationalized. The slogan is particularly silly for Tip O’Neill himself. Sure, O’Neill had to have a firm grip on local politics to get his safe seat in the first place, but after that it was smooth sailing. Jonathan Bernstein disagrees , writing: Yes, but: don’t most Members of the House have ironclad partisan districts? And isn’t the most important single thing they can do to protect themselves involve having pull in state politics to avoid being gerrymandered? That is “all politics is local,” no? There’s also a fair amount they can do to stay on the good side of their local party, thus avoiding a primary fight. And, even in an era of nationalized elections, there’s still plenty a Member of Congress can do to to influence elections on the margins, a

19 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”).

20 andrew gelman stats-2010-12-19-Google’s word count statistics viewer

Introduction: Word count stats from the Google books database prove that Bayesianism is expanding faster than the universe. A n-gram is a tuple of n words.