sTattler.com : Statistics blog and discussions aggregator

Gelman's Blog: Bayesian model-building by pure thought: Some principles and examples

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:52:07 -0500

This is one of my favorite papers:

Gelman's Blog: What is a prior distribution?

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:30:57 -0500

Some recent blog discussion revealed some confusion that I’ll try to resolve here.

I wrote that I’m not a big fan of subjective priors. Various commenters had difficulty with this point, and I think the issue was most clearly stated by Bill Jeffreys, who wrote:

Gelman's Blog: “Turn a Boring Bar Graph into a 3D Masterpiece”

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:26:18 -0500

Jimmy sends in this.

Gelman's Blog: More on the economic benefits of universities

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:16:17 -0500

Last year my commenters and I discussed Ed Glaeser’s claim that the way to create a great city is to “create a great university and wait 200 years.”

I passed this on to urbanist Richard Florida and received the following response:

Gelman's Blog: Web equation

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:06:36 -0500

Aleks sends along this app which, while cute, is not quite “killer” for me. I find it more difficult to write the equation using the trackpad than to simply type it in using Latex! But I suppose it could be useful to beginners who want their papers to look more like science.

Gelman's Blog: Philosophy of Bayesian statistics: my reactions to Senn

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:53:00 -0500

Continuing with my discussion of the articles in the special issue of the journal Rationality, Markets and Morals on the philosophy of Bayesian statistics:

Gelman's Blog: The inevitable problems with statistical significance and 95% intervals

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:00:25 -0500

I’m thinking more and more that we have to get rid of statistical significance, 95% intervals, and all the rest, and just come to a more fundamental acceptance of uncertainty.

In practice, I think we use confidence intervals and hypothesis tests as a way to avoid acknowledging uncertainty. We set up some rules and then act as if we know what is real and what is not. Even in my own applied work, I’ve often enough presented 95% intervals and gone on from there. But maybe that’s just not right.

Gelman's Blog: Philosophy of Bayesian statistics: my reactions to Cox and Mayo

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:45:18 -0500

The journal Rationality, Markets and Morals has finally posted all the articles in their special issue on the philosophy of Bayesian statistics.

Gelman's Blog: “the forces of native stupidity reinforced by that blind hostility to criticism, reform, new ideas and superior ability which is human as well as academic nature”

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:53:07 -0500

Q. D. Leavis wrote:

The answer does seem to be that the academic world, like other worlds, is run by the politicians, and sensitively scrupulous people tend to leave politics to other people, while people with genuine work to do certainly have no time as well as no taste for committee-rigging and the associated techniques. And then of course there are the forces of native stupidity reinforced by that blind hostility to criticism, reform, new ideas and superior ability which is human as well as academic nature.
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Gelman's Blog: Statistical Murder

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:32:31 -0500

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