RE: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-18 Thread Allen Esterson
lecturer, Science Department Southwark College, London allenester...@compuserve.com http://www.esterson.org RE: [tips] The joy of stats Rick Froman Fri, 17 Dec 2010 11:59:07 -0800 I nominate this thread as the most inappropriately (or ironically) named

Re:[tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-17 Thread Allen Esterson
Chris Green writes: Again, Allen overwhelms with far more bulk than (I feel) it is appropriate to respond to in a forum such as this. So who decides what is appropriate as a response to another TIPSters contentions? I could have quoted just a couple of the academic critics of Wilkinson

Re:[tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-17 Thread Allen Esterson
Michael Smith writes: One funny thing in Allen's post was: ...who regards himself as “about as anti-inequality an economist as you’ll find”)... Well I guess that settles that. This is proof positive that God exists. We have at last found a truly objective (unbiased) individual who is,

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-17 Thread Mike Palij
On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 03:49:01 -0800, Michael Smith wrote: Again Palij you miss the points. It's pretty funny how you do that so consistently, but not surprising. You don't confuse me by hiding your 'logic' behind being long winded...it's just really boring. Maybe instead of giving your

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-17 Thread Dr. Bob Wildblood
:14:26 -0500 From: Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu Subject: Re: [tips] The joy of stats To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu Cc: Mike Palij m...@nyu.edu On Fri, 17 Dec 2010 03:49:01 -0800, Michael Smith wrote: Again Palij you miss the points. It's pretty funny

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-17 Thread Christopher D. Green
Allen Esterson wrote: I note that, keeping in mind Mill’s dictum that “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that”, This from the man who is criticizing a book he hasn't yet read. Chris -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, ON M3J

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-17 Thread Michael Smith
I agree. I wouldn't normally respond to Mike P's personal innuendos and comments in kind (which are usually, if not always, initiated by him to multiple posters on TIPS), but I thought I would this time in order to highlight its inappropriateness and the degree to which Mike P is willing to

RE: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-17 Thread Rick Froman
I nominate this thread as the most inappropriately (or ironically) named thread in the history of TIPS given the extent to which each subsequent post has clearly sucked all of the joy out of the list. In fact, my stats classes are a laugh riot compared to this dreary sequence of ad hominem

Re:[tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-17 Thread Allen Esterson
Chris Green writes of my posts in response to his repeated commendations of *The Spirit Level*: This from the man who is criticizing a book he hasn't yet read. Chris: Please check my posts and quote where I have given my personal view of the book. All I have done is quote the criticisms of a

Re:[tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-16 Thread Allen Esterson
On 15 December Chris Green cited evidence he thinks is supportive of the conclusions of the book I was pushing a few weeks ago: _The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone_. As I wrote in a post under the thread on “objectivity” recently, while one can never completely remove one’s

Re:[tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-16 Thread Allen Esterson
A postscript to my post on *The Spirit Level*: I don’t pretend to have done more than glance through the *The Spirit Level*. To properly read a book brimful of statistics I have to be (a) in the right frame of mind (b) have little else occupying my time, neither of which is currently the

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-16 Thread Christopher Green
Again, Allen overwhelms with far more bulk than (I feel) it is appropriate to respond to in a forum such as this. I will say, in response to Kay's critique, that one should look at the whole book. It is written for a popular audience, and so does not include correlations coefficients in the

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-16 Thread Michael Smith
I think I'll try to match Allen's lengthy response. I haven't read it (The Spirit Level) either (although I think I have it somewhere and have been planning to). I think Chris made a good point that it is a popular book and so perhaps focuses on readability. This, however, doesn't mean the

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-16 Thread Mike Palij
On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 07:35:53 -0800, Michael Smith allegedly wrote: But the most hillarious one is from one critics response that Allen presents that includes: The evidence presented in the book is mostly a series of scatter diagrams, with a regression line drawn through them. This is hillarious

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-16 Thread Jim Clark
Hi It is not just sociology that suffers from excessive ideological promotion / criticism of non-experimental research. Psychology as well has many issues (theories, models, whatever, ...) that will only or primarily be examined non-experimentally. It behooves us as scholars / researchers /

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-16 Thread Michael Smith
Mike P: As someone who is familiar with the research methods literature in sociology. Congratulations. I think most here are familiar with regression. I am puzzled about (a) why you are laughing (outside of your being prone to laugh at things for no apparent reason) ...better than being a

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-16 Thread Mike Palij
On Thu, 16 Dec 2010 18:11:45 -0800, Michael Smith wrote: Mike P: As someone who is familiar with the research methods literature in sociology. Congratulations. I think most here are familiar with regression. Non sequitur. You self-servingly edited out most of post which showed that

Re:[tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-15 Thread Allen Esterson
Stephen Black drew attention to: A remarkable graphical display of economic progress at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo As the clip indicates, this is from a BBC 4 TV documentary, which I saw last week. I have no comment on the topic of the clip itself, but here's something on the

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-15 Thread Christopher D. Green
Stephen Black drew attention to: A remarkable graphical display of economic progress at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbkSRLYSojo Rosling fails to point out one of the most significant aspects of the data: almost all of the increases life expectancy come between incomes of $400

RE: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-15 Thread Marc Carter
-- From: Christopher D. Green [mailto:chri...@yorku.ca] Sent: Wednesday, December 15, 2010 8:17 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] The joy of stats Stephen Black drew attention to: A remarkable graphical display of economic progress at http

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-15 Thread sblack
On 15 Dec 2010 at 5:34, Allen Esterson wrote: But just one caveat: he [Rosling] never gives the slightest indication that statistics can be a means of (deliberately or otherwise - and I think it is often otherwise) deceiving people. Evidently he has not heard of (or chooses to ignore in his

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-14 Thread John Kulig
As my students would say, really cool! I was looking (eyeball only) to see if the line of best fit remained about the same through the years ... despite some fluctuations, the basic positive (sort of linear) correlation remained. Now, if we achieved what he suggested at the end - greater

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-14 Thread Jim Clark
Hi Rosling has been doing a great job not only of presenting results, but of making massive amounts of statistical data widely available in accessible form. I've used his website at http://www.gapminder.org/ for a class exercise in my culture and psychology course the past few years. The

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-14 Thread Jim Clark
Hi Just a small point ... the GDP axis is NOT linear ... it is a logarithmic scale. Note the 3 values given at equal intervals are 400, 4000, and 4, the logs of which are 2.6, 3.6, and 4.6. It is this transformation that makes the relationship appear linear. In fact there is a marked

Re: [tips] The joy of stats

2010-12-14 Thread John Kulig
in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 3:28:22 PM Subject: Re: [tips] The joy of stats Hi Just a small point ... the GDP axis is NOT linear ... it is a logarithmic scale. Note the 3 values given at equal intervals are 400, 4000, and 4