9 November Posts (2010)

Statistics Education
We’ve just gone through linear regression in class and I stumbled on the Anscombe’s quartet example: basically it is canned data that “games” the regression algorithm. The regression coefficients and “r” value agree up to 2 to 3 decimal places even though the data sets themselves, when plotted, do not resemble each other:

Obviously the outliers cause problems in a couple of cases. But the lesson: look at a plot!

Philosophically, a regression line is a type of projection and when one does a projection, one loses information. And in pathological projections, one can lose a LOT of information.

Politics Surprise, Dick Morris wildly overestimated how many seats the Republicans would pick up. But in his defense (and I hate defending Dick Morris), he saw the possibilities of this sort of thing happening back when Intrade saw it unlikely and he aimed the Republicans to aim high.

Trivia: a Naval Academy classmate (1981) took a “safe” Democratic seat (MN-08).

Sarah Palin: she reads the newspapers, but doesn’t understand what she reads:

In remarks delivered at a Phoenix convention, and first leaked by the The National Review, Palin criticized the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing policy, in which the bank will purchase up to $600 billion of new U.S. government debt (as part of a plan that could reach $900 billion), and urged Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to “cease and desist.”

As HuffPost’s Shahien Nasiripour noted Monday, the Federal Reserve operates independently of any other government body, and so political criticism of it is unusual.

Even more unusual were the specifics of Palin’s critique: As WSJ’s Sudeep Reddy pointed out Monday, she doesn’t get all of her facts right. In response to Palin’s assertion that “everyone who ever goes out shopping for groceries knows that prices have risen significantly over the past year or so,” Reddy wrote Monday that “Grocery prices haven’t risen all that significantly, in fact.” He notes that prices have actually increased only 0.6 percent over the past year. It’s the lowest rate on record — so low that it inspired a high-profile Twitter fight late last month.

But Palin would have none of it. She wrote in her Facebook note, “That’s odd, because just last Thursday, November 4, I read an article in Mr. Reddy’s own Wall Street Journal titled ‘Food Sellers Grit Teeth, Raise Prices: Packagers and Supermarkets Pressured to Pass Along Rising Costs, Even as Consumers Pinch Pennies.’ She continued:

Now I realize I’m just a former governor and current housewife from Alaska, but even humble folks like me can read the newspaper. I’m surprised a prestigious reporter for the Wall Street Journal doesn’t.

Those arrogant elitists! Oh wait:

Reddy has responded to Palin on Twitter, pointing out that she has actually misread the WSJ article she refers to. As Reddy notes, the article’s first sentence discusses “the tamest year of food pricing in nearly two decades.”

The source of confusion comes in the next paragraph. The article says the cost of goods has risen, a burden that food sellers must decide whether to pass on to customers via prices. The rise in prices hasn’t actually happened yet. Palin omits this key fact.

Damn…maybe Gov. Palin needs a Cliff-notes version of those “harder” newspapers.

Anyway, remember that she is a leading candidate to head the Republican 2012. But hey, we are talking about representative democracy and she well represents most Republicans.

Speaking of “teh stupid”, I sure miss Christine O’Donnell. So I had to read this to get my “fix”. Ok, it is a routine article that answers the question: “could she have won had those Republican meanies given her more money? Guess at the answer.

More on this:

Advertisement