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How did white people vote? The U.S. government’s guide to blogging

Sharad’s blog

Posted on March 25, 2009 7:49 PM by Andrew

Sharad Goel is a brilliant guy who works at Yahoo with Duncan Watts and just started a blog on statistical topics. It’s great so far and I’m sure will continue to be so.

This entry was posted in Miscellaneous Science by Andrew. Bookmark the permalink.
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  1. Opher Donchin on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 19, 2026 4:36 AM

    Thanks for that. I would say that both these books have a ‘Frequentist first’ approach. That is, Bayesian statistics are…

  2. AAAnonymous on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 19, 2026 4:24 AM

    Quote from the blog post: "“How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”" This is where some parts…

  3. piglet42 on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 19, 2026 3:44 AM

    This is true to some exstent but it's also true that the US has a demented autocrat president whose openly…

  4. Phil on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 19, 2026 1:51 AM

    "With no smartphone you lose your job", that's an interesting claim! Most people do not need a smartphone to do…

  5. Anonymous on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 18, 2026 7:15 PM

    Thanks for calling me out on this. Let me try to be clearer by being concrete. Here are things that…

  6. Eric on Survey Statistics: Modeling Complex Contingency TablesAugust 18, 2026 5:56 PM

    I think that the positivity constraint was in step 5 of part 4 of the poster where there's a post-hoc…

  7. Bob Carpenter on Survey Statistics: Modeling Complex Contingency TablesAugust 18, 2026 5:35 PM

    Thanks for the pointer to Goplerud et al.'s poster. I have a pull request for the Stan User's Guide, https://github.com/stan-dev/docs/pull/967,…

  8. Raphael K on Survey Statistics: Modeling Complex Contingency TablesAugust 18, 2026 5:00 PM

    Thanks for sharing! I am fascinated by the idea. The decomposition/approximation in step 2 is pretty smart. But I am…

  9. John G Williams on The improvement in political analysis in the past 25 years, as demonstrated by excellent demonstrations of statistical workflow from Elliott Morris, Nate Silver, and Eli Mckown-DawsonAugust 18, 2026 3:45 PM

    On polling, we have this from a story in The Hill: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/6035570-median-strategies-closes-fake-polls/ “All previously published polling releases have been withdrawn…

  10. piglet42 on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 3:35 PM

    “In this story, maybe the problem isn’t oligarchy. Elon Musk’s billions don’t tangibly change my life.” Why take somebody seriously…

  11. piglet42 on The improvement in political analysis in the past 25 years, as demonstrated by excellent demonstrations of statistical workflow from Elliott Morris, Nate Silver, and Eli Mckown-DawsonAugust 18, 2026 3:25 PM

    Since you link to your election analysis from 2008 I feel compelled to point out that the very first sentence…

  12. Daniel Lakeland on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 2:12 PM

    Dale, I'm delighted you agree with me on the importance of agency and that it is sorely lacking. The next…

  13. Will on The improvement in political analysis in the past 25 years, as demonstrated by excellent demonstrations of statistical workflow from Elliott Morris, Nate Silver, and Eli Mckown-DawsonAugust 18, 2026 2:10 PM

    "There aren’t so many all-purpose pundits like David Brooks—people who know essentially nothing and have no real interest in learning…

  14. Carlos Ungil on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 2:05 PM

    > I quoted several sections where he literally says that banks must borrow before they can lend Really? The closest…

  15. Andrew on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 1:52 PM

    Interesting connection here to this post from yesterday.

  16. Andrew on Jamaican me crazy yet againAugust 18, 2026 1:51 PM

    Gdanning: Thanks. I must have passed by this place a zillion times and never noticed it. I'll have to check…

  17. mrT on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 1:41 PM

    Americans may have larger average gene size. AMY1 is associated with starchy diet, higher body fat, and accelerated brain developments.…

  18. Dale Lehman on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 1:39 PM

    Yes, I think agency is a key concept when talking about happiness. I think we can all agree that slaves…

  19. Daniel Lakeland on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 1:30 PM

    Joshua, I think my slave analogy worked exactly as intended. it was intended to make stark the role that *agency*…

  20. paul alper on The improvement in political analysis in the past 25 years, as demonstrated by excellent demonstrations of statistical workflow from Elliott Morris, Nate Silver, and Eli Mckown-DawsonAugust 18, 2026 1:24 PM

    This strikes me as a bit one-sided: "I remember Bill James once wrote, in reaction to the unexpected playoff heroics…

  21. Gdanning on Jamaican me crazy yet againAugust 18, 2026 1:11 PM

    If you haven't been, I would recommend pretty much all of the appetizers at Bar Manje, including the patties. http://www.goodenoughtoeat.com/barmanje/…

  22. huan on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 12:41 PM

    When I traveled Kingston, Jamaica, 3 years ago I got a very different picture. Many neighborhoods were very poor and…

  23. Carlos Ungil on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 18, 2026 12:40 PM

    Maybe I misunderstood your remark about getting "an understanding of frequentist procedures without getting bogged down in frequentist justifications" but…

  24. Luis Guirola on How to avoid the “clean data, clean model” trap when teaching statistics and data scienceAugust 18, 2026 12:06 PM

    Does anyone know a good case study to teach instrumental variables? The paper that is always used to teach this…

  25. Joshua on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 12:01 PM

    Somebody - Cumulatively, while the math doesn't cancel out, things can change on a relative scale, but not on a…

  26. Joshua on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 11:43 AM

    Daniel - For me, the slavery comparison actually works against the point you're making. The stress of choosing between rent…

  27. somebody on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 10:07 AM

    Why don’t people who are struggling to pay the rent save some money by ditching the smartphone and the streaming…

  28. Daniel Lakeland on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 9:56 AM

    Phil, the problem with looking only at what we consume, such as the square footage we live in, is that…

  29. John Kane on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 9:49 AM

    Added to my collection of quotes. It does tend to match my impression. Thanks.

  30. Andrew on Jamaican me crazy yet againAugust 18, 2026 9:00 AM

    Jeff: Yes, exactly! This one couldn't wait.

  31. turn_of_the_90s on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 8:16 AM

    If only everyone saw it through such a rational lens. Traveling brings a lot of anxiety, and people want to…

  32. Dale Lehman on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 7:56 AM

    Daniel I'm ok with using the supplemental poverty measure as it seems a definite improvement. So, 12.9% rather than 10.6%…

  33. Jeff on Jamaican me crazy yet againAugust 18, 2026 7:16 AM

    Given the timing of this post, it seems to have qualified for the "particularly relevant" exemption to the yearlong queue.

  34. Anoneuoid on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 18, 2026 6:47 AM

    I kind of agree with that. Start with probability (p) as a combinatorics problem. Literally x = favored divided by…

  35. Opher Donchin on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 18, 2026 6:47 AM

    My impression is that teaching Bayesian statistics after Frequentist statistics leaves students confused and ambivalent. This at least for the…

  36. Anon on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 18, 2026 4:44 AM

    What do you mean by frequentists having previous data? Are you confusing Neyman-Pearson decision theoretics with the statistical machinery of…

  37. Anon on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 18, 2026 4:34 AM

    I would say that in-sample goodness-of-fit style tests can still be problematic within the general context of poorly conceptualised science:…

  38. Phil on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 18, 2026 12:56 AM

    I didn't ask about the average square foot of housing that an adult owns, I asked about the square footage…

  39. Proxomitron on Jamaican me crazy yet againAugust 17, 2026 9:36 PM

    If it's worth more than 0.3% of a visit with Grover Cleveland, you'll come out ahead.

  40. James B. Shearer on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 17, 2026 9:26 PM

    The short answer would be "money isn't everything". Lots of people are upset about things that don't have a lot…

  41. Daniel Lakeland on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 17, 2026 8:42 PM

    Anonymous, indeed over the last 20 years in comments on this blog I have repeatedly made the point that econ…

  42. Anonymous on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 17, 2026 6:47 PM

    The only other time I have seen a dimensionless measure of income compared with cost of living is in a…

  43. Daniel Lakeland on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 17, 2026 4:43 PM

    Dale I really dislike the reliance on the explosion of electronics as evidence of "wealth". Let's talk about the modern…

  44. Opher Donchin on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 17, 2026 3:29 PM

    I have a full Frequentist course. This course used to be a Frequentist course and served as a prelude to…

  45. Opher Donchin on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 17, 2026 3:25 PM

    Tha is for these! I will definitely look into them!

  46. Opher Donchin on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 17, 2026 3:23 PM

    Here is the direct link to the syllabus: https://github.com/opherdonchin/StatisticsCourse_36714361/blob/main/Syllabus_2026-2.pdf The first time I taught the course, I tried to push…

  47. Opher Donchin on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 17, 2026 3:13 PM

    I've taught the course a couple of times by this point. I agree that the parallels and differences between posterior…

  48. Carlos Ungil on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 17, 2026 3:04 PM

    > I want to give them an understanding of frequentist procedures without getting bogged down in frequentist justifications. Paraphrasing Savage,…

  49. J. J. Ramsey on Frequentism for Bayesians: He wants to teach frequentist methods to engineering students with a strong Bayesian backgroundAugust 17, 2026 3:01 PM

    I suspect that your misunderstanding of Bayesian methods as being based on made-up data is likely based on one of…

  50. Eric Bennett Rasmusen on “How Can America Be So Miserable When It’s So Rich?”August 17, 2026 2:33 PM

    Americans are rich, even the poor ones, but that makes certain problems worse--- alcohol, meth, and fentanyl are more affordable.…

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