Graphic Anarchy

Serious works of economics or statistics tend to be written in a serious style in some version of plain academic English. [...]

Serious works of social science nowadays use all sorts of data display, from showing no data at all, to tables, to un-designed Excel-style bar charts, to Cleveland-style dot and line plots, to creative new data displays, to ornamental information visualizations. The analogy in writing style would be if some journal articles were written in the pattern of Ezra Pound, others like Ernest Hemingway, and others in the style of James Joyce or William Faulkner.

Andrew Gelman, "Standardized Writing Styles and Standardized Graphing Styles"

Why Be an Early Adopter?

Old technology is typically pretty stable; new technology is improving. It can make sense to switch early (before the new technology actually performs better than the old) to get the benefits of being familiar with the new technology once it does take off.

Andrew Gelman, "Argument in favor of Ddulites"

Ratios of Small Numbers

Then someone at the table – and I couldn’t believe this – said, ‘My uncle smoked a hookah pipe all his life, and he lived until he was 90 years old.’ And I had a sudden flash of insight, which was this. Suppose you have something that actually kills half the people. Even if you’re a heavy smoker, your chance of dying of lung cancer is not 50 per cent, so therefore, even with something as extreme as smoking and lung cancer, you still have lots of cases where people don’t die of the disease. The evidence is certainly all around you pointing in the wrong direction – if you’re willing to accept anecdotal evidence – there’s always going to be an unlimited amount of evidence which won’t tell you anything.

Andrew Gelman on Statistics

If All Models Are Wrong. . .

If the goal of a model is to be useful, surely we need to explore [what] "useful" means. At the very least, usefulness will depend on use.

Richard Berk, quoted in: Andrew Gelman, "Useful models, model checking, and external validation: a mini-discussion"

In Other Words, Your Sample Is Biased

One thing Bill James pointed out many years ago, is that the people who privilege intuition over statistics often end up using statistics to make their points. They just don’t use statistics systematically. Instead of looking carefully at offensive contributions, they’ll say that someone hit .300 once and somebody else notched 100 RBI.

Andrew Gelman, "Note to the 'quals': Instead of competing with the 'quants,' take advantage of quantitive understanding to do better qualitative reporting and analysis"

One Theory Is That This Concept Was Invented by Parents

I've never really understood the idea that a "beach read" should be something light and fluffy. On the beach, you can relax, you have the time to get into anything. I could see wanting something light on the subway--you have to be able to get into it right away and follow it amid all the jostles. I guess the point is that when you're at the beach, you're far from the library. So what you really want for the beach is not necessarily something relaxing or easy to read, but rather a sure thing, a known quantity that you'll definitely enjoy.

Andrew Gelman, "Beach Reads, Proust, and Income Tax"