8 Comments
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Grumpy Liberal's avatar

Always enjoy reading your posts.

Seth's avatar
Jan 27Edited

I guess I have to read Helen DeWitt now. Also, I'm glad someone noticed that Andrew Gelman's blog is like 50% literature content!

Is it a coincidence that Gelman's philosophy of statistics is deeply pragmatic?

Henry Oliver's avatar

Truly such a great literature blogger. Yes, you MUST read HDW!! I don't know enough about stats honestly to say

Seth's avatar

Should I start with Last Samurai or short stories? Or somewhere else?

I think the connection, if there is one, is that Gelman is interested in the broader world -- literature, also being a political scientist, etc -- and his statistical philosophy reflects his interest in actively engaging with the outside world in a holistic way. He is comfortable invoking ideas that are not themselves purely statistical or mathematical, and does not see statistics as a fully separate domain.

The hardcore Bayesian and Frequentist statistical philosophy stuff, in contrast, is very inside-baseball, very self-referential, mostly about the theories-in-themselves.

Henry Oliver's avatar

Those two are the ones to read yes

Taylor Rule's avatar

Good article, I'll have to read some Somers.

Pedantic comment but the proper spelling is DeWitt.

Henry Oliver's avatar

whoops thanks for pointing that out