Sandbox

More on the Monty Hall problem.
The Mathematical Gazette,
November 2009
Setphen K Lucas, Jason Rosenhouse

The Senate’s health care calculations
New York Times, 18 November, 2009
Andrew Gelman, Nate Silver and Daniel Lee

Using some beautiful statistical graphics, the authors discuss the politics of the health care debate . One graphic explores a putative relationship between senators' positions on health care and public opinion in their home states. However, the relationship is shown to disappear when a third variable is accounted for, namely President Obama's 2008 margin of victory in each state. A second graphic uses data maps to illustrate public opinion on health care broken down by age, family income and state.

A November 19 post from Andrew Gelman's blog provides a fascinating description of how the graphics evolved, including the collaboration with graphics professionals at the New York Times as they worked to transform the originals into an Op/Ed Chart. We read there that:

Our graphs took months of effort, but the Times versions were not immediate either. We had to go back and forth several times to get the clarity we all wanted. I'd like to think, though, that our effort was not wasted: by being able to make a bunch of graphs that were informative for us, we were able to home in on the story.

For some of that history, see the earlier October 12 post.

Additional commentary about these graphs can be found on the Junk Charts blog.

Submitted by Bill Peterson