Call It A Comeback
Looks like the Web Guys are having fun with Eric:
Jack sucks. Here in St. Louis they renamed it the Arch and I thought it might have some, I don’t know, good music from the past–no. It was like growing up in Central Illinois with the musical diversity being Top 35 and and classic rock. The only thing that saved me was WXRT was on satellite and my cable company carried it.
He’s giving good press to the guy who can ensure Blagojevich’s reelection.
This is a man who said Obama would wilt with Keyes in a debate.
I haven’t followed the Washington trial over the vote in the Governor’s race very closely, so I was surprised to read that ecological inference was even being attempted given the circumstances.
The problem of ecological inference is one of the bigger problems in trying to determine how people vote in political science. Simply put, given individual vote choice isn’t available to scientists other than as exit polling, one has to utilize precint level voting returns as the lowest level of analysis to study voting behavior (different though correlated to surveys of political beliefs).
The problem is that one cannot reliably infer the behavior of individuals from a group behavior. If all you have is information concerning the aggregated group, one cannot make inferences about the individuals within the group or how they behave.
To give a fairly simple example, if one has an integrated precinct with 50% black and 50% white voters, one is unable to make any meaningful analysis of vote choice by race unless everyone votes in one way. If the final vote choice is heterogenous, one doesn’t know how individiuals voted and that means one couldn’t determine how people vote by race in such a case without an exit poll.
The reason we know a lot about black voting behavior is that America is, in a scientific sense, conveniently segregated so precincts with large numbers of African-Americans tend to only have African-Americans (please–no examples of your neighborhood–my precinct is about 50-50 and it’s an abberation).
So, the Rossi camp finds Jonathan Katz, a very talented methodologist at the California Institute of Technology to argue for an idea called proportional reduction in dealing with votes by felons that shouldn’t have occurred. He suggested simply taking the number of votes in such precincts and then reducing the number proportionally for all of the likely illegal votes in that precinct for both sides. So if Gregoire got 60% of the vote, take the total number of likely illegal votes and reduce her total by 60% of the illegal votes and reduce Rossi’s vote by 40% of the total likely illegal votes.
It’s attractive to Republicans because it reduces her totals more than his totals.
The problem is that it is statistical incompetence and so the judge ruled this morning that commits the ecological fallacy that one can determine individual behavior by aggregate statistics.
Katz’s argument was essentially that since there is limited information, making a choice based on that limited information is the best one could do–so being ‘fair’ was by assuming that felon votes were entirely independent of any factor other than geography. Such an assumption is ludicrous–it contains no information about race, gender, income, church attendance or a wide array of demographics that affect vote choice.
The argument that any information–such as geography in this case–should be used to determine how to count votes in such a case is one that essentially leads to a basic point in how we count votes–namely not counting votes.
The simple answer is that with the information available, there is no way to fairly distribute the votes between candidates. Without individual information or a large amount of specific information about the precincts and people in them where actual ecological inference techniques could be used with at least some ability to gauge the reliability of the stats, no court and no political scientist should be making conclusions about a fair distribution of those votes. To do so is statistical incompetence. One might argue for a particular hypothesis, but no one should be able to make the argument that they have reasonably confident conclusions based simply on geography.
Even with more data, one would have to be especially cautious. As Gary King, the political scientist who literaly wrote the book on ecological inference says:
Because the ecological inference problem is caused by the lack of individual-level information, no method of ecological inference, including that introduced in this book, will produce precisely accurate results in every instance.
What Katz would do is make an assumption about voters who were felons and how they voted with no information except geography to inform that assumption. For Republicans to argue for such a methodology is bizarre given their complaints over well understood techniques for oversampling in relation to the Census which would be on far better statistical ground than Katz’s idea.
While such techniques may have been utilized in other cases, that doesn’t make the technique anymore reliable or reasonable, it makes such cases as warning signs against junk science.
His more personal stuff is over at Rhodesschool.com
Chris is all upset about a crimp in his style, but despite those problems, he points to Kristen McQueary’s column that brings up Renee Kosel’s challenger, Chris MacNeil. MacNeils’ first site was MacNeilforCongress.com–oddly out of place for a state lege race, but more importantly had a really creepy picture of Pat O’Malley.
The funniest line from the current set of issues is:
Issue #3: A pro-Life / pro-Family agenda.
Chris is unafraid to proclaim opinions on issues of abortion, embryonic stem cell research, expansion of gambling, pornography, and other areas that directly affect Illinois families.
“Unafraid to proclaim opinions”
We know the answers given his allies, but wouldn’t someone who is unafraid, oh, take a position on his issues page related to these subjects?
“Let’s Not Get Excited Now”
From a NYT article in the Trib
“One was colorful and flamboyant, and the other one thought that was absolutely fine,” said Robert Redford, who produced the film of “All the President’s Men” and played Woodward. “Bob was quite comfortable with Carl being the more colorful, because that helped him do what he did best, which was to have a killer instinct masked by a very cool, Presbyterian presence.”
Now, someone needs to ask her about her feelings on daylight savings time…
This is a perfect example. Birkett was not the SA at the time and it was not his decision to “press ahead” with a third trial. The SA was Anthony Pecarelli.
True that Birkett wasn’t SA, but he was lead Prosecutor on the case when the decision was made. From the Sun-Times on March 13, 1995
Prosecutors trying Rolando Cruz for the 1983 Jeanine Nicarico slaying will ask the Illinois Supreme Court to reverse a judge’s order that they disclose whether they believe convicted sex killer Brian Dugan took part in the crime.
For weeks, prosecutors have resisted DuPage County Circuit Judge Ronald Mehling’s ruling that they disclose their theories on Dugan, the murder weapon and murder site so defense lawyers can adequately prepare their case.
Ten years ago Dugan told his lawyer that he alone killed the Naperville girl, but he refused to testify unless granted immunity from the death penalty. Prosecutors have refused to grant that.
At Cruz’s last trial in 1990, prosecutors theorized that perhaps Cruz, co-defendant Alejandro Hernandez and Dugan committed the crime together. Dugan is serving a life sentence for two unrelated murders.
Cruz, now 31, was convicted in that trial and sentenced to death. But last summer, the state Supreme Court overturned the conviction. Hernandez was convicted in a separate trial in 1991, but the Illinois Appellate Court reversed his conviction in January. Prosecutors are appealing that ruling.
On Friday, prosecutors Joseph Birkett and Robert Huiner submitted their response to Mehling’s order. As to the murder weapon, they said they would rely on statements Cruz allegedly made to others, in which he told one person a baseball bat was used, another that a tire iron was the weapon, and a third that a crowbar was used.
And they listed the names of people that Cruz had allegedly stated were present during the murder: himself, Hernandez, Dugan, onetime co-defendant Stephen Buckley and two men who were original suspects but never charged.
It’s absurd to think that the decision for a third trial wasn’t consistent with the wishes of the lead prosecutor on the case at the time. Worse than that, when Birkett did become State’s Attorney, he was still trying to flog the Cruz theory to death in 2002 claiming there were many unanswered questions regarding Cruz’s involvement.
I think Dan’s a decent guy from my admittedly limited interactions with him, but one thing about working blogs is that there’s a time to let things pass just as there is a time to challenge things.
Over at Rich’s place, Dan Curry is taking on Rich’s coverage of Joe Birkett and Mike Tristano pointing out that Tristano was an unpaid, informal advisor.
To which Rich should have replied, so’s Tony Rezko. I think one thing everyone should learn from the Blagojevich Administration is that being self-righteous when one has ties to clowns isn’t a recipe for success.
Goose Gander issues.
Paging Scott McClellan. Oh, why does he still have a job?
Given the government had the information on these incidents, why was the Press Offices at the White House and the Pentagon attacking Newsweek?
ArchPundit