{"id":260,"date":"2012-01-30T14:46:14","date_gmt":"2012-01-30T14:46:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rulesofreason.wordpress.com\/?p=260"},"modified":"2012-01-30T14:46:14","modified_gmt":"2012-01-30T14:46:14","slug":"when-just-looking-beats-regression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=260","title":{"rendered":"When ‘just looking’ beats regression"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a draft paper\u00a0currently under review I argue that the institutionalization of\u00a0a common EU\u00a0asylum policy has not led to a race to the bottom with respect to asylum applications, refugee status grants, and some other indicators. The graph below traces the number of asylum applications lodged in 29 European countries since 1997:\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

My conclusion is that there is no evidence in support of the theoretical expectation of a race to the bottom (an ever-declining rate of registered applications). One of the reviewers insists that I use a regression model to\u00a0quantify the change and to estimate the uncertainly of the conclusion. While in general I couldn’t agree more that being open about the uncertainty of your inferences is a fundamental part of scientific practice, in this particular case I refused to fit a regression model and calculate standards errors or confidence intervals. Why?<\/p>\n

In my opinion, just looking at the graph is convincing that there is no race to the bottom – applications rates have been down and then up again while the institutionalization of a common EU policy has only strengthened over the last decade. Calculating standard errors will be superficial because it is hard to think about the yearly averages\u00a0as samples from some underlying population. Estimating a regression which would quantify the EU effect would only work if the model is sufficiently good to capture the fundamental dynamics of asylum applications before isolating the EU effect, and there is no such model. But most importantly, I just didn’t feel that a regression coefficient or a standard error will improve on the inference you get by just looking at the graph: applications have been all over the place since the late 1990s and you don’t need a confidence interval to see that! But the issue has bugged me ever since – after all, the\u00a0reviewer was just asking for what would be the standard way\u00a0of approaching an empirical question.<\/p>\n

Then two days\u00a0ago I read this blog post<\/a> by William M. Briggs who (unlike myself) is a professional statistician. After showing that by manipulating the start and end points of a time series you can get any regression coefficient that you want even with randomly generated data, he concludes ‘The lesson is, of course, that straight lines should not be fit to time series.’\u00a0 <\/em>But here is the real punch line:<\/p>\n

If we want to know if there has been a change from the start to the end dates, all we have to do is look<\/em><\/strong>!<\/em> I\u2019m tempted to add a dozen more exclamation points to that sentence, it is that important. We do not have to model what we can see. No statistical test is needed to say whether the data has changed. We can just look.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But what about hypothesis testing? We need a statistical\u00a0test to refute a hypothesis, right? Let me quote some more:<\/p>\n

It is true that you can look at the data and ponder a \u201cnull hypothesis\u201d of \u201cno change\u201d and then fit a model to kill off this straw man. But why? If the model you fit is any good, it will be able to skillfully predict new data…. And if it\u2019s a bad model, why clutter up the picture with spurious, misleading lines?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the inimitable prose of Prof. Briggs, ‘if you want to claim that the data has gone up, down, did a swirl, or any other damn thing, <\/em>just look at it!’<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a draft paper\u00a0currently under review I argue that the institutionalization of\u00a0a common EU\u00a0asylum policy has not led to a race to the bottom with respect to asylum applications, refugee status grants, and some other indicators. The graph below traces the number of asylum applications lodged in 29 European countries since 1997: My conclusion is that there is no evidence in support of the theoretical expectation of a race to the bottom (an ever-declining rate of registered applications). One of the reviewers insists that I use a regression model to\u00a0quantify the change and to estimate the uncertainly of the conclusion. While in general I couldn’t agree more that being open about the uncertainty of your inferences is a fundamental part of scientific practice, in this particular case I refused to fit a regression model and calculate standards errors or confidence intervals. Why? In my opinion, just looking at the graph is convincing that there is no race to the bottom – applications rates have been down and then up again while the institutionalization of a common EU policy has only strengthened over the last decade. Calculating standard errors will be superficial because it is hard to think about the yearly averages\u00a0as samples from some underlying population. Estimating a regression which would quantify the EU effect would only work if the model is sufficiently good to capture the fundamental dynamics of asylum applications before isolating the EU effect, and there is no such model. But most importantly, I just didn’t feel…<\/p>\n

Continue readingWhen ‘just looking’ beats regression<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[45],"tags":[82,83,103,250,554,646],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7g3hj-4c","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":810,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=810","url_meta":{"origin":260,"position":0},"title":"Visualizing asylum statistics","date":"May 30, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Note: of potential interest to R users for the dynamic Google chart generated via googleVis in R and discussed towards the end of the post. Here you can go directly to the graph. An emergency refugee center, opened in September 2013 in an abandoned school in Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo by\u00a0Alessandro\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Data visualization"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/dynamic-asylum-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":845,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=845","url_meta":{"origin":260,"position":1},"title":"5 simple things to know about asylum policy in the European Union","date":"September 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Migration is quickly turning into the defining issue of our time. This might sound clich\u00e9, but is true. Not only does migration top the list of most important problems facing society, but it is also divisive in a way no other issue is. Unlike problems like inequality or the environment,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "EU governance"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":863,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=863","url_meta":{"origin":260,"position":2},"title":"The Commission\u2019s plan for reforming EU asylum policy is very ambitious. But can it work?","date":"May 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Note: A 3,000-word analysis of reform plans that are probably never gonna see the light of day anyways, based on simple\u00a0arithmetics\u00a0and not-so-simple\u00a0simulations. Also, an excuse to do graphs. Re-posted from Eurosearch.\u00a0 \u00a0 The European Commission announced last Wednesday a new package of proposals designed to reform the EU asylum system.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "EU governance"","img":{"alt_text":"asylum_application_and quotas12","src":"http:\/\/eurosearch.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/asylum_application_and-quotas12.png?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":544,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=544","url_meta":{"origin":260,"position":3},"title":"Ethnic job discrimination in the Netherlands","date":"October 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"I have more than one reason to care about job discrimination based on ethnicity in the Netherlands. A new study shows that there is plenty to worry about. In short, the researchers sent identical job applications varying only the name - Dutch vs. ethnic (Antillean, Surinamese, Turkish, Moroccan). The 'Dutch'\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Field experiments"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":290,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=290","url_meta":{"origin":260,"position":4},"title":"Weighted variance and weighted coefficient of variation","date":"February 13, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Often we want to compare the variability\u00a0of a variable in different contexts - say, the variability of unemployment in different countries over time, or the variability of height in two populations, etc. The most often used measures of variability are the variance\u00a0and the standard deviation (which is just the square\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Measurement"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1020,"url":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/?p=1020","url_meta":{"origin":260,"position":5},"title":"Immigration and voting for the radical right in Andalusia","date":"December 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"I wrote a short text for the European Politics and Policy (EUROPP) blog on the link between immigration presence and voting for Vox, a relatively young radical right party, in the Spanish region of Andalusia.\u00a0 Full text is here, see also this post from 2015 about a similar link with\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Immigration and asylum policy"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/and_vox2_europp.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-design.dimiter.eu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}