The Year of Moving Forward

The Year of Moving Forward
At our 4 person wedding reception in DC

Friday, June 12, 2009

Multilevel Regression and Candy

I love multilevel regression and poststratification. Even if I have forgotten some of what I learned. Go here to see the graph and explanation...


...but basically, it shows that states which are gay friendly are moving quicker toward support for gay marriage than states that are gay hateful. Notice Alabama is 3rd from the bottom.

Is that a surprise? Not at first glance, but statistically it is unusual.

"I was stunned when I saw this picture. I generally expect to see uniform swing, or maybe even some "regression to the mean," with the lowest values increasing the most and the highest values declining, relative to the average. But that's not what's happening at all. What's going on?"

Possible explanations, the authors explain, are:

1. Tipping point. As gay rights become accepted more gays come out of the closet. More gays out of the closet means more straight friends and family understanding and wanting to support.

2. Politics. As a state turns more blue, it becomes wiser for a politician to support progressive issues.

More explanation is at the site, take a look.

Or, how about some Candy.


I just bought some candy to throw to parade viewers tomorrow night. I will have State Representative Patricia Todd and Jen riding in the truck!

And here is Paolo Nutini, singing "Candy."






Gossip. Because Bessemer Opinions Readers want to know.

Paolo is Scottish, and you can catch it in his voice. Nice. It seems that every artist has the gay question. His is kind of funny. From StarPulse:

He says, "When I first started gigging, people were giving me all of these words of advice. They said: 'Find a girl in the audience and sing to her, let her be the focus of the song.' But once when I did it a guy came up to me later and said, 'I saw you looking at me throughout that song.'


"I said: 'I'm sorry man, I think there was a girl right beside you,' And he went: 'Aww, it wasn't me?'


"It was the most awkward moment. He said: 'So you're not gay?' And I said: 'No.' The dude walked away then came up again and shook my hand. He sort of went, 'I'm sorry about that see you later.'


"And then he left his number in my hand! Ten out of ten for trying but ever since then I've not run the risk again!"




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