Re: guess the correlation

[fabio guillermo rojas]

My guess is positive because California and New York tend to have a lot of
high income people. Around 0.4? Fabio

On Thu, 16 Dec 2004, Bryan Caplan wrote:

 I've calculated the correlation coefficient between per-capita state
 income and the percent of the vote Kerry got.  Guesses?  I'll post the
 answer in an hour.
 --
  Prof. Bryan Caplan
 Department of Economics  George Mason University
  http://www.bcaplan.com  [EMAIL PROTECTED]

 But we must deplore and, so far as possible, overcome the evils of
  habitual newspaper reading.  These evils are, chiefly, three: first,
  the waste of much time and mental energy in reading unimportant news
  and opinions, and premature, untrue, or imperfect accounts of
  important matters; second, the awakening of prejudices and the
  enkindling of passions through the partisan bias or commercial greed
  of newspaper managers; third, the loading of the mind with cheap
  literature and the development of an aversion for books and
  sustained thought.

--Delos Wilcox, The American Newspaper (1900)

the answer is...

[Bryan Caplan]

The correlation between per-capita state income and Kerry vote
percentage is +.70.  That makes Bill by far the most accurate of our
guessers.  If you do a bivariate regression, every +$1000 of per cap
income is associated with +1.48 percentage points of Kerry share.
Scatter plot with regression line is attached.
--
Prof. Bryan Caplan
   Department of Economics  George Mason University
http://www.bcaplan.com  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   But we must deplore and, so far as possible, overcome the evils of
habitual newspaper reading.  These evils are, chiefly, three: first,
the waste of much time and mental energy in reading unimportant news
and opinions, and premature, untrue, or imperfect accounts of
important matters; second, the awakening of prejudices and the
enkindling of passions through the partisan bias or commercial greed
of newspaper managers; third, the loading of the mind with cheap
literature and the development of an aversion for books and
sustained thought.
  --Delos Wilcox, The American Newspaper (1900)
inline: kervote.jpg

Re: the answer is...

[Cyril Morong]

Could there be some collinearity with education or educational attainment? If people with more education make more income (and were more likely to vote for Kerry), maybe something else is going on. I actually don't know if Kerry got more support from the best educated.