Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

From a letter to the New York Times:

Regarding the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama on Friday (The New York Times on the Web, Oct. 9):

I applaud this stunning decision as a much-needed boost to the image of the United States on the world stage and as a vote of confidence in President Obama's diplomatic efforts.

But conservatives in this country are going to see it as an effort by the Nobel Committee to unduly influence President Obama's policy review on Afghanistan. Meanwhile, progressives will find succor in what Rahm Emanuel jokingly referred to as an "Oslo beats Copenhagen" moment.

Nonetheless, congratulations, Mr. President! This award could not have come at a better time for you and America.

The GCP event was set for an 8 hour period beginning about an hour before the announcement, which was around 5 am ET (09:00 GMT), to cover a little anticipation and a substantial time for the news to spread especially in the US. The result shows Chisquare 28983.463 on 28000 for a probability of 0.222, and Z = 0.766, a modest positive deviation.

Obama Wins Nobel
Peace Prize

It is important to keep in mind that we have only a tiny statistical effect, so that it is always hard to distinguish signal from noise. This means that every "success" might be largely driven by chance, and every "null" might include a real signal overwhelmed by noise. In the long run, a real effect can be identified only by patiently accumulating replications of similar analyses.


Go to Main Results Page

GCP Home