Reply to Garcia et al.: Common mistakes in measuring frequency dependent word characteristics

TL;DR

This paper clarifies misconceptions about measuring frequency-dependent word positivity, emphasizing proper data analysis and demonstrating that previous criticisms are based on misinterpretations and improper data handling.

Contribution

It defends the original findings by illustrating correct analysis methods and showing that criticisms stem from data misreading and methodological errors.

Findings

English word frequency data aligns with related surveys

Survey design does not bias results

Measurement error does not account for positivity biases

Abstract

We demonstrate that the concerns expressed by Garcia et al. are misplaced, due to (1) a misreading of our findings in [1]; (2) a widespread failure to examine and present words in support of asserted summary quantities based on word usage frequencies; and (3) a range of misconceptions about word usage frequency, word rank, and expert-constructed word lists. In particular, we show that the English component of our study compares well statistically with two related surveys, that no survey design influence is apparent, and that estimates of measurement error do not explain the positivity biases reported in our work and that of others. We further demonstrate that for the frequency dependence of positivity---of which we explored the nuances in great detail in [1]---Garcia et al. did not perform a reanalysis of our data---they instead carried out an analysis of a different, statistically improper data set and introduced a nonlinearity before performing linear regression.