Posted inStatistics
Do Heat Waves Cause Birth Defects?
What would you name a paper which purports to discover that heat waves stress pregnant women and thus cause birth defects but which never once measures the actual exposure of…
Posted inCulture Statistics
No Religion Is Third-Largest World Group: Or, How Inaccurate Are Surveys On Religious Belief?
The actual headline at Reuters was "No religion" is the third-largest world group after Christians, Muslim, but my expurgated version is close enough. It's also similar to many of the…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
The Data Is The Data, Not The Model: With Climatology Time Series Example
How not to plot The following plot was sent to me yesterday for comment. I cannot disclose the sender, nor the nature of the data, but neither of these are…
Posted inStatistics
On-Line Statistics Course: Ideas And Your Opinions
We talked about this a couple of months ago, but now the time is nigh to build and create an on-line statistics course, or courses. There are several problems: content,…
Posted inCulture Statistics
Were Medications Responsible For The Connecticut Lanza Murders?
Some are speculating that the evil, and thank God dead, Adam Lanza was on SSRIs, which are medications designed to mess with your mind (in the pleasantest of ways), and…
Posted inStatistics
Politico’s Biased Reporting Of Its Own Poll
Today's post is over at Legal Insurrection. The headline, helpfully supplied by William Jacobson, is "Politico poll showing 'plurality support' for gay marriage also shows majority opposition." Headline writing is…
Posted inCulture Statistics
What Can We Learn From A Crude Model Of Sexually Transmitted Diseases?
It's Statistical Modeling Day, so let's look at one dealing with sexually transmitted diseases. Why this subject? Well, according to New York's CBS 2, "Study Shows Soaring STD Rates In…
Posted inPhilosophy Statistics
What Does The Regression Equation Mean? Causality? Something Else?
Saw this tweet this fine morning: https://twitter.com/MarkThoma/status/276542962622668800 and downloaded the paper at the landing site, co-authored by Judea Pearl, he of Causality fame (a recommended book). Pearl and a co-author…