The Future of Everything by David Orrell. Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York. I wanted to like this book, which was supposed to be an examination of how well scientists made predictions—my special […]
Briggs
12 million kids are being held hostage by a psychiatric disorder
source: New York Times My God! 12 million! Something must be done! This bulletin board appears at various places in New York City (as reported in the New York Times). It is […]
Another attempt to show abstinence is bad: “Losing virginity early or late tied to health risks”
That headline is from an MSNBC story of the same name. Taken at face value, it argues that, for maximum healthiness, we should all aim to lose our virginity at the same […]
Beer: alcohol, calories, and carbs
Which beer style has the most calories? In general: porters. The least: lager, the style of beer with which you are probably most familiar. Budweiser, Miller, Coors, the majority of all mass-market […]
Never use bar charts! Case study #1
This graphic comes from the New York Times article “Social Security Disability Cases Last Longer as Backlog Rises.” It obviously intends to show how applications have increased since 1998. This is a […]
How to Exaggerate Your Results: Case study #2
That’s a fairly typical ad, which is now running on TV, and which is also on Glad’s web site. Looks like a clear majority would rather buy Glad’s fine trash bag than […]
Why most statistics don’t mean what you think they do: Part II.
In Part I of this post, we started with a typical problem: which of two advertising campaigns was “better” in terms of generating more sales. Campaigns A and B were each tested […]
Why most statistics don’t mean what you think they do: Part I.
Here’s a common, classical statistics problem. Uncle Ted’s chain of Kill ’em and Grill ’em Venison Burgers tested two ad campaigns, A and B, and measured the sales of sausage sandwiches for […]
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