Statistics and journalists
The (US) National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting is having its annual conference. This is a project of Investigative Reporters & Editors, whose statistics interventions for journalists range from a set of statistical tipsheets to having Hadley Wickham teach R to the nerdier ones. Unfortunately, it’s harder to fund this sort of thing in a small country.
Liz Lucas, one of the participants in a recent ‘statistics boot camp’ wrote about why journalists should learn statistics
When confronted with this statistical reality, what did the state officials say? In effect, “leave the statistical analysis to the government, OK?”
Now, if that doesn’t make you want to run for the nearest copy of “Statistics for Dummies”, I don’t know what will.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »