March 31, 2013

Briefly

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Easter trading rules don’t appear to forbid blogging today, so a few links

  • Using words like “common”, “uncommon”, “rare”, “very rare” to describe risks of drug side-effects is recommended by guidelines,  and patients like it better than numbers, but it leads to serious overestimation of the actual risks (PDF poster, via Hilda Bastian)
  • A map of gun deaths in the US since the Sandy Hook shootings
  • Stuff’s small-business section says: “Scientists believe the Kiwifruit virus Psa came to New Zealand in a 2009 shipment of flowers.” I hope it’s just the newspaper, not the scientists, that thinks Psa is a virus
  • Another story about petrol prices in the Herald, linked to remind you all that the government collects and publishes data.  You can find it, even if AA, the petrol companies, and the media can’t.  This time AA seems to be right: the importer margin is about 4c above the trend line, which itself is up 5c on last year.
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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 »