April 1, 2013

Briefly

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Despite the date, this is not in any way an April Fools post

  • “Data is not killing creativity, it’s just changing how we tell stories”, from Techcrunch
  • Turning free-form text into journalism: Jacob Harris writes about an investigation into food recalls (nested HTML tables are not an open data format either)
  • Green labels look healthier than red labels, from the Washington Post. When I see this sort of research I imagine the marketing experts thinking “how cute, they figured that one out after only four years”
  • Frances Woolley debunks the recent stories about how Facebook likes reveal your sexual orientation (with comments from me).  It’s amazing how little you get from the quoted 88% accuracy, even if you pretend the input data are meaningful.  There are some measures of accuracy that you shouldn’t be allowed to use in press releases.
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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 »