May 6, 2013
Some surprising things
- From Felix Salmon: US population is increasing, and people are moving to the cities, so why is (sufficiently fine-scale) population density going down? Because rich people take up more space and fight for stricter zoning. You’ve heard of NIMBYs, but perhaps not of BANANAs
- From the New York Times. One of the big credit-rating companies is no longer using debts referred for collection as an indicator, as long as they end up paid. This isn’t a new spark of moral feeling, it’s just for better prediction.
- And from Felix Salmon again: Firstly, Americans are bad at statistics. When it comes to breast cancer, they massively overestimate the probability that early diagnosis and treatment will lead to a cure, while they also massively underestimate the probability that an undetected cancer will turn out to be harmless.
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 »