October 30, 2013

Briefly

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  • The Legatum Prosperity Index ranks countries on a range of domains including economy, health, governance, social capital.  In their 2013 report NZ comes in 5th, and the top country in the Asia/Pacific.   Apparently, about a quarter of Kiwis believe there is widespread business or government corruption, and this is less than the figure almost everywhere else (Denmark is the exception)
  • A post on risk communication in the recent UK storm, from Ross Anderson, a computer security expert.
  • I have heard people comparing the UK storm to the recent Wellington storm, which didn’t cause any deaths despite stronger winds. Note that the UK storm killed roughly  one in twenty million of the UK population. In Wellington the same mortality rate would be about 0.01 people.
  • The Herald tells us “Texting, reading magazines, eating and applying makeup are among the top 10 driver distractions, an AA Insurance survey has found.”  Looking at the press release, AA asked about twelve distractions. Eleven of them ended up in the top ten, so the list can’t be very sensitive to respondent opinion. 
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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 »