December 27, 2013
Briefly
- When petrol companies raise prices, they always claim it’s due to increased costs. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell whether they were lying liars who lie or impotent cogs in the uncaring machine of international trade? Well, as we regularly point out, the NZ Government tracks the difference between import costs and retail costs for petrol, precisely so you can tell. They aren’t up to their usual standard right now, because of the holidays, but they start surveying again on Jan 7.
- UK charity Sense about Science has decided not to put out its annual summary of misleading science claims by celebrities, because it hasn’t been as bad as usual this year. They made a ‘greatest hits’ summary instead.
- Google Ads, for some reason, thinks I would be interested in a rubber wristband that purports to generate anions to improve health. There are physics problems (it probably doesn’t generate anions), medical problems (if it did, they wouldn’t help), general cluelessness (a mylar hologram is described as not containing technology), but there’s also a statistical problem. They say “Most Endevr™ users report positive benefits with our products” but unless they are in league with the NSA (or Santa) they couldn’t possible know this — a national survey would have to sample huge numbers to collect a reasonable group of users, and since the bracelet is sold over the counter at Target and some pharmacy chains, they can’t sample users directly.
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 »