August 28, 2014
Briefly
‘Dodgy use of data’ edition [Background: the Washington Post is the serious DC paper. The Washington Times, not so much]
- From the Washington Post “But really, is it possible that more than 1 in 6 people in France could “back” Islamic State? When you look at the numbers closely, something doesn’t add up.”
- From journalism/editing blog HeadsUp: “Too bad a clear conscience and a pure heart can’t turn correlation into cause, no matter what your first named source says.”
- From economics blog TVHE: “For example, [Tourism Industry Association New Zealand] claims that 15%of Upper Hutt residents’ jobs depend on the tourism industry, while only 9% of residents’ jobs in Queenstown-Lakes District depend on tourism.”
- From linguistics blog Language Log: “I’ll merely observe that the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution scores 68% on the Latinometer, well over the “probably lying” threshold. “
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 »