Posts from August 2014 (52)

• Nicely balanced Guardian article on genetic sequencing in rare diseases

Some diagnoses open up a whole world of support groups and treatments for patients who previously had no name to put to their disorder. But even when there is no treatment, no sudden rush of hope and relief, families are grateful for the diagnosis.

• Andrew Gelman:
  

  The result is what I call the “scientific surprise” two-step: (1) When defending the plausibility of your results, you emphasize that they are just as expected from a well-estabilished scientific theory with a rich literature; (2) When publicizing your results… you emphasize the novelty and surprise value.

• From the copyediting blog “Ten Minutes Past Deadline”, an example of how statistical errors avoid getting into print (on a good day, God willing and the creek don’t rise)

• Network visualisation game to show how a disease spreads (via Flowing Data).

“…Unlike people, computer programs aren’t embarrassed by their prejudices and don’t try to hide them.” Thomas Lumley discusses the algorithm-based tools that sift data about us and our behaviour in this week’s New Zealand Listener. Click here for the full story.