October 29, 2014
Briefly
- The Herald reports on a genetic study in Finland that found a couple of rare genetic variants which were about 2.5 times more common in people who had committed multiple violent crimes. I don’t have anything criticise about the story, just a point about genetics. When you’re trying to interpret an association like this one from a philosophical or policy point of view, it’s helpful to note that roughly 95% of their extremely violent criminals carried a genetic variant present in only 50% of the population — an odds ratio more like 25 than 2.5.
- A story and interactive tool at Fusion, showing how changes in youth turnout would affect the US election results next week (if they happened, which they probably won’t).
- From Anthony Tockar at Neustar, how anonymised taxi ride data from New York could be used to track passengers, not just drivers.
- And the same taxi data being used for good, via mathbabe.org
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 »