December 1, 2014

Ghosts and zombies

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A month late for the season, but still interesting:

  • The Iraq military reportedly has about 50,000 ‘ghost’ soldiers, existing only for payroll fraud.
  • Jordan Weissman at Slate tries to track down a zombie figure of $400 billion/year for illegal sports betting in the US. It has been cited in an academic paper and a Supreme Court brief, without any primary source being given.
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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 »