August 14, 2015
Briefly
- “As the polar ice caps melt and the earth churns through the Sixth Extinction, another unprecedented phenomenon is taking place, in the realm of sex,” says Vanity Fair. “Yeah, nah” says New York magazine. If you only talk to top Tindr users, (especially in New York) you’re going to get strange ideas about sex.
- “How Statistics guided me through life, death, and ‘The Price is Right'” by Elisa Long, in Washington Post. Dr Long writes about her breast cancer and her appearance on the famous US game show.
- At Vox EU, an analysis of the environmental benefits or otherwise of electric cars. The cars don’t emit any pollution as they run, but the power has to come from somewhere. In about half of the US, enough of the electricity comes from coal to make electric cars worse than efficient petrol or diesel cars. In NZ my impression is that a predictable night-time load would largely come from hydro, so electric cars would be green. In Australia, probably not.
- You probably saw the Herald story on speeding by NZTA staff. A nice example of using data (obtained under the Official Information Act) to show the extent of an issue
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 »