December 20, 2016

Briefly

  • “Algorithms can help stomp out fake news”, from the Atlantic.  They can, but if the algorithm is available to the public, you can just tweak your fake news until it passes. So there’s a moderately scary transparency tradeoff.
  • Donald Trump has managed the best Electoral College result by a white man since Bill Clinton. (data)
  • From NIWA: ocean currents around NZ

  • A lot of factoids on the internet are true, but only for very careful definitions of ‘true’, sometimes more than one in the same picture. (via @JulieB_92, @publicaddress)

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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 »