October 9, 2017
Briefly
- Google has a camera that learns to take automatic videos of your kids and pets. And they’ve gone to some lengths to make it less creepy than that sounds.
- It’s not just the inbuilt biases of the input data you have to worry about in statistical models/machine learning. People are also messing with the input deliberately.
- NY Times piece on personal genetic testing. (Disclaimer: I’m doing some consulting for a personal genomics company)
- Also from the Times, Jordan Ellenberg (mathematician) on “How Computers Turned Gerrymandering Into a Science“ (Now with a link!!)
- Where Americans get their science news and how much they trust various sources, from Pew Research.
- “The Subjects Planned for the 2020 Census and American Community Survey report released today inadvertently listed sexual orientation and gender identity as a proposed topic in the appendix,” the U.S. Census Bureau said in a statement to NBC News. “This topic is not being proposed to Congress for the 2020 Census or American Community Survey”
- ” It’s no longer good enough to shrug off (“briefly,” “for a small number of queries”) the problems in the system simply because it has computers in the decision loop.”
- Road deaths are up since 2013. Contrary to what the NZTA spokesperson says, it can’t be explained by increases in cars on the road: there has been a change in the trend for deaths per unit distance travelled.
- Voting is now open for NZ Bird of the Year. StatsChat doesn’t usually endorse bogus polls, but this one admits it’s just a publicity stunt.
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 »