September 16, 2020
Briefly
- Good piece at Stuff, from The Conversation about COVID statistics
- “The BSA said the decision highlights the importance of data literacy, particularly in a news and current affairs context.” Broadcasting Standards Authority decision, on a complaint about Mike Hosking.
- Two StatsChat-relevant new books: “How to Make the World Add Up” by Tim Harford, and “Calling Bullshit” by Carl Bergstrom and Jevin West
- “Forecast models”…are typically designed with a single goal in mind: to make a specific, quantitative prediction about an event that will be observed in the future….Other infectious-disease “scenario models” are designed to explore multiple “what if” hypothetical futures”. From the Washington Post
- A story at the Herald, from the Daily Telegraph: low-level exposure to coronavirus through masks could be giving people immunity. It could be, but there’s little to no evidence that it actually is. And we know it isn’t in New Zealand, because there’s almost no coronavirus here to have low-level exposure to, a point that might have been worth mentioning.
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 »
On the equivalence between mask and vaccine, read also http://nautil.us/issue/90/something-green/the-importance-of-face-masks-and-the-tragedy-of-downplaying-them
I confess to find the idea intriguing, even if I consider the above interview too partisan and categorical: more than 15 minutes yes, less nope, less than 6 feets yes, less nope.
4 years ago