April 1, 2021
Briefly
- Eden Park is the world’s sexiest bald man. Or something like that. The results are bogus for the obvious reason: Prince William and Eden Park both get a lot of internet coverage, so they will show up on what is basically a count of Google hits. You might well get the same winners for ‘ugliest bald man’ and ‘least popular cricket ground. These reports are typically done in order to get some company’s name in the news, and since they typically don’t provide any real information about the numbers, it would be poetic justice to report the claims but just leave out the company name. Or, better, ignore them.
- Good news: there are clinical trial results for the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine in children aged 12-15. These still need review based on more detail than just a press release, but it’s quite likely that we’ll be vaccinating this age group by the time we’d get around to them based on risk. Trials in younger children are just starting; the end date will depend on how bad the pandemic is in the next few months, but might be around the end of the year.
- Books:
- The Data Journalism Handbook (including open-access version) By a large cast including Aotearoa’s own Prof Tahu Kukutai on Indigenous Data Sovereignty
- How to Make the World Add Up, by Tim Harford (or, in USA/Canada, The Data Detective). It’s a non-technical book on thinking clearly about numbers: “We need to be open-minded without being gullible, maintaining a healthy scepticism without lapsing into corrosive cynicism. Above all, we need to keep being curious.”. He’s on the Slate Money podcast talking about the book here.
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 »
I see recently that Met service website for weather data for various towns and cities shows say rainfall for today , 30 days and ‘historical average’.
The fine print says thats last 10 years.
Abuse of statistics right there yet they have a vast trove of data
4 years ago
When I last played with weather data there were all sorts of caveats about weather stations that have been shifted. Maybe, it’s only in the last 10 years that the weather stations have been uniformly stationary?
4 years ago
Another story today that seems confused in its statistics
“A statistical fact that will change the way you think about the gender pay gap”
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/money/300267507/a-statistical-fact-that-will-change-the-way-you-think-about-the-gender-pay-gap
The study isnt about the gender pay gap for people doing the same or similar work, its about the pay difference in a relationship from the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at ANU. Apparently when a woman earns more than their partner they more likely (20%) to ‘report’ abuse.
Some other weird Stuff stories maybe because its April Fools Day
4 years ago