May 21, 2021

Briefly

By
  • 92% of people think they’re better than average at complying with Covid-19 rules (UK study).  It could be that people who comply with Covid rules are also more likely to respond to surveys, but it also wouldn’t be surprising if most people just think they’re better than average.
  • A (flashing) map of lighthouses
  • “Did 4 per cent of Americans really drink bleach last year?” — a good piece at the NZ$ Herald, from the Harvard Business Review. Spoiler: no, probably not: it’s the sort of claim that surveys are bad at supporting.
  • “Every recorded battle in history” on a map (click to embiggen).

    “recorded” means recorded by Wikipedia. The European bias is pretty clear, but note that it even misses battles in the Waikato and Taranaki wars where British soldiers were awarded the Victoria Cross, so the Wikipedia completeness bias is more complicated than just ‘European soldiers’.
avatar

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 »

Comments