Posts filed under Research (206)

There’s a new genetic study (stuff.co.nz has the Associated Press article) claiming that variation in intelligence is about 50% genetic.  That claim is not new, but previous studies got estimates like that by studying the IQ of close relatives,  and this study actually measures genes.  The researchers studied 3500 unrelated people in Scotland and England,   measuring half a million genetic variants on each person and relating them to two different types of intelligence test, and found that while they couldn’t identify specific genetic variants that affected intelligence, they did find evidence that there were hundreds of variants with some effect.  (more…)

You’ll be able to find out on Tuesday August 16 at 4pm, when Department of Statistics masters student Ben Stevenson, who has been working under the supervision of Associate Professor Russell Millar, presents his findings into this very question. See more at http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/uoa/home/events/template/event_item.jsp?cid=411574

Student Ben Stevenson, left, and Associate Professor Russell Millar check out a freshly-caught snapper.

We congratulate our colleagues Maxine Pfannkuch, Matt Regan, Chris Wild and Nick Horton who have been recognised by the American Statistical Association for the best paper in 2011 in the Journal of Statistical Education, Telling Data Stories: Essential Dialogues for Comparative Reasoning.

This is the second major recognition on the world stage in the last year for this group, following on from their read paper before the Royal Statistical Society on World Statistics Day, 20/10/2010.

Q: So, have you seen the article about Vitamin D and diabetes?

A: Of course. The tireless staff of StatsChat read even West Island newspapers. It’s a good report, too.

Q: What did the researchers do?

A: They studied 5200 people without diabetes, following them up for five years. 199 of them developed diabetes. The people who ended up with diabetes started off with lower vitamin D levels in their blood.

Q: Where did you get those details?

A: The abstract for the study publication (you can also get the full text there free if you’re at a university or if you wait until next year).

Q: Isn’t it annoying that newspaper websites don’t provide any links to that sort of information?

A: It’s like you’re reading my mind.

Q: One of the study authors is quoted as saying “”It’s hard to underestimate how important this might be.” What do you think?

A: I think he meant “overestimate”.

Q: So, how important is this finding?

A: If it really is an effect of vitamin D, it would be really important.  A simple supplement would be able to dramatically reduce the risk of diabetes.

Q: How can we tell?

A: Someone needs to do a randomized trial, where half the participants get vitamin D and half get a dummy pill. If the effect is real, fewer people getting vitamin D will end up with diabetes.

Q: That sounds like a good idea. Is someone doing a trial?

A: Yes, Professor Peter Ebeling, of the the University of Melbourne.

Q: Is there some useful website where I can find more information about the trial?

A: Indeed.

Q: Will it work?

A: No.

Q: Are you sure?

A: No, that’s why we need the trial.  But it’s a trial of vitamin supplementation, which almost always has disappointing results, and it’s a trial  in adult-onset diabetes, which almost always has disappointing results.

Bobby Willcox, one of our PhD students at the University of Auckland, Department of Statistics was featured in the NZ Herald yesterday.

Bobby’s major area of interest is statistical research in netball. She completed her MSc in Statistics in 2004, and has been involved with Netball New Zealand and the Silver Ferns netball team ever since. She is currently the Performance Analyst for the Silver Ferns and is in the process of completing her PhD, started in 2007. Her research is focused around finding a way to objectively measure and evaluate player performance in netball and identifying different strategies adopted by players within each position on court.

Read more about Bobby’s statistical tools developed for the Silver Ferns.

New research published in the journal Science from researchers at MIT has shown that toddlers as young as 16 months old are able to make accurate judgments about whether a toy failed to operate due to their own mistake or due to circumstances beyond their control.

The results give insight into how toddlers use prior knowledge with some statistical data to make accurate inferences about the cause of a failed action. These findings are contrary to commonly held educational assumptions that young children aren’t able to distinguish among causes and has implications for early childhood education and for how humans learn in general.

“Infants who saw evidence suggesting the failure was due to their own action tried to hand the toy to their parents for help. Conversely, babies who saw evidence suggesting that the toy was broken were more likely to reach for a new toy, as another one was always nearby.

“That’s the amazing thing about what the babies are doing,” said Schulz. “They can use very, very sparse evidence because they have these rich prior beliefs and they can use that to make quite sophisticated, quite accurate inferences about the world.”

“It was fascinating to see that they are even sensitive to this problem of figuring out whether it’s them or the world to begin with,” added Gweon, “and that they can track such subtle statistical dependence between agents, objects and event outcomes to make rational inferences.”

Read more about the study »