The straight scoop on antidepressants

Mark Liberman has an outstanding article about the recent meta-analysis of anti-depressant effectiveness over at Language Log.  Not only does he use clear and succinct language to explain what’s going on, he has some simple and effective graphics to back it all up.  Check it out.

Update (2 March).  Liberman is on a roll.  In his latest post, he takes on the rationalizations for separate-sex classrooms by looking at some of the statistically specious arguments provided.  Along the way, he gives a wonderfully concise explanation of the meaning of standard deviation:

Sax initially built his argument that girls hear
better than boys on two papers published in 1959 and 1963 by a
psychologist named John Corso. Mark Liberman, a linguistics professor
at the University of Pennsylvania, has spent a fair amount of energy
examining the original research behind Sax’s claims. In Corso’s 1959
study, for example, Corso didn’t look at children; he looked at adults.
And he found only between one-quarter and one-half of a standard
deviation in male and female hearing thresholds. What this means,
Liberman says, is that if you choose a man and a woman at random, the
chances are about 6 in 10 that the woman’s hearing will be more
sensitive and about 4 in 10 that the man’s hearing will be more
sensitive.

From what I’ve read about separate-sex classroms, they do have their advocates and advantages, but things like student hearing and brain volumes aren’t the criteria.  My thanks to Mark Liberman for reminding me of this probability interpretation; I need to use it in my classes more often.