statistics

George Will, Stanley Fish, and Terrence Jeffrey have been showing their quantitative asses with some weird rap about President Obama referring to himself (I, me, my, myself, etc.) excessively.   Mark Liberman over at Language Log has blown the whistle on this nonsense, twice, showing it’s unfounded in the data.  Liberman, whose only obvious fault is… Read more

Someone at the WSJ knows how to put together a simple, informative article on the web.  A click-sortable table, how cool! Tip from the Open Congress Blog. Read more

David Hume at Secular Right has posted a quickie guide to using the online interface to the General Social Survey.  Thanks! Tip from John Derbyshire at The Corner. Read more

Nathan at Flowing Data has assembled links to 37 websites doing primo infographics, enough for any graphixglutton.  Thanks, Nathan! Read more

The Good don’t always die young.  Statistician I. J. Good recently passed away at the ripe old age of 92, with one hell of a CV. Read more

OK, by now it should be obvious that the country (or at least the AP’s journalists) have a quantitative literacy problem: The tests were conducted at 40 miles per hour (17 kilometers per liter), representing a severe crash. Did I miss the memo equating speed and gas mileage?Tip from Language Log, where the commenters run… Read more

When I do get time to teach such a course, it’s nice to know that a good first draft is already up and running, at Harvard no less. Tip from Gelman at his Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science blog. Read more

The guys at Language Log are talking about talking about statistics again.  Follow the links back to previous posts where they talk about tribes with no numbers, and techies who don’t have (or understand) long tails. Read more

…Getting Past the Pie Chart.  I think this will be the the Day Zero reading for my someday course in statistical graphics and visualization. Tip from Nathan at Flowing Data. Read more

Hanna Rosin gives us the scoop on the purported effects–and culture–of breastfeeding.  What a great reading assignment for my students!Tip from Andy Eggers at the Social Science Statistics Blog. Update (20 March).  Sob Sisters on both sides of the issue discuss it at 11D.  Tip from Joanne Jacobs, whose comments are mercifully descriptive, rather than… Read more