statistics

Mark Blumenthal has a very interesting post about exit polling; he reports on a recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll which suggests that Democrats are more likely to participate in exit polls than Republicans.  If this is a valid finding, it might go a long ways towards explaining the big discrepancy between the exit polls and… Read more

The Burnham, Lafta, Doocy, and Roberts report of Iraqi mortality, recently published in the Lancet, has stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy, not just among the various political camps, but among survey statisticians as well. I was a bit dubious of their point estimate (654 965), but I didn’t think too much about it… Read more

If I read or hear this phrase one more time I’m going to puke. People are continually spouting off with far-fetched estimates and meaningless statistics in support of their pet cause, and then some other jackass digs up this hoary old Disraeli quote like it meant something. Folks, a sample statistic is a number computed… Read more

…from the Canadian election.  This is a great example of using the web to manage large amounts of information in a small display. Tip from Joe Katzman at Winds of Change. Read more

I just got a postcard for the latest issue of the Statistical Computing and Graphics newsletter.  The newsletter has a new trick: With this new issue of the newsletter we start a tradition of sending you a postcard* in the mail heralding the forthcoming publication. We plan for this December’s postcard to be the first… Read more

Check out this gem from my local TV station and the Associated Press: OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The odds of the same Oklahoma Pick-3 lottery numbers coming up two nights in a row are a million to one, but that’s just what happened last weekend. [my emphasis] Sounds like somebody at the AP flunked out… Read more

This guy has the most ambitious–and creative–website ever.  Go give him some data. Tip from Dymphna at the Gates of Vienna. Read more