Fishing in the Bay

My colleague, Peter Cebon, has sent me the graphic below which shows a time series of temperature, CO2 and sea levels. It is actually a pretty good graphic. While it is true that one generally counsels against putting three plots, on different scales, on the same graph, I think that this one works pretty well, especially with the three axes at the right color coded to agree with the time series. The resolution is not that great so I suggest you download it in pdf form HERE.

The Monty Hall problem is a terrific little example of how intuition, especially the intuition of those trained in statistics, can go horribly wrong. It appears from recent calculations of the economist, M. Keith Chen that some of the most famous experiments in psychology may have fallen victim to the same logical fallacy.

Continue reading ‘The Full Monty (Hall)’ »

On a recent ABC interview, a well known scientist made the following statement about global temperatures.

Actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you’d expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years.

Is she right?

Continue reading ‘Temperature Rising’ »

How often are innocent people convicted? Our justice system, and that of the US, is supposed to be weighted heavily against the possibility of type 1 errors. A recent article in the NY Times highlights some faulty reasoning by well-known conservative Antonin Scalia, who says we call all sleep peacefully knowing the rate of false conviction is only 0.00027.

Continue reading ‘False Convictions’ »

Research published in the British Medical Journal in 2001 (download HERE) showed that amongst actors who attend the academy awards, those who receive an Oscar live on average longer than those who do not – by a statistically significant amount. Does winning an Oscar make you live longer?

Continue reading ‘A long way to go - III’ »

Do obese people impose a disproportionate cost on the health system? Being over-weight is certainly strongly associated with high blood pressure and heart attack, and these diseases certainly impose high costs. At first glance this appears to imply that such people cost more. Can you spot the flaw?

Continue reading ‘Fat Stats’ »

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, will speak at MBS at 1.15pm on Thursday 28th February. If you would like to attend this lunchtime session, please RSVP to alumni@mbs.edu. It will be held in the Coles Theatre and is absolutely free.

Continue reading ‘Tim Harford’ »

Following on from the SuperCruncher’s post, I recently became aware of some interesting research on bias in job hiring practices. This is a field where a properly designed trial can reveal even unconscious bias, beyond any reasonable doubt.

Continue reading ‘Discriminating Statistics’ »

If statistics is the process of turning data into information then our most useful tool is the graphic (intermediated of course by a model). I would be interested and grateful if readers of the blog could point me to what they consider to be the most successful and/or innovative graphics they have seen. Links would be especially useful so that I can collect them for another post. The example below has been claimed to be the best statistical graphic ever drawn! He obviously lived in an age of hyperbole as he was himself described as “the Leonardo da Vinci of Data”! Anyway, it is a pretty impressive graphic and I want to describe it below.

Continue reading ‘An Outstanding Graphic’ »

It is a commonplace that computers can, in carefully specified circumstances, outperform human experts. They are for example very good at chess, or at guiding aircraft. SuperCrunchers, by law professor (!) Ian Ayres of Yale Univ, collects together a large body of evidence on cases where equations seem to outperform experts.

Continue reading ‘Super Crunchers’ »