Peter Norvig, Director of Research at Google, provides an FAQ on the election. I haven’t finished reading it, but the analysis appears worth reading.
POSTS TAGGED : statistics
Spatial Data, Rocks, and Voting
Image via Matt Stiles @ NPR.
Why the blue line across the South in the sea of red? Plankton may be the answer. Read the story at Krulwich’s blog:
These same counties went mostly blue in 2004 and 2000. Why? Well, the best answer, says marine biologist Craig McClain, may be an old one, going back before the Civil War, before 1776, before Columbus, back more than 100 million years to the days when the Deep South was under water.
Stats and Fats
Here’s a good read on the science (and politics) of soda and sugar. For researchers, a key point is:
“If you looked at the secondary endpoints in these studies, said Allison, then yes, each of the studies found one statistically significant result: but they were all for different things and so provided no evidence of consistency that might adduce causality. What was troubling—what the field of obesity research had to avoid—was spinning these secondary endpoints into major findings. You just can’t do this when they weren’t the endpoints you built your study to examine.”
When Politics and Statistics Collide
Most of the increase in unemployment rate happened before Obama took office in January 2009. I’m not a policy expert, so I won’t comment on why that might be. However, I do think that at least in this one case (I haven’t checked others), the statement on Mitt Romney’s flyer mischaracterizes the whole picture.
You can go to http://data.bls.gov and explore this data for yourself.
Statistics and Organic Food: A Cultural Battleground
Read Simply Statistics: “The Statistical Method Made Me Lie.”
And Kaiser Fung’s: “A no difference conclusion arises after positive findings are explained away.”
Statistician’s Blues
Todd Snider is playing at Ziggy’s on September 21st. There’s 95% chance that I’ll be there.
Higg-Boson Data
At about 6 minutes into this video, it becomes clear how important statistics are for fundamental science.
Hammer Condones Analytics
What time of day do most bicycle accidents occur?
When is it safe to ride a bike?
I’ve been looking at the data available on cycling accidents in the Bay Area (of which I am a statistic). This data comes from CHP. I’ve learned the hard way to start a data analysis with a small subset of your data (else you sit around waiting for computations to happen), so I’ve started by looking at cycling accidents in Sonoma County.
I haven’t figured out why some bars in this plot have gaps between them and others don’t. I’ll keep phutzing with the binwidth parameter.
I haven’t done much modeling yet, but I did model fatalities using logistic regression against time of day, day of week, road conditions, lighting conditions, and violation category. So far, the most statistically significant predictor of a fatality is alcohol being involved in the accident. Remember kiddos, don’t drink and drive.