Tag Archives: statistics

Bush Did North Dakota

Continuing yesterday’s discussion of fake news: Guess et al says that 46% percent of Trump voters endorsed the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. Does this mean fake news is very powerful? We can compare this to belief in various other conspiracy theories, … Continue reading

Never Tell Me The Odds (Ratio)

[Epistemic status: low confidence, someone tell me if the math is off. Title was stolen from an old Less Wrong post that seems to have disappeared – let me know if it’s yours and I’ll give you credit] I almost … Continue reading

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More Confounders

[Epistemic status: Somewhat confident in the medical analysis, a little out of my depth discussing the statistics] For years, we’ve been warning patients that their sleeping pills could kill them. How? In every way possible. People taking sleeping pills not … Continue reading

Does Reality Drive Straight Lines On Graphs, Or Do Straight Lines On Graphs Drive Reality?

Here’s a graph of US air pollution over time: During the discussion of 90s environmentalism, some people pointed out that this showed the Clean Air Act didn’t matter. The trend is the same before the Act as after it. This … Continue reading

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In Search Of Missing US Suicides

[Content warning: suicide. Thanks to someone on Twitter I forget for alerting me to this question] Among US states, there’s a clear relationship between gun ownership rates and suicide rates, but not between gun ownership rates and homicide rates: You … Continue reading

Why DC’s Low Graduation Rates?

[Some changes to the conclusions in this post; see edit at the end and entry 21 on Mistakes page] US News: DC Schools Brace For Catastrophic Drop In Graduation Rates. “Catastrophic” isn’t hyperbole; the numbers are expected to drop from … Continue reading

SSC Journal Club: Cipriani On Antidepressants

I. The big news in psychiatry this month is Cipriani et al’s Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder: a systematic review and network meta-analysis. It purports to be … Continue reading

SSC Survey Results 2018

Thanks to the 8,077 people (!) who took this year’s SSC survey. I don’t have the energy to screenshot/copy/paste the graph for every single question the way I have in previous years, so let’s do it differently. The survey page … Continue reading

Preregistration Of Hypotheses For The SSC Survey

[This post is about the 2018 SSC Survey. If you’ve read at least one blog post here before, please take the survey if you haven’t already. Please don’t read on until you’ve taken it, since this could bias your results.] … Continue reading

Change Minds Or Drive Turnout?

I. Current Affairs: The Democratic Party Just Admitted It Doesn’t Stand For Anything. Overall it makes some good points, but one passage caught my eye: [Democrats believe that if you moderate your platform and swing toward the center] you might … Continue reading