Statistical Literacy

Statistical illiteracy may lead to parents panicking about Autism.

I just was doing my morning reading of a few news sources and stumbled across this Huffington Post article talking about research correlating babies cries to autism. It suggests that the sound of a babies cries may predict their future risk for autism. As the parent of a young son, this obviously caught my attention in a very lizard-brain, caveman sort of way. I couldn’t find a link to the research paper in the article so I did some searching and found out this result is also being covered by Time, Science Daily, Medical Daily, and a bunch of other news outlets.







Nature is hiring a data will they make sense of the data?

It looks like the journal Nature is hiring a Chief Data Editor (link via Hilary M.). It looks like the primary purpose of this editor is to develop tools for collecting, curating, and distributing data with the goal of improving reproducible research. The main duties of the editor, as described by the ad are:  Nature Publishing Group is looking for a Chief Editor to develop a product aimed at making research data more available, discoverable and interpretable.

Statistics is not math...

Statistics depends on math, like a lot of other disciplines (physics, engineering, chemistry, computer science). But just like those other disciplines, statistics is not math; math is just a tool used to solve statistical problems. Unlike those other disciplines, statistics gets lumped in with math in headlines. Whenever people use statistical analysis to solve an interesting problem, the headline reads: “Math can be used to solve amazing problem X” or

R and the little data scientist's predicament

I just read this fascinating post on _why, apparently a bit of a cult hero among enthusiasts of the Ruby programming language. One of the most interesting bits was The Little Coder’s Predicament, which boiled down essentially says that computer programming languages have grown too complex - so children/newbies can’t get the instant gratification when they start programming. He suggested a simplified “gateway language” that would get kids fired up about programming, because with a simple line of code or two they could make the computer do things like play some music or make a video.

In the era of data what is a fact?

The Twitter universe is abuzz about this article in the New York Times. Arthur Brisbane, who responds to reader’s comments, asks  I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about. He goes on to give a couple of examples of qualitative facts that reporters have used in stories without questioning the veracity of the claims.



Citizen science makes statistical literacy critical
