March 7, 2016
Briefly
- From Pro Publica, an extended investigation (with detailed simulations) of what will happen to Houston when a big cyclone hits it. And a “making of” post.
- From 538: A plagiarism scandal in the crossword world: the sort of thing that only computerised searches can really do.
- From Public Address: An example of unfunded drugs other than Keytruda (pembrolizumab) that might be higher up a priority list
- Sensible presentation of stats in a Herald story on seatbelts and crashes
- “Data is a toxic asset” from computer security expert Bruce Schneier
- From Fusion: “How this company tracked 16,000 Iowa caucus-goers via their phones”
- And finally, two notes on the flag referendum. First, if the current flag doesn’t win, New Zealand will go down in history as the new example of opinion-poll failure, since current polls give it an almost 2-1 lead. Second, in case it turns out to be necessary, a mnemonic for the official number of leaflets on the fern: it’s the number of players on a team for the Silver Ferns (netball, 7), plus the White Ferns (cricket, 11), plus the Black Ferns (rugby union, 15) — a celebration of NZ women’s sports.
Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) is Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Auckland. His research interests include semiparametric models, survey sampling, statistical computing, foundations of statistics, and whatever methodological problems his medical collaborators come up with. He also blogs at Biased and Inefficient See all posts by Thomas Lumley »