December 20, 2016
Briefly
- “America is not always like the rest of the world.” In this case, for macroeconomics, but it applies to a lot of topics where the US is unusual but gets a lot of coverage.
- “Algorithms can help stomp out fake news”, from the Atlantic. They can, but if the algorithm is available to the public, you can just tweak your fake news until it passes. So there’s a moderately scary transparency tradeoff.
- Andrew Chen looks at trends in ethnicity across school deciles.
- More people who will be missed: Stephen Feinberg, Thomas Schelling
- Donald Trump has managed the best Electoral College result by a white man since Bill Clinton. (data)
- From NIWA: ocean currents around NZ
We have put together this short video to show the direction and speed of offshore currents around #NewZealand. Please share. 🏄 🚤🎣 pic.twitter.com/pzJHmN0fyf
— NIWA (@niwa_nz) December 15, 2016
- A lot of factoids on the internet are true, but only for very careful definitions of ‘true’, sometimes more than one in the same picture. (via @JulieB_92, @publicaddress)
Brought to you by People for the Ethical Treatment of Factoids pic.twitter.com/gahN4drstZ
— Thomas Lumley (@tslumley) December 12, 2016
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 »