Posts filed under General (3156)

Team Ratings at 04 October

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to 04 October along with the ratings at the start of the Rugby World Cup.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 26 matches played, 21 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 80.8%.
Here are the predictions for previous games.

Predictions for 04 October to 07 October

The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the first-named team, and a negative margin a win to the second-named team.

From the Independent, which used to be the sort of paper that knew better:

With a 100 per cent record up to this point – they predicted England would beat Fiji but lose to Wales – it seems that the meerkats might have some genuine psychic abilities. 

Even if they do, that doesn’t explain why they care about rugby, or how they know which flags painted on pebbles correspond to which group of large men.

Yes, I get that it’s not supposed to be true. Simon Rice probably doesn’t believe the meerkats are psychic. He probably doesn’t expect his readers to believe the meerkats are psychic (and if they did, they would have been terribly disappointed). In the old days of paper newspapers though, you could distinguish stories that were supposed to be true from the ones that weren’t supposed to be true by a lot of positioning and formatting cues. 

With the move from paper to digital, the presentation of news stories that are supposed to be true is getting more similar to the presentation of news stories that aren’t supposed to be true.  That’s especially an issue for health science news: even when the reporter knows which stories are news and which are nutribollocks, it can be hard for the reader to tell.

(via)

Under the headline “Studies show food preferences are written in genes,” the Herald has an interesting story by CSIRO scientist Nicholas Archer about genetic variation in taste and smell receptors (and largely not about food preferences). The same story was at The Conversation, under the headline “Blame it on mum and dad: how genes influence what we eat.”

The text makes much more reasonable claims about food preference. It says

Food preferences vary and are shaped by three interacting factors: the environment (your health, diet and cultural influences); prior experience; and genes, which alter your sensory perception of foods.

and later

Genetics has also been linked to whole foods, such as coriander preference, coffee liking and many others. But genes have only a small influence on preference for these foods due to their sensory complexity and also the contribution of your environment and prior experiences.

It’s only the headlines that are over the top, but that’s a consistent problem with genetics stories.

When you see a genetics headline, the first thing to think about is whether the trait it talks about has changed over the past century or so. Human genetics hasn’t had time to.

We can look at changes over recent time to show the enormous non-genetic influences on food choice. The biggest ones are due to wealth, but there are actual changes in preferences as well.

For example, raw fish would have been an unusual food preference for Aucklanders of European descent forty years ago. It’s not that raw fish was unavailable back then; that was how it came from the shop. It’s just that people didn’t eat it raw, because ick. Now, raw fish is an absolutely routine form of fast food. That’s not because of a change in genetics, it’s because of cultural change spreading from the US.  As another example, many European-ancestry people like spicier food than their parents or grandparents did, not because of a change in genetics, but because of a change in exposure to spices early in life.  You can easily think of more.

“Mum and dad” do have a big influence on what we eat, but most of it happens well after conception.

• Algorithm audit and cheating (from NYT): there is a class of software that successfully goes through tight regulatory auditing — it’s not voting machines, it’s gambling machines

• If you use a round-number price on eBay you will sell faster, for less.

• Book recommendation: How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking, by Jordan Ellenberg. The only thing wrong with this book is that he’s misspelled “Statistical” in the subtitle.

• Book recommendation: Eureka: Discovering Your Inner Scientist, by Chad Orzel. A good guide to how science actually works; useful for dispelling the myth that scientists are mutant geniuses who do qualitatively different stuff from normal humans.

Team Ratings for the Grand Final

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 200 matches played, 118 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 59%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for the Grand Final

Here are the predictions for the Grand Final. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 8

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 54 matches played, 38 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 70.4%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 8

Here are the predictions for Round 8. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

Team Ratings for Round 9

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to this week’s games, along with the ratings at the start of the season.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 32 matches played, 23 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 71.9%.
Here are the predictions for last week’s games.

Predictions for Round 9

Here are the predictions for Round 9. The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the home team, and a negative margin a win to the away team.

It is a little difficult to choose a period for the predictions. I have predicted up to October 3 because Tonga plays a further game on October 4, and I want to have updated their rating based on the result of the Tonga-Namibia game before predicting their game against Argentina.

Team Ratings at 29 September

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to 29 September along with the ratings at the start of the Rugby World Cup.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 19 matches played, 16 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 84.2%.
Here are the predictions for previous games.

Predictions for 29 September to 03 October

The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the first-named team, and a negative margin a win to the second-named team.

• Good story in the Herald: A survey from Southern Cross Health Insurance estimates that about 750,000 people in NZ regularly take vitamins and dietary supplements. Contrary to what some supporters say, there have been quite a lot of randomised trials of vitamin supplements — it’s just that they tend to give disappointing results.  There are a few exceptions (such as folate in pregnancy) and a few arguably open questions (such as higher-dose vitamin D) but not many.

• Entertaining legal report in NBR: NZ Honey is fighting the Ministry for Primary Industries over whether it makes unsupported health claims for mānuka honey. The fun part is that the controversy isn’t whether there’s evidence for health benefits, it’s over whether brand names such as “Manuka Doctor” and “Manuka Pharm” are so clearly just puffery that no-one would mistake them for health claims

• People often claim spinach is very high in iron. Other people often claim this is due to a misplaced decimal point in early German research, and that Popeye didn’t know what he was talking about and spinach is a terrible source of iron. Still other people look into this more carefully and find that the error was not German, or a misplaced decimal point, and that Popeye’s health claims weren’t iron-related. In the end, spinach actually is a moderately good source of iron. (Karl Kruszelnicki, ABC Science)

I decided updated ratings and predictions would be a good idea at this time. I can then post new predictions before the next games after September 27, which are on September 29.

Team Ratings at 25 September

The basic method is described on my Department home page.

Here are the team ratings prior to 25 September along with the ratings at the start of the Rugby World Cup.

Performance So Far

So far there have been 12 matches played, 10 of which were correctly predicted, a success rate of 83.3%.
Here are the predictions for previous games.

Predictions for 25 September to 27 September

The prediction is my estimated expected points difference with a positive margin being a win to the first-named team, and a negative margin a win to the second-named team.