Chance News 100: Difference between revisions

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"Another example of that interest was data from TiVo showing that although four of the top five streamed games of the tournament in homes with TiVo DVRs involved the United States team, six of the 10 most-streamed games involved teams from other countries." [One must bear in mind that the US played in exactly four games in the World Cup!]
"Another example of that interest was data from TiVo showing that although four of the top five streamed games of the tournament in homes with TiVo DVRs involved the United States team, six of the 10 most-streamed games involved teams from other countries." [One must bear in mind that the US played in exactly four games in the World Cup!]
<div align=right>in: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/business/media/germany-1-world-cup-fever-1000.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A5%22%7D Germany 1. World Cup fever 1,000], ''New York Times'', 14 July 2014</div>
<div align=right>in: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/business/media/germany-1-world-cup-fever-1000.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Aw%2C%7B%221%22%3A%22RI%3A5%22%7D Germany 1. World Cup fever 1,000.] ''New York Times'', 14 July 2014</div>
Submitted by David Czerwinski
Submitted by David Czerwinski



Revision as of 16:20, 18 July 2014

Quotations

"Steve Ziliak, a critic of RCTs [randomised controlled trials], complains about one conducted in China in which some visually-impaired children were given glasses while others received nothing. The case against the trial is that we no more need a randomised trial of spectacles than we need a randomised trial of the parachute."

--Tim Harford, in: The random risks of randomized trials, Financial Times, 25 April 2014

Submitted by Paul Alper

Forsooth

One sentence too many?

“At issue was how highly correlated the prices of various subprime mortgage bonds inside a CDO might be. Possible answers ranged from 0 percent (their prices had nothing to do with each other) to 100 percent (their prices moved in lockstep with each other). Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s judged the pools of triple-B-rated bonds to have a correlation of around 30 percent, which did not mean anything like what it sounds. It does not mean, for example, that if one goes bad, there is a 30 percent chance that the others will go bad too. It means that if one bond goes bad, the others experience very little decline at all.”

Michael Lewis, Boomerang, 2011, pp. 207-208

Submitted by Margaret Cibes


“When confronted with data from the Centers for Disease Control that seemed to provide scientific refutation of her claims [that vaccines caused autism, Jenny] McCarthy responded, ‘My science is named Evan [her son] and he’s at home. That’s my science.’ …. She is fond of saying that she acquired her knowledge of vaccinations and their risks at ‘the University of Google.’” [p. 79]

“[Dr. Andrew] Weil doesn’t buy into the idea that clinical evidence is more valuable than intuition. Like most practitioners of alternative medicine, he regards the scientific preoccupation with controlled studies, verifiable proof, and comparative analysis as petty and one dimensional.” [p. 257]

"[T]he National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is the brainchild of Iowa senator Tom Harkin, who was inspired by his conviction that taking bee pollen cured his allergies …. There is no evidence that bee pollen cures allergies or lessens their symptoms. …. In Senate testimony in March 2009, Harkin said he was disappointed in the work of the center because it had disproved too many alternative therapies. ‘One of the purposes of this center was to investigate and validate alternative approaches. Quite frankly, I must say publicly that it has fallen short,’ Harken said.” [pp. 174, 180]

“I don’t have either APOE4 allele, which is a great relief. ‘You dodged a bullet,’ my extremely wise physician said when I told him the news. ‘But don’t forget they might be coming out of a machine gun.” [p. 220]

Michael Spector in Denialism, 2010

Submitted by Margaret Cibes


"Another example of that interest was data from TiVo showing that although four of the top five streamed games of the tournament in homes with TiVo DVRs involved the United States team, six of the 10 most-streamed games involved teams from other countries." [One must bear in mind that the US played in exactly four games in the World Cup!]

in: Germany 1. World Cup fever 1,000. New York Times, 14 July 2014

Submitted by David Czerwinski

The Oxford comma: A pressing issue?

Elitist, superfluous, Or popular? We polled Americans on the Oxford comma
By Walt Hickey, FiveThirtyEight, 17June 2014

A grammatical point of controversy: should you use a comma before the "and" in a list of more than two items? As reported in the article:

We asked respondents which sentence was, in their opinion, more grammatically correct: “It’s important for a person to be honest, kind and loyal.” Or: “It’s important for a person to be honest, kind, and loyal.” The latter has an Oxford comma, the former none.

Among 1129 Americans responding, the Oxford comma was preferred, 57% to 43%. Interestingly, those in favor tended to have a higher opinion of their own grammatical skills, as shown in the accompanying graph

Hickey-OxfordComma.png


Lest you get the impression that this is simply a matter of taste, see The best shots fired in the Oxford comma wars. Among the amusing examples there:

Pro: "She took a photograph of her parents, the president, and the vice president."
This example from the Chicago Manual of Style shows how the comma is necessary for clarity. Without it, she is taking a picture of two people, her mother and father, who are the president and vice president. With it, she is taking a picture of four people.

Con: "Those at the ceremony were the commodore, the fleet captain, the donor of the cup, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Jones."
This example from the 1934 style book of the New York Herald Tribune shows how a comma before "and" can result in a lack of clarity. With the comma, it reads as if Mr. Smith was the donor of the cup, which he was not.

Submitted by Paul Alper

Item 2