Last year, Gizmodo capitalized on the fallout from the Ashley Madison hacking scandal and published a sensational article claiming the website that, if you haven't heard, promotes adultery, has "almost no" real women on it. The subtext is that millions of gullible, disloyal males were paying monthly fees to the website to do nothing or, cue the laugh track, to converse with "badly-designed robots." These men, according to Gizmodo, were…
Last year, Gizmodo capitalized on the fallout from the Ashley Madison hacking scandal and published a sensational article claiming the website that, if you haven't heard, promotes adultery, has "almost no" real women on it. The subtext is that millions of gullible, disloyal males were paying monthly fees to the website to do nothing or, cue the laugh track, to converse with "badly-designed robots." These men, according to Gizmodo, were…
Last week, I gave an invited talk at the INFORMS Analytics Conference on ethics in data analytics. This is a follow-up to the HBR article from last year. In the talk, I discussed the need to have some frameworks to think about ethics. There are three main ethical philosophies that one can use to make ethical arguments. *** The Hillary Clinton email scandal is a good place to apply these…
Pollsters, forecasters, and the likes were embarrassed by the Bernie Sanders upset in Michigan Tuesday night. Nate Silver called it among the greatest polling error in primary history. Now, they are struggling to explain the big miss. Recall the polls conducted close to the contest showed a Clinton lead of about 20 percent points. The actual outcome was a gap of 1.5 points, with a million votes cast. This type…
Investors of Herbalife (HLF) are owed a full explanation of the metrics disaster that the management disclosed suddenly to the SEC last week. As a regulator, the SEC should be requesting much more information about what happened. (Click on the 8K filed in March 2016. Here is the LA Times article.) On Feb 25, Herbalife management held an earnings call to discuss 2015 4th quarter and full year results. Investors…
In the last post in the Know Your Data series, I discussed how Uber can use its vast database of your personal trips against your personal interests. (This does not preclude the possibility that they use the data for your benefit.) It turns out that something more ominous is at foot… a number of news outlets have just published investigative reports about a company known as Vigilant Solutions (EFF, The…
Andrew Gelman and I have published a piece in Slate, discussing the failure to replicate scientific findings, using the recent example of the so-called power pose. The idea of the "power pose" is that people develop psychological and hormonal changes by making this "power pose" before walking into business meetings, whereupon these changes make them more powerful. As you often read here and at Gelman's blog, the fact that someone…
The news is out that Uber got fined by the New York Attorney General's office for data breaches and privacy concerns. The headline writer for ZDNet nailed this one: "Uber fined peanuts in God View surveillance" (link). And the sub-lead has the kicker: "For a company with a valuation of over $50 billion, a $20,000 fine over user data protection is laughable." This settlement tells us one of the following…
In our latest Statbusters column for the Daily Beast, we read the research behind the claim that "standing reduces odds of obesity". Especially at younger companies, it is trendy to work at standing desks because of findings like this. We find a variety of statistical issues calling for better studies. For example, the observational dataset used provides no clue as to whether sitting causes obesity or obesity leads to more…
My friend Liliane pointed me to this HBR article about "machine learning." (link) As a basic introduction, the article is pretty good. Here are 3 things you learned and 2 things you didn't learn from this article. 3 Things You Learned Machine learning is not the same as learning as you know it. At the end of step 5 ("Iterate"), the author proudly states "It has learned." But what does…
