The New York Times has been making waves this week featuring management practices at Amazon and workplace tracking practices at various companies (link). These are essential references for how data make us dumber. I am going to ignore the shocking claim by the journalist who stated that GE is "long a standard-setter in management practices." To give him some credit, he did not say "good" management practice. It is true…
In our newest column, we take on the recent media obsession with companies who make robots that hire people. (link) As with most articles about data science, the journalists failed to dig up any evidence that these robots work, other than glowing quotes from the people who are selling these robots. We point out a number of challenges that such algorithms must overcome in order to generate proper predictions. We…
One of the most misguided and dangerous ideas floated around by a group of Big Data enthusiasts is the notion that it is not important to understand why something happens, just because "we have a boatload of data". This is one of the central arguments in the bestseller Big Data, and it reached the mainstream much earlier when Chris Anderson, then chief editor of Wired, published his flamboyantly-titled op-ed proclaiming…
One statistical concept that instructors frequently don't have time to cover in Stat 101 is the "interaction" effect. I will explain this concept using the fantastic interactive graphic by the visualization team at the German publication Zeit (please also read the corresponding post on Junk Charts here for some background.) When we ignore interactions, we end up with overly simplistic statistical summaries. For example, some study might find that drinking…
This piece is part of the StatBusters column written jointly with Andrew Gelman. Hope they fix the labeling soon. In it, we talk about two recent studies on data privacy, which leads to contradictory conclusions. How should the media report such surveys? Is the brand name of the organization enough? In addition, we debunk the notion that consumers will definitely get something valuable out of sharing their data.
This op-ed by Richard Thaler caught my attention because I have a similar experience. In my statistics classes, I have noticed a pattern: if the mid-term exam is hard, with a lower average score (say 75-80%), the students look crestfallen and feel that they did not learn; eventually, when it comes to evaluating the instructor, I receive lower grades, with comments indicating that I have not taught them properly to…
