On Labor Day, our new Statbusters column appeared. This one concerns a popular news story from some weeks ago, saying science has proven that there are four types of drunks. The four refers to four "clusters" formed by running a cluster analysis algorithm. But four is decided by the analyst. Some algorithms won't run unless the analyst specifies the number of clusters; other algorithms generate the best structure for every…
In the newest column for the Daily Beast, Andrew and I look at the media's fascination with expressing large numbers as daily numbers. (link) In short, you should divide by 365 only when the metric actually scales with time, and be careful if the metric is not evenly distributed across time. We discuss the following headlines: "Air pollution is China is killing 4,000 per day" and "Periscope users view 40…
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…
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.
Gelman sums up the reasons why there is a crisis in experimental research in our time. The journal publication process fails to catch fake research (let alone bad research), and the new media prefer sensationalist headlines over good science. Many res...
