by david allan van nostrand | Dec 30, 2019 | Items in the News, Voodoo Statistics
Last week the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece that has Harry Anslinger grinning in his grave. They included the oft-cited statistic so old it has whiskers: 95% of heroin users began by smoking marijuana. This is a textbook example...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 7, 2019 | Misinformation traps, Voodoo Statistics, Young moderns
You know how you hear one story that makes a lot of sense and then you hear another that also makes a lot of sense but you’re bothered because taken together they don’t make any sense at all? Me, too. I examine research studies than most, and because they have...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 24, 2019 | Items in the News, Research, Surveys, Voodoo Statistics
Readers have asked me to demonstrate how I go about reading a study. We don’t use privately-funded studies as examples, so I’ve been waiting for something interesting to show up in the public domain where we all have free access to the information. A little...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 17, 2019 | Unintended Consequences, Using Information, Voodoo Statistics
Volume of ramp is 1920cu in vs 3 cu in for test. If you saw those exact words, would you have cancelled the Challenger launch because conditions were dangerous and the likelihood of failure was high? Me neither, and here’s why. Westerners read from top to...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 22, 2019 | Items in the News, Voodoo Statistics
University of Washington professors Jevin West and Carl Bergstrom say the world is awash in bullshit and they’re tired of it. This is why they designed a class called Bullshit: Data Reasoning in a Digital World. Their aim is to teach people how to think critically...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 15, 2019 | Items in the News, Voodoo Statistics
Movie buffs know that army paratroopers shout Geronimo! as they jump out of airplanes. As the story goes, paratroopers do it because it’s what the famous Apache chief yelled when he bravely leaped his horse from a high cliff into the river below to evade the hot...
