Demonstrating Statistical Deception
Wesley Elsberry nails it in this post. He also mentions the great book How to Lie with Statistics, which everyone should read.
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Not About Joe the Plumber
ByhenryThe furor over this poor guy has illustrated to me one of the problems of presidential campaigning in America. It’s not about analyzing policies to determine who they impact, to what extent, and for what purpose, nor indeed it is about whether the policies will accomplish that purpose. It’s rather all about engaging people’s emotions….
Losing the War on Drugs
ByhenryThere’s a stereotype of opponents of our current drug laws that suggests such people just want to light up a joint – legally. That’s not very accurate. I personally don’t even use alcohol, and I rarely use over-the-counter, completely non-addictive pain killers. I’m leery about legalization, but I certainly think we need substantial reforms in…
Polls and Headline Writing
Byhenry. . . or how to lie with headlines. I get very annoyed with the reporting of polls. One way to create news is to incorrectly headline or even incorrectly describe polling data. For example, CNN uses the headline Poll: Romney & Gingrich Tied for Top Spot in reporting on the latest USA Today/Gallup poll…
Health Care Must be Produced
ByhenryI read this article on CQPolitics.com that deals with some of the issues of handling health care costs, and also suggests to me that my feeling may be right that the types of savings claimed by the candidates as part of their health care programs may be much more complicated to attain than they would…
Government Regulated Media != Free Media
ByhenryThe following from YouTube illustrates why I simply don’t trust politicians for anything. There being a perceived imbalance in talk radio in favor of conservatives, to which I say “Who cares?”, a number of liberals are now calling for government control, obviously because we all know that the government is always fair in the way…
It’s Broken!
ByhenryA little bigger than the one we were playing with! Image via Wikipedia “I know what’s wrong with it,” said six year old Steven. From the eminence of 12 years old, I was showing Steven my electric trains, most of which I had salvaged from other sets and lovingly repaired. Suddenly one of the engines…