Blogs

Speed cameras, regression-to-the-mean, and the Daily Mail (again)

david's picture
Submitted by david on Fri, 07/06/2013 - 10:55am

It was interesting to hear ‘regression-to-the-mean’ being discussed on the Today programme this morning, even if the quality of the debate wasn’t great. The issue was the effectiveness of speed cameras, which tend to get installed after a spate of accidents. Since bad luck does not last, accidents tend to fall after such a ‘blip’, and this fall is generally attributed to the speed camera, whereas it would have happened anyway: this is what is meant by ‘regression-to-the-mean’.

How can 2% become 20%?

david's picture
Submitted by david on Tue, 04/06/2013 - 1:57pm

The Daily Mail headline below is unequivocal – statins cause a 20% increase in muscle problems.

statin-muscles-mail.jpg

Court of Appeal bans Bayesian probability (and Sherlock Holmes)

david's picture
Submitted by david on Mon, 25/02/2013 - 9:26am

..when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth
(Sherlock Holmes in The Sign of the Four, ch. 6, 1890)

In a recent judgement the English Court of Appeal has not only rejected the Sherlock Holmes doctrine shown above, but also denied that probability can be used as an expression of uncertainty for events that have either happened or not.

What's more dangerous - the bute or the burger?

david's picture
Submitted by david on Fri, 15/02/2013 - 8:28am

There is reasonable public outrage at possible criminal conspiracies to adulterate meat products with horsemeat, and additional concerns raised about the presence of the anti-inflammatory known as bute.

Squaring the square, in glass

david's picture
Submitted by david on Tue, 22/01/2013 - 6:24pm

Here is my latest stained glass effort, seen on a snowy day.

trinity-glass2-small.jpg

It is a 'square of squares', where all the constituent squares are of different sizes. Here are the dimensions -

sqsqbig.png

Alcohol in pregnancy and IQ of children

david's picture
Submitted by david on Fri, 16/11/2012 - 5:54pm

Some of the coverage of yesterday's story about drinking in pregnancy and IQ of children was not entirely accurate. The Times reported that 'women who drink even a couple of glasses of wine a week during pregnancy are risking a two-point drop in their child's IQ', and 'children whose mothers drank between 1 and 6 units a week - up to three large glasses of wine - had IQs about two points lower '(than mothers who did not drink).

More lessons from L'Aquila

david's picture
Submitted by david on Sun, 28/10/2012 - 7:18pm

The L’Aquila story gets even murkier.

The Continuing Tragedy of L’Aquila

david's picture
Submitted by david on Wed, 24/10/2012 - 7:42am

As in ‘Boffins jailed for not predicting earthquake’, the 6-year sentences and massive fines handed out to the Italian seismologists have been largely portrayed by the media and commentators outside Italy as an attack on science, and the prosecution ridiculed as expecting the scientists to have been able to predict the earthquake.

Rats and GM

david's picture
Submitted by david on Thu, 20/09/2012 - 6:55am

With others, I made some comments for the press about the recent paper (abstract, figures and tables freely available here) on cancer in rats fed GM maize and Monsanto's Roundup pesticide.
[ Full paper should also be available here].

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