When Tim Harford published a second edition last year of his splendid book, The undercover economist, he added a chapter on the GFC. This week he’s made the chapter, Rotten eggs and rotten investments, available for free via download. I’m always interested in the mis-use of statistics. I was struck by these paras (page 9) [...]
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STATISTICS
Are Australians cycling less?
The Sydney Morning Herald reported this week that a “far smaller” proportion of Australians is cycling today than was the case in the mid 1980s. The number of cyclists dropped on a per capita basis “by 37.5% between 1986 and 2011.” That must be unwelcome news for cycling advocates but music to the ears of [...]
READ MOREWhat does ‘random’ look like?
The exhibit shows two seemingly similar patterns – but one of them is random and one isn’t. Can you tell which is which? More in a moment. I’ve taken these plots from Steven Pinker’s new book, The better angels of our nature: why violence has declined. It’s in a Chapter titled The statistics of deadly [...]
READ MORECan selection bias shoot down an argument?
Urban policy is rich in opportunities for fallacious thinking – for example, surveys that purport to show huge latent demand for a particular mode of transport, but sample only users of that mode. So I’m always interested in new examples of where we can so easily go wrong. Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution recently provided a [...]
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