Chance News 94
Quotations
"...classic PPT statistical graphic: 13 logos, 10 numbers, 9 bubbles, 1 giant green arrow."
[quoted in: The real NSA scandal? The horrible slides. Washington Post, Wonkblog, 7 June 2013.]
Submitted by Bill Peterson
“6. (Mar's Law) Everything is linear if plotted log-log with a fat magic marker.”
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
According to Derek de Solla Price, "...in order to relieve the tedium of sitting for a portrait painter, on two different occasions he [Francis Galton] computed the number of brush strokes and found about 20,000 to the portrait; just the same number, he calculated, as the hand movements that went into the knitting of a pair of socks."
Submitted by Paul Alper
Forsooth
“The afternoon wave of [U.S. Open] starters began their first round Thursday in hot, sticky conditions and finished in cool, breezy weather on Friday. Luke Donald described the difference as ‘180 degrees’ ….”
by Karen Crouse, The New York Times, June 14, 2013
Submitted by Margaret Cibes at the suggestion of Jim Greenwood
"Doctors were on board and volunteered to help in 48 percent of cases; nurses and other health workers were available in another 28 percent. Only one-third of cases had to be handled by flight attendants alone."
Submitted by Bill Peterson
"So for a company that thought there was a 60 percent chance that it would have to pay $1,000 on a claim, and a 40 percent chance it would have to pay $2,000, its required reserve would rise from $1,000, the most probable number, to $1,400 — the average of the probabilities."
Submitted by Bill Peterson
Statistics Without Borders
Statistics Without Borders
(not to be confused with “Statisticians WithOut Borders), a consulting group)
Current or future statisticians may be interested in the all-volunteer organization Statistics Without Borders. SWB is an Outreach Group of the ASA consisting of over 400 volunteer statisticians who provide free statistical consulting to organizations and government agencies, particularly from developing nations. Its goal is to “promote the use of statistics to improve the health and well-being of all people.”
The April 2013 issue of Significance magazine contains an article, “Haiti after the earthquake,”[1] that describes one of their 2010 projects.
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
Data about cell and landline phone usage
“Researchers Warn of ‘Bias’ in Landline-Only Phone Polls”
by Steven Shepard, National Journal, June 18, 2013
The CDC reports that landline phone surveys in 2012 were most likely to reach older, whiter Americans. The article gives a number of statistics about landline vs. cell phone usage among various demographic groups.
(The article also states that it is illegal for automatic dialers to call cell phones, which makes polling cell phone holders more expensive. I’m not sure how many companies observe this ban!)
One interesting fact, if true:
Calling the proper number of cell phones is not a guarantee of accuracy: Gallup, which called the most cell phones, was considered among the least accurate survey firms in its 2012 pre-election polls; PPP, which called none, was considered among the most accurate.
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
Google's hiring methodology
Paul Alper sent a link to the following:
On GPAs and brainteasers: New insights from Google on recruiting and hiring, by Adam Bryant, LinkedIn.com
Paul flagged the following two passages as Forsooths:
The ability to hire well is random. “Years ago, we did a study to determine whether anyone at Google is particularly good at hiring,” Bock [Google’s senior vice president for people operations] said. “We looked at tens of thousands of interviews, and everyone who had done the interviews and what they scored the candidate, and how that person ultimately performed in their job. We found zero relationship. It’s a complete random mess, except for one guy who was highly predictive because he only interviewed people for a very specialized area, where he happened to be the world’s leading expert.”
GPAs don’t predict anything about who is going to be a successful employee. “One of the things we’ve seen from all our data crunching is that G.P.A.’s are worthless as a criteria for hiring, and test scores are worthless — no correlation at all except for brand-new college grads, where there’s a slight correlation,” Bock said. “Google famously used to ask everyone for a transcript and G.P.A.’s and test scores, but we don’t anymore, unless you’re just a few years out of school. We found that they don’t predict anything.