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Does Bran Make the Man? What Statistics Really Tell Us

Annette Georgey wrote to the Isolated Statisticans

An article came out in today's Wall St. Journal that would be fun to use for introductory stats classes. It touches on several concepts--the limits of observational studies, confounding, spurious correlations, type I errors.

The author, Melinda Beck, usas as example an article"You are what your mother eats" in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B and

This article was discussed in Chance News 36 here by Paul Alper so you might like to look at this. Beck also meantions another

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123301860344617927.html?mod=todays_us_nonsub_pj Does Breakfast Cereal Affect a Baby's Gender?]

Here we will have a discussion of an article in the Wall Street Journal

which is based on and on a criticism of this article: "Cereal-Induced gender selection? Most likely a multiple testing false positive" in the same journal.

You might want to read these articles before we figure out something wise to say about the articles.

To be continued.

Submitted by Laurie Snell

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123301860344617927.html?mod=todays_us_nonsub_pj Does Breakfast Cereal Affect a Baby's Gender?

Here we will have a discussion of an article in the Wall Street Journal

which is based on an article"You are what your mother eats" in the Proceedings of the Royal Society and on a criticism of this article: "Cereal-Induced gender selection? Most likely a multiple testing false positive" in the same journal.

You might want to read these articles before we figure out something wise to say about the articles.

To be continued.

Submitted by Laurie Snell