Chance News 113

January 1, 2018 to June 30, 2018

Quotations

“The court will not rely on extrapolated numbers from tiny samples sizes and otherwise flawed data.”

-- Judge Julie A. Robinson, quoted in: A crusader against voter fraud fails to prove his case, New York Times, 19 June 2018

Statistic of last year

On lawnmowers and terrorists again: the danger of using historical data alone for decision-making
by Norman Fenton, Probability and Law blog,

Fenton's post is based on his short article that criticizes the Royal Statistical Society's International Statistic of the Year (see last issue of Chance News).

Voting maps

A case for math, not ‘gobbledygook,’ in judging partisan voting maps
by Adam Liptak, New York Times, 15 January 2018

Chief Justice John Roberts famously said that proposed statistical measures of partisan gerrymandering struck him as "sociological gobbledygook." But in many cases it is impossible to avoid technical issues, and the Court needs to make informed decisions.

The article cites a report It’s a fact: Supreme Court errors aren’t hard to find (ProPublica, 17 Oct 2017), where we read

The review found an error in a landmark ruling, Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down part of the Voting Rights Act. Chief Justice John Roberts used erroneous data to make claims about comparable rates of voter registration among blacks and whites in six southern states. In another case, Justice Anthony Kennedy falsely claimed that DNA analysis can be used to identify individual suspects in criminal cases with perfect accuracy.

Matching shirts!

Leading probability researchers confounded by three coworkers wearing same shirt color on same day
The Onion, 18 January 2018

A lovely spoof on coincidence stories. We read the following breathless quote from "researchers":

We at least have models for something like two people coming to work wearing the same shoes or both getting a haircut the day before, but this is the equivalent of lightning striking in the same place hundreds of times in a row. We’re going to have to go back to the drawing board on probability analysis entirely.

Football decision theory

Force overtime? Or go for the win?
by Jesse Walker, Jane L. Risen, Thomas Gilovich and Richard Thaler , New York Times, 27 February 2018

In the final minutes of a game, teams may be faced with the choice of making a 1-point kick to tie the game, or going for a 2-point conversion that would win. Going for the tie may seem safer, but is it the best strategy?

(Mis)interpreting exit polls

The 2016 exit polls led us to misinterpret the 2016 election
by Thomas Edsall, New York Times, 29 March 2018

Cites [1] this record of exit polling data.

Lottery fraud

Jo Hardin sent the following article to the Isolated Statisticians e-mail list.

The man who cracked the lottery
by Reid Forgrave, New York Times Magazine, 3 May 2018

Hurricane Maria death tolls

Why are the death tolls in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria so different?
by Sheri Fink, New York Times, 2 June 2018

Mediterranean diet controversy

That huge Mediterranean diet study was flawed. But was it wrong?
by Gina Kolata, New York Times, 13 June 2018

Pew Research Center "Decoded"

Decoded

Decoded is a new resource from the Pew Research Center. As described on the Welcome page:

Pew Research Center’s main website offers plenty in the way of polished reports, data visualizations and interactives. But there are also lots of methodological musings, puzzles and tangles that you would see if you could flip those picture-perfect research products over (metaphorically speaking)... At Decoded, you’ll find blog posts about some paths taken and some narrowly avoided, including experiments that intrigued us but never saw the light of day.

Among the intriguing technical tools you will find here are the following:

• How to analyze Pew Research Center survey data in R
• Using APIs to collect website data