Chance News 85
Quotations
“Journalists could help people grasp uncertainty and help them apply critical thinking to health care decision-making issues…rather than promote false certainty, shibboleths and non-evidence-based, cheerleading advocacy.”
"To treat your facts with imagination is one thing; to imagine your facts is another."
Science Writing in the Age of Denial, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Submitted by Paul Alper
"A big computer, a complex algorithm and a long time does not equal science."
Submitted by Bill Peterson
"Statistics [from observational studies] cannot turn sow's ears into silk purses, no matter how large the number of sow's ears available for study. Nor can adding up large numbers of scientifically impoverished studies yield scientific information. The appeal of statistics is that it is (a) very cheap compared to scientific testing, and (b) it can produce results to order because the data itself imposes relatively few constraints on the statistical conclusion drawn from it. Both of these render such methods irresistible to politicians and advocacy groups.”
“Analytical Trend Troubles Scientists”, The Wall Street Journal, May 4, 2012
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
“The first principle [of scientific integrity] is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. …. I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist. ….One example of the principle is this: If you’ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.”
Caltech’s 1974 commencement address
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
From Significance magazine, April 2012:
“It was a cause of great sorrow to me that I had absolutely no talent for the game [Liverpool football], or any sport other than chess, and I had to accept that I am a centre forward trapped inside a statistician’s body.”
“We see an apparently unending upward spiral in remarkable levels of athletic achievement …. I think a major contributor to this remarkable increase in proficiency is population size. …. A simple statistical model that captures this idea posits that human running ability has not changed over the past century. That, in both 1900 and 2000 the distribution of running ability of the human race is well characterized by a normal curve with the same average and the same variability. What has changed is how many people live under that curve. …. [T]wo factors are working together. There is the growth of the total population of the world. There is also the (non-parallel) growth of the population who can participate. …. The best of a billion is likely better than the best of a million.”
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
Forsooth
"We're spending $70 per person to fill this out. That’s just not cost effective," he continued, "especially since in the end this is not a scientific survey. It’s a random survey." Daniel Webster, first term Republican congressman from Florida, referring to the American Community Survey, as quoted in "The Beginning of the End of the Census?" Catherin Rampell, The New York Times, May 19, 2012.
Submitted by Steve Simon
Fish oil
Weighing the evidence on fish oils for heart health
by Anahad O’Connor, Well blog, New York Times, 11 April 2012
According to O'Connor,
Fish oil supplements have become some of the most popular dietary pills on the market, largely on the strength of medical research linking diets high in baked and broiled fish to lower rates of heart disease. Across the United States, annual sales of purified fish oil, commonly sold as omega-3 fatty acids, are in the neighborhood of a billion dollars. And in some parts of Europe, doctors routinely prescribe fish oils to patients with heart disease.
People who put their faith in fish oil supplements may want to reconsider. A new analysis of the evidence casts doubt on the widely touted notion that the pills can prevent heart attacks in people at risk for cardiovascular disease.
And well the people might. O’Connor is referring to “Efficacy of Omega-3 Fatty Acid Supplements (Eicosapentaenoic Acid and Docosahexaenoic Acid) in the Secondary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease; A Meta-analysis of Randomized, Double-blind, Placebo-Controlled Trials” by S.M. Kwak, et al., to appear in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Not only did:
Our meta-analysis showed insufficient evidence of a secondary preventive effect of omega-3 fatty acid supplements against overall cardiovascular events among patients with a history of cardiovascular disease,
But also:
Furthermore, no significant preventive effect was observed in subgroup analyses by the following: country location, inland or coastal geographic area, history of CVD, concomitant medication use, type of placebo material in the trial, methodological quality of the trial, duration of treatment, dosage of eicosapentaenoic acid [EPA] or docosahexaenoic acid [DHA], or use of fish oil supplementation only as treatment.
Discussion
1. The authors started their meta-analysis with 1007 articles; eventually, after 181 studies were excluded as duplicates and others were dropped out for various other reasons, they were left with “14 randomized, double blind, placebo-controlled trials.” The total number of subjects in the 14 trials was 20, 485. As stated above, statistical significance was not to be seen. Two large studies of 11,234 and 18, 645 subjects, respectively which did show beneficial effects from fish oil were not included in the 14; they were rejected because they were “open-label” studies. Why are open-label studies suspect?
2. Why did the subjects in the placebo arm of the 14 studies receive various vegetable oils? Some of those subjects in the placebo arm received olive oil. Why might this “have disguised the ‘true’ benefit of omega-3 fatty acid supplementation?”
3. If not fish oil, O’Connor says the authors conclude that
it may make the most sense to spend your money on actual fish, rather than fish oil supplements.
They argue that by eating fish, you end up replacing other less healthy protein sources, like processed foods and red meat. For that reason, a diet high in fatty fish — one that includes at least two servings a week — may make a difference over the long term, they say.
If the above is correct, why are so many people eschewing fish for fish oil?
Submitted by Paul Alper
Choosing a spouse--really?
The purpose of spectacular wealth, according to a spectacularly wealthy guy
by Adam Davidson, New York Times Magazine, 1 May 2012
Davidson describes an interview with Edward Conard, one of Mitt Romney's former associates from Bain Capital, who has written a book entitled Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong. It is amusing to note the following, which appears that about halfway through the article:
There’s also the fact that Conard applies a relentless, mathematical logic to nearly everything, even finding a good spouse. He advocates, in utter seriousness, using demographic data to calculate the number of potential mates in your geographic area. Then, he says, you should set aside a bit of time for “calibration” — dating as many people as you can so that you have a sense of what the marriage marketplace is like. Then you enter the selection phase, this time with the goal of picking a permanent mate. The first woman you date who is a better match than the best woman you met during the calibration phase is, therefore, the person you should marry. By statistical probability, she is as good a match as you’re going to get. (Conard used this system himself.)
Discussion
1. They almost got the description of the optimal strategy for the famous Secretary Problem correct. What is missing from this argument?
2. Do you believe that Conard actually used this system himself?
Submitted by Charles Grinstead
Comments
1. This is a long article, which presents Conard's argument as a defense of unbridled, winner-take-all competition. He rejects the idea that income inequality is a problem; indeed, he thinks even greater rewards are needed as incentives for risk-taking entrepreneurs, whose efforts to boost the economy will benefit everyone. As a reminder that we have heard this before, Paul Alper sent the following quote from a previous century:
The American Beauty Rose can be produced in the splendor and fragrance which bring cheer to its beholder only by sacrificing the early buds which grow up around it. This is not an evil tendency in business. It is merely the working-out of a law of nature and a law of God.
2. See also the post Incentive perversity, Economix blog, New York Times, 7 May 2012. University of Massachusetts economist Nancy Folbre reminds us that the links between rewards and performance are not so clear cut, and that incentives can be distorted when economic rewards grow too extreme. She points out that high-stakes educational testing led schools to cheat on exams, and out-sized contracts for star athletes led to an era tainted by performance-enhancing drugs. She concludes that, "Good incentives are always a good idea. But it’s not as easy to design them as it might seem, because they should discourage a host of economic sins — not just sloth and fear, but also cruelty and greed."
TV and the shortening of life
Television viewing time and reduced life expectancy: a life table analysis
by J Lennert Veerman, et. al., British Journal of Sports Medicine, 15 August 2011
From the online abstract we read:
Results The amount of TV viewed in Australia in 2008 reduced life expectancy at birth by 1.8 years (95% uncertainty interval (UI): 8.4 days to 3.7 years) for men and 1.5 years (95% UI: 6.8 days to 3.1 years) for women. Compared with persons who watch no TV, those who spend a lifetime average of 6 h/day watching TV can expect to live 4.8 years (95% UI: 11 days to 10.4 years) less. On average, every single hour of TV viewed after the age of 25 reduces the viewer's life expectancy by 21.8 (95% UI: 0.3–44.7) min. This study is limited by the low precision with which the relationship between TV viewing time and mortality is currently known.
Conclusions TV viewing time may be associated with a loss of life that is comparable to other major chronic disease risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.
Needless to say, this highly speculative--but very quotable--statistical analysis has been picked up by every conceivable web site since last August. It just made its appearance in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: Can TV cut your life short?, by Jeff Strickler, 7 May 2012. The New York Times mentioned it a week earlier: Don’t just sit there, by Gretchen Reynolds, 28 April 2012.
Submitted by Paul Alper
Discussion
1. The NYT article describes a number of studies concerning the ill effects of inactivity. Their entire description of the Australian study reads, "researchers determined that watching an hour of television can snip 22 minutes from someone’s life. If an average man watched no TV in his adult life, the authors concluded, his life span might be 1.8 years longer, and a TV-less woman might live for a year and half longer than otherwise." What is missing here?
2. Elsewhere in the story, however, the NYT notes that "Television viewing is a widely used measure of sedentary time." What does this suggest about interpreting the Australian study?
"Approval" statistic
“Memo to Connecticut Democrats”, by Jonathan Pelto, May 7, 2012
From a CT blogger's website:
The following chart indicates how Connecticut Democratic voters rate Governor Malloy’s job performance. In politics we use a statistic that measures the rate of approval compared to the rate of disapproval – we call that the overall positive or negative rating of an individual (i.e. +/-). The higher the positive rating the better the candidate or elected official is doing.
Questions
1. Can you think of a reason why the June 2011 poll figures sum to 106?
2. The rightmost column heading might suggest that these figures are margins of error (percentage points), except for their size. If they had been margins of error, about how many people would have been in the sample on March 2011? Is that realistic?
3. According to the text, the rightmost column contains a “statistic that measures the rate of approval compared to the rate of disapproval.” How do you think that the blogger compared approval/disapproval figures to come up with the figures in the rightmost column? (While I couldn’t find a definition of “approval rating,” I did found that the blogger's "statistic" is pretty common; for example, see Wikipedia's "United States presidential approval rating".)
4. How might you have entitled the +/- column, in order to clarify its meaning?
5. The blogger opens the article by stating that Malloy's "support from members of [his] own party ... is at a breathtakingly low + 19 percent." Do you agree? What would you have said?
Submitted by Margaret Cibes
Happiness and variability
Parents today are happier than non-parents, studies suggest
by Sharon Jayson, USA Today, 5 March 2012
This article drew commentary on Andrew Gelman's blog (Happy news on happiness; what can we believe?, 7 May 2012). Gelman notes that the article concludes with the following quote:
The first child increases happiness quite a lot. The second child a little. The third not at all.
The quote is attributed to Mikko Myrskylä, the coauthor of A Global Perspective on Happiness and Fertility, one of the two studies described in the article.
Gelman then complains, "As a statistician, I hate hate hate hate hate when people ignore variability and present results deterministically. The above statement might be an accurate summary of average patterns but is certainly not true in every case!"
Submitted by Paul Alper
House cuts American Community Survey
“Operating in the dark”, Editorial, New York Times, May 13, 2012
“Does government knowledge mean government intrusion?”, by Suzy Khimm,Washington Post, May 13, 2012
Last week the U.S. House of Representatives voted to cut funds for the American Community Survey and at least part of the Economic Census. The former, “a bipartisan creation” in 2005, provides annual updates of economic, demographic and housing characteristics, which supplement the decennial census information. Let’s see what the Senate does ….
See the U.S. Census Bureau Director’s statement (and video)[2].
Submitted by Margaret Cibes