Category Archives: Statistics

Understanding the Limitations of Your Data: The Fisheries Edition

Posted on January 27, 2016 by mikethemadbiologist

This is disturbing (boldface mine): Astudy published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications suggests that the national data many countries have submitted to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has not always accurately reflected the amount of fish actually … Continue reading →

Posted in Fish, Statistics | Comments Off on Understanding the Limitations of Your Data: The Fisheries Edition

Going Manhattan Project on Science’s Ass: You Get the Science You (Don’t) Pay For

Posted on December 8, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

I’ve argued before that the funding structure of science hurts our ability to conduct experiments at the appropriate scale, and that this should be fixed by ‘going Manhattan Project on its ass.’ Here’s what I mean (boldface added): What I’ll … Continue reading →

Posted in Funding, Statistics | Comments Off on Going Manhattan Project on Science’s Ass: You Get the Science You (Don’t) Pay For

Why Politically-Savvy Lawyers Should Never Be Allowed To Set Data Standards

Posted on November 9, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

I didn’t think Obama could appoint an Attorney General worse than Eric Holder. Clearly, that was a failure of imagination on my part (boldface mine): Attorney general Loretta Lynch says the federal government should not require police to report fatal … Continue reading →

Posted in Civil Liberties, Statistics | 4 Comments

Maybe This Has Something To Do With The Reproducibility Problem?

Posted on October 7, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

Recently, the Atlantic had an article about people who earn a living as clinical trial test subjects. Some ‘methodological notes of interest’ (boldface mine): Intrigued by the promise of an easier way to make money, he enrolled as a guinea … Continue reading →

Posted in Drugs, Statistics | Comments Off on Maybe This Has Something To Do With The Reproducibility Problem?

Police Officers Get ‘Teachered’: Accountability Vs. Transparency

Posted on September 11, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

A while ago, I contrasted our expectations for teachers versus police officers: It’s weird: one group of heavily unionized public workers is under a constant barrage of claims of being underqualified, while another, with much lower educational standards, gets a … Continue reading →

Posted in Statistics, The Rule of Law | Comments Off on Police Officers Get ‘Teachered’: Accountability Vs. Transparency

P-Hacking Is a Poor Reason For Replication Problems

Posted on September 3, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

With the recent release of the results from the Reproducibility Project–an effort to replicate 100 experimental findings in social psychology–there has been a lot of commentary and coverage about the finding that the majority of the studies failed to replicate. … Continue reading →

Posted in Philosophy Shit, Statistics | 1 Comment

Reliability and VAM

Posted on August 25, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

One of the problems of using value-added measurement (‘VAM’) to assess individual teachers is the imprecision of these estimates. Brad Lindell explains the problem in testimony in a New York case challenging teacher assessment: If the same test-retest reliability from … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Statistics | Comments Off on Reliability and VAM

How You ‘Pre-Treat’ Your Data Really Matters (It’s Not the P-Hacking)

Posted on August 21, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

There’s an 538 article “Science Isn’t Broken” that’s winding its way through the tubes of the internet. It has a cool ‘p-hacking’ interactive feature, which is probably why most of the associated commentary has focused on the problem of p-hacking … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Genomics, Statistics | Comments Off on How You ‘Pre-Treat’ Your Data Really Matters (It’s Not the P-Hacking)

VAM-Based Teacher Evaluation Collides With the Legal System

Posted on August 19, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

And if the judge’s questions are any indication, VAM-based teacher evaluation gets hit and dragged a couple hundred yards (boldface mine): Lederman’s suit against state education officials — including John King, the former state education commissioner who is now a … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Statistics | 1 Comment

Understanding the Limitations of Your Data: At-Risk Versus Low-Income

Posted on August 6, 2015 by mikethemadbiologist

A while ago, I described how decisions about how to treat your data can have significant effects on your results–effects that can be as profound as, if not greater than, p-value tweaking. So a preliminary analysis of the effects of … Continue reading →

Posted in Education, Statistics | Comments Off on Understanding the Limitations of Your Data: At-Risk Versus Low-Income