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Math anxiety turns political
In a recent interview, vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan was asked about the problem with his party’s proposed “budget” (if we may loosely use that word for a set of proposals that refrain from...
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The Silver standard
Who speaks for statistics? Ace forensic psephologist Nate Silver has attracted quite a bit of attention lately, with his 4+-year-old blog devoted to his statistical model that is intended to provide a...
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Are you demographic?
As a sometime demographer myself, I am fascinated by the prominence of “demographics” as an explanatory concept in the recent presidential election, now already slipping away into hazy memory. Recent...
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What’s the Matter with Economics?
One of the most politically important economics results of recent years has been the paper by Reinhart and Rogoff on the link between high sovereign debt and low GDP growth. This work is something I’d...
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Who needs math?
According to a study by sociologist Michael Handel, summarised here by Jordan Weissman, 75% of American workers never use any mathematics more complicated than fractions in their work. (It goes without...
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More scary maths
I was just working through the sheet music for “As Time Goes By”. I don’t remember ever having heard the intro — it was left out when the song appeared in Casablanca, and seems never to have been...
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Impact à la canadienne
I’ve mocked the sometimes risible implications of the British obsession with tying academic research one-for-one with “impact” on industry or society. It’s not absurd to want to ask the question, I...
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Research impact and road construction
I’ve been interested in the turn of government funders of scientific research in several countries — in particular, US, UK, and Canada — to target research spending likely to have high economic...
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Dawkins’ faulty taxonomy
Science enthusiast Richard Dawkins is always good for a laugh, even if the laughter sometimes curdles at his anti-Catholic and anti-Muslim bigotry, and his inclination to minimise the the significance...
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The mistimed death clock: How much time do I have left?
Someone has set up a macabre “death clock“, a web site where individuals can enter a few personal statistics — birthdate, sex, smoking status, and general level of optimism, and it will calculate a...
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Macho science: Deflowering virgin nature
I was listening to BBC radio this morning, which I rarely do, because I find it generally dull. A scientist named Mark Lythgoe was being interviewed, director of the Centre for Advanced Biomedical...
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Cool nerds
An interesting article by Carl Wilson (apparently the start of a month-long series) in Slate looks at the word “cool” in its past and current incarnations. It’s a lot more readable and to the point...
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A thoughtful politician
I was at the concluding conference today for the New Dynamics of Ageing research programme in London, and one of the talks was by David Willetts, the Minister of State for Universities and Science. I...
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Data-mining for Cthulhu
I don’t ordinarily repost what other people have written, but this post by The Atlantic‘s Alexis Madrigal is so beautiful that I feel the need to copy it. It really just consists of juxtaposing the...
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Hippie science
There are two books I’ve read sort of recently, From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner and How the Hippies Saved Physics by David Kaiser, that supplement each other as a picture of how...
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More Hockey Statisticks
I wrote last week about my surprising response to two books about the public conflicts over palaeoclimatology. Whereas I expected to find myself sympathising with the respected scientist Michael Mann,...
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Percents are hard
Some really bad science reporting from the BBC. They report on a new study finding the incidence of diagnosed coeliac disease increasing (and decreasing incidence of dermatitis herpetiformis, though...
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Low unemployment rates for math/stat PhDs
I was interested to read of a recent NSF study, that found only 2.1% unemployment in the US for people with doctoral degrees in science, engineering, and health fields. That’s only about 1/3 the rate...
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Innumeracy: UK prison service edition
The BBC reports on a study by the Prisoners Education Trust, of the impact of the recent decision of the prison service to limit prisoners’ access to books. The Ministry of Justice has dismissed the...
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Jews and evolution
Salon has published an interesting interview with former Commonwealth Chief Rabbi of the soi-disant Orthodox Jonathan Sacks about his new book about the relationship between science and religion. The...
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