MetaFilter posts tagged with statistics and brokenlink

Mind if I fart?

Eekacat — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 17:29:08 -0800

Physicians and scientists around the world even go as far as to state that smoking leads to premature death. Don’t we all know someone who smokes constantly, even heavily, yet is still living — or has lived — to the mature age of eighty, ninety, and older? Furthermore, the MDs and PhDs state that smoking causes cancer and emphysema. If this diagnosis were definitive, wouldn’t these afflictions affect all smokers equally, rather than the small percentage that it actually does affect?

woe is we

bshort — Thu, 26 Aug 2004 08:19:44 -0800

Bush's latest accomplishment may not be one that he's willing to brag about. The Census Bureau is reporting that an additional 1.3 million Americans are now living in poverty. They also offer a number of pretty graphs (all in pdf).

X % of email is Spam

Mo Nickels — Tue, 06 Jul 2004 19:26:34 -0800

85% of all email is spam. 83% of all email is spam. Between 80 and 90% of all email is spam. 80% of all email is spam. 76% of all email is spam. Between 64 and 78% of all email is spam. 64% of all email is spam. 63% of all email is spam. 60% of all email is spam. 52% of all email in 2004 will be spam. 50% of all email is spam. By 2006 98% of all email will be spam.

What is the future of the US stock market?

muppetboy — Fri, 14 May 2004 18:14:16 -0800

Why Stock Markets Crash : Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems. Professor Didier Sornette of UCLA has some very interesting things to say about stock markets. In his book, he explains how his "theory of cooperative herding and imitation [...] has detected the existence of a clear signature of herding in the decay of the US S&P500 index since August 2000 with high statistical significance, in the form of strong log-periodic components." Although his timing has been just a bit early, the theory, the predictions to date and the pictures are all pretty uncanny. This is easily the most interesting book on the stock market I have ever read and provides interesting and believable hypotheses about things I never imagined could have rigorous explanations. For an overview, here is an interview with the author.

Understanding polls.

skallas — Fri, 23 Apr 2004 20:58:21 -0800

Understanding polls. For those of us who slept through statistics.

Prayers for peace

poopy — Mon, 17 Mar 2003 18:10:31 -0800

Prayers for peace. I'm agnostic and my feelings on the current Iraq crisis are confused. However, one thing is almost certain: many innocent people will die in the following weeks (months, years), most of them relegated to statistics. The future is uncertain.

crunchland — Mon, 10 Jun 2002 17:54:04 -0800

More pedestrians died in traffic accidents in the US in the year 2000 than all of the people who died in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. 10 times the number of people killed in 9/11 attacks died due to motor vehicle attacks that same year. And yet some say the US government is on a course that will take away many of our civil rights in order to protect us from the boogie-monster terrorists. OF COURSE, the terrorist attacks were a horrible nightmare, and of course we want our police forces to prevent even worse attacks in the future, but before we start thinking about creating a Brave New Police State, maybe now is a good time to have a little perspective.

Danf — Wed, 20 Feb 2002 11:08:03 -0800

Utah Leads Nation in Rate of Anti-Depressant Use. It is interesting (to me) in that the people doing the study credit a "Mother of Zion" syndrome of married Mormon women putting on the happy face regardless of how happy they truly are. My state is up at the top also. Could be all the rain I guess. . .*sigh*

Postroad — Sat, 21 Apr 2001 11:03:51 -0800

Harpers April Index Some interesting stats here, especially on energy-related items.

stevis — Sat, 03 Mar 2001 21:47:14 -0800

Going down? NPR's Savvy Traveler did a bit on this site; apparently it tells you the odds of a crash on your chosen flight. Question is, do I want to know?

Postroad — Tue, 13 Feb 2001 07:33:55 -0800

statistics on the death penalty Statistics which suggest that the death penalty does not accomplish what we expected of it. Unless, perhaps, we like revenge.

josholalia — Tue, 07 Nov 2000 21:17:25 -0800

Statistical Dead Heat May Result in Ping Pong Match Tie-Breaker So says Ken Layne in his tale of obscure lore and presidential politics.

rschram — Tue, 24 Oct 2000 09:19:42 -0800

Hey, kids! Statistics is cool! (Amazing introduction to the concept of estimation, and error computing.)

thirteen — Mon, 29 May 2000 22:48:51 -0800

This information was supposed to be private, wasn't it?

grant — Mon, 22 Nov 1999 20:08:27 -0800

Internet use has reached one billion page views per day. Does this statistic mean anything to anybody? In reality, if more sites were designed better, this number would drop by half because people would be able find the information they were looking for twice as fast.

tdecius — Sat, 09 Oct 1999 11:09:24 -0800

Eric Schulman from the Annals of Improbable Research asks, Can Fame Be Measured Quantitatively?.