Stats
It’s a holiday in Brazil, our Proclamation of the Republic day, so we thought we would go “light” today. It’s been a while since our last “humor” post… Two funny, yet very serious, cartoons inside. Brush them aside at your own peril! (there goes the “light” touch…)
Brilliant article by John Kay in the Financial Times – “Sex, lies and the pitfalls of overblown statistics”. Questioning is vital when dealing with data: what does it really mean, where did it come from, what is it trying to answer, is it the best data to answer that question, what are the incentives of the source of the data, what are my own incentives and biases in interpreting this data… and so on. In fact, one should start with the right questions, but that’s another subject. Skepticism and intellectual honesty makes for a hard way to live one’s life, but there’s really no choice if one is to minimize the traps of “data”.
The World Bank has released a huge wealth of data on developing economies. The impacts of such moves are never immediate and almost always underrated, and there’s the risk of data deluge. That said, things like Google indexing and an app development contest could lead to interesting uses for all this information.
Facebook is just starting to tap the immense wealth of data generated by its 300mm audience, as reported in their blog and in the New York Times (free registration required) yesterday. This particular study on the “Happiness Index” is more of a teaser, a taste of what is to come. We don’t pretend to know [...]
