Tag Archives: statistics

Statistics 101 – David Borman

by Myrna Posted on December 18, 2018

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Statistics 101

From Data Analysis and Predictive Modeling to Measuring Distribution and Determining Probability, Your Essential Guide to Statistics

David Borman

Genre: Mathematics

Price: $10.99

Publish Date: December 18, 2018

Publisher: Adams Media

Seller: SIMON AND SCHUSTER DIGITAL SALES INC


A comprehensive guide to statistics—with information on collecting, measuring, analyzing, and presenting statistical data—continuing the popular 101 series. Data is everywhere. In the age of the internet and social media, we’re responsible for consuming, evaluating, and analyzing data on a daily basis. From understanding the percentage probability that it will rain later today, to evaluating your risk of a health problem, or the fluctuations in the stock market, statistics impact our lives in a variety of ways, and are vital to a variety of careers and fields of practice. Unfortunately, most statistics text books just make us want to take a snooze, but with Statistics 101 , you’ll learn the basics of statistics in a way that is both easy-to-understand and apply. From learning the theory of probability and different kinds of distribution concepts, to identifying data patterns and graphing and presenting precise findings, this essential guide can help turn statistical math from scary and complicated, to easy and fun. Whether you are a student looking to supplement your learning, a worker hoping to better understand how statistics works for your job, or a lifelong learner looking to improve your grasp of the world, Statistics 101 has you covered.

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Statistics 101 – David Borman

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Trump Brags About Job Growth That Happened Under Obama

by Sidney2406 Posted on February 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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After repeatedly accusing the government of inflating its monthly jobs reports while on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump on Friday praised the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest numbers, which showed 227,000 new jobs in January, as “really big league.” He even appeared to take credit for the report, even though the data were collected during Barack Obama’s final days in office.

“A couple of things happened this morning,” Trump said referring to the report. “So we are very happy about that. I think that it’s really big league. We’re bringing jobs back, we’re bringing down your taxes. We are going to get rid of your regulations.”

Conservative outlets, including Fox News and Breitbart, also misleadingly implied that the reported job growth came under Trump:

While running for president, Trump took a strikingly different approach to the Labor Department’s reports. He routinely accused the Obama administration of purposely understating the true unemployment rate, which he believed to be as high as 42 percent.

“Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment,” Trump said at a rally nearly a year ago. “The number is probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent.”

Some of the president’s Cabinet picks, including treasury secretary nominee Steve Mnuchin and labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder, have also mocked the government’s official unemployment rate.

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Trump Brags About Job Growth That Happened Under Obama

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No, all of your friends haven’t gone to Standing Rock without you.

by HermanOneill Posted on October 31, 2016

That’s according to a new report by UNICEF, which found that nearly one in seven children in the world live in areas where outdoor air pollution is at least six times higher than international guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

The report also found that air pollution — primarily caused by fossil fuel burning, vehicle emissions, waste incineration, and dust — contributes to the deaths of about 600,000 kids under the age of 5 each year. The statistics are most dire in South Asia, where an estimated 620 million children live with dirty air.

Air pollution is especially harmful to children as their lungs are still developing and their respiratory tracks are more permeable than adults’. But as UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake points out, “Pollutants don’t only harm children’s developing lungs, they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and permanently damage their developing brains — and, thus, their futures.”

UNICEF is calling for countries to take several steps to minimize risk to kids, including reducing pollution, increasing access to health care, monitoring air pollution levels, and keeping polluting facilities away from schools and playgrounds.

“We protect our children when we protect the quality of our air,” Lake says. “Both are central to our future.”

Excerpt from – 

No, all of your friends haven’t gone to Standing Rock without you.

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Fossil fuels will be heavily represented at this year’s U.N. climate talks.

by TiffinyLudwig Posted on October 31, 2016

That’s according to a new report by UNICEF, which found that nearly one in seven children in the world live in areas where outdoor air pollution is at least six times higher than international guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

The report also found that air pollution — primarily caused by fossil fuel burning, vehicle emissions, waste incineration, and dust — contributes to the deaths of about 600,000 kids under the age of 5 each year. The statistics are most dire in South Asia, where an estimated 620 million children live with dirty air.

Air pollution is especially harmful to children as their lungs are still developing and their respiratory tracks are more permeable than adults’. But as UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake points out, “Pollutants don’t only harm children’s developing lungs, they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and permanently damage their developing brains — and, thus, their futures.”

UNICEF is calling for countries to take several steps to minimize risk to kids, including reducing pollution, increasing access to health care, monitoring air pollution levels, and keeping polluting facilities away from schools and playgrounds.

“We protect our children when we protect the quality of our air,” Lake says. “Both are central to our future.”

Link:

Fossil fuels will be heavily represented at this year’s U.N. climate talks.

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Brexit Now Looking Like It Will Probably Fail

by JenniGerken Posted on June 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Peter Eavis says that Brexit is likely to lose and Britain will remain part of the EU:

Asking people to predict a result of an election has, over time, provided more accurate forecasts than asking people their voting intentions, according to a study by Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan economist and an Upshot contributor, and David Rothschild, of the Microsoft Research and Statistics Center.

When Survation asked, “Regardless of how you plan to vote, what do you think the result will be?” just shy of 40 percent of people said the “remain” camp would win. Only 26 percent said that “leave” would prevail.

The betting markets agree:

The betting odds for the EU referendum changed direction over the weekend and now firmly favour a Remain vote with just three days to go….Ladbrokes has given just a 27% chance of a Vote Leave while William Hill has it as 28.5%. Ladbrokes added that 95% of betting on was a Remain vote on Monday.

My sense—though I’d prefer actual data if anyone has collected it—is that secession votes usually follow a pattern: the leavers get an upward bump a few weeks before voting day, but stayers get a bump in the few days before voting day. A fair number of people flirt with the idea of leaving, but then get scared at the last minute and decide to vote for the status quo instead. Basically, in any secession referendum, I figure that Leave needs to be polling at 55 percent or higher to have a realistic chance of winning.

As of today, the polls are still tied, so my guess is that Brexit will fail on Thursday. If I’m right that about 5 percent of the leavers will get cold feet and change their minds, the final tally will be something like 53-47 percent in favor of remaining in the EU. We’ll find out in a couple of days.

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Brexit Now Looking Like It Will Probably Fail

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This Might Be a Better Way to Track Police Shootings

by oraexactaz Posted on March 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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One of the biggest frustrations about reporting on fatal police shootings is just how little we know about them. As reporters and criminologists have pointed out repeatedly, federal data on violent crime and mortality trends does a poor job of capturing how often, and under what circumstances, cops kill unarmed people. Last December, FBI Director James Comey called the agency’s system for tracking fatal police shootings a “travesty,” and promised to expand it by 2017. The lack of a reliable national source of data has prompted news outlets, academics, and citizens to build their own datasets.

Now, researchers from Harvard University and Northeastern University say they have identified an overlooked source that could offer the most complete accounting yet of fatal encounters with police. In a paper published in the American Journal of Public Health, the researchers point to the National Violent Death Reporting System, a database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s trove of data on violent deaths, they write, “captures detailed coded data and rich narratives that describe the precipitating circumstances and incident dynamics for all suicides and homicides.” In other words, the data gives a pretty clear picture of the deceased and the moments leading up to their death.

Because it started in 2003—decades later than the CDC’s Vital Statistics or the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reports—the CDC’s violent death data has been largely ignored by journalists and policymakers, says Catherine Barber, a public health researcher at Harvard and the paper’s lead author.

Thirty-two states are now reporting to the database, though current data is only available for 16 states. Surprisingly, even in just those states, Barber and her colleagues identified 1,552 police-involved homicides between 2005 and 2012. That’s 71 percent more than the 906 cases identified in the CDC’s Vital Statistics, and more than double the 742 cases reported in the FBI’s Supplemental Homicide Reports during the same period.

The paper also found stark racial disparities in the available violent death data, consistent with disparities in federal data that have been noted previously:

Expanding the National Violent Death Reporting System to include all 50 states, the researchers conclude, will offer not only a more accurate count of police homicides, but also a detailed narrative “on the people, weapons, and circumstances involved.”

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This Might Be a Better Way to Track Police Shootings

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China Slashes Coal Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions for the Second Year in a Row

by Claudia58Q Posted on February 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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China is continuing to drag itself off coal—the dirty energy source that has made it the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter. Figures published Sunday night by China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed coal consumption dropping 3.7 percent in 2015, marking the second year in a row that the country has slashed coal use and greenhouse gas emissions.

To put that in perspective, Greenpeace East Asia says China’s drop in coal use over the past two years is equal to Japan’s total annual coal consumption—a trend the environmental group says could “far surpass” China’s commitments enshrined in the Paris climate deal reached in December. Last year, China’s carbon emissions dropped 1-2 percent, Greenpeace says, a decline the group attributes to both falling economic output from China’s heavy industries and an upswing in renewable energy use. China is widely expected to meet or surpass its goal of “peaking” emissions (the point at which the country begins to permanently reduce its greenhouse gas emissions) by 2030.

But the shift away from coal will also hit the country’s workers hard: The government plans to slash 1.8 million jobs in the steel and coal industries—about 15 percent of the workforce in those sectors, according to Reuters. The government says it has a $15.27 billion plan over 10 years to relocate these workers.

Today’s news follows China’s promise of a three-year moratorium on all new coal mines. The country also plans to shutter 1,000 existing coal mines this year alone, with deeper cuts to come. All of this has been accompanied by massive investments in wind and solar that have made the country’s renewable energy firms world-leaders in clean power.

But with China—the world’s second largest economy—there is always a disclaimer. It’s right to be skeptical of official economic and energy statistics coming from China, which some experts say can be subject to political pressure.

Still, there are some undeniable signs of progress. The last major coal-fired power station in Beijing is expected to close this year, welcome news to residents of a city that is frequently blanketed in toxic smog.

Originally posted here – 

China Slashes Coal Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions for the Second Year in a Row

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Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015

by Myrna Posted on December 23, 2015

Snowballs, witch-hunts, and a big measles outbreak. In 2015, science was a favorite punching bag for many of America’s politicians. While leaders of nearly 200 nations met in Paris to hammer out a historic deal to combat climate change, the US Senate held a hearing—hosted by presidential hopeful Ted Cruz (R-Texas)—to debunk the science. It had a subtle title: “Data or Dogma?” In fact, 2015 did nothing to alter the notion that one whole American political party—and nearly all of its candidates for the White House—remains stuck on a murky spectrum from outright climate denial to the policy version of ¯_(ツ)_/¯, as we wrote about all-too often this year. There was, of course, the infamous snowball thrown on the floor of the Senate. Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) claimed that global warming wasn’t happening because it was cold when he made the snowball. (Repeat after me: Weather does not a climate trend make.) But perhaps the more insidious attack on science was directed by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the chairman of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee. Smith accused government scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of rigging climate data to disprove the so-called “global warming pause” (a contested but popular talking point often used to attack the science). He then attempted to depose the scientists and subpoena their documents. “Political operatives and other NOAA employees likely played a large role in approving NOAA’s decision to adjust data that allegedly refutes the hiatus in warming,” he told the Washington Post. But if you can’t fight the science outright in public, why not simply try to ban the words? That was the ingenious tactic allegedly employed by the state of Florida, under Gov. Rick Scott (R). Employees from several state departments said they had been told not to use the phrases “climate change” and “global warming” in official state business. (The governor denied the allegations.) 2015 also saw yet another round of measles outbreaks, including one that spread at Disneyland in California. Public health officials blamed parents who don’t vaccinate their kids. That anti-vaxxer sentiment found a powerful megaphone in Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who at September’s televised GOP debate repeated the totally discredited—and dangerous—theory that vaccines cause autism. “Autism has become an epidemic,” Trump claimed. “Twenty-five years ago, 35 years ago, you look at the statistics, not even close. It has gotten totally out of control.” (Trump insisted he’s still in favor of vaccines, despite warning a national TV audience that they are endangering children.) Watch the whole, not-so-splendid, anti-science show above. Front-page image credit: Smoke: Claire McAdams/Shutterstock; Man: Everett Collection/Shutterstock Follow this link:  Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015 ; ; ;

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Here’s a Video Showing the Very Worst Anti-Science Bullshit of 2015

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The True Cost of Gun Violence: Our Methodology

by JoannaBonner Posted on April 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Direct costs

Police
This is an estimate of the money that police departments spend to respond to and investigate gun-related crimes. It includes police salaries, benefits, and equipment, as well as overhead costs to the police department. Miller based this calculation on the amount of time police spent on initial response and follow-up (based on this sample survey) and the amount of money police departments spend on average per officer (including fringe benefits, equipment, supervision, etc.) using data from the 2006 Census of Governments.


The True Cost of Gun Violence in America


16 Charts That Show the Shocking Cost of Gun Violence in America


This Is What It’s Really Like to Survive a Gunshot


The True Cost of Gun Violence: Our Methodology

Emergency transport
This is the cost of the labor and equipment involved in transporting victims of gun violence to the hospital. Miller calculated the likelihood that each type of victim (fatal or injured) would reach the hospital via emergency transport using data from a national sample of emergency room visits. The cost of transport was based on a GAO survey from 2010, which was then updated to 2012 dollars. The median cost of emergency transport for an individual injury or fatality was $452.

Medical
This is the cost of treating victims of gun violence in the hospital and post-discharge. It includes the hospital service and insurance claims processing fees paid by Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and the victims themselves. Hospital costs are based on a database of 40 to 50 million healthcare claims from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project, insurance costs come from data collected by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and post-discharge costs are based on medical expense data collected by the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Council on Compensation Insurance.

Mental health
This refers to the cost of counseling for victims of gun violence and their families. It includes the services paid by Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and the victims themselves. The number of people seeking mental health services per gun violence incident (death or injury) and the cost for these services are based on Ted Miller and Mark Cohen’s 1998 survey of 168 mental health counselors—including psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and pastoral counselors—which found that for every murder victim, 1.5 to 2.4 people sought mental health treatment.

Legal services and adjudication
This is the cost of legal and adjudication services for perpetrators of homicide and aggravated assault, including salary of the judges and public defenders, and other overhead costs of operating a courthouse. These costs are based on a 2010 study by Kathryn McCollister et al, which examined Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI data to calculate local, state, and federal government expenditures on legal services for homicides and aggravated assaults. Miller’s estimate assumes that legal and adjudication costs do not apply to unintentional deaths or injuries, legal interventions, or suicides.

Incarceration
This is the estimated amount of money needed to incarcerate perpetrators (convicted in 2012) of homicides or aggravated assaults over the course of their sentences. These estimates are based on a 2010 study by Kathryn McCollister et al, which examined Bureau of Justice Statistics and FBI data to calculate local, state, and federal government expenditures on incarceration of perpetrators of firearm homicides and assaults. Here again Miller assumes that incarceration costs do not apply to unintentional deaths or injuries, legal interventions, or suicides.

Indirect costs

Work costs for victims and perpetrators
This refers to the potential wages and household productivity that were lost due to a death or injury. Miller estimated lost wages of victims and imprisoned perpetrators using expected earnings data from the Current Population Survey (US Census), data on the duration of temporary disabilities from the Annual Survey on Workplace Injuries (Bureau of Labor Statistics), and workers compensation data on the probability of permanent disabilities by the type of injury. Lost household productivity is estimated using a 2009 study based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey. In both estimates, Miller assumes that victims and perpetrators make the same amount of money and are as productive as the typical American in their gender and age group.

Costs to the employer
This refers to the costs other than benefits that an employer incurs when a worker leaves employment permanently or temporarily because of injury. It captures costs of workplace disruption, rehiring and retraining, overtime to meet production schedules, and investigation and reporting of on-the-job incidents. This number is based on estimates of employer costs by injury severity used by both the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

Losses in quality of life
This is an estimate of the financial value of the pain, suffering, and fear that accompany a death or injury. Miller concludes that a life is worth about $6.2 million, which is a violence-specific average based on the amounts awarded by juries in wrongful injury and death cases. It includes lost wages and household production.

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The True Cost of Gun Violence: Our Methodology

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Watch John Oliver Explain the Insanity of Our Student Debt Crisis

by NannetteUnj Posted on September 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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The price of attending college in America continues to spiral out of control. In 2012, the average cost of attending a 4-year undergraduate institution in the US hit a record $23,872, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. For comparison, 35% of American workers made less than $22,500 in 2012.

On Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, liberal piñata-destroyer John Oliver took on this insanity with a typically entertaining and blood boiling segment. “Essentially, student debt is like HPV. If you go to college, you’re almost certainly going to get it, and if you do, it will follow you for the rest of your life.”

Watch:

For more, here are 9 charts about the student debt crisis that will drive you crazy.

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Watch John Oliver Explain the Insanity of Our Student Debt Crisis

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