Not far from Fisher, a young economist named Austin Bradford Hill was growing similarly impatient with the limits of statistics to account for cause and effect in health care. In 1923, for example, Hill received a grant from Britain’s Medical Research Council that sent him to the rural parts of Essex, east of London, to […]
Entries Tagged as 'policy'
The Origins of Statistical Inference – “The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns”, Sasha Issenberg
December 4th, 2012 · No Comments · Data, Policy, Statistical Inference, Statistics
Tags:Data·Health Policy·policy·Statistical Inference·Statistics
The Accuracy of Climate Models – “The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction” – Nate Silver
November 24th, 2012 · No Comments · Environmental Policy, Policy, Politics, Prediction, Statistics
Emanuel’s concerns are actually quite common among the scientific community: climate scientists are in much broader agreement about some parts of the debate than others. A survey of climate scientists conducted in 2008 found that almost all (94 percent) were agreed that climate change is occurring now, and 84 percent were persuaded that it was […]
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Tags:Climate Change·Consensus·Forecasting·Modelling·policy·Politics
Bayes’ Theorem – “The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction”, Nate Silver
November 21st, 2012 · No Comments · Policy, Prediction, Statistics
Bayes’s theorem is concerned with conditional probability. That is, it tells us the probability that a theory or hypothesis is true if some event has happened. Suppose you are living with a partner and come home from a business trip to discover a strange pair of underwear in your dresser drawer. You will probably ask […]
Tags:analysis·Bayesian Analysis·Forecasting·policy·prediction·Statistics
Markets for Predicting Macro-Economic Variables – “The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction”, Nate Silver
November 20th, 2012 · No Comments · Economics, Policy, Prediction
One of the most basic applications might simply be markets for predicting macroeconomic variables like GDP and unemployment. There are already a variety of direct and indirect ways to bet on things like inflation, interest rates, and commodities prices, but no high-volume market for GDP exists. There could be a captive audience for these markets: […]
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Tags:ABS·Economic Forecasting·Economic Modelling·Economic Policy·markets·policy·Prediction Markets
The Limitations of Economic Forecasts – “The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction”, Nate Silver
November 19th, 2012 · Comments Off on The Limitations of Economic Forecasts – “The Signal and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction”, Nate Silver · Economics, Policy, quote
Instead, economic forecasts are blunt instruments at best, rarely being able to anticipate economic turning points more than a few months in advance. Fairly often, in fact, these forecasts have failed to “predict” recessions even once they were already under way: a majority of economists did not think we were in one when the three […]
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Tags:Economic Forecasts·Economic Modelling·Economic Policy·economics·policy·Statistics
Bjelke-Petersen on Medicare – “Joh: The Life and Political Adventures of Johannes Bjelke-Petersen”, Hugh Lunn
October 11th, 2012 · No Comments · Health Policy, Policy, Political Communication, Politics, Queensland
Mr Speaker, Throughout history, man has had to cope with many disasters. Some of these disasters have become household names – the Biblical Flood, the eruption of Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii, the Titanic. Well, as from Friday we can add another monumental disaster that will affect every household in Queensland and the rest of Australia […]
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Tags:conservatives·Health Policy·Joh·Labor·Medicare·policy·Politics·Queensland
Queensland Decentralisation – “Joh: The Life and Political Adventures of Johannes Bjelke-Petersen”, Hugh Lunn
October 4th, 2012 · No Comments · Policy, Queensland
There are special needs in Queensland, and many of these arise from the problems of decentralisation. Ten of Australia’s twenty-four most populous cities are in this state, and more people live outside Brisbane in Queensland than live in the whole of South Australia or Western Australia (1,250,000 in 1977). It is true that Western Australia […]
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Tags:policy·Queensland·RARA·Regional Development
Folks don’t listen to you when your voice is low and patient and you stop them in the hot sun and make them do arithmetic – “All the King’s Men” – Robert Penn Warren
June 27th, 2012 · No Comments · Campaigning, Policy, Political Communication, Politics, Progressive Politics
You could see Willie standing on a street corner, sweating through his seersucker suit, with his hair down in his eyes, holding an old enveloped in one hand and a pencil in the other, working out figures to explain what he was squaking about, but folks don’t listen to you when your voice is low […]
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Tags:Campaigning·Economic Policy·Language·policy·Political Communication·Politics·Speeches
The Bank is Something Else Than Men – “The Grapes of Wrath” – John Steinbeck
June 14th, 2012 · No Comments · Economics, Policy, Politics, Quotes
The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.
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The ‘Abominable “No” Man’ – “Inside the Canberra Press Gallery: Life in the Wedding Cake of Old Parliament House” – Rob Chalmers
May 26th, 2012 · No Comments · Economics, Policy, Politics, Quotes
The more influential businesspeople did not turn up at the front counter in William Street; they went to Canberra to see the Minister for Agriculture and Commerce, McEwen. What they did not know was that McEwen would have made up his mind in advance of seeing any delegation whether he could revise a licensing decision […]
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Tags:economics·Free Trade·policy·Politics·Quotes·Trade·Trade Liberalisation