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Statistics Alive
Power of statistics: US Census has politicians on edge 2010-03-11 Floyd Wayne Williams Jr faces the death penalty, accused of murdering two people in the state of Georgia. His lawyers this week launched what has been dubbed the 'census defence' to get the charges dismissed. Read more... Births to minorities are approaching majority in US 2010-03-11 In the latest sign of the nation’s shifting racial and ethnic composition, births to Asian, black and Hispanic women in the United States are on the verge of surpassing births to non-Hispanic whites. Read more... Arabs organize to get counted in US census 2010-03-11 A coalition of Arab-American cultural organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area have launched a grassroots organizing campaign designed to send a clear message to Washington: that they, along with every other Arab in America, are in fact Arab, and not white. Read more... Don't blame the economists 2010-03-10 Bill Federman argues in his Feb. 27 article, "Dismal science, dismal record," that the failure of the economics profession to provide accurate forecasts or sound policy advice is the principal cause of our economic woes. He suggests that if economists were replaced by computer programs, "doubt and uncertainty about what to do and when to do it would vanish." Such claims, even if made in jest, do readers a disservice. Read more... Perils of polling: Surveys can be wrong 2010-03-10 Surveys or opinion polls are not free from risks. Poll results that are several weeks or months old may be perfectly valid. But surveys are snapshots of opinions. A mood or opinion is, of course, subject to change. That’s why surveys taken at different times reflect different opinions. Read more... Italy shows largest leisure time gap between genders 2010-03-10 Italian women may want to consider moving to Norway. An international survey has found that although universally men have more leisure time than women, nowhere was the disparity more flagrant than in Italy, where they unwound for a stellar 80 minutes more a day than women. Read more... Tories rebuked again by statistics chief on crime 2010-03-09 The Tories were today embroiled in a new row with statistics chiefs after insisting that violent crime has soared under Labour. Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary, ratcheted up the tension over misleading figures after asking parliamentary statisticians to ajudicate. Read more... American millionaires and the search for work 2010-03-09 The statisticians who occasionally cough up data on employment posted two new sets of numbers today. The first was the traditional monthly report from the BLS called “The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary”. Job openings at the end of January in the public and private sector rose by 173,000 to a seasonally adjusted 2.7 million the highest the figure, has been in 11 months. Nearly 14.8 million people are unemployed in America according to the report, but the chances that people can find work improved. The single most important figure about the labor situation - the ratio of jobless people to job openings - was 5.45 jobless people to each open job. That number was 6.03 in December and a record 6.25 in November. The figure is the only government statistic that measures the real opportunity that people without work have to find it. Read more... The Surgeon, the survey and survival 2010-03-09 Statistical analysis is a venerable approach in medical research. It is one way to find causes of conditions that are not fully understood, for example triggers of incurable diseases like cancer. It can also give you a good idea what determines child mortality rates in a given society at a certain point-in-time. The key determinants may not even be of a medical nature, as Hans Rosling, professor for international health, will point out at the Teradata Universe in Berlin. Read more... Recognize moms' work in labour statistics 2010-03-09 I’m a SUCKER for a good romance novel. When life gets hectic, I find nothing more curative than a quiet evening spent lost within the words of good escape fiction. One of the more entertaining - OK, kind of cheesy - book series that I’ve followed for years is the In Death collection from J.D. Robb. Read more...
Newsfeeds	News compiled by Richard Humphries