Statistical Manipulation at it’s Finest: Care of HUD
September 29, 2008
Polizeros links to a Time article and provides a brief summary of its contents (visit Polizeros for the summary). The change made to the counting process is much more defensible in the article, but suspicions certainly are still warranted.
Anyone else painfully tired of this shit? We spend so much energy polishing shit that you have to wonder if we couldn’t have just solved the underlying problem instead. Throughout work and recreation, I find myself constantly faced with the confused goals that have arisen when we became too comfortable with out method of measure.
I really do believe that this is the crisis of our times: The reliance on statistical aggregates and the confusion with progress on an indirect measuring tool with progress towards a goal. And I say this fully aware that the world financial system is at risk of collapse. I’m more worried about the continuing prevalance of statistical abuse and misuse.
… and the cow goes moo
here is a great talk on the dangers of misinterpreting statistics: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/peter_donnelly_shows_how_stats_fool_juries.html
this sounds like a similar case of either negligence or outright deception, and on a much larger scale :/
Thanks for the video, Mike. Will check it out.
Just watched it, very interesting stuff and something I’ve forgotten about myself.
And he doesn’t even address (in the limited time) the fallibility of the observational counts on which the statistics are based. Thanks for the link. TED is always pretty money.
[...] stumbled upon this TED talk as a related presentation from a presentation linked to in the comments on a previous post on statistics and homelessness. And I’m very glad I [...]