Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Book Review: How to lie with statistics
A data analysts bible for communicating stats to non-experts. A recommended re-read as annual absolution for your statistical sins.
There is no surprise it's a classic: the book has aged remarkably well, the (humourus) anticdoes being as pertinent today as 60 years ago.
The premise is quite straight-forward. When presented with stats, keep in mind:
1) Tools of the trade,
2) Lies, and
3) Fallacies.
Then do a "sniff-test."
Tools are the trade include bias, sample size and significance tests.
Lies are (often graphical) ways of misleading the reader (intentionally for the data scientist; plausibly unintentionally for those with less of a background): changing the scale bars, 'cleverly' chosen percentages, dishonest before/after and my personal favorite, semi-attached figures (what the medical profession now calls 'surrogate end points').
Fallacies include the ever present correlation is of course causation, and 'proving' the null hypothesis.
If a breezy 124 pages is too much, cut straight to the end. At a 'lengthy' (by this books standards) 15 pages, the 10th and final chapter enumerates a 5-step 'sniff test' that can stop a good many lie in its tracks:
1) Who says so?
2) How does he know?
3) What's missing?
4) Did somebody change the subject?
5) Does it make sense (particularly for extrapolations)
If pointy haired boss ever read this book, it'd make the data analysts job -- appease power by bending truth -- 456.7% more challenging!
PS. Speaking truth to power will get you fired 654.3% faster than appeasement. Exercise minimally bent truth with caution. You've been warned!
Saturday, May 12, 2012
Book Review: How Economics Shapes Science by Paula Stephan
A must read for anyone considering STEM (Science Technology Engineering
and Math) training. Stephan systematically deconstructs the S&E
enterprise in the United States, with occasional comparisons to foreign
systems for context. Long story short, it's a pyramid scheme. Indentured
servitude for growing legions of graduate students, post-docs and
non-tenure track scientist, slaving for a shrinking elite of
tenured/tenure-track faculty, who in turn slave for funding and
recognition. Those unfortunate many on the bottom of the pyramid are
rewarded with an abysmal shot at becoming a tenured elite, poor pay, a
soft job market outside of academia where they are unprepared to compete
and a high likelihood of underemployment if they decide to leave the
game.
Chapters 7 (The Market for Scientist and Engineers) and Chapter 8 (The Foreign Born) are particularly sobering. If a prospective graduate student or postdoc does nothing else, they MUST read these two chapters. On graduation day, your average newly minted US-born life sciences doctorate can look forward to a poorly paid no benefits postdoc followed, having their dream of a tenure track position crushed, and having lifetime expected earnings no more than an equivalent with a bachelors degree. Sobering indeed. Given the lack of information available from graduate programs on student outcomes and the sinister complicity of universities, growing discontent among the lower-levels of the pyramid are not a surprise. Academia is powered by the crushed hopes, dreams and souls of grad students and postdocs.
Too boot, there is little hope in reform. Universities are complicit in the system because their whole funding model relies on cheap, increasingly foreign labor. In a cruel twist of fate, the in-sourcing of foreign scientific labor is the driving force behind one of America's few remaining bastions of comparative advantage, the production of knowledge.
How long before an American-born scientist is akin to an American-born textile worker? How long before foreign competition slowly creep up the value chain, eventually displacing the US in dominance, a la electronics and semi-conductors industry?
How can universities, which benefit so handsomely from substituting non-tenure positions for tenured faculty and an underclass of temporary 'trainees' for permanent scientist positions be tasked with remedying the situation? The truth is, they can't and they won't; not without external incentives for which the political will does not exist to create or maintain. Indeed, the current state of affairs is only a problem for those ground down to lubricate the cogs of the machine, not for the taskmasters running the racket. In the refrain of the author, "Where one stands depends on where one sits."
Science, in it's truest sense, is a quest for understanding, for making sense of an apparently senseless and chaotic world. It is the noble pursuit for truth. However, humans, the systems and institutions we invent, are anything but noble or truthful. Science is a business. Scientist are somewhat rational actors that respond to incentives. Before continuing your quest, read this book. You'll never look at science the same way again.
Chapters 7 (The Market for Scientist and Engineers) and Chapter 8 (The Foreign Born) are particularly sobering. If a prospective graduate student or postdoc does nothing else, they MUST read these two chapters. On graduation day, your average newly minted US-born life sciences doctorate can look forward to a poorly paid no benefits postdoc followed, having their dream of a tenure track position crushed, and having lifetime expected earnings no more than an equivalent with a bachelors degree. Sobering indeed. Given the lack of information available from graduate programs on student outcomes and the sinister complicity of universities, growing discontent among the lower-levels of the pyramid are not a surprise. Academia is powered by the crushed hopes, dreams and souls of grad students and postdocs.
Too boot, there is little hope in reform. Universities are complicit in the system because their whole funding model relies on cheap, increasingly foreign labor. In a cruel twist of fate, the in-sourcing of foreign scientific labor is the driving force behind one of America's few remaining bastions of comparative advantage, the production of knowledge.
How long before an American-born scientist is akin to an American-born textile worker? How long before foreign competition slowly creep up the value chain, eventually displacing the US in dominance, a la electronics and semi-conductors industry?
How can universities, which benefit so handsomely from substituting non-tenure positions for tenured faculty and an underclass of temporary 'trainees' for permanent scientist positions be tasked with remedying the situation? The truth is, they can't and they won't; not without external incentives for which the political will does not exist to create or maintain. Indeed, the current state of affairs is only a problem for those ground down to lubricate the cogs of the machine, not for the taskmasters running the racket. In the refrain of the author, "Where one stands depends on where one sits."
Science, in it's truest sense, is a quest for understanding, for making sense of an apparently senseless and chaotic world. It is the noble pursuit for truth. However, humans, the systems and institutions we invent, are anything but noble or truthful. Science is a business. Scientist are somewhat rational actors that respond to incentives. Before continuing your quest, read this book. You'll never look at science the same way again.
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