Monday, 23 April 2007

Teaching moments

Free Exchange notes New York Times reporter Erik Eckholm playing fast and loose with infant mortality statistics to extrapolate ominous trends from what appear to be random year-to-year fluctuations in infant death rates (and a downward-sloping overall trend, to boot).

One might also wonder what effect—if any—Hurricane Katrina had on the 2005 mortality rate. That is, if one weren’t Eckholm, who doesn’t even mention the possibility of a relationship with the largest natural disaster in Mississippi history.

# By Chris Lawrence @ 4:06 pm CDT [Permalink] « (0)
Manual TrackBack URL for this entry: https://blog.lordsutch.com/tb.cgi/3787
Tags: , Media, Medicine, Mississippi, Stats
 

2 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.
[Permalink] 1. Professor Chaos wrote @ Mon, 23 Apr 2007, 6:59 pm CDT:

But wasn’t Hurricane Katrina caused by KKKarl Rove, making the data consistent with known facts about the causal relationship between infant death and Rethuglican presidents (who obviously hate poor children most of all)?

Just a thought…

 
[Permalink] 2. MJ wrote @ Mon, 23 Apr 2007, 11:24 pm CDT:

One can’t trust the NY Times to be accurate on anything though. Their stories always should be verified by another source.

 
Comments are now closed on this post.

Like what you’re reading?

To view other posts at Signifying Nothing, please visit the BlogFront.

Random Thoughts…

Signifying Nothing formerly featured the stylings of Brock Sides, a left-leaning philosopher turned network administrator currently residing in Memphis, Tennessee who now blogs at Battlepanda, and Robert Prather, a libertarian-leaning conservative economist and occasional contributor at OTB.

Syndication Feeds

Recently… ↓