President George H.W. Bush famously quipped, “Read my lips: No new taxes.” He went on to raise taxes and many believed this contributed to the reason he did not serve a second term. Another famous saying, in 1971 an automobile engine oil filter manufacturer heavily advertised their product using the threat, “You can pay me
The first thing a statistician, data scientist, medical researcher, engineer, social scientist or anyone depending on data is to assess its quality. As of this writing, the recent release of the Durham Report suggests that the FBI was lax in their assessment of the alleged Russian influence in the 2016 presidential election cycle. This resulted
According to Cambridge Dictionary the title term is defined as, Not real, or existing only in order to deceive people.” We live in a world when lies are tossed around with impunity. Politician lie, school boards withhold from parents and the news is decried as fake by both sides of the political isle. How does
One newscaster recently used the metaphor of the sun setting in the west as settled science so contrary views were not newsworthy. His argument–Fairness is Over Rated! What? One wonders whether this is true for those who believe the world is round or for those in the Flat Earth Society? Yet most political commentary and
Almost every day, we hear that “The Science” says . . . We are told Covid-19 and Climate Change are based on The Science and as such we must accept that expert analyses as ‘settled.’ Then something changes and once more the science police demand we accept their new interpretation. The near-term result: confusion and
Attributed to former US Senator and Governor Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, “Trust is built with consistency.” Moreover, from statistics we know that Internal Consistency, “measures whether several items that propose to measure the same general construct produce similar scores.” The follow on definition statistical reliability, “is the consistency of a set of measurements or measuring
