Some code to help you remember numbers
Two posts ago we showed you the digit sound system for remembering numbers. This week we provide two computer programs to help you create mnemonics. [Read more...]
Ideas
Keep your files in sync for free
It is not uncommon to have two computers at work, four at home and a server out on the wild, wild internet (that's what we have, anyway ... wait, we forgot one in London). How to keep all these files in sync? Here are our file synchronization tips. [Read more...]
Do cents follow Benford’s Law?
Benford's law is an amazing thing. If you know the probability distribution that classes of "natural" numbers should have, you can detect where people might be faking data: phony tax returns, bogus scientific studies, etc. [Read more...]
Dollars and cents: How are you at estimating the total bill?
When estimating the cost of a bunch of purchases, a useful heuristic is rounding to the nearest dollar. (In fact, on US income tax returns, one is allowed to omit the cents). If prices were uniformly distributed, the following two heuristics would be equally accurate:
* Rounding each item up or ... [Read more...]
How many NYC restaurants get As on their health inspections?
Decision Science News is no stranger to misleading infographics in free New York newspapers. We could stop reading them entirely, but we find that playing "spot the infographic flaw" makes time fly on the subway.
Recently we saw the above graphic in a paper called Metro. Can you spot the ... [Read more...]
On not going viral
This week the reader is directed to Messy Matters to read up on research conducted by Sharad Goel, Duncan Watts and Dan Goldstein in which they hunted for traces of "viral" diffusion on Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo!, and beyond. The results run counter to mainstream intuition. [Read more...]
Best graph ever
Best graph ever. LARGEST EVER DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 328 and 327 SPOTTED IN NEW YORK CITY [Read more...]
The housing bubble by city
The housing bubble by city. Miami sailed high and fell far. Detroit rose modestly and but dropped more than it went up. Dallas held steady. DC is enjoying a bit of renewed growth, but are in and New York yet to fall? [Read more...]
Area plots unmasked
RESULTS OF THE GREAT AREA PLOT QUIZ If you are the type of reader who remembers things from last week, you may remember the great area plot quiz we had running. This week, we are excited to announce that the results are in. The plot above shows answers to the ... [Read more...]
Once again, chart critics and graph gurus welcome
HOW TO DISPLAY A LINE PLOT WITH COUNT INFORMATION? In a previously-mentioned paper Sharad and your DSN editor are writing up, there is the above line plot with points. The area of each point shows the count of observations. It’s done in R with ggplot2 (hooray for Hadley). We ... [Read more...]
Some ideas on communicating risks to the general public
SOME EMPIRICAL BASES FOR CHOOSING CERTAIN RISK REPRESENTATIONS OVER OTHERS This week DSN posts some thoughts (largely inspired by the work of former colleagues Stephanie Kurzenhäuser, Ralph Hertwig, Ulrich Hoffrage, and Gerd Gigerenzer) about communicating risks to the general public, providing references and delicious downloads where possible. Representations to ... [Read more...]
Visualizations of US neighborhoods by race and ethnicity
HOMOPHILY + MAPS WITHOUT MAPPING SOFTWARE In the past, Decision Science News has posted about homophily (“birds of a feather shop together“) and cool, lightweight visualizations (“maps without map packages in R“). Today, both topics come together in Eric Fischer’s fascinating set of images on Flickr called “Race and Ethnicity”(*). ... [Read more...]
Birds of a feather shop together
PREDICTING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR FROM SOCIAL NETWORKS This week, Decision Science News is doing a special cross-posting with Messy Matters. The post below is by Sharad Goel and describes work that he and your Decision Science News editor Dan Goldstein are jointly undertaking at Yahoo! Do you know what the #$*! your ... [Read more...]
Which chart is better?
CHART CRITICS, GRAPHICS CURMUDGEONS, COME ONE COME ALL Once upon a time there was this graph (graph 1). Andrew Gelman went all graphics curmudgeon on it, calling it an “ugly, sloppy bit of data graphics“, so it became this graph (graph 2). Now the question is, which is better: graph 2 or graph 3? ... [Read more...]
The counterfactual GPS!
WHAT IF YOUR GPS TOLD YOU WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HAD TAKEN THE OTHER ROUTE? Not long ago, your Decision Science News editor was planning a trip to a book group meeting along with another member. The monthly book group takes place in Cove Neck Long Island, about ...
Navigate the Bermuda Triangle of Mediation Analysis
MYTHS AND TRUTHS ABOUT AN OFTEN-USED, LITTLE-UNDERSTOOD STATISTICAL PROCEDURE If you go to a consumer research conference, you will hear tales of how experiments have undergone particular statistical rites: the attainment of the elusive crossover interaction, the demonstration of full mediation through Baron and Kenny’s sacred procedure, and so ...
Maps without map packages
LATITUDE + LONGITUDE + OVERPLOTTING FIX = MAPS Decision Science News is always learning stuff from colleague, physicist, mathlete, and all-around computer whiz Jake Hofman. Today, it was a quick and clean way to make nice maps in R without using any map packages: just plot the latitude and longitude of your data ... [Read more...]
Baseball, basketball, and (not) getting better as time marches on
PROS ARE NOT GETTING BETTER AT FREE THROWS Rick Larrick recently told Decision Science News that baseball players have been getting better over the years in a couple ways. First, home runs and strikeouts have increased. The careless or clueless reader might note that this is curious, for from the ... [Read more...]
Tuesday’s child is full of probability puzzles
COUNTERINTUITIVE PROBLEM, INTUITIVE REPRESENTATION Blog posts about counterintuitive probability problems generate lots of opinions with a high probability. Andrew Gelman and readers have been having a lot of fun with the following probability problem: I have two children. One is a boy born on a Tuesday. What is the probability ... [Read more...]
You won, but how much was luck and how much was skill?
In baseball, what are the chances the winner will win again against the same opponent the very next day? [Read more...]
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