Statistics in practice

Pick one article about statistics from the following list (this list will be updated during the semester as I find more interesting articles).

• An empirical approach to economic intelligence in WWII (from 1947)
• Does your ipod really play favourites?
• Panopticlick, including about and web tracking
• The best questions for a first date
• A Dutch Book (a dutch book is a betting situation in which can always end up winning money)
• How should we screen for breast cancer?
• “I don’t think that means what you think it means;” Statistics to English Translation, Part 1: Accuracy Measures
• Afghanistan: statistics of war. Helicopters, bombs and strategies
• The statistics of meaning: Darwin, Gibbon and Moby Dick
• Hal Varian and the sexy profession
• Straight sex vs. gay sex
• Beyond reasonable doubt: catching the drug cheats at the London Olympics
• The sands of time: does history obey the rules of statistics?
• London murders: a predictable pattern?
• Spoilt for choice: is organic milk really any different?
• On the need to use error-correcting memory
• Cow, compass, bang - Do cows really sense the earth’s magnetic field and point north?
• The Case For An Older Woman.
• Any other article related to the application of statistics, with prior approval

Once you have read it, write a page of single-spaced 12pt text with 1 inch margins answering the following questions:

• Why did you choose that article? Why are you interested in that topic?
• What did you learn, and how does it connect to what you have learned in class?
• What questions about the paper were you left with? What did it fail to explain? Where was the evidence lacking?

Each essay will be graded according to a rubric (PDF). Or read some comments on previous essays