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statistics

Why They Are Called Numb-ers

October 7, 2011 by Michael Tobis
with 143 views
0

Those of us who have learned the ability of numbers, properly deployed, to explain and illuminate have always had difficulty understanding where the name "numbers" came from. All you need to do is attend a typical talk by a concerned, active, engaged but not especially informed person on almost any subject of collective importance. [read more]

Energy ≠ Power

September 7, 2011 by Alex Trembath
with 330 views
1

Bay Area locals may recognize this ad, which I found on BART. I thought it was hilarious, though you may not unless you share my appreciation for energy/power errors in your sense of humor.I've taken better pictures in my life. The caption reads: "Power from the sun: 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilowatts per second." This of course makes... [read more]

Our Climate Fate On The Toss Of A Coin?

April 8, 2011 by David Hone
with 187 views
4

Perhaps in response to the initial findings of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project and the reported disappointment of some climate skeptics after the lead of the project testified before a Congressional committee, the Wall Street Journal Europe published an article on April 5th by former commodity market statistician Douglas Keenan which questions the significance, in statistical terms, of the warming of the planet over the last century. [read more]

Database Shows Modes of Transportation By City

March 24, 2011 by Robert Rapier
with 193 views
0

Within the U.S., there are cities in which a large fraction of the population walks to work, cities in which almost everyone drives alone to work, and cities in which more than half of the working population takes public transportation to work. A reader recently called my attention to a database he has developed that compares the various modes of transportation for more than 2,100 U.S. cities. The database is called Modes of Transportation to Work. [read more]

Beware of Poll Predictions Based on Poorly Representative Samples

October 24, 2010 by Rod Adams
with 959 views
3

I am going to take a moment of publisher privilege and write about a topic that is not specifically atomic, nuclear, or energy related. As I read about election predictions based on polling numbers, I am reminded of a story I learned during one of my statistics classes. We had just learned the mathematical formula for determining the... [read more]

CRU Scientists Cleared, Still Bupkis

April 14, 2010 by Michael Tobis
with 301 views
0

Of course, the scientific investigation of CRU turned up, what do you know, nothing but scientists doing science. Here are the things worth thinking about from the report. 2. We cannot help remarking that it is very surprising that research in an area that depends so heavily on statistical methods has not been carried out in close... [read more]

China’s Copenhagen Pledges

February 10, 2010 by Climatico Analysis
with 188 views
0

China’s Copenhagen pledges, along with fifty four other nations, have recently been announced. China has pledged to reduce its carbon dioxide emission per unit of GDP by 40-45% by 2020 compared to 2005 levels, raise the level of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to 15% and increase forest coverage by 40 million hectares... [read more]

Media tipping point (at long last)?

October 27, 2009 by Lou Grinzo
with 459 views
0

I have to admit, I was already very impressed with the smattering of mainstream media pieces I’ve seen that treated the superfreaks, a.k.a. Levitt and Dubner, the authors of the (apparently) spectacularly bad Superfreakonimics, like the truth abusers they are. The best example I had seen until the other day was Eric Pooley’s Bloomburg... [read more]

Myth of Cooling Globe shattered by AP-sponsored ‘blind’ test

October 26, 2009 by A Siegel
with 260 views
0

Just over the weekend, my inbox was filled with a discussion attacking climate science with assertions that “none of the models predicted the current cooling period” and, therefore, the entire concept of Global Warming rests on very shaky grounds. Sigh … Those involved in that discussion have now received links to an excellent article... [read more]

Deceptive Use of Statistics to "Prove" That Politically Acceptable Renewable Energy Sources Matter Much

July 21, 2009 by Rod Adams
with 144 views
0

Every month, the US Energy Information Administration issues a report called Electric Power Monthly that provides a snapshot of statistics on the production of electricity in the United States. It usually takes several months to process the data provided by utilities and merchant power generators, so there is a three month gap between... [read more]