Tag Archives: lecture

[Conference Report] A First Course on Statistical Thinking II: Common Flaws in News Reports

Long time no update...I should apologize for this.

magic letters

This post is about the conference report I presented last month (26th, May) in the 5th China-R Conference at Renmin University of China, Beijing.

The talk contains several intuitive examples about the misuse of numbers in news reports. Basic statistics knowledge is not hard to learn, but pretty easy to forget. In the slides, I picked some popular pieces of news which mislead the public intentionally. I aimed at telling people how to keep a clear mind - consequently you will be able to distinguish between tricks and real statistical models.

The incentive for me to deliver a presentation like this is to show students how interesting statistics could be, therefore hopefully some of them will grow more interests in this subject and hence go further in their studies. Knowledge is always easy to learn and hard to apply - but without applications, what's the point of studying? Why are you paying much a great cost (of time) on studying in school?

The original slides can be found here: http://cos.name/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/8-chenliyun-rumor.zip (in Chinese).

An easier version of this topic was presented earlier at a popular science training lecture hosted by Songshuhui.net, an NGO in China works on popular science. The full record in Chinese can be visited on their website: http://s-camp.songshuhui.net/events/s-workshop/class008_part-1/

back to the earth[3rd week, Oct]

I just come back to the earth from a week’s escaping. Sorry for leaving without a notice.

Well, just now when I open my Gmail, I found it impossible to read every mail carefully. I’m sorry if I ignored your email, and if it was really important, please send it to me again! I promise that this time I won’t miss anyone.

Meanwhile, Gmail tells me that “You are currently using 5886 MB (79%) of your 7383 MB“. I don’t know how and why… So shall I delete some “big” ones?

However, next week I will still be pretty busy, and although I WILL NOT disappear again, finding me without an email may be a hard thing. Writing my paper, preparing for the class… shall I apply for the lectures about latex in the following month? I’m not sure whether I have enough time to get well prepared for them. Too many stuffs to be done, an incontrovertibly busy week.

Well I should admit that I’d like to communicate with others in English rather than Chinese, even in the campus. So please forgive me if I write too much in English or if I reply you in English. You can tell me about your difficulties if you wish.

Finally, I should say that the feeling of being back to earth is really good!