Mind the Gap
Oct. 1st, 2009 11:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
OMG. Wow:
http://www.gapminder.org/
The chart tool is very much the kind of software I used to produce for genomics research. Stuff that lets non-programmers and non-statisticians dive into datasets and see stuff for themselves. Seeing this brought to the world (literally) is wonderful.
I put it to immediate use in assessing the political slogan "feed at 'em now, shoot at 'em later", something which has long irritated me. Feeding people is not like feeding wildlife; it is an empirical fact that high fertility is associated with poverty and food insecurity. And, not surprisingly, the data paint a more complicated picture - it is true, for instance, that foreign aid received as a percent of a country's GDP is correlated with fertility, too. Foreign aid per person, however, is not. The argument that foreign aid does not increase the number of births is one I happen to believe is true, but it is not a simple matter to explain why. One can cherrypick the data to suggest individually compelling but contradictory conclusions. This, perhaps, is the most useful lesson to be drawn.
http://www.gapminder.org/
The chart tool is very much the kind of software I used to produce for genomics research. Stuff that lets non-programmers and non-statisticians dive into datasets and see stuff for themselves. Seeing this brought to the world (literally) is wonderful.
I put it to immediate use in assessing the political slogan "feed at 'em now, shoot at 'em later", something which has long irritated me. Feeding people is not like feeding wildlife; it is an empirical fact that high fertility is associated with poverty and food insecurity. And, not surprisingly, the data paint a more complicated picture - it is true, for instance, that foreign aid received as a percent of a country's GDP is correlated with fertility, too. Foreign aid per person, however, is not. The argument that foreign aid does not increase the number of births is one I happen to believe is true, but it is not a simple matter to explain why. One can cherrypick the data to suggest individually compelling but contradictory conclusions. This, perhaps, is the most useful lesson to be drawn.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-02 01:20 pm (UTC)