En statistiker läser Superfreakonomics

Uppföljaren till Freakonomics är ute sedan ett tag: Superfreakonomics. Har själv bara läst första kapitlet, i likhet med den här statistikern, vars inlägg är läsvärt, inte som en sågning, snarare för en rad nördiga redaktörsliknande kommentarer:

p.29 -- "At least 3 of the 160 prostitutes who participated died during the course of the study." Don't use the phrase "at least"! It sounds sloppy, and it is sloppy as "at least 3" includes "everyone". This is a documented study with a small sample; they should know exactly how many died. 

...

p.33 -- A table of sex acts and their average prices. It's important to establish the sample sizes underlying the average prices. The researcher documented 2,200 sex acts, and the least frequent act accounted for 9% of those, so about 200 acts. To establish the margin of error around those averages, I'd also need the spread of the individual prices.

Icke desto mindre: Det verkar saknas gedigna källor för en del av kapitlets mer kontroversiella påståenden, inklusive

"women used to have shorter life expectancy than men"

och 

"a Chicago street prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one"

Comments

[Marcus]

Kan också rekommendera den här recensionen, eller kanske ska jag säga sågningen:

http://uppsalainitiativet.blogspot.com/2010/01/recension-superfreakonomics.html

[Anders Gustafsson]

"a Chicago street prostitute is more likely to have sex with a cop than to be arrested by one"

Har inte hunnit läsa hela artikeln, men beläggen skall finnas i denna:


http://www.international.ucla.edu/media/files/levitt_venkatesh.pdf