Why? Why not?

Ross Gittins, as always has a very interesting article in todays SMH, about the ways people manipulate statistics. Since doing stats at uni, and being a naturally suspicious kinda guy, I’ve always taken reports that doing $random_thing will increase/decrease your risk of $some_random_undesirable_thing with a grain of salt. The obvious questions are things liek: what’s my chance if I do, and what’s my chance if I don’t?

For example, if I like to hop around on one leg screaming about the social construction fo reality at the top of my lungs, and it’s been shown in some study that this increases my chance of being attacked by a thousand rabid marmots by 10%, should I be worried?

Not if my chance is, say, 10 in 10 billion to start with. If that’s the case, the impressive-sounding increase of 10% in my risk raises my chances from 10 in 10 billion to 11 in 10 billion. Oh no, I’m really scared. The marmots are coming! The marmots are coming!

I wish people would switch on their bullshit detectors more often when using the media.

You may notice that the dates on the navigate bar have changed. Yes, it’s true, I’ve finally updated some stuff. Most of it is backend stuff, but the About page and the Archive page are the biggest updates.

Thanks, Memepool, for introducing me to Villainsupply.com! I’ve ordered the ‘SUBTERRANEAN ISLAND BASE WITH OPTIONAL VOLCANO UPGRADE’ and also the ‘APOCALYPSE SOLAR DESTROYER BREAKING GOD MUYI MUYI’. So you all better start bowing before me, or I’l BLOW UP THE SUN!!!!

MUAUAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA.

Oh, and I’d like socks too, can someone get me some socks?