Long hours on statistics...

I am, without question, an American. Why do I say this? I spent ten and a half hours at work yesterday (nine and a half, if you take away the hour-long bicycle commute). It's true that I spent only eight hours at work the day before (seven), but I did a bit of work at home, too. It's been exhausting, and if any of my readers are left, thanks for sticking around...

I actually have a lot to write about; I just don't have the time to write it. Without question, most of my time has been spent on preparing for statistics, and grading homework quizzes. I hope it will please Alessandra to learn that I've decided to print one of the articles she's linked to, and use it as an exercise in identifying problems with statistical citations. I actually like the article very much, but I think it has a few problems that the book identifies. Tomorrow's homework will be:

1. a biased sample ("man-on-the-street", self-selected, etc.);
2. problems with experimental or observational studies (unnatural setting, Hawthorne effect, confounding variable, ethics, unclear cause-and-effect, reliance on others' data);
3. misuse of statistics (suspect sample, no control group, ambiguous average, changing the subject, detached statistics, implied connection, bad question).

I think the hardest one for the students will be identifying a biased sample, but the biased sample I have in mind is the author herself, who uses her own life as an example. The point is that what makes for excellent writing also makes for bad statistics.

I also picked an article from the Washington Post on problems with measuring the economy.

As for trying to get at the students' interest: I've taken another professor's group projects and issued it to the group. Hopefully they will use their own interests and experience to choose a survey topic and the questions that follow. In any case, they should be involved in the project, which makes for better learning than listening to me.

I'd like to think that there are some good signs. Homework scores aren't so good, but students are disagreeing with me in class about whether an answer is good or bad, and their arguments are often on good grounds. Some of these answers aren't very clear-cut (the other professor has told me that statisticians disagree on them) so there's wiggle room.

Yesterday, on the other hand, I cited Nazi medical experiments as an example of an unethical experimental study. A student suggested the Tuskegee Project; I initially agreed, but then the student went on to say that the government gave the subjects syphilis, much as Dr. Mengele injected his subjects with poisons (or whatever he did). That struck me as inaccurate, and subsequent research seems to confirm my understanding: the doctors didn't give the subjects syphilis, but deliberately failed to tell the patients that they had syphilis. Instead, they told the patients that they had "bad blood".

Does anyone know otherwise? Here's a Wikipedia reference; nothing suggests that the men were deliberately infected with syphilis.