position:statistician

Scientists rise up against statistical significance
▻http://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00857-9

https://media.nature.com/lw1024/magazine-assets/d41586-019-00857-9/d41586-019-00857-9_16546608.jpg

Valentin Amrhein, Sander Greenland, Blake McShane and more than 800 signatories call for an end to hyped claims and the dismissal of possibly crucial effects.

à bas la p-value!

#statistiques #recherche #hype cc @anne

R vs Python: What’s The Difference
▻https://hackernoon.com/r-vs-python-whats-the-difference-4eed706890ae?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3

https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*d-K19RVdGTl5_fqMRcFXjw.jpeg

The challenge under ten categoriesWith the massive growth in the importance of Big Data, machine learning, and data science in the software industry or software service companies, two languages have emerged as the most favourable ones for the developers. R and Python have become the two most popular and favourite languages for the data scientists and data analysts. Both of these are similar, yet, different in their ways which makes it difficult for the developers to pick one out of the two.R is considered to be the best #programming language for any statistician as it possesses an extensive catalogue of statistical and graphical methods. On the other hand, Python does pretty much the same work as R, but data scientists or data analysts prefer it because of its simplicity and high (...)

#software-development #machine-learning #hackernoon-top-story #data-science

Is Marijuana as Safe as We Think ? | The New Yorker
▻https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/14/is-marijuana-as-safe-as-we-think

https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5c2d5054397f5b30646d0477/16:9/w_1200,h_630,c_limit/190114_r33574.jpg

A few years ago, the National Academy of Medicine convened a panel of sixteen leading medical experts to analyze the scientific literature on cannabis. The report they prepared, which came out in January of 2017, runs to four hundred and sixty-eight pages. It contains no bombshells or surprises, which perhaps explains why it went largely unnoticed. It simply stated, over and over again, that a drug North Americans have become enthusiastic about remains a mystery.

For example, smoking pot is widely supposed to diminish the nausea associated with chemotherapy. But, the panel pointed out, “there are no good-quality randomized trials investigating this option.” We have evidence for marijuana as a treatment for pain, but “very little is known about the efficacy, dose, routes of administration, or side effects of commonly used and commercially available cannabis products in the United States.” The caveats continue. Is it good for epilepsy? “Insufficient evidence.” Tourette’s syndrome? Limited evidence. A.L.S., Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s? Insufficient evidence. Irritable-bowel syndrome? Insufficient evidence. Dementia and glaucoma? Probably not. Anxiety? Maybe. Depression? Probably not.

Then come Chapters 5 through 13, the heart of the report, which concern marijuana’s potential risks. The haze of uncertainty continues. Does the use of cannabis increase the likelihood of fatal car accidents? Yes. By how much? Unclear. Does it affect motivation and cognition? Hard to say, but probably. Does it affect employment prospects? Probably. Will it impair academic achievement? Limited evidence. This goes on for pages.

We need proper studies, the panel concluded, on the health effects of cannabis on children and teen-agers and pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers and “older populations” and “heavy cannabis users”; in other words, on everyone except the college student who smokes a joint once a month. The panel also called for investigation into “the pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic properties of cannabis, modes of delivery, different concentrations, in various populations, including the dose-response relationships of cannabis and THC or other cannabinoids.”

Not surprisingly, the data we have are messy. Berenson, in his role as devil’s advocate, emphasizes the research that sees cannabis as opening the door to opioid use. For example, two studies of identical twins—in the Netherlands and in Australia—show that, in cases where one twin used cannabis before the age of seventeen and the other didn’t, the cannabis user was several times more likely to develop an addiction to opioids. Berenson also enlists a statistician at N.Y.U. to help him sort through state-level overdose data, and what he finds is not encouraging: “States where more people used cannabis tended to have more overdoses.”

The National Academy panel is more judicious. Its conclusion is that we simply don’t know enough, because there haven’t been any “systematic” studies. But the panel’s uncertainty is scarcely more reassuring than Berenson’s alarmism. Seventy-two thousand Americans died in 2017 of drug overdoses. Should you embark on a pro-cannabis crusade without knowing whether it will add to or subtract from that number?

Drug policy is always clearest at the fringes. Illegal opioids are at one end. They are dangerous. Manufacturers and distributors belong in prison, and users belong in drug-treatment programs. The cannabis industry would have us believe that its product, like coffee, belongs at the other end of the continuum. “Flow Kana partners with independent multi-generational farmers who cultivate under full sun, sustainably, and in small batches,” the promotional literature for one California cannabis brand reads. “Using only organic methods, these stewards of the land have spent their lives balancing a unique and harmonious relationship between the farm, the genetics and the terroir.” But cannabis is not coffee. It’s somewhere in the middle. The experience of most users is relatively benign and predictable; the experience of a few, at the margins, is not.

The National Academy panel is more judicious. Its conclusion is that we simply don’t know enough, because there haven’t been any “systematic” studies. But the panel’s uncertainty is scarcely more reassuring than Berenson’s alarmism. Seventy-two thousand Americans died in 2017 of drug overdoses. Should you embark on a pro-cannabis crusade without knowing whether it will add to or subtract from that number?

Drug policy is always clearest at the fringes. Illegal opioids are at one end. They are dangerous. Manufacturers and distributors belong in prison, and users belong in drug-treatment programs. The cannabis industry would have us believe that its product, like coffee, belongs at the other end of the continuum. “Flow Kana partners with independent multi-generational farmers who cultivate under full sun, sustainably, and in small batches,” the promotional literature for one California cannabis brand reads. “Using only organic methods, these stewards of the land have spent their lives balancing a unique and harmonious relationship between the farm, the genetics and the terroir.” But cannabis is not coffee. It’s somewhere in the middle. The experience of most users is relatively benign and predictable; the experience of a few, at the margins, is not.

Late last year, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Scott Gottlieb, announced a federal crackdown on e-cigarettes. He had seen the data on soaring use among teen-agers, and, he said, “it shocked my conscience.” He announced that the F.D.A. would ban many kinds of flavored e-cigarettes, which are especially popular with teens, and would restrict the retail outlets where e-cigarettes were available.

In the dozen years since e-cigarettes were introduced into the marketplace, they have attracted an enormous amount of attention. There are scores of studies and papers on the subject in the medical and legal literature, grappling with the questions raised by the new technology. Vaping is clearly popular among kids. Is it a gateway to traditional tobacco use? Some public-health experts worry that we’re grooming a younger generation for a lifetime of dangerous addiction. Yet other people see e-cigarettes as a much safer alternative for adult smokers looking to satisfy their nicotine addiction. That’s the British perspective. Last year, a Parliamentary committee recommended cutting taxes on e-cigarettes and allowing vaping in areas where it had previously been banned. Since e-cigarettes are as much as ninety-five per cent less harmful than regular cigarettes, the committee argued, why not promote them? Gottlieb said that he was splitting the difference between the two positions—giving adults “opportunities to transition to non-combustible products,” while upholding the F.D.A.’s “solemn mandate to make nicotine products less accessible and less appealing to children.” He was immediately criticized.

“Somehow, we have completely lost all sense of public-health perspective,” Michael Siegel, a public-health researcher at Boston University, wrote after the F.D.A. announcement:

#Santé_publique #Marijuana

U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.html

Avril 2016

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“It’s really stunning to see such a large increase in suicide rates affecting virtually every age group,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior adviser for health care at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who has identified a link between suicides in middle age and rising rates of distress about jobs and personal finances.

Researchers also found an alarming increase among girls 10 to 14, whose suicide rate, while still very low, had tripled. The number of girls who killed themselves rose to 150 in 2014 from 50 in 1999. “This one certainly jumped out,” said Sally Curtin, a statistician at the center and an author of the report.

Un texte un peu ancien, et en anglais, mais qui ne semble pas avoir été publié sur SeenThis, de #Chimamanda_Adichie sur la #dépression et le déni qu’on en fait, pour mon retour sur ST après deux semaines de vacances :

Mornings are dark, and I lie in bed, wrapped in fatigue. I cry often…
Chimamanda Adichie, The Guardian, le 1er février 2015
▻http://www.mymindsnaps.com/chimamanda-adichies-struggle-with-depression

Sometimes it begins with a pimple. A large shiny spot appears on my forehead. Or it begins with a feeling of heaviness, and I long to wear only loose-fitting clothes. Then my mood plunges, my lower back aches, my insides turn liquid. Stomach cramps come in spasms so painful I sometimes cry out. I lose interest in the things I care about. My family becomes unbearable, my friends become strangers with dark intentions, and cashiers and waiters seem unforgivably rude. A furious, righteous paranoia shrouds me: every human being with whom I interact is wrong, either insensitive or ill-willed. I eat mounds of food – I crave greasy stews and fried yams and dense chocolate truffles – or I have no appetite at all, both unusual for a careful, picky eater. My breasts are swollen and taut. Because they hurt, I wear my softest bras – “tender” seems a wrong word for the sharp discomfort. Sometimes they horrify me, so suddenly round, as though from science fiction, and sometimes their round perkiness pleases my vanity. At night, I lie sleepless, drenched in strange sweat; I can touch the wetness on my skin.

I am sitting in a doctor’s office in Maryland and reciting these symptoms. On the wall of the bright room, there is a diagram of a lean female, her ovaries and uterus illustrated in curling lines; it reminds me of old pictures of Eve in the garden with Adam. The doctor is a kind and blunt woman, bespectacled, but reading over her lenses the forms I have filled out. When she first asks why I have come to see her, I say, “Because my family thinks I need help.” Her reply is, “You must agree with them or you wouldn’t be here.” Later, it will strike me that this is a quality I admire most in women: a blunt kindness, a kind bluntness.

When she asks questions, I embellish my answers with careful detail – the bigger-sized bra I wear for a few days, the old frost-bitten ice cream I eat because I will eat anything. I make sure to link everything to my monthly cycle, to repeat that I always feel better when my period starts. I make fun of my irritability: everyone I meet is annoying until I suddenly realise that I am the only constant and the problem has to be me! It is, I tell her, as though a strangeness swoops down on me every month, better on some and worse on others. Nothing I say is untrue. But there are things I leave out. I am silent about the other strangeness that comes when it will and flattens my soul.

“It sounds like you have premenstrual dysphoric disorder,” she says.

It is what I want to hear. I am grateful because she has given me a name I find tolerable, an explanation I can hide behind: my body is a vat of capricious hormones and I am at their mercy.

But the doctor is not done. Her eyes are still and certain as she says, “But the more important thing is that you have underlying depression.” She speaks quietly, and I feel the room hold its breath. She speaks as if she knows that I already know this.

In truth, I am sitting opposite her in this examining room because my family is worried about the days and weeks when I am, as they say, “not myself”. For a long time, I have told them that I just happen to have hormonal issues, victim to those incomplete tortures that Nature saves for femaleness. “It can’t be just hormonal,” they say. “It just can’t.” Mine is a family full of sensible scientists – a statistician father, an engineer brother, a doctor sister. I am the different one, the one for whom books always were magical things. I have been writing stories since I was a child; I left medical school because I was writing poems in biology class. When my family says it is “not just hormonal”, I suspect they are saying that this malaise that makes me “not myself” has something to do with my being a writer.

Now, the doctor asks me, “What kind of writing do you do?”

I tell her I write fiction.

“There is a high incidence of depression in creative people,” she says.

I remember a writers’ conference I attended in Maine one summer years ago, before my first novel was published. I liked the other writers, and we sat in the sun and drank cranberry juice and talked about stories. But a few days in, I felt that other strangeness creeping up on me, almost suffocating me. I drew away from my new circle of friends. One of them finally cornered me in the dormitory and asked, “You’re depressive, aren’t you?” In his eyes and his voice was something like admiration, because he believed that there is, in a twisted way, a certain literary glamour in depression. He tells me that Ernest Hemingway had depression. Virginia Woolf and Winston Churchill had depression. Graham Greene had depression. Oh, and it wasn’t just writers. Did I know Van Gogh had wandered into the field he was painting and shot himself? I remember feeling enraged, wanting to tell him that depression has no grandeur, it is opaque, it wastes too much and nurtures too little. But to say so would be to agree that I indeed had depression. I said nothing. I did not have depression. I did not want to have depression.

And now, in the doctor’s office, I want to resist. I want to say, no thank you, I’ll take only premenstrual dysphoric disorder please. It fits elegantly in my arsenal of feminism after all, this severe form of premenstrual syndrome, suffered by only 3% of women, and with no known treatment, only different suggestions for management. It gives me a new language. I can help other women who grew up as I did in Nigeria, where nobody told us girls why we sometimes felt bloated and moody. If we ever talked about what happened to our bodies, then it was behind closed doors, away from the boys and men, in tones muted with abashment. Aunts and mothers and sisters, a band of females surrounded in mystery, the older whispering to the younger about what periods meant: staying away from boys, washing yourself well. They spoke in stilted sentences, gestured vaguely, gave no details. Even then I felt resentful to have to feel shame about what was natural. And now here I was, burnished with a new language to prod and push at this damaging silence.

But depression is different. To accept that I have it is to be reduced to a common cliché: I become yet another writer who has depression. To accept that I have it is to give up the uniqueness of my own experience, the way I start, in the middle of breathing, to sense on the margins the threat of emptiness. Time blurs. Days pass in a fog. It is morning and then suddenly it is evening and there is nothing in between. I am frightened of contemplating time itself: the thought of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, the endless emptiness of time. I long to sleep and forget. Yet I am afraid of waking up, in terror of a new day. Mornings are dark, and I lie in bed, wrapped in fatigue. I cry often. My crying puzzles me, surprises me, because there is no cause. I open a book but the words form no meaning. Writing is impossible. My limbs are heavy, my brain is slow. Everything requires effort. To consider eating, showering, talking brings to me a great and listless fatigue. Why bother? What’s the point of it all? And why, by the way, are we here? What is it I know of myself? I mourn the days that have passed, the wasted days, and yet more days are wasted.

The doctor calls these symptoms but they do not feel like symptoms. They feel like personal failures, like defects. I am normally full of mischievous humour, full of passion, whether in joy or in rage, capable of an active, crackling energy, quick to respond and rebuke, but with this strangeness, I do not even remember what it means to feel. My mind is in mute. I normally like people, I am deeply curious about the lives of others, but with this strangeness comes misanthropy. A cold misanthropy. I am normally the nurturer, worrying about everyone I love, but suddenly I am detached. It frightens me, this sense of slipping out of my normal self. It cannot be an illness. It feels like a metaphysical failure, which I cannot explain but for which I am still responsible.

There is an overwhelming reluctance to move. A stolidness of spirit. I want to stay, to be, and if I must then only small movements are bearable. I switch off my phone, draw the shades, burrow in the dim stillness. I shy away from light and from love, and I am ashamed of this. I feel guilty about what I feel. I am unworthy of the people who care about me. I stew in self-recrimination. I am alone. Stop it, I say to myself. What is wrong with you? But I don’t know how to stop it. I feel as if I am asking myself to return a stolen good that I have not in fact stolen.

In some of my family and friends, I sense confusion, and sometimes, suspicion. I am known to nurse a number of small eccentricities, and perhaps this is one. I avoid them, partly not to burden them with what I do not understand, and partly to shield myself from their bewilderment, while all the time, a terrible guilt chews me whole. I hear their unasked question: Why can’t she just snap out of it? There is, in their reactions, an undertone of “choice”. I might not choose to be this way, but I can choose not to be this way. I understand their thinking because I, too, often think like them. Is this self-indulgence? Surely it cannot be so crippling if I am sentient enough to question it? Does the market woman in Nsukka have depression? When I cannot get out of bed in the morning, would she be able to, since she earns her living day by day?

The doctor says, about the high incidence of depression in creative people, “We don’t know why that is.” Her tone is flat, matter-of-fact, and I am grateful that it is free of fascination.

“Do you think anybody else in your family might have depression?” she asks.

Nobody else does. I tell her, a little defensively, about growing up in Nsukka, the small university campus, the tree-lined streets where I rode my bicycle. It is as if I want to exculpate my past. My childhood was happy. My family was close-knit. I was voted most popular girl in secondary school.

Yet I have memories of slow empty days, of melancholy silence, of perplexed people asking what was wrong, and of feeling guilty and confused, because I had no reason. Everything was wrong and yet nothing was wrong.

I remember a gardener we had when I was a child. A wiry ex-soldier called Jomo. A man full of stories for little children. My brother and I followed him around as he watered the plants, asking him questions about plants and life, basking in his patience. But sometimes, he changed, became blank, barely spoke to anybody. Perhaps he had depression. Later, I will wonder about African writers, how many could be listed as well in this Roll of Depression, and if perhaps they, too, refuse to accept the name.

The doctor says, “I’d recommend therapy, and that you try anti-depressants. I know a good therapist.”

A therapist. I want to joke about it. I want to say that I am a strong Igbo woman, a strong Nigerian woman, a strong African woman, and we don’t do depression. We don’t tell strangers our personal business. But the joke lies still and stale on my tongue. I feel defensive about the suggestion of a therapist, because it suggests a cause that I do not know, a cause I need a stranger to reveal to me.

I remember the first book I read about depression, how I clung to parts that I could use to convince myself that I did not have depression. Depressives are terrified of being alone. But I enjoy being alone, so it cannot be depression. I don’t have drama, I have not ever felt the need to rant, to tear off clothes, to do something crazy. So it cannot be depression, this strangeness. It cannot be the same kind of thing that made Virginia Woolf fill her pockets with stones and walk into a river. I stopped reading books about depression because their contradictions unsettled me. I was comforted by them, but I was also made anxious by them.

I am in denial about having depression, and it is a denial that I am not in denial about.

“I don’t want to see a therapist,” I say.

She looks at me, as if she is not surprised. “You won’t get better if you do nothing. Depression is an illness.”

It is impossible for me to think of this as I would any other illness. I want to impose it my own ideas of what an illness should be. In its lack of a complete explanation, it disappoints. No ebb and flow of hormones.

“I don’t want to take medicine either. I’m worried about what it will do to my writing. I heard people turn into zombies.”

“If you had diabetes would you resist taking medicine?”

Suddenly I am angry with her. My prejudices about American healthcare system emerge: perhaps she just wants to bill more for my visit, or she has been bribed by a drug rep who markets antidepressants. Besides, American doctors over-diagnose.

“How can I possibly have PMDD and depression? So how am I supposed to know where one starts and the other stops?” I ask her, my tone heavy with blame. But even as I ask her, I feel dishonest, because I know. I know the difference between the mood swings that come with stomach cramps and the flatness that comes with nothing.

I am strong. Everyone who knows me thinks so. So why can’t I just brush that feeling aside? I can’t. And it is this, the “cantness”, the starkness of my inability to control it, that clarifies for me my own condition. I look at the doctor and I accept the name of a condition that has been familiar to me for as long as I can remember. Depression. Depression is not sadness. It is powerlessness. It is helplessness. It is both to suffer and to be unable to console yourself.

This is not the real you, my family say. And I have found in that sentiment, a source of denial. But what if it is the real me? What if it is as much a part of me as the other with which they are more at ease? A friend once told me, about depression, that perhaps the ancestors have given me what I need to do the work I am called to do. A lofty way of thinking of it, but perhaps another way of saying: What if depression is an integral but fleeting part of me?

A fellow writer, who himself has had bouts of depression, once wrote me to say: Remember that it is the nature of depression to pass. A comforting thought. It is also the nature of depression to make it difficult to remember this. But it is no less true. That strangeness, when it comes, can lasts days, weeks, sometimes months. And then, one day, it lifts. I am again able to see clearly the people I love. I am again back to a self I do not question.

A few days after my doctor visit, I see a therapist, a woman who asks me if my depression sits in my stomach. I say little, watching her, imagining creating a character based on her. On the day of my second appointment, I call and cancel. I know I will not go again. The doctor tells me to try anti-depressants. She says in her kind and blunt way: “If they don’t work, they don’t work, and your body gets rid of them.”

I agree. I will try antidepressants, but first, I want to finish my novel.

Remembering Hans Rosling, the visualization pioneer who made data dance - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/02/08/remembering-hans-rosling-the-visualization-pioneer-who-made-data-dan

Professor Hans Rosling, the statistician and epidemiologist who brought dramatic flair to animated visualizations of dry public health data, has died in Finland of pancreatic cancer, according to the foundation he started with his children.

For much of the public not steeped in the arcana of epidemiological data sets or data visualization techniques (a.k.a. normal people), Rosling burst onto the scene in 2010 as part of the BBC special “The Joy of Stats.” “Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development,” the BBC wrote at the time.

#visualisation #développement #hans_rosling

How statistics lost their power – and why we should fear what comes next

The ability of statistics to accurately represent the world is declining. In its wake, a new age of big data controlled by private companies is taking over – and putting democracy in peril

►https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/19/crisis-of-statistics-big-data-democracy

In theory, statistics should help settle arguments. They ought to provide stable reference points that everyone – no matter what their politics – can agree on. Yet in recent years, divergent levels of trust in statistics has become one of the key schisms that have opened up in western liberal democracies. Shortly before the November presidential election, a study in the US discovered that 68% of Trump supporters distrusted the economic data published by the federal government. In the UK, a research project by Cambridge University and YouGov looking at conspiracy theories discovered that 55% of the population believes that the government “is hiding the truth about the number of immigrants living here”.
Rather than diffusing controversy and polarisation, it seems as if statistics are actually stoking them. Antipathy to statistics has become one of the hallmarks of the populist right, with statisticians and economists chief among the various “experts” that were ostensibly rejected by voters in 2016. Not only are statistics viewed by many as untrustworthy, there appears to be something almost insulting or arrogant about them. Reducing social and economic issues to numerical aggregates and averages seems to violate some people’s sense of political decency.

Why Presidential Elections Aren’t Really About the Candidates - Facts So Romantic
▻http://nautil.us/blog/why-presidential-elections-arent-really-about-the-candidates

http://static.nautil.us/10934_ac90e5f00f7542d99231f63fb0dfeecf.jpg

Political pundits have had some explaining to do since the Presidential election. FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver and other analysts have come under fire for assigning a high likelihood to Hillary Clinton’s victory—their predictions ranged from a 70 percent to 99 percent chance of her winning the Electoral College. Clinton’s loss prompted people to question the trustworthiness of polling data—and the statistical models that relied so heavily on it. But to do so is at least a little bit naïve, says Andrew Gelman, a statistician and political scientist at Columbia University. “The polls were off by two percentage points,” Gelman says. Trump was expected to win roughly 48 percent of the two-party vote and ended up with nearly 50 percent. “It just happened to be that this election, two percentage (...)

The Information Sage by Joshua Yaffa | The Washington Monthly
▻http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/mayjune_2011/features/the_information_sage029137.php?page=all

Alors : un long portrait de celui qu’on appelle le gourou de la visualisation, Edward Tufte. A lire et à discuter.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/wamo/mag/1105/1105.yaffa_article.jpg

One day in the spring of 2009, Edward Tufte, the statistician and graphic design theorist, took the train from his home in Cheshire, Connecticut, to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with a few members of the Obama administration. A few weeks earlier, he had received a phone call from Earl Devaney, a former inspector general in the Department of the Interior, who is best known for leading that agency’s investigation of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Devaney had recently been appointed head of the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board, the body created by the Obama administration to keep track of the $780 billion in federal stimulus money that has spread out across the country.

Whereas Devaney once led a team of professional investigators responsible for sniffing out waste, fraud, and abuse, he was now faced with a rather different, but related, task: designing a Web site. In the stimulus bill, Congress had called for the creation of “user-friendly visual presentations” of data that would allow the American public to watch over the disbursement of the giant funding package. This wasn’t exactly familiar territory for Devaney, a career lawman. Perhaps Tufte could offer some advice?

#tufte #visualisation #cartographie

U.S. Suicide Rate Surges to a 30-Year High - The New York Times
►http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/22/health/us-suicide-rate-surges-to-a-30-year-high.html

https://dl.dropbox.com/s/g9tpqgynxx7f5k4/20160422_NYT_US_Suicides.jpg

Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s.

The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday.

The increases were so widespread that they lifted the nation’s suicide rate to 13 per 100,000 people, the highest since 1986. The rate rose by 2 percent a year starting in 2006, double the annual rise in the earlier period of the study. In all, 42,773 people died from suicide in 2014, compared with 29,199 in 1999.

“It’s really stunning to see such a large increase in suicide rates affecting virtually every age group,” said Katherine Hempstead, senior adviser for health care at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, who has identified a link between suicides in middle age and rising rates of distress about jobs and personal finances.

Researchers also found an alarming increase among girls 10 to 14, whose suicide rate, while still very low, had tripled. The number of girls who killed themselves rose to 150 in 2014 from 50 in 1999. “This one certainly jumped out,” said Sally Curtin, a statistician at the center and an author of the report.

American Indians had the sharpest rise of all racial and ethnic groups, with rates rising by 89 percent for women and 38 percent for men. White middle-aged women had an increase of 80 percent.

The rate declined for just one racial group: black men. And it declined for only one age group: men and women over 75.

Don’t Panic - The Truth About Population (2013)
▻http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/dont-panic-the-truth-about-population-2013

Using state of the art 3D graphics and the timing of a stand-up comedian, world famous statistician Professor Hans Rosling presents a spectacular portrait of our rapidly changing world. With 7...

Devenu statisticien par pure coïncidence...

cc @simplicissimus

▻http://flowingdata.com/2012/04/06/the-accidental-statistician

George E.P. Box, a statistician known for his body of work in time series analysis and Bayesian inference (and his quotes), recounts how he became a statistician while trying to solve actual problems. He was a 19-year-old college student studying chemistry. Instead of finishing, he joined the army, fed up with what the British government was doing to stop Hitler.

Before I could actually do any of that I was moved to a highly secret experimental station in the south of England. At the time they were bombing London every night and our job was to help to find out what to do if, one night, they used poisonous gas.

Some of England’s best scientists were there. There were a lot of experiments with small animals, I was a lab assistant making biochemical determinations, my boss was a professor of physiology dressed up as a colonel, and I was dressed up as a staff sergeant.

The results I was getting were very variable and I told my colonel that what we really needed was a statistician.

He said “we can’t get one, what do you know about it?” I said “Nothing, I once tried to read a book about it by someone called R. A. Fisher but I didn’t understand it”. He said “You’ve read the book so you better do it”, so I said, “Yes sir”.

–— ---

Statisticians in World War II: They also served | The Economist

▻http://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636589-how-statisticians-changed-war-and-war-changed-statistics-they-al

http://cdn.static-economist.com/sites/default/files/images/print-edition/20141220_SSP005_0.jpg

“I BECAME a statistician because I was put in prison,” says Claus Moser. Aged 92, he can look back on a distinguished career in academia and civil service: he was head of the British government statistical service in 1967-78 and made a life peer in 2001. But statistics had never been his plan. He had dreamed of being a pianist and when he realised that was unrealistic, accepted his father’s advice that he should study commerce and manage hotels. (“He thought I would like the music in the lobby.”)

War threw these plans into disarray. In 1936, aged 13, he fled Germany with his family; four years later the prime minister, Winston Churchill, decided that because some of the refugees might be spies, he would “collar the lot”. Lord Moser was interned in Huyton, near Liverpool (pictured above). “If you lock up 5,000 Jews we will find something to do,” he says now. Someone set up a café; there were lectures and concerts—and a statistical office run by a mathematician named Landau. One day Lord Moser sat with him at lunch. By the meal’s end he had agreed to be the mathematician’s assistant—and found his vocation.

#statistiques #histoire

Star statistician Hans Rosling takes on #Ebola | Science/AAAS | News
▻http://news.sciencemag.org/africa/2014/12/star-statistician-hans-rosling-takes-ebola

▻http://news.sciencemag.org/sites/default/files/styles/thumb_article_l/public/si-roslingH.jpg?itok=z_n1jF65

Rosling has come without any affiliation, which he says helps him stay independent. “He just walked into the office and introduced himself,” Bawo says.

He feels bad about not coming earlier. (...)

After he arrived in Monrovia, Rosling started by doing simple things, such as proofreading the ministry’s epidemiological reports, which he says nobody had time for. He changed an important detail in the updates: Rather than listing “0 cases” for counties that had not reported any numbers—which could be misleading—he left them blank. Next, he tackled the problem behind the missing data. Some health care workers couldn’t afford to call in their reports, because they were paying the phone charges themselves; Rosling set up a small fund to pay for scratch cards that gave them airtime.

#santé #statistiques

Nate Silver and Political #Data : Every One of His State-level Presidential #Predictions Proved True | Singularity Hub
►http://singularityhub.com/2012/11/08/nate-silver-and-big-data-every-one-of-his-state-level-presidential-p

A former baseball statistician, Silver has made his name by aggregating state level polling data, and predicting the likelihood of victory by adjusting for different factors that have historically influenced electoral performance. He consistently rejected the conventional wisdom that the race was tied, and for that, he was cast as a left-wing nut peddling bad science.

Nate Silver et la #prévision par les #statistiques
►http://www.lemonde.fr/elections-americaines/article/2012/11/02/nate-silver-le-statisticien-promu-gourou-de-la-prediction-politique_1784852_

Donc on parle beaucoup de ce statisticien venu du baseball, qui a eu tout bon comme Paul le poulpe naguère. On en tire des leçons scientifiques même comme relevé par @rezo : ►http://tomroud.cafe-sciences.org/2012/11/07/5-lecons-scientifiques-du-succes-de-nate-silver

Il y a eu un film récemment « Moneyball » sur les premiers statisticiens de ce sport à Oakland, dans l’équipe des A’s, pas mal (Brad Pitt dans le rôle de Billy Beane)
►http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moneyball:_The_Art_of_Winning_an_Unfair_Game #sport #élections #US #chiffres #démocratie

D’après Wired « Obama Wins Nerdiest Election Ever »
►http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/nerdiest-election-ever/all

Sujet déjà évoqué là : ►http://seenthis.net/messages/85122

Data Données Statistiques Visualisation Science

From statistics to data science, and vice versa

►http://flowingdata.com/2012/07/26/from-statistics-to-data-science-and-vice-versa

July 26, 2012 to Statistics by Nathan Yau

Carnegie Mellon statistics professor Cosma Shalizi considers the differences and similarities between statistics and data science.

If people want to call those who do such jobs “data scientists” rather than “statisticians” because it sounds more dignified, or gets them more money, or makes them easier to hire, then more power to them. If they want to avoid the suggestion that you need a statistics degree to do this work, they have a point but it seems a clumsy way to make it. If, however, the name “statistician” is avoided because that connotes not a powerful discipline which transforms profound ideas about learning from experience into practical tools, but rather, a meaningless conglomeration of rituals better conducted with twenty-sided dice, then we as a profession have failed ourselves and, more importantly, the public, and the blame lies with us. Since what we have to offer is really quite wonderful, we should not let that happen.

Some time during the past couple of years, statistics became data science’s older, more boring sibling that always plays by the rules. There are a lot of statisticians who now call themselves data scientists. I still call myself a statistician.

Un dossier sur le gourou américain de la représentation graphique, Edward Tufte

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Information Sage

►http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/mayjune_2011/features/the_information_sage029137.php?page=1

The Information Sage

Meet Edward Tufte, the graphics guru to the power elite who is revolutionizing how we see data.

By Joshua Yaffa

One day in the spring of 2009, Edward Tufte, the statistician and graphic design theorist, took the train from his home in Cheshire, Connecticut, to Washington, D.C., for a meeting with a few members of the Obama administration. A few weeks earlier, he had received a phone call from Earl Devaney, a former inspector general in the Department of the Interior, who is best known for leading that agency’s investigation of the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Devaney had recently been appointed head of the Recovery Act Accountability and Transparency Board, the body created by the Obama administration to keep track of the $780 billion in federal stimulus money that has spread out across the country.

#cartographie #visualisation