Stats in the wild: AP article about racial profiling in LA, ACLU press release, and full report by Ian Ayres. Ayres finds that minorites, including African-Americans and Hispanics, are stopped and searched at disproportionately high rates. He is quoted in the AP article: “The results of this study raise grave concerns that African-Americans and Hispanics…

So Starbucks caused the global crisis, right? Slate article about Starbucks and the financial crisis. From Slate: “At first blush, there’s a pretty close correlation between a country having a significant Starbucks presence, especially in its financial capital, and major financial cock-ups, from Australia (big blowups in finance, hedge funds, and asset management companies; 23…

This is good: Law School and Stats You went to law school to get away from stats. But it followed you. You know why? Cause you’re in the wild. A note about the article: The author mentions in the first paragraph that “Usually, the investigator seeks to ascertain the causal effect of one variable upon…

Say I want to estimate the mean of a population.  In order to quantify the amount of uncertainty about my guess, I construct a confidence interval.  So you might see a statement like “A 95% confidence interval for the mean is (17.6,24.6).” This means that 95% of the time the true mean is in the…

I don’t know if many of you know, but there is an election in November. For president. Of the United States. As a result, you’re probably being inundated with polls. Obama 50 McCain 46 plus or minus 3 points. McCain 48 Obama 46 plus or minus 4 points. You know stuff like that. So how…