Humor4u

Oh boy - look what a data hunter  has dragged in this time! Why is this problem so common? And who on earth is Bonferroni? Our friend here found one "statistically significant" result when he looked at goodness knows how many differences between groups of people. He's fallen totally for a statistical illusion that's a hazard of 'multiple testing'. And a lot of headline writers and readers will fall for it, too. Then he's made it worse by taking his unproven hypothesis (that a particular drink on a particular day in a particular group of people prevented stroke) and whacking on another unproven hypothesis (that if everyone else drinks lots of it, benefits will ensue). But it's the problem of multiple testing (also called multiplicity) where Olive Jean Dunn comes in. It's pretty much inevitable that multiple testing will churn out some some totally random, unreliable answers. A "statistically significant" difference isn't proof that th...

In The Emperor of all Maladies , author Siddhartha Mukherjee describes a type of cancer as "terrifying to experience, terrifying to observe and terrifying to treat." Somehow, though, in our efforts to stem the tide of the disease and our dread of it, we can end up making things worse for many people. The shadow of cancer angst  is spreading much further than it needs to go. We're struggling, as a culture, with the consequences of the over- and mis-use of associations from epidemiological data about cancer risks. The imposition of risk awareness has been called a form of cultural imperialism . Cancer awareness-raising continues relentlessly, though - even in cases where a community's problem has become over-estimation of risk, not a lack of awareness. This week, Jeff Niederdeppe and I will be co-moderating a discussion for science writers and researchers on these issues in the  Covering cancer causes, prevention and screening  session at Science Online. Come along, or...

Many readers of this blog have read my rants about badly designed coursebook or digital activities and heard me moan about preoccupation with single words in ELT. This has probably left you wondering what kind of approach to teaching I actually believe in. This post describes the main principles of lexical teaching. The term "teaching lexically" was coined, I believe, by Hugh Dellar and Andrew Walkley , coursebook writers ( Innovations , Outcomes ) and teacher trainers (University of Westminster), who have proudly taken over from retired Michael Lewis as torch bearers of the Lexical approach. Before I go on, some caveats.  This post is aimed more at people who are interested in the basics of the lexical teaching, so some of the suggestions may seem obvious to teachers familiar with the approach.  Second, like with any post of this kind (Main principles of...), this is my take on  lexical teaching and other proponents of the "lexical movement" may see things dif...

It doesn't come as a terrible shock to hear that a lot of patients struggle with statistics . It's a little more scary, though, to be reminded that doctors' understanding of health statistics and data on screening isn't all that fabulous either. And now this month we hear that "a considerable proportion of researchers" don't understand routinely used statistical terms in systematic reviews. Gulp. We've probably only been scratching the surface of what can be done to improve this. A recent small trial found that hyperlinking explanations to statistical and methodological terms in journal articles could improve physicians' understanding. (That's something we've started doing at PubMed Health . Although it's early days yet for us with coverage, they're getting clicked on quite a bit.) Statistical literacy needs a combination of literacy, mathematical, and critical skills ( PDF ). In communication, numbers will always be tangled up ...

The Android team has just rolled out the first four shows in a new series called DevBytes, which is intended to be very short, focused tutorials on specific developer topics. A quick explanation, maybe a demo, and a few lines of code to walk through and it's done. Taking a break from work? Want to learn something new? Or just wonder how a specific piece of technology works on the platform? Tune into one of the DevBytes episodes to get a quick deep dive into that exact topic (well, assuming we've done a show on that topic. Maybe we could interest you in one of the shows that we've actually filmed yet instead?) The first few of these feature ... me! (Surprise, surprise!) I'll be doing many of these tutorials over time, especially in the areas of animation, graphics, and UI development, starting with this first set: ViewAnimations : This show covers the basics of creating and running pre-3.0 Animations on View objects. PropertyAnimations : This show parallels the ViewAnima...

This week I read a report whereby journalists in Greece were targeted with bombs... ostensibly because of their seeming support for crushing governmental austerity measures. It seems the gap between theoretical, abstract tough love meted out to the citizens and resulting actual pain and anguish may be rapidly intersecting. Journalists in Greece Are Becoming Targets The Greek police on Saturday were looking for the people responsible for detonating makeshift bombs at the homes of five journalists in Athens, the latest in a series of actions taken against reporters in Greece who have raised questions about a deteriorating climate for media freedom. An anarchist group calling itself “Lovers of Lawlessness” claimed responsibility for Friday’s attacks, citing coverage of the financial crisis that the group denounced as sympathetic to the austerity programs being imposed by the Greek government and its foreign lenders. Are attacks on journalist the tip of a giant iceberg? There...

Making history By Alexandre Inagaki  via Flickr [CC BY 2.0] I hope you and your students enjoyed my traditional end-of-year news quiz I published earlier this week. If you haven't seen it, it's still not too late - follow this link Activities below are aimed at reviewing the language from the quiz. Scroll down to view handouts for students (2 levels) and teachers notes with answers. Part A reviews verb + noun collocations (e.g. make history ) Part B reviews adjective + noun ( ancient civilization ) and noun + noun collocations ( prank call ) Part C is an extension activity providing additional noun collocates for the adjectives in B. It is assumed that most words here will be familiar to students, but some combinations (e.g. remote possibility ) might be new. You can do some contrastive analysis here and ask students to translate the collocations into their L1. They might end up with different L1 words for soft in soft drink / voice / skin . Remote in remote area may not b...