All About That Bias
What is survivorship bias?
A statistical error when you rely on the "survivors" or successful outcomes of a study while ignoring the failures, non-survivors, or drop-outs.
Presents selected data that supports a single claim and ignoring the rest.
What is Cherry-picking?
True or False: A positive correlation equals causation?
False.
What is new-school and old-school bullshit?
What does Goodhart's Law observe?
New-school bullshit is often most effective because of this type of bias?
What is Quantification Bias: Tendency to overvalue numerical data over qualitative because numbers are perceived as objective and more reliable.
When the graph origin doesn't start at zero.
What is truncated y-axis?
What is the difference between a dotted line and a solid arrow?
Ex. Time on a treadmill----calories burned.
Time on a treadmill—>movement—>calories burned.
Dotted means there is an association and solid means there is a direct causation.
What is Brandolini's Principle?
It takes more energy to refute bullshit than it does to produce it.
Define lying by omission, commission, and paltering.
Commission: knowingly active falsehood.
Omission: Omits important facts to create false impression.
Paltering: Uses true statements framed to mislead, exploits implicature.
We watched a video in class where New Yorkers were hesitant to sell/part with their lottery tickets; What is the name of this bias concept?
What is The Endowment Effect: A bias where people value something more because they own it than if they didn't.
Uses trigger and catchwords to draw the attention of as many viewers as possible.
What is clickbait?
What is the difference between correlation and causation?
Correlation is when two variables appear in change similarly. Causation means one variable directly makes the other happen.
Quantitative claims and numerical data are more commonly used to mislead and deceive.
What is the "black box" (Latour)?
Obscure internal workings, focuses on (often biased) in/outputs, shields a claim from further investigation.
Dr. Johnson went through a predictive criminology case study that ultimately failed because of software bias; What technology was this?
There is a strong correlation between ice cream cones sold and the number of drownings at the beach, what is the confounding variable?
According to Frankfurt, what distinguishes a bullshitter from a liar?
The bullshitter in indifferent to the truth and cares on for their self-promotion and audience persuasion while the liar knows the truth and intentionally seeks to deceive people about the facts.
Strength of Association, Consistency, Specificity, Temporality, Gradient, Plausibility, Coherence, Experimental Evidence, and Analogy.
In 1930s, Literary Digest predicted Republican Alf Landon to win the presidency against Franklin Roosevelt by sending 10 million ballots (~2 million responded) to magazine subscribers, automotive owners, and telephone directories. What bias is present?
What is Non-response bias and sampling bias?
Q= A x (O+S) / W
What is mathiness?
There is a correlation between Taylor Swift's presence at the KC Chiefs games and their wins. Name a confounding variable?
Home-field advantage, quality players, weaker opponents, etc.
Give an example of bullshit that is technically true but misleading.
TBD
An association between two variables in a population emerges, disappears, or reverses when the population is divided into subgroups.
What is Simpson's Paradox?