Thursday, December 30, 2010

Is road out of poverty down the aisle? - chicagotribune.com

Is road out of poverty down the aisle? - chicagotribune.com

This article highlights what is wrong when researchers overplay their results, or, worse yet, when politicians or the media get hold of results and start pontificating. Reports of associations or relationships (correlations) are not reports of cause. But often they are reported as such. In this article, for example, the association between poverty and not being married was interpreted as: If we can get these people to marry, they will no longer be in poverty. There was a relationship, that is all. We can go on all day and try to explain it, but that would only be subjective surmising. We'd have to conduct further research to see what is going on.

I like the author's explanation: "People tend not to marry if they are financially unstable. They tend to break up due to poor relationship skills. Work on both these factors, and we might just see our poverty rate move in the right direction." But we'd have to research it.

Saturday, December 18, 2010

This is really weird...

While I know that I am, by far, not the least Internet savvy person around (some I work with can hardly email, much less use a Wiki or post on a forum), I am not an Internet guru...or geek. Therefore, it is posts like this (which came up on my Google Alerts) that perplex me: Link

Wordcraft and Epea Pteroenta are listed as well.

Very Strange.

Friday, December 17, 2010

We're getting out the word

We seem to be getting out the word about epicaricacy. They are quoting "Kalleh," and yet the links don't go anywhere. Have you ever heard of that Love to Share Blog?

Similarly, it was used in the comments section of the Huffington Post: Link.

I am thinking it should be the word of the year for 2010!