Re: [Marxism] statistics for students?

[Nick Fredman <n.fredman.11@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I've just finished the first half of a post-grad introductory statistics
course,and we were given some interesting examples of  the misuse of the
concepts of correlation and causality.

The best example, because it involves evil bourgeois swine, is Big Tobacco's
misuse of the general rule that you can't really prove causation without
experimental conditions to deny proof of a link between smoking and cancer,
because surprisingly no-one has yet convinced an ethics committee to agree
to dosing a treatment group with nicotine and a control group with a
placebo, with all other variables kept constant. There's a whole lot of real
life "Thank You for Smoking" moments at:
http://tobacco.health.usyd.edu.au/site/supersite/resources/docs/diary_of_den
ial.htm

Representing the public good against this private greed is:

Austin Bradford Hill (July 8, 1897 - April 18, 1991), English epidemiologist
and statistician, pioneered the randomized clinical trial and, together with
Richard Doll, was the first to demonstrate the connection between cigarette
smoking and lung cancer.

Hill's well-known paper on causation is also available on the web at
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/hill

Various examples of bad science and/or bad science reporting relating to
correlation and causation http://256.com/gray/thoughts/2004/20040511.html

Of course someone has a blog http://correlation-causality.blogspot.com/



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