<p>I’m only about 1/2 way through Nate Silver’s book but I’ve been a fan of his since '08. The book is an excellent read for anyone interested in a reality based view of the world. Since there’s such an oversupply of data, and so much mangling and misinterpretation of it (deliberate and otherwise) the book is very helpful in understanding the “known knowns” and “unknown unknowns” and how much or little we really know about which is which.</p>
<p>Baseball, earthquakes, politics, epidemics - it’s all in there.</p>
<p>The last sentence in this brief is especially illuminating:
</p>
<p>A problem for this kind of ranking is that the healthy conditions of those people on the bottom of the society pull down our ranking.</p>
<p>If we only compare the top 30 percenters in US (who have good insurance through their good jobs) and the top 30 percenters in other high income countries, do you think we are still worse? If yes, our medical system really “over-treat” our patients. A fact is that we do use the costly advanced medical equipment more often than others.</p>
<p>I think we have a higher percentage of people who value personal freedom and individualism more as compared to other high income countries. After all, we love our cars (and, for many, our guns) and are less willing to support the “money losing” public transportation system (and even the public education!)</p>
<p>Happy new year to y’all as well. My youngest offspring graduated last year, so I’m officially not a “college parent” anymore, which is why I’m not around so much.</p>
<p>Dstark, the report is thorough, but not really news, and I’m not sure it will make much difference. I’ve come to the opinion that the real conflict in America today isn’t between competing ideologies, but between fact-and-reason-based and fear-and-emotion-based decision making. The fact that we have a health care delivery and financing problem, and not a medical science problem, pretty much got lost in all the sturm und drang over the ACA. And our beloved freedom to do stupid things - a freedom I’ve availed myself of many times - does tend to cut our lives short. Whether you’re talking to motorcyclists and drivers who don’t want to wear crash helmets and seat belts, people who insist that their “rights” are infringed by restrictions on whether they can smoke or go nude in public places, or gun nuts who insist that nirvana would be at hand if we just armed all the “good guys,” Americans tend to be able to rationalize and idealize their right to do what they want to do, and ignore the consequences for themselves and others.</p>
<p>Which brings me full circle to Silver’s book. Facts, math, science. Predictions of outcomes and their probabilities - an important concept. I’m a fan. The way Silver was attacked - professionally and personally - for making what turned out to be spot-on, well reasoned analyses of the polls leading up to the last election was an illustration of the conflict between science and emotion. In the final analysis, my most basic “political” leaning is pro-science.</p>
<p>kluge, nice to see you! I also miss Silver, and checked his site at least once a day. I never could understand the shock people felt on Nov 8th.</p>
<p>My only problem with the acclaim Silver has been garnering (and I’m taking issue with the acclaim, not with Silver) is that Sam Wang was just as good, maybe even better, and he rarely got a mention. For anyone who’s not familiar with Wang, check out his site for the next election.</p>
<p>The book is home from the library waiting for this retired statistician to start it. Neither of the library systems I use have it in audio… would prefer that format!</p>
<p>Silver just came out with Super Bowl Predictions:</p>
<p>Note that the above are run by bloggers with obvious partisan preferences, but they are able to separate what they want to happen with what they think is actually happening, unlike a lot of the political pundits who were surprised by the actual election result.</p>
<p>Silver is great, smdur, but he also predicted that Notre Dame would beat the point spread over Alabama. He says that statistics is useful for baseball, less so for basketball, and the least useful for football. </p>
<p>(Disclaimer: I’m with the tee shirts: I support New York and anyone who’s playing Boston.)</p>
<p>You can download the pre-publication version for personal use. It is 405 pages.</p>
<p>Among education related bits, it mentions the percentage of people age 25-34 with the equivalent of an associates or bachelor’s degree (page 208 of the PDF, 181 in the text):</p>
<p>Canada 56.1%
Japan 55.7%
US 41.0%
lots of countries 38.2% to 46.8%
Germany 26.7%
Portugal 23.3%
Austria 21.0%
Italy 20.1%</p>
<p>On the next page, it mentions that US 15-year old students ranked 17th in reading, 13th in science, and 15th in math among 17 rich countries.</p>
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