Friday, September 19, 2008

My new geeky addiction

I'm not great at math. In high school, I never understood probability and statistics. Like what are the chances I'll flip a coin and get tails 10 times in a row? Or, say . . . what are the chances of getting pregnant with twins two times in a row? But I digress.

While I cannot create or use statistical formulas, I do understand the value of statistical analysis.
In one of my classes, we're looking at the difference between causation and correlation. In other words, things that happen together sometimes cause each other and sometimes don't. While preparing for my students, I stumbled across this website from George Mason University:

www.stats.org

They critically analyze news stories about research studies and give some perspective to all those scary reports about hot-topics like cancer, vaccines, and toxins. The blog is now my new fave.

It's like the adult version of the urban-myth-buster website, SNOPES, but it's not about email scams from Nigerians trying to move millions into my bank account. Both are great ways to waste more time online. Enjoy!

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