Steve Keen

Clear and lively, 23 May 2013

In the wrong hands, statistics can be a dangerous thing. In the right hands, there's still no guarantee that the statistics you're reading in your newspaper or on your screen are much more trustworthy. In Naked Statistics, Charles Wheelan provides a little bit of a toolkit to help the uninitiated a fighting chance of at least recognising the potential pitfalls in the analysis they're reading and to ask some smart questions about its foundations.

Wheelan lays out his stall pretty early, making it clear that he's not a numbers for their own sake person. Numbers to him are only of any interest if there's a point, and he proceeds to explain why statistics are, in the final analysis,… Read more

A useful toolkit for analysis, 13 May 2013

In an uncertain world, the creative industries are an uncertain path to success and riches. There is often no way of market testing many of their products before they are brought to market. The music industry moves too quickly, with tastes constantly shifting. What goes down well with your focus group today will likely tank by the time it's on iTunes. By the time you're ready to market test your movie most of the money's spent. Similarly with a painting. And in the acting profession, uncertainty and insecurity are demonstrated by the high proportion of actors who are unemployed at any given time, and the low average incomes of many. There's a story about Michael Caine, in which an… Read more

Putting the numb into numbers, 8 May 2013

Personally, I don't ever remember claiming to be no good with numbers. It certainly wouldn't fill me with pride if I wasn't. I've done my share of number crunching: calculus, linear modelling, econometrics, and so on and so forth, and fifth, for that matter.

Numbers have always been functional items for me. I count my apples and eat them. I count my money and spend what I can afford. I measure the distance from A to B and estimate how long it will take to walk, drive, fly. I calculate the correlation between industry concentration and R&D expenditure.

I derive a certain pleasure from doing it, that's for sure, but I'm not about to give up any hobbies so I can do a bit… Read more