There are sure to be lots of people who read this bit of demographic news and react in a panic. (Gates of Vienna, I’m looking at you.) But there’s no reason to panic at all. RTFA and you will find… Continue Reading
IDeclining Marriage Rates Why aren’t Brits getting married anymore? The marriage rate is at a historic low in the UK – the marriage rate is lower now than since the Brits started keeping records of this sort of thing, and… Continue Reading
Statisticians might make sense of this but even after some consideration of how it might work, I can come up way too many explanations for this dichotomy: A [French] woman’s average number of partners has risen from under two in… Continue Reading
The Clinton campaign is complaining that the Byzantine delegate-selection process in Texas is unfair. The argument is that the rules are so complex, and allocate delegates around districts unevenly, that they could easily produce a delegate result disproportionate to the… Continue Reading
Presidential primaries are not about winning votes, they’re about winning delegates to the party’s conventions. I still think, therefore, that Barack Obama won New Hampshire, not Hillary Clinton, because he got more delegates from that state than she did. Annoyingly,… Continue Reading
Hillary Clinton “won” in New Hampshire. By what looks like about 7,700 votes, or 2% of the Democrats and independents voting in the Democratic primary. Beginning almost immediately thereafter, the media began spinning the results like it was some kind… Continue Reading
I have no idea what this chart means. It was offered, in another forum, to prove that poor people smoke more than rich people do (and therefore that a tax on cigarettes is regressive). But as far as I can… Continue Reading
Truth is properly defined in objective, not subjective, terms. I define a “subjective truth” here as “something that I agree with.” You might not agree with me, which makes your opinion wrong. For example, “Most country music is tedious, repetitious,… Continue Reading
The Tennessee arm of the AMA says yes. The Nashville Tennessean says no. The data in favor of that argument is pretty compelling. In 2004, there were a total of six medical malpractice judgments, totaling $1.9 million. In that time,… Continue Reading