Statistically Insignificant

Our second of three episodes on the role of mutual aid in the leftist political project. This time we talk about why mutual aid is good for the people doing it. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant If you have a statistic or a chart you'd like us to talk about contact us. Email: StatisticallyInsignificantPod@proto...

First of a three part series about mutual aid. This episode deals with the logistics of managing mutual aid stuff, particularly around mutual aid funds that act as pools of money for a community. Example for individual project or person: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ClTaXdR5oyyx1hrivxJvqGSc77KAeWvwdoo-IQWHkmg/edit?usp=sharing Example for community: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d...

If a cow farts in a field and there's a techbro with a box to catch it, does it really produce greenhouse gases? References:Chay, F., Badgley, G., Martin, K., Freeman, J., Hamman, J., and Cullenward, D. (2022) 'Unpacking ton-year accounting', (carbon)plan, https://carbonplan.org/research/ton-year-explainer .Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes and additional material: https://www.patreon....

We talk about how and why BMI sucks as a metric for either health or fatness, and other models for classifying fatness that actually reflect the needs and experiences of fat people. If you want to know more about relative risk statistics check out E19: Pregnancy Risk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9dC4VRD3B8 Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes and additional material: https://www.patr...

Marking schemes are statistical objects and boy are they weird ones. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant The video version of this episode is at https://youtu.be/2JuiaFzgbyE If you have a statistic or a chart you'd like us to talk about contact us. Email: StatisticallyInsignificantPod@protonmail.ch Twitter: @Stat...

We talk to Dr Tom Bowers about how medical devices fail in the body, and how that is translated to statistics that can help with early detection. Tom can be found at https://twitter.com/fancywookiee Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant References:Sheffield, S. (2019). The Controversy Over Essure Birth Control. Wom...

We talk about KPIs as instruments of measurement, class power structures, and how to be a bad capitalist if you can. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant The video version of this episode is at https://youtu.be/bwCvUp-hE-I If you have a statistic or a chart you'd like us to talk about contact us. Email: Statistica...

Grievance time!

Uber continues to make its pricing and pay models less transparent to drivers and passangers. Workers, as ever, are pushing back, and here are some ideas for how to do it. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant References:The Rideshare Guy (2023) '2 Uber Drivers: Same Requests DIFFERENT PAY! You Won't Believe This!'...

If the cost of things is increasing faster than your wages, where is that money going? Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant References Stanford, J. (2023) 'Profit-Price Spiral: The Truth Behind Australia's Inflation', The Australia Institute, Centre for Future Work. Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2022, December...

In an act of considerable masochism the crew dive deep into how Ben Shapiro thinks governments maintain legitimacy. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant References: Haerpfer, C., Inglehart, R., Moreno, A., Welzel, C., Kizilova, K., Diez-Medrano J., M. Lagos, P. Norris, E. Ponarin & B. Puranen (e...

When is a raise not a raise? How do you work out what a multi-year pay agreement should do? Why does the government think that young people and people with disabilites have less expensive lives than others? We dive into the relationship between pay and inflation, looking at how comparison calculations can be done, and what gaps emerge over extended periods of time. Support the pod on Patreon for b...

We look at how the theory of intersectional feminism can be modelled statistically, and use this to examine representations of interactions between covariates. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant References Brown, T. (2012). The intersection and accumulation of racial and gender inequality: Black w...

Electoral systems are losing their legitimacy in the public eye, and have never been very good at actually representing the will of the population. We talk through a different way of approaching representative selection with special guest: Dean of the Show - Tess's partner Dean.

We talk through the limitations of applying population statistics to individual experience, but some of the ways you can get a better idea of your own likely outcomes. IVF success (and the mess of statistics for what that means) is used as an extended case study. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant...

We talk to Liam Stevens of Toa Tabletop about the history of racism manifest in blood quantum, and how those ideas persist today. Liam can be found here: https://twitter.com/ToaTabletop https://www.toatabletop.com/ https://twitter.com/_Boganova_ References: Wolfe, P. (2016). Traces of history: Elementary structures of race. Verso Books. American Association of Biological Anthropologists (2019). 'A...

We dive deep into the bat shit insane proposed predictions of these ideologies and why they don't understand what would be involved in the calculations they are trying to do. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant References Hoel, E. (2022). 'Why I am not an effective altruist', The Intrinsic Perspect...

Statistics can't see causal relationships directly, but that doesn't mean we can't reason about them. We look at the sorts of errors that get made in explanations of stuff, and a bunch of case studies ranging from being gay and doing crimes to COVID. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant References:...

STEMlords have an annoying habit of claiming that social science is only anecdotal evidence. We talk through what that actually means and how to make it consistent across a handful of case studies of the good, the bad, and the weird. References: Richards, K., Death, J., & Ronken, C. (2021). What do victim/survivors of sexual violence think about Circles of Support and Accountability?. Victims...

There are bigoted skeletons in the dark closet of statistics and we're going to shine some light on them. An examination of what no material analysis does to a motherfucker. References: Clayton, A. (2020) How Eugenics Shaped Statistics, Nautilus, October 2020, https://nautil.us/how-eugenics-shaped-statistics-9365/ Unknown author - Historical Spotlight: Eugenics - journey to the dark side at the da...

We take a flutter on explaining the maths structure of gambling with special guest Dave, your mate from Twitter. Dave can be found on Twitter @mesut_ausil References: Gambling in Australia (2021) Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/gambling Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and additional material: https://www.pa...

We talk to Asher Wolf about the points-based system now being inflicted on unemployed workers in Australia, why it must be destroyed, and some ways that people can minimise its impact on their lives until then. Asher Wolf is @Asher_Wolf on Twitter and occasionally writes for newspapers. The Australian Unemployed Workers Union can be found at https://www.auwu.org.au/ Support the pod on Patreon for...

In statistics, the idea of a relationship between two things has a very specific mean. We talk through this for a couple of cases, then look at what a straight line can and cannot tell you. Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant The video version of this episode is at https://youtu.be/VmGUu7zLSRI If y...

Tess rambles for a while about teaching maths and stats. We talk about maths anxiety, modes of communicating, and language.

We look at a disasterous effort to quantify diversity among videogame characters which started at a mobile developer and then got absorbed by Blizzard. You can find Artie on Twitter @alliedwolves Support the pod on Patreon for bonus episodes, early access, and additional material: https://www.patreon.com/statisticallyinsignificant References (I am way too fucked to do these up properly you're just...