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The Political Orphanage

How to Spot Statistical Garbage

The Political Orphanage

Andrew Heaton

Comedy, Moderate, Politics, Independent, News, Nonpartisan, Libertarian

5951 Ratings

🗓️ 26 July 2023

⏱️ 79 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Statistics can be mangled to say whatever you’d like, and sometimes they’re garbage to begin with.

Aaron Brown teaches statistics at New York University and at the University of California. He joins to tip us off on statistical malfeasance.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for the level-headed, the rational, and the overwhelmingly good-looking.

0:16.6

I'm Andrew Heaton, and I am two of those three things.

0:21.9

Damn it's hot out!

0:23.0

Summer, right?

0:25.0

Summer's my least favorite season, ugh.

0:28.0

But at least here in Austin, Texas, it only lasts 10 months.

0:32.0

You know, what are the worst things about Texas is all of the

0:35.3

crime created by ice cream? Do you know about this? Have you read about this? You can't

0:40.6

argue with me because it's science. Here, check this out. Crime is higher in Texas during the summer.

0:46.0

Ice cream sales are also higher in Texas during the summer. So, logically, ice cream makes criminals more burglarly, particularly rocky road, which is an ice cream

0:57.1

made for and by degenerates.

0:59.9

That's not me, that's science. Now the canny listener might say hey wait a minute maybe

1:07.4

people buy more ice cream in hot months because it's the summer is like living in the unceasingly moist and

1:13.0

people commit more crimes during hot months because

1:18.0

Texas in the summer is like living in the unceasingly moist and oven-like armpit of cathulu, which makes people

1:26.4

go insane and burglarized stores in hopes that a cop shoots them in the back of the head,

1:31.3

because even if they go to hell for larceny, at least it's a dry heat.

1:35.0

Anyway, crime and ice cream share a causal relationship with heat, not each other.

1:42.0

They're correlated, but not causal. All right, you saw that one coming.

1:47.0

Let me lob a harder one at you. This is from real life and does not involve excessive heat.

1:55.0

Thank God.

1:57.0

In 1973, Berkeley got sued for gender discrimination.

...

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