Transcript April 14 winners

Statistic of the week

Joseph Nelson & Albert Kilger - Scaling fluctuation analysis and
statistical hypothesis testing of anthropogenic warming

Mike Keck – Aviation & safety

Alex Krizek – Cologne effectiveness
Joseph Nelson & Albert Kilger
A new study “Scaling fluctuation analysis and statistical hypothesis testing of
anthropogenic warming” tests the hypothesis that climate change/global warming that
we are experiencing is caused by natural fluctuation. The conclusion: the naturalwarming hypothesis may be ruled out “with confidence levels great than 99%, and
most likely greater than 99.9%.
I think this is very relevant and important to science and politics right now, and also very
relevant to the test we just took on confidence intervals!
“This study shows that the odds of that being caused by natural fluctuations are less than
one in a hundred and are likely to be less than one in a thousand.
“While the statistical rejection of a hypothesis can’t generally be used to conclude the
truth of any specific alternative, in many cases –including this one – the rejection of
one greatly enhances the credibility of the other.”
Link below:
http://www.mcgill.ca/research/channels/news/global-warming-just-giant-naturalfluctuation-235236
Mike Keck
I have an interesting statistic for the stat of the week contest. I found this information
looking for how safe commercial aviation was, I thought it was interesting. Actually
all of these "odds" are pretty interesting.
Odds of Death
DEATH BY: YOUR ODDS •Cardiovascular disease: 1 in 2
•Smoking (by/before age 35): 1 in 600
•Car trip, coast-to-coast: 1 in 14,000
•Bicycle accident: 1 in 88,000
•Tornado: 1 in 450,000
•Train, coast-to-coast: 1 in 1,000,000
•Lightning: 1 in 1.9 million
•Bee sting: 1 in 5.5 million
•U.S. commercial jet airline: 1 in 7 million
Whenever we fly, we have a one one-hundred-thousandth of one percent (.000014%)
chance of dying!
Sources: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, University of California at Berkeley
http://www.anxieties.com/86/flying-howsafe#.U0mhtWdOXIU
Alex Krizek
Below I have a link to an interesting stat of the week. It is a clip from the
movie Anchorman. The stat is referring to a certain type of cologne and
he says that “60% percent of the time, it works every time”, which
makes absolutely no sense but is really funny.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjvQFtlNQ-M
Statistic of the week