We need a title for our Daily Beast column

Kaiser and I will soon start a weekly column for the Daily Beast, focusing on statistics that are cited in political and civic debates. The question is, what to call it? We have a few possibilities but aren’t thrilled with any of them. So we could use some help from the wisdom of the crowd.

We have some ideas but don’t love any of them. I’ll put what we have in the first comment, but I’d like you to first try to come up with a good name for the column, without being influenced by our current mediocre suggestions. Then you can read what we have and see if that inspires you to something better.

Thanks much in advance.

105 thoughts on “We need a title for our Daily Beast column

  1. Stat Police
    Data Doctors
    Data Wranglers
    Statbusters
    Statistics Truth Squad
    Stats Screen

    Datawatch
    Data Watchers
    Stathoscope
    Statshoscope

    Statboyz in the Hood
    The Devil is in the Details
    The Devil is in the Data
    Devil Dogs
    Reservoir Dogs
    Adding it Up
    Stat Skeptics

    Ummm . . . you should be able to come up with something better than this!

  2. Here are a few…

    Probably relevant
    Probably pertinent
    Probably unlikely (if one is pessimistic about the relevance of data used in public debate)
    Probably X, where X says something about the subject matter?

    or (these are probably a bit geeky for public consumption)
    Entropy reduction
    Belief updaters (It would be fun to have a reference/joke in there for those of us that care about this stuff!)
    Normalized data (The stats joke has a possible clash with the database version, but still my fav.)

  3. I tried once to get my fellow grad students to go with Noise Busters for the softball team – but they liked Outfliers better.

    Noise does not reflect bias and perhaps more importantly misses false certainty about uncertainty.

    Qualifying certainty about uncertainty.

    Understanding (un)certainty assertions/pretensions.

    Good luck.

  4. Science vs Fiction (or some combination thereof, Fiction Science, The Science & the Fiction, etc…)

    You could then have a science to fiction thermometer, where you would rank specific claims at the end of each article.

    PS I was wondering why you were not offering a t-shirt or something to encourage people. But then I though how much fun we all get from your blog, so really, it is just quid pro quo!

  5. A theme to consider:
    A Mean Column
    The Mean Column
    Intentionally Mean
    Essentially Mean
    Mean Daily
    Daily Mean
    Above the Mean
    Beyond the Mean
    Don’t be Mean

  6. The Andrewmazing Fungtastic Gelman Kaiser (could be a statistical circus act)
    Numbers are Fun-statistics
    Andrew’s Peeves, Kaiser’s Beef
    How about… Statistics in Political and Civic Debates

  7. This isn’t relevant to your blog, but our exercise team (all from one of our stats departments) was called “Goodness of Fit”. Wish it was my idea, but it wasn’t.

  8. How about the column Krypto?

    Meaning: 1) secret, hidden, or concealed; 2)a person who secretly supports or adheres to a group, party, or belief. 3) a combining form meaning “hidden,” “not perceived immediately or with certainty”

    Uses: Superman’s pet Krypto the superdog. The game Krypto: “mathematical game that promotes proficiency with basic arithmetic operations. More detailed analysis of the game can raise more complex statistical questions.”

    I think it kind of captures the spirit of “statistics that are cited in political and civic debates”. Maybe you want something more clever though?

  9. What Lies Beneath (because it both covers what underlies the data and how the use of data supports lies)

    Behind the Data Curtain (sort of a Wizard of Oz reference, with two variants below)
    Data Wizards: Peering Behind the Curtain (I don’t like colons, but at least this gets the full point across)
    Data Wiz (Sort of like Cheez Whiz, but with Data!)

    Decimal Points (because it’s points made with numbers and because you dislike decimal points)

    Imaginary Numbers and Real Numbers (or, to combine this into one snappy title for the cognoscenti…)
    The Complex Plane

  10. Here are some (quite bad) suggestions :

    What do you mean ?
    Substandard deviation
    Bayes and girls
    Beautiful models
    Give me the breaks
    Skeptic regression
    Odds radio
    Dumb and numbers

  11. The Central Tendency
    Negatively Skewed
    Positively Skewed (readers may just read this a “positively screwed” a nice commentary on our political situation.)
    The Shape and Scale of Justice.
    Risky Inference
    False Precision
    Two Significant Figures

  12. “Nothing, if not critical”

    Desdemona: What wouldst thou write of me, if thou shouldst praise me?
    Iago: O gentle lady, do not put me to’t; For I am nothing, if not critical.

  13. Cynical Data

    110% Half Truths

    Stat Power

    Normal Noise

    Min Max and Average

    Statistical Fallacies

    Really?

    False Discoveries

    Common Statistics

    Statistical Rhetoric

    Persuasive Data

    • “PolitiStat” (with apologies to PolitiFact) also occurred to me — but I looked it up and found that “politistat” is the Danish word for “police state”. Not sure whether that’s a minus or a plus.

  14. “Data Driven” –
    “Unbiased Estimators” – a bit wonky
    “Correlations”
    “Behind the Numbers”
    “The Best Estimate”
    “Above Average”

  15. turning a simple stats term into something that has a second meaning (without too much tongue in your cheek) seems appropriate, like:

    Statistical Significance
    Significance Testing
    Confidence Intervals
    Independent Variables
    Regressing to the Mean
    Testing for Bias

    or maybe some statistical non-sequitur like Box and Whisker.

  16. Oh, stats people… In media there is this thing called “high concept,” which has a rather counter intuitive definition. But, the point is, this is going to have to appeal to a wider portion of the distribution of information consumers.

    Something like:

    “Modern Conditioning”

    • Economist’s (i) suggests Evidentially as a possibility.

      Or perhaps “Eventually evidential?” with the question mark included (to express the inevitable uncertainty).

      Or how about, “Evidence and Uncertainty”.

      Or “Uncertain Evidence”

  17. The Statistical State

    Polistitics/Polimetrics

    Convergent Hypotheses

    Estimated States

    Prior Posteriors

    Structure of Interest

    Door #3 (named after the Monty Hall problem)

  18. Initially “The Statistical State” sounded good, but then I remembered that the word “statistics” originally referred only to information about states (in the political sense). So that suggests possibilities such as the following:

    State-istics

    Original Statistics

    Polistics (Or perhaps that’s what you meant rather than Polistitics ?)

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