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.
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!
How about Statistico?
Red Stat, Blue Stat
Game of Stats
Your number’s up
My numbers are better
Statopolis
Outnumbered
House of Stats
The Educated Guess
+=1 game of stats
+1 for outnumbered.
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.)
I like Probably Relevant. Humble yet appropriate.
How about “Prior Restraint”
probably improbable?
Stat Trek, though I think it’s been done.
I like Statbusters.
Just The Stats, Ma’am
Thermo-stat
You should call it Degrees of Freedom.
Freeeeedommmmmm!!!!!!!
I Once googled “degrees of freedom” to read up on the subject and got a bunch of links to Liberty University
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.
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics”
Standard Errors
How about Scrutinizing Statistics? It’s topically truthful and amazingly alliterative also.
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!
False Positives
Uninformed Posteriors
Here’s my $0.02:
Honest Statistics
Rude Awakenings
Honesty for the Best Policy
Scrubbed Numbers
Good luck! And congrats on the columns!
How about ‘Haruspex – predictions from the political entrails’
P for Two
Debunking Data
Delusional Data
Deconstructing Data
Statatat
Stat-Attack
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
Stat’s All, Folks
credible interlude
Statistically Significant at the National Level
maybe Statistical Significance at the National Level sounds better?
Political Figures
The Week Prior
Just Add Data
Most Statistics Are
Show Me The Data
Statistically Speaking
Probable Flaws
Political Values
Victims of Statistics
Probably Politics
Critical Value
Thomas: Neat but maybe work in
Prevention and rehabilitation of Victims of Statistics.
Slight variation on your second to last: Probably Political
I like just “Stat!” because it reminds me of watching “Emergency!” in boyhood. (10 cc of Ringers lactate fixed everything then.)
Almost Surely BS
Allows for abbreviations P(BS) = 1, or A.S. B.S.
Biased, but Consistent
This is my favorite but unfortunately wouldn’t work for a general audience
Agree: fantastic name for a stats blog for statisticians, not for one on the Daily Beast.
Bayes Watch
or Hawaii 0.05?
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
Uncertainty Acceptance Therapy
Uncertainty Acceptance Therapy
The Daily Least Squared Error
Survey Says
Politically Significant
Lies, Damn Lies, and Politics
From the musical Fiorello, Politics and Poker — any you’ll even have a theme song!
Given the publication, how about
“Numbers of The Beast”
This is great!
The Number of the Beast, of course!
statistics ain’t beanbag
Data Front
Stat Front
Trench datafare
At Variance
Beastly Stats
Politics by the Numbers.
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.
Statcheck…like factcheck
Data Debate
PolitiCalc
Always Wrong, Sometimes Useful
Might provide some inspiration:
http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/726/famous-statistician-quotes
Probably approximately correct
Party Lines
Daily BS?
Dissimulation
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?
Prefer crypo (c rather than k)–makes explicit the connection with information (cryptography).
Questionable Significance
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
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
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
How about “Damned Lies”? :-) (As in “Lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
The Chai Square … where you sit around and talk stats over a nice cuppa
“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.
The Art of the Probable
Model Citizens
A Prior Engagement
The Stat in the Scat
(with apologies to Dr. Seuss.)
known unknowns
Residual
Cited figures
Referenced figures
Quoted figures
Speak, data
Speaking statistically
1 Where it’s stat
2 Politics counts
3 Posterior-view mirror
(Of these I like 1, though it’s not as good as Anon’s “Numbers of The Beast”)
Cynical Data
110% Half Truths
Stat Power
Normal Noise
Min Max and Average
Statistical Fallacies
Really?
False Discoveries
Common Statistics
Statistical Rhetoric
Persuasive Data
“Convince Me”
Slaughterhouse 0.05
The numbers game.
PoliStats
-Statistical Moderator
-Auto Moderator
-Naive Bayes Moderator
-Stat Watchers
-Statistically Insignificant
-PolitiStat
“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.
Answers, Stat
Loci-vore
Random Walk Prattle
I also vote for J. Cross’ “Model Citizens”
Posterior ✔️
aCountability (with the Count as mascot)
Beastats
‘The Null Hypothesis’
Data Coroners
(Poli)CSI: Stats
Data Coroners
[Poli]CSI: Data analysis
“Data Driven” –
“Unbiased Estimators” – a bit wonky
“Correlations”
“Behind the Numbers”
“The Best Estimate”
“Above Average”
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.
The Weekly Metric
maybe:
The Key Metric(s)
Statosphere or Statasphere
Trendbusters
Dataspeak
Statcallers
Datashack
Oddballs
Calling the odds
Data ninjas
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”
In order of my preference :
i) Evidently
ii) Drawing Inferences/ Making Inferences
iii) Probably
iv) By All Means
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”
The Plot Sickens
+1
1. Probable Cause
2. Dirty Data
3. No (Central) Limits
4. Favorable Odds
5. Polimetrics
Good luck, Andy!
The Statistical State
Polistitics/Polimetrics
Convergent Hypotheses
Estimated States
Prior Posteriors
Structure of Interest
Door #3 (named after the Monty Hall problem)
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 ?)