Friday 17 July 2009

Lies, damned lies and statistics

Woke up to the news that swine flu deaths in the UK had lept to 29 and the government is predicting total death toll will reach anywhere between "3,000 and 65,000". That top figure is pretty frightening but how did they come to such a wide variation in figures? I strongly suspect some very dubious mathematics and look forward to the next Bad Science column in The Guardian.

P.S. Just found this article by Fergus Walsh who seems to share my cynicism of statistics. See also his What Are The Chances of Dying From Swine Flu.

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