Category: Uncategorized
-
What is a confidence interval?
I think confidence intervals might be the most commonly-misunderstood statistic. I’ve been trying to understand them better and this is what I’ve learnt. (In this blog I explained p-values and statistical significance and recommend reading that first.) How do we create confidence intervals? We typically use p-values to test the…
-
What do we mean when we talk about a ‘strong relationship’ between two numbers?
People will often talk about finding ‘strong’ or ‘weak’ relationships between two variables, X and Y. I think this language can be unhelpfully vague and prone to misconception. It could sound like three things: Sometimes people seem to use this vague language intentionally. It allows them to imply that they…
-
What is a p-value? What makes something statistically significant?
Most people, including me, find it really hard to understand p-values and statistical significance. Even proper scientists struggle to explain it. This blog is my attempt to explain it as clearly as I can, for my own benefit. It’s an iron law of social science that any definition of statistical…
-
What was the impact of Covid-19 measures on crime?
A new systematic review is out on the impact of Covid-19 measures on crime. Lockdown was perhaps the most drastic crime prevention measure ever taken – what was its impact? Here’s the abstract: COVID-19 caused a great burden on the healthcare system and led to lockdown measures across the globe.…
-
How do social science RCTs happen?
I would like to see more rigorous evaluations of social policy interventions. This doesn’t just mean more randomised control trials (RCTs) but that is an important step. If we want more RCTs, how do we achieve this? I think it helps to learn about the situations where RCTs have happened…
-
What is the public health approach to violence prevention?
Many people advocate for a public health approach to preventing violence. What does this actually mean? I’ve encountered several definitions and, despite them all being slightly different, I think they share some core ideas. I think the public health approach focuses on: Populations over individuals The criminal justice system is…
-
Some facts about violence in England and Wales
Keir Irwin-Rogers and Luke Billingham’s book ‘Against Youth Violence’ has a nice summary of what we know about the nature of violence in England and Wales:
-
Seven facts about crime
A paper has been circulating twitter which suggests some ‘facts’ about crime. It seems unusually concrete and useful for an academic piece. These facts are: I think there’s probably an eighth fact missing about the contexts and backgrounds of people who conduct the most frequent or serious offences. They are…
-
How do we know how much violence is happening?
I’m reading Keir Irwin-Rogers and Luke Billingham’s Against Youth Violence. The first chapter has a good overview of sources of data on the prevalence of violence. It’s not easy to measure how much violence is happening – all the available sources have their strengths and limitations. Here’s a summary of…
-
How to talk to an AI
I had my first experience last week of a useful conversation with an AI. I was trying to edit some text but was tired and struggling to find the right words. I gave ChatGPT an example of the style of writing I was aiming for, then asked it to summarise…
Peter Henderson 