The story of Anne Frank is tragic. If not for the words that she wrote in her diary, she would be a digit of history. Her diary is relatable, and the thoughts that collected inside her being during a horrible time in history gives the reader an idea of who she was. She is immortalized because of the little things that she wrote, not because of any great deeds recorded by others. As a victim of tyranny she is remembered as an innocent murdered. She is a story found inside the numbers. Thanks to her diary, we have a human figure to know and mourn, despite the mechanized bureaucratic...
statistics
Lunatic With a Plan: Erdogan and Turkey’s Economic Woes
Since the first assault on Turkey’s finances in 2018, which I wrote about multiple times (here, here, and here), I’ve been the lone voice telling everyone that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a lunatic but he’s a lunatic with a plan. That plan is to de-dollarize the economy of a valuable member of NATO geostrategically. Since the first shots across the bow by the Trump administration at Erdogan’s toying with those powers east of the Bosporus (Russia, China and Iran) the Turkish lira has been the primary mode of attack against Erdogan. Erdogan has pursued what has been deemed unorthodox...
How to Misuse Global COVID-19 Statistics
Have you heard about Somalia's COVID-19 policy? In the official statistics, Somalia has just 3,362 confirmed infections and 97 confirmed deaths from COVID-19. On a per capita basis, the country has a death toll just barely above New Zealand, and below other widely reported success stories like South Korea, Japan, Norway, Germany, etc. Yet, my guess is you probably have not heard much about how Somalia defeated the coronavirus. Why is that? The reason is that, implicitly, no one thinks Somalia's statistics reflect the underlying reality. Still the recurring target of US drone strikes and...
Three Observations on the Second Wave of COVID-19
The long-feared second wave of COVID-19 in the United States appears to have arrived. National case numbers are making new records and two states have started to move back towards quarantine. Since news reports on the virus continue to emphasize the wrong metrics, some important facts about the new wave often get missed. Here are three things to know about the new rise in cases. 1. The recent rise in cases cannot be explained by increases in testing. This is an important point because the onset of a second jump in cases has been declared prematurely several times before now. These types...
Three Ways Not To Analyze COVID-19 Statistics
The COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns continue to cause unprecedented devastation of everyday life in the United States--approximately 100,000 deaths, tens of millions unemployed, and countless plans, activities, and goals put on an indefinite hold. In this context, news outlets, politicians, and consumers are closely following the trends in the COVID-19 statistics, trying to answer the most pressing questions. Are things getting better or worse in the US? Have we succeeded in the flattening the curve? Are the reopened states seeing a surge in new cases that many have feared? These are...