Three scams and a lie

also: Russian roulette, computing pi, and the oral tradition

Last week on the blog:

• Computing pi by flipping a coin

• Hey! I almost got scammed by Google.

• From junk science (largely non-political) to junk medical treatments (mostly associated with the far-right): A financial connection

• What do Socrates, Herb Simon, and Andrew Gelman have in common? A love of the oral tradition

• The 80% power lie

• Fitting a model to estimate the seats-votes curve, back in the bad old days before we had Stan

• Survey Statistics: Gallup’s Presidential Approval Ratings

• The Atlantic Monthly, March, 1947

• My online talk Tues 24 Feb, 9am NY time at the Behind-the-Scenes seminar series: Russian Roulette and stochastic potential outcomes

• Hanging out: An observational study

• Funniest predatory-journal pitch ever

We had a good mix of topics last week.