Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
The ABC’s Statistics and Lies
Sir: A summary of the results of the Australia Talks Survey was published by the ABC on its News website on June 10. The results are interesting mainly because they reveal the prejudices and intellectual deficiencies of ABC staff and (perhaps) consumers of ABC presentations.
The survey results appeared under the heading “Data Doesn’t Lie”. One might have thought by now that even the ABC would know data does indeed lie. The head of Risk and Evidence Communication at Cambridge University, Sir David Spiegelhalter, recently published an entire book explaining why data is at risk of being misapplied and misinterpreted (The Art of Statistics). Long ago Mark Twain popularised the saying, “There are lies, damned lies and statistics.” That well-known warning certainly applies to this ABC survey. The heading is a lie, and the contents are no better.
The first lie on the ABC News website is the omission of any mention of the well-known problems of sampling and confirmation bias…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
