Rotundus.com

As someone commented on their Facebook post: "wonder if they read these for relevance before posting?!"

Over the years I've developed a high level of cynicism about most statistics reported in the media, particularly those originating from individuals and organizations that would describe themselves as "feminist". A few days ago I was amused to discover that an article in the journal Eating Disorders critiquing Naomi Wolf's anorexia-related claims had come up with a metric it dubbed WOLF, short for Wolf's Overdo and Lie Factor. This figure was the ratio of Naomi Wolfe's claims to figures from published reviews. What did the study find?

When compared to the relevant epidemiological reviews, however, 18 of the 23 statistics are inaccurate and overdone. On average, a statistic on anorexia by Naomi Wolf should be divided by eight to get close to the real figure.

Note that one factor lowering the WOLF factor to "only" 8-10 was the author of the review giving Wolf the benefit of the doubt where evidence was unavailable, which affected one claim. (Frankly, it seems somewhat absurd to give her the benefit of the doubt given her demonstrated propensity to exaggerate in the vast majority of her remaining claims). Another factor lowering the average WOLF was calculating it using the geometric mean (multiplying all N numbers and then taking the Nth root). The arithmetic mean - what people typically mean when they use the term average - of all WOLF scores in the original edition of the book was 39.3, which goes down to 28.6 when removing her overstatement of anorexia-related deaths.

You can see the results summarized here if you aren't able to access the original paper.

McDonald's opens vegetarian-only restaurant

Not too surprisingly it's in India. Also interesting: "In India, its menu is typically 50% vegetarian."

Warming Up to the Officeless Office

I wonder if a productivity hit might be the actual result even if workers do report more collaboration. A lot of people seem to think that multi-tasking improves their performance, but the actual productivity implications seem grim. Still, even if there is a hit on productivity it might still be worth it. e.g., "GlaxoSmithKline says it has saved nearly $10 million annually in real-estate costs by gradually shifting 1,200 employees at its Research Triangle Park, N.C., office to unassigned seating" - that's a savings of about $8000/employee-year.

The curious allure of child preachers

The quote from one professor mentioned in the article seems to sum it up: "I think the appeal is frankly the novelty of it. It's a kind of a carnival side-show"

Poverty, single mothers and mobility

The last graph seemed to me to be the most interesting. "The Nordic countries have the lowest overall poverty rates. But in absolute terms their advantage is much bigger for single mothers. ... The US and UK have the largest difference in poverty rates between single mothers and overall poverty. That is, we have the largest poverty penalty for single motherhood. If the relative poverty rates for single mothers were lower in the US, we might spend more time and money addressing poverty and less trying to change family structures." Wouldn't the reason for the Nordic countries having lower single mother poverty rates likely be due to the existing high government expenditures there for things like childcare which seem to amount to a large subsidy to the single parent lifestyle? i.e. wouldn't there be less money - not more - available to divert to dealing with other poverty?