How to interpret a poll like a statistician — 1/ Suppose you ran a @Twitter poll asking “Should @RW_UNP be PM?” Suppose, If 151 people answered, and 85 (56.3%) said “Yes”. How should you interpret the results? Could we conclude that a *majority* of #SriLanka think “Yes”? 2/ Not everyone in #SriLanka is on the internet. Of that not…

Understanding the Parliament through Visualising — 1/ This article describes a web app, for visualising the MPs of the @ParliamentLK. This will help us better understand the current bunch, & be more informed, critical, & careful when it is time to elect the next. #SriLanka Parliament of #SriLanka Web site created using create-react-appnuuuwan.github.io 2/ The App visualises parliament by “cutting” MPs by various dimensions.

And why this is important — Solar Energy is all the rage worldwide. And Sri Lanka is no exception. Not surprising, given that it is clean, abundant and popular. However, some important characteristics of Solar Energy are not discussed, which make the broader conversation both incomplete and misleading. We must fill these gaps. This article discusses…

Complex Systems and Magic Numbers — In How much money?, we saw how the supply of gold affected inflation, growth, spending and saving in a simple society of farmers and fishermen. Similarly, a central bank’s policy towards money supply affects these same factors in a modern economy. How do central banks control the money supply? What…

On Bias, Variance, and Fixing them — A statistician would describe an exam as an “estimator”, which is a process for calculating the value of something based on observed data. In this case, the “observed data” is the candidate’s performance in the exam. For example, a student’s marks for Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry at the 2022 G.C.E…

On Money Supply, Inflation, Growth — Money Supply Consider a small country populated by farmers and fishermen. Suppose this country uses gold as money (for those who’ve read What is Money?, this would be a Money 1.0 country). The farmers and fishermen would use gold to buy rice and fish. What is Money? A Brief Historymedium.com Suppose a sack of rice cost one gold…

A Very Brief History — I’m an ordinary person interested in Economics. This article is part of a series, where I try to explain Economics in a way that ordinary people might understand. I start with Money — probably the most important and least understood concept in economics. Money 0.0 — Barter In the beginning, humans mostly bartered. Suppose…

And how not to cheat — Statistics is the art of answering questions with data; “art” because Statistics involves both creativity and subjectivity. All applications of statistics is a process of answering four questions. This article discusses these questions and how to answer them. Question 1: What is the Question? As I mentioned, “Statistics is the art of answering questions with data”…