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Statistics site 538 adjusted its swing state forecast for Ohio Monday, and the results are looking better for Republican nominee Donald Trump. Trump overcame a 5 point deficit mid-August to lead Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by three points in the state, according to the latest Ipsos poll published in September. Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/09/05/nate-silver-trump-improving-in-ohio-hillary-slipping/#ixzz4JQZrW0e1

The honest statistics show that the only injustice being perpetrated against blacks is by other blacks. https://youtu.be/2mrWN40u2Zc

Even in this age of runaway emotions, there are still some people who want to know the facts. Nowhere are facts more important, or more lacking, than in what has been aptly called "The War on Cops," the title of a devastating new book by Heather Mac Donald. Few, if any, of the most fashionable notions about the police, minorities and the criminal justice system can withstand an examination of hard facts. Yet those fashionable notions continue to dominate discussions in the media, in politics and in academia. But Ms. Mac Donald's book of documented facts demolishes many fashionable notions....

President Barack Obama is claiming that murder rates are declining in Dallas, Los Angeles and nationwide, even though numerous sources of data shows a nationwide spike in murder since he launched his 2014 stigmatize-and-federalize campaign for the nation’s state and local police forces. “Over the last four or five years during the course of my presidency, violent crime in the United States is the lowest it’s been since probably the 1960’s … in places like New York or Los Angeles or Dallas, you have seen huge drops in the murder rates,” Obama claimed at a July 9 press conference held...

The youngest black professor ever to receive tenure at Harvard and recipient of an economics prize for “most promising American economist under 40” has just upended the conventional wisdom on police shootings. There is no racial bias when officers fire on suspects, according to a new study by Prof. Roland Fryer – black suspects are actually less likely to be shot than other suspects.The study looked at more than a thousand shootings in 10 major police departments, The New York Times reports. Fryer and student researchers spent 3,000 hours putting together data from police reports in Houston, Austin, Dallas and...

My daughter was a thief. And what she stole was cold, hard cash. It began with money from a parent’s wallet. Then, from another parent’s wallet. It moved on to a twenty from her big brother’s desk drawer. And then singles from the babysitter’s purse. This happened a dozen times over. It was a pattern. It was serious, not incidental or of opportunity. The piece de resistance was pinching thirty dollars from a school mate’s back pack – she got wind that the wad was in there for a donation. Oh, and my daughter is seven. I freaked out. Explained...

Analysis contradicts widespread views about racial targetsNobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison says she wants to see an officer shoot an unarmed white teenager in the back before agreeing that the “conversation about race” is over, but she almost certainly already has received her wish. An analysis released last week shows that more white people died at the hands of law enforcement than those of any other race in the last two years, even as the Justice Department, social-justice groups and media coverage focus on black victims of police force. As researchers are quick to point out, FBI data on police...

I can’t breathe. I’m literally fighting back tears as I write, again, about this prevalent injustice. They don’t see us as individual human beings, but a group to be exploited, separated, and judged based on our pigmentation. I’m talking about mainstream media and their manipulation of all Americans, corralling us into our respective color zones. They have a narrative to peddle. And we see it with every tragic account of black Americans killed by those tasked with the extremely dangerous job of serving and protecting. I’m repulsed by a news media that is hell-bent on fomenting a racial war. Whites...

Folks, let's be clear: Autism is almost-certainly not caused by vaccines. Let's remember the first rule of observational studies, which incidentally I was surprised to find a few years ago in my daughter's High School intro-to-stats class: Observational studies can only show correlation and correlation cannot prove causation. However, the absence of correlation is damn near bomb-proof evidence that the alleged cause you believe exists is false. Measles vaccination in the US began in 1963 following approval in 1962. Within five years near-complete compliance was obtained within the US. MMR, the combined vaccine that people like to blame autism on,...

A new study published in Climate Dynamics has found that humans are responsible for virtually all of the observed global warming since the mid-20th century. It's not a novel result - in fact, most global warming attribution studies have arrived at the same general result - but this study uses a new approach. Studies attempting to figure out the global warming contributions of various human and natural sources usually use a statistical approach known as 'linear regression'. This approach assumes we know the pattern of warming that each source (forcing) will cause, but we don't know how big the resulting...

Who needs algebra? That question muttered by many a frustrated student over the years has become a vigorous debate among American educators, sparked by a provocative new book that argues required algebra has become an unnecessary stumbling block that forces millions to drop out of high school or college. “One out of 5 young Americans does not graduate from high school. This is one of the worst records in the developed world. Why? The chief academic reason is they failed ninth-grade algebra,” said political scientist Andrew Hacker, author of “The Math Myth and Other STEM Delusions.” Hacker, a professor emeritus...

Academia is supposed to be a place in which scholars pursue inquiries. Perhaps more academics should have inquiring minds. "One in five women and one in 71 men will be raped at some point in their lives, according to the National Sexual Violence Center," Ingrid Sturgis, an associate professor at Howard University, writes in a special supplement to The Chronicle of Higher Education in an article which appeared on March 18, 2016. Actually, that ratio was rebutted widely and vigorously two years ago. Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute summed up the case in a column which appeared...

I was listening to Mark Levin’s radio show last night during which he expressed his frustration with how the GOP has allowed itself to be mired in meaningless “scandals” at the expense of making a clear case for conservatism and addressing policy. I agree with him. It is absolutely unbelievable to me that despite having a very strong lineup of candidates, on tp of 8 years of disastrous progressive liberalism, we could be in danger of losing this nation to a SOCIALIST? While the media (even on our side) obsesses over tweets, there are critical issues we should be discussing....

I am completing my family tree which goes back 39 generations on one branch and 14 on another. I would like to explain to my grandchildren how unique the DNA combination they have is. We have roots to a canonized saint in our bloodline as well as an American Revolutionary War solider and a famous Irish revolutionary hero too. I just need to show the children how small the odds are of duplicating our family tree. Anyone that can help please Freepmail me, Thanks much

I believe I've read that there is something magical about a 42% threshold in an election/poll. Can someone clarify why that number is so important? Does or have to do with inevitability?

Shortly after news broke of a shooting in San Bernardino (which we now know was a terrorist attack), Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit were abuzz that the events of December 2, 2015 were the "355th mass shooting" of 2015. Obviously, this was a concerning statistic--if it were actually true.It turns out it wasn't, and even figures on the left agree. There's been nowhere near 355 mass shootings in 2015, and according to Mother Jones editor Mark Folman, there have been exactly four. At Mother Jones, where I work as an editor, we have compiled an in-depth, open-source database covering more than...

This week's mass shooting in San Bernandino, which killed 14 innocents and wounded another 21, seems sadly routine. We've had so many of these incidents in recent years that they flow together. And yet, as Max Ehrenfreund notes at the Washington Post, we've actually had a "massive decline" in gun violence over the last two decades. (snip) Regardless, the difference between perception and reality here is stark. Mass shootings of strangers are, quite naturally, scarier and more attention-grabbing than ordinary homicides involving people known to the shooter. They make national news and spark debates over the state of our society...

The definition of a serial killer is, “A person who murders three or more people, usually due to abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant break (a “cooling off period”) between them.” Serial killers may be overwhelmingly male and most likely to be either black or white, but is there a connection for these men between their tendencies and their sexual behavior? Most serial killers are seeking out a thrill. But from where does their blood lust stem? Radford University keeps a database of statistics surrounding serial killers; age, race,...

One of the many painful signs of the mindlessness of our times was a recent section of the Wall Street Journal, built around the theme "What's Holding Women Back in the Workplace?" Whenever some group is not equally represented in some institution or activity, the automatic response in some quarters is to assume that someone has prevented equality of outcomes. This preconception of equal outcomes requires not one speck of evidence, and defies mountains of evidence to the contrary. Even in activities where individual performances are what determine outcomes, and those performances are easily measured objectively, there is seldom anything...

Tyler Vigan of the Harvard Law School highlights his new book, “Spurious Correlations,” which invites us to take a critical view of statistical correlations. Just because the divorce rate in Maine correlates with per capita consumption of margarine does not mean that we should cut back!