Spring Seminar Series  April 3, 2008
University of Minnesota
School of Statistics
College
of Liberal Arts

Do people really USE statistical evidence?  Recent economic issues in global climate change policy

Steven J. Taff
Department of Applied Economics
University of Minnesota

Thursday, April 3, 2008
3:30 PM, 115 Ford Hall
Minneapolis, East Bank Campus
Social at 3:00 PM, 300 Ford Hall

 

Abstract

The more work I do in policy analysis, the less comfortable I am with how  we use statistical evidence in public decisions. Maybe that's just me.  I'll show you some recent work on electric energy production and  greenhouse gas emissions and talk about how our efforts to impart even the  simple notion of variance about the mean have been rebuffed. In the  process, we can examine some of the ways in which economists apply  statistics and, perhaps, how statisticians apply economics.