📚 This is an archive of Aid Thoughts, a development economics blog that was active from 2009 to 2017. Posts and comments are preserved in their original form.

Green jelly beans and subsamples

Excited about that new randomized controlled trial result showing  microcredit works for men between the ages of 30 and 40.5 who have between 3 and 4 siblings? Or how about yet another study showing a positive effect of aid on growth when you restrict it to countries with good governance and names that begin with the letters A to F? XKCD hits the nail on the head as to why you should approach these results with extreme caution:

2 Comments

Nicolas · April 06, 2011 at 11:38 AM

Matt (or others), do you know any references off the top of your head to papers that show if/how you can adjust standard errors when dealing with things like this (e.g. when you're estimating over different subsamples)?

julian · April 08, 2011 at 03:45 PM

I just posted about this cartoon on my blog as well, including a quick reference to Bonferroni (which responds in part to Nicolas's question): rnhttp://tunesforbears.com/2011/04/07/quasi-random-ouch-thoughts-on-statistics/