When bias wins

Statisticians know how to control bias and variance. Journalists, political analysts and economists generally don’t.

The total number of data available globally in 2010 was 2 zetabytes – or 2 trillion gigabytes. This year, this number is forecast to up to 181 ZB. By 2030 we might be in the yottabyte, and soon after we will be running out of Greek letters. The only thing I can think of as capable of matching the growth of available data is the degree of bias they gener…