An intriguing op-ed in The Washington Post on Saturday (June 20, 2009) claimed to spot fraud in the Iran elections by applying some analytic methods basically drawn from Benford's Law.  Yes, read the article, but be sure to drill down into the 140+ comments.  Most quite cogent and well argued.

The Devil Is in the Digits

Since the declaration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory in Iran's presidential election, accusations of fraud have swelled. Against expectations from pollsters and pundits alike, Ahmadinejad did surprisingly well in urban areas, including Tehran -- where he is thought to be highly unpopu...By Bernd Beber and Alexandra Scacco

Nathan, the chap who curates the valuable blog Flowing Data, offers up a bit of hope for journalists who are worried about their employment futures and yet have invested in learning methods of data analysis.  When thinking about re-inventing ourselves, consider the phrase "data scientist."

Rise of the Data Scientist

Photo by majamarko

As we've all read by now, Google's chief economist Hal Varian commented in January that the next sexy job in the next 10 years would be statisticians. Obviously, I whole-heartedly ...   more »