"Moreover, the BLS states that the 90% confidence interval of the change in the number of jobs is approximately plus/minus 136,000." Wow that is a pretty big interval! I get it now :-)
I get your point about putting stats in context, and couldn't agree more. The challenge for people like me is that we don't know what contextual information is relevant, because we do not know the subject matter well enough or don't have the data. So for instance, with regards to the -0.5% change in GDP, I wouldn't know that it was driven by early buys ahead of tariffs. Hence very glad I read you! Great article, as always, thanks.
It's very true that headlines and articles skip the context. Especially in the context of labor markets, prior to reading some other economics substackers, I often saw the headline and trusted the conclusion (i.e. labor market is doing good/bad). Now I wait to see the write-up and analysis
Thank you for the shout out! And nice post on the issues with these data. I'm thankful for people like you writing articles to educate others on how to think like an economist (and also how to think about data). We really need to push intro stats courses in high school to help people understand context and confidence intervals.
"Moreover, the BLS states that the 90% confidence interval of the change in the number of jobs is approximately plus/minus 136,000." Wow that is a pretty big interval! I get it now :-)
I get your point about putting stats in context, and couldn't agree more. The challenge for people like me is that we don't know what contextual information is relevant, because we do not know the subject matter well enough or don't have the data. So for instance, with regards to the -0.5% change in GDP, I wouldn't know that it was driven by early buys ahead of tariffs. Hence very glad I read you! Great article, as always, thanks.
Glad to hear you find my work helpful! :)
It's very true that headlines and articles skip the context. Especially in the context of labor markets, prior to reading some other economics substackers, I often saw the headline and trusted the conclusion (i.e. labor market is doing good/bad). Now I wait to see the write-up and analysis
Thank you for suggesting my article!
Thank you for the shout out! And nice post on the issues with these data. I'm thankful for people like you writing articles to educate others on how to think like an economist (and also how to think about data). We really need to push intro stats courses in high school to help people understand context and confidence intervals.