For the last few years, the same crop of news stories seem to run. Many say that Earth Hour is a genuinely useful tool of social change, raising awareness of climate change and encouraging people to think about the effects of their energy usage. A minority—and I reluctantly put myself in their camp—regard it as a publicity stunt with limited environmental effect. They (we?) grumble it could even be harmful to the broader cause of environmental sustainability, encouraging a “been there, done that” attitude among citizens who are quick to flick the lights back on as soon as their 60 minutes is up, consciences cleared but energy-use patterns essentially unchanged.

I’m honestly torn, and wanted to see what everyone thinks of Earth Hour. Are you participating? Am I just being a big Grinch? Vote in the poll or leave a comment and let us know what you think.

If only journalists displayed this much facility with stats. XKCD comic by Randall Munroe.

A year of layoffs and anaemic ad buys has given journalists an excuse to turn inwards like never before. By now, even folks outside the industry must be sick of hearing about the Future of Journalism — my own fervent hope is to never read another article about social media for reporters. But I do think that an instinct for self-improvement is useful, so I’m going to add something else to the agenda — call it a Margin of Error manifesto. I’d like to talk about statistical literacy.

I know that it’s a bit predictable, even self-serving, to argue that everyone should have a skill that you have already developed. And I hate to add another job description to a list that is rapidly becoming unmanageable. Increasingly, it seems that we are all expected to be programmers and photographers, designers and copy editors, fact checkers and fundraisers. I’m not sure what to make of this job ooze, as an economist — we know something about the value of specialization — but so long as we’re all marginally employed and learning new skills, let’s try to pick up this indispensable one.

Craig Silverman has been saying smart things about journalism since before it was fashionable, and he is forceful about the importance of numeracy. But my point is not just about knowing how to add. When I say that we need to be literate, I mean that journalists should be comfortable enough with statistical methods to skim an academic paper, poll, or piece of market research and know whether the numbers say what our sources claim. We should have a clear hold on what it means to control for something, and when and why something is statistically significant. We should be able to compare contradictory studies. A couple rigorous university-level courses in social science methods would do the trick, more or less, but reading a few textbooks might be even better.

Unfortunately, most journalists don’t have a single course in methods, or any math past high school. We are, for better or worse, an industry of math-phobic English majors. And yet we report on statistics almost daily. Even crime reporters have to throw in the occasional paragraph on whether the murder rate is going up or down, and lifestyle columnists just love to write about neuroscience studies.

A few things happen when you have to report on something that you barely understand. You are forced to trust the researchers absolutely — whenever private companies release their own research, that’s a risk. You introduce errors by paraphrasing. You fail to communicate which results are suspect and which are nearly indisputable. Everything is reported as a breakthrough, because no researcher will admit to an incremental result. You can’t put contradictory studies in context, which drives readers nuts — who can remember whether red wine is good or bad for you, anyway? What are we supposed to eat, if everything causes cancer?

My sense is that political reporters develop some expertise on polling, and health reporters are getting serious about understanding drug and diet trials. A select group of journalists are making data what they do, and the New York Times has been doing some beautiful work with online infographics. But if you type “study” into Google News and scroll down, there is plenty of depressing nonsense to be found.

In August, the New York Times declared this the golden age of statistics, quoting Google’s resident math geek Hal Varian. Thanks to the internet, more data is more available than ever before. Statistics is only going to become more important. We can only hope that we will be able to cover it. Without statistical literacy, we will just be writing fiction.

If we ran a “WTF” blog post every time another ridiculous, inconclusive political poll came out, you’d never read anything else here. But since this particular batch of ridiculous, inconclusive polls came out as all the Canadian political parties were gearing up for the fall session, we’ll make an exception this time.

Harris-Decima says the Tories and the Liberals are in a “dead heat.” Ipsos-Reid says the Conservatives “have leaped to a strong lead.” They can’t both be right, which likely means neither of them are. But this kind of thing gets trotted out by big media (and small) all the time, the perfect non-news news story for the dying, dull days of August. The Liberals are “gear[ing] up for fall election” in one story, but Michael Ignatieff is also “dispel[ling] election rumours.” In short, if there’s an election (which no one knows) then no one knows that the hell is going to happen.

The party leaders are meeting around this time to horse-trade and try to angle for their agendas in the fall session, and then coming out of their meetings with the prime minister to give partisan but essentially non-committal statements about whether they will (or won’t!) support Stephen Harper’s minority government. They speculate about the possibility of an election, but it’s the equivalent of a nauseating phone call that just won’t end (“You hang up first!” “No, you hang up!”)

There will be an election, or there won’t. We’re watching and waiting. Just like the people at Ipsos-Reid and Harris-Decima.

The New Democratic Party convenes today in Halifax for its federal convention, and one of the hottest questions is whether the party will drop the “New” from its name. Sure, there’s a bunch of boring old policy meetings and stuff, to, you know, lay out a vision for the country and junk, but there’s something irresistible about the razzle-dazzle of a rebranding. Nick Taylor-Vaisey jumped on this story weeks ago, way before the mainstream media caught on, but now everyone’s got an opinion.

Anyway, the reason I’m filing this under our cheery Friday FTW section is that it actually has shoved Canadian progressive politics into the spotlight again, which is crucial. (I’ve reposted James Laxer’s important and controversial This cover story from last year on the future of the NDP, just to stoke the fires a little more.) The prospect of a name change has fostered some important talk in progressive circles about what exactly we want from a left political party: do we want uncompromising, principled ideological stances, regardless of the electoral outcome? Is it actually important to pursue power? Are these goals mutually incompatible? Have we been seduced by the success of the Obama electoral machine and just want to grab some of that excitement for ourselves in Canada? I don’t know, but I’m sure glad we’re talking about it.

The nice thing here is that there have been all kinds of useful, necessary questions asked, and the stakes are actually pretty low at this point. Judging by a hilarious poll commissioned by the Canadian Press and released yesterday, it really doesn’t matter:

Of about 1,000 Canadians surveyed, about one-third each believe the name change is a good idea, a bad idea, or just don’t give a shit. Practically no votes ride on the decision; if there’s a name change, lefties aren’t going to flee the party, and righties aren’t going to flock to it. In other words, maybe we can get the whole name-change thing out of the way, whatever the decision is, and talk about the truly important issues.