What I've been Reading

There are a pile of useful documents published all the time, so here are a couple of them that I've read that are especially important to my work. I confess I also read the Alex cartoon in the NZ Herald, but that is unimportant on this page.

Surveys

• Segui, F. April 2005-04. Survey Automation through ActiveX components and XML Web Services. ISI 55, IPM 58.
• Schonlau, M., van Soest, A., Kapteyn, A., Couper, M., Winter, J. Adjusting for selection bias in Web surveys using propensity scores: the case of the Health and Retirement Study. Joint Statistical Meetings, Toronto, August 2004

Privacy and Data Confidentiality

Before you get anonymous aggregate statistics, you have individual rows which may be able to point back to the person who gave the response. Many times this is just embarassing, but it can also be illegal, and in the case of electronic voting, a fundamental problem. In our own student surveys we strip the labels off the data and store them in a different database table.

• New Zealand Government. Privacy Act 1993
• (some article in some book that was left in the Commons Room)
• Fienberg, S. and Slavkovic, A. 2004. Making the Release of Confidential Data from Multi-Way Tables Count. Chance, 17(3): 5 - 10
• Reiter, J. 2004. New Approaches to Data Dissemination: A Glimpse into the Future (?). Chance, 17(3): 11 - 15 (Mangling data, or remote servers return output to you, so you never see the raw data.)
• Duncan, G. and Stokes, S. 2004. Disclosure Risk vs. Data Utility: The R-U Confidentiality Map as Applied to Topcoding. Chance, 17(3): 16 - 20
• Wallman, K. and Harris-Kojetin, B. 2004. Implementing the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002. Chance, 17(3): 21 - 25
• Singer, E. 2004. Confidentiality, Risk Perception, and Survey Participation. Chance, 17(3): 30 - 34
• Straf, M. 2004. Fostering Trust to Motivate Responses: It's Not Just a Matter of Confidentiality. Chance, 17(3): 35 - 36
• Verykios, VS., Bertino, E., and Fovino, IN. 2004. State-of-the-art in Privacy Preserving Data Mining SIGMOD Record, 33(1): 50 - 57

Spam

• Goodman, J. and Heckerman, D. June 2004-06. Fighting spam with statistics. Significance, 1(2): 69 - 72.

Other

• Russell, JC., Towns, DR., Anderson, SH., and Clout, MN. October 2005-10-20. Intercepting the first rat ashore. Nature, 437(7062): 1107
• Bland, M. and Altman, D. December 2005-12. Do the left-handed die young? Significance, 2(4): 166 - 170.
• Matthews, R. December 2005-12. Why do people believe weird things? Significance, 2(4): 182 - 184.