uncertainty
Every record this desk has filed under uncertainty, newest first, each with the number of sources it can still show you.
Before you repeat a number, find the sentence where its author says how wrong it might be. Four big numbers landed this week. Three of them came with that sentence. One came with nothing.
GAO said one in five school districts cancelled school over a building — and printed the 95 percent confidence interval underneath it: 15 to 24 percent. GAO said federal agencies spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave — and said in the same breath that its own source data probably overstates it, by a measurable amount, in a direction it names. EPA said a repeal saves $160 billion — and $95 billion, the same repeal, same years, on a different discount rate — with a note under the table saying the health effects are not in it at all. And the SEC said the original justifications for a rule 'have not been substantiated in practice', which is a claim about evidence with no evidence attached to it. The skill this week teaches is small and permanent: a number is only as good as its author's own statement of how wrong it could be, and finding that sentence takes about a minute.
Also filed undermethodstatisticsgaoepasec
A record appears here because it carries uncertainty in its own frontmatter. If a record you expected is missing, it was filed under a different subject — the full list is on the topics index.