From "538":

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-52-best-and-weirdest-charts-we-made-in-2016/?ex_cid=story-twitter

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/29/pew-research-centers-most-read-research-of-2016/?utm_source=Pew+Research+Center&utm_campaign=6c36d551ba-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2016_12_27&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_3e953b9b70-6c36d551ba-399726609

"Pew Research Center published 125 reports and more than 400 blog posts in 2016, covering a wide array of topics, from race and immigration, to the U.S. presidential election and religion. As the year draws to a close, we look back at our research that attracted the most readers, as measured by web visitors to our site."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/maybe-spotify-isnt-killing-the-music-industry-after-all/

For their analysis, Waldfogel and Aguiar took Spotify at its word, and used the median per-stream point ($0.007) to estimate any new revenue generated through streaming. They found that revenue roughly offsets the revenue lost from any drop in sales. In other words, they think Spotify has had a revenue-neutral impact on the music industry, though whether Spotify has cut into artists’ earnings is a different question not directly addressed in this paper.

There is one thing Page and Waldfogel do agree about: legal streaming’s effect on piracy. In the working paper, the economists compared the growth of Spotify streaming to the weekly volumes of torrents for 8,000 top artists, using data from Musicmetric, a music analytics company. Every additional 47 streams displaced one pirated download, they concluded. The economists even cited Page’s own work showing Spotify lowered unpaid downloads. But as Waldfogel said, “reducing piracy is not the same as increasing revenue.”

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2016/12/how-to-cite-a-youtube-channel.html

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/12/21/16-striking-findings-from-2016/

"Every year, we publish a collection of facts about the important events, issues and trends we documented in our wide-ranging research over the past 12 months. In 2016, Pew Research Center examined an array of topics in America – from immigration to the growing divide between Republicans and Democrats – as well as many from around the globe. Here are 16 of our most striking findings."

http://www.govexec.com/management/2016/12/gao-suggests-how-agencies-can-do-more-less/134092/

Federal auditors are offering some pointers on how agencies can better handle severe budget cuts, examining where some offices succeeded and failed during the forced reductions during sequestration.

Evidence matters…

http://www.realclearscience.com/lists/biggest_junk_science_2016/junk_science_2016_start.html

http://blog.stata.com/2016/12/13/understanding-truncation-and-censoring/

Truncation and censoring are two distinct phenomena that cause our samples to be incomplete. These phenomena arise in medical sciences, engineering, social sciences, and other research fields. If we ignore truncation or censoring when analyzing our data, our estimates of population parameters will be inconsistent.

"But the Waffle House Index also stands for something less obvious. It is an indicator of how complex and long supply chains are — for food, for fuel, for power — and of what it takes to plan around infrastructure that can be fragile in unexpected ways."

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/if-waffle-house-is-closed-its-time-to-panic/

https://blog.google/topics/google-europe/reflecting-right-be-forgotten/

What if links to stories about someone’s past—stories about defrauding an international business or about medical tourism malpractice—were removed from Google search in your country, not because of your local laws but because someone was able to use the laws of another country. How would you feel about that?

That question may seem simplistic. But it goes to the heart of a very important debate that is taking place now in Europe, initially between some Data Protection Authorities and, next year, in court. At stake: whether Europe’s right to be forgotten—which allows people in EU countries to request removal of certain links from name search results—should reach beyond the borders of Europe and into countries which have different laws.