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.

http://www.govtech.com/social/Law-Enforcement-Agencies-Spend-Millions-on-Social-Media-Monitoring.html

“Certainly we can see that there are huge numbers of police departments that are buying this software,” Levinson-Waldman said. “Clearly they think it’s effective. Whether it is, we don’t know yet.”

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2016/12/07/hate-crimes-spike-after-the-election/

The most common place for these incidents to occur, after sidewalks and streets, was K-12 schools.

http://www.epi.org/publication/employment-fell-because-of-the-great-recession-not-the-minimum-wage-study-claiming-the-minimum-wage-harmed-low-wage-workers-fails-conventional-tests/

The analysis in this report supports the hypothesis that the federal minimum wage increase from $5.15 in 2007–to $7.25 in 2009 did little to affect employment levels. Industrial and geographic factors account for the employment differences between states with and without significant minimum wage increases, so these employment differences were correlated with but not caused by the minimum wage. Once the appropriate controls are included, employment differences between unbound and bound states are generally small and statistically insignificant.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/stop-treating-hud-like-a-second-tier-department/?ex_cid=538twitter

Article mentions the American Housing Survey:

"Experts pointed out how HUD did a poor job of collecting data about eviction, for instance. In response, starting with the 2017 AHS survey, HUD will incorporate a roster of eviction-related questions previously tested in the field."

Besides the point it makes… what an outstanding use of graphics!!!

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/12/03/us/politics/why-it-will-be-hard-to-repeal-obamacare.html?smid=pl-share&_r=0