Required for next week: March 12, 1996

• Chapters 5 and 6 of Tainted Truth by Cynthia Crossen. Come prepared to discuss these and ask questions about the parts you didn't understand.

In the Globe and Mail this week

• ``Implant study contradictory'', Feb. 28, A9 (Lee Bowman). Today's issue of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, reports on the largest study to date of women with breast implants. The study, which was financed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health and Dow Corning, show a small but statistically significant increased risk of connective-tissue disease associated with breast implants. This is probably the study referred to at the end of Chapter 6 of Tainted Truth.
• ``Closer targets easier to hit in a budget'', Mar. 4, A6 (Bruce Little). Compares the government's deficit predictions with the actual results: the accompanying graphic really tells the story. The predictions tend to be off by quite a bit. The current finance minister Paul Martin is using two-year, rather than the more traditional five-year, predictions.
• ``Ontario's economic future is the sum of its auto parts'', Mar. 2, A1 &A10 (Bruce Little and Greg Keenan). A very long article arguing that the auto industry is as important to Ontario's economy as oil and gas are to Alberta, or lumber is to British Columbia. Provides a detailed analysis of the economic history of the auto business over the past 30 years. An accompanying graphic shows the size of the auto parts industry overlaid on the size of the Ontario economy, for the years 1985 -- 1995. The graph uses two y-scales a technique that can be visually very misleading, as we saw in the handout of September 26 (Howard Wainer's ``Visual Revelations'' column in Chance, 1991, p.50).