Say it ain't so, Joe!

What is a brain, and who said so?

A love affair with dictionaries began when I was a schoolboy. My parents encouraged me to "look it up in the dictionary" whenever a word was questioned. It was an ingenuous time. The meaning of a word was enshrined in the dictionary, and words existed because they were recorded there. When someone said "ain't" we chanted, "Ain't ain't a word, because ain't ain't in the dictionary." The concept ...

Morning Briefing

Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll: Two-thirds of Americans say fix Obamacare, don't repeal it. [1] More than half say, get on to other priorities. Has Congress ever changed the Affordable Care Act? Yes, it has and with bipartisan support. A short history. [2] President Trump ratcheted up his pressure on lawmakers to pass a healthcare plan with a threat to end key Obamacare payments and cancel some of ...

"Say it ain't so, Joe": Comment on "Hospital process compliance and surgical outcomes in medicare beneficiaries".

OBJECTIVES To determine whether high rates of compliance with perioperative processes of care used for public reporting and pay-for-performance are associated with lower rates of risk-adjusted mortality and high-risk surgical complications. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of Medicare inpatient claims data (from January 1, 2005, through December 31, 2006). Hierarchical logistic regression models...

I Wish I Didn't Say That! Analyzing and Predicting Deleted Messages in Twitter

Twitter has become a major source of data for social media researchers. One important aspect of Twitter not previously considered are deletions – removal of tweets from the stream. Deletions can be due to a multitude of reasons such as privacy concerns, rashness or attempts to undo public statements. We show how deletions can be automatically predicted ahead of time and analyse which tweets are...

It ain't necessarily so: the cost implications of health care reform.