May 25, 2014

Following this afternoon’s post, I decided to dig a little further into Thomas Piketty’s data spreadsheets. I’ll start with two general observations: I. Decennial Averaging Piketty seems to have an inordinate fondness for converting his data  into decennial averages. Usually this is done by the not-terribly-sophisticated technique of simply adding up annual stats (or in many cases percentage […]

If you’ve been following the news for the past few days you’ve probably seen a reference to the Financial Times’ investigation of the data behind Thomas Piketty’s recent bestseller Capital in the 21st Century. While it is difficult to extrapolate intentions from data alone, it seems safe to say now that Piketty was – at minimum