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Statistics Done Wrong
July 5, 2012 — xanthippaOne of my most frustrating pet peeves is when scientists don’t understand what it is they are measuring.
And, let me assure you, this is a much bigger problem than anyone is willing to admit.
My background – going way, way back, before my ventures into the business world or even into parenthood, I studied Science. And, while I never sought a doctorate or any such thing (I had done my due diligence on child-bearing statistics in preparation for parenthood and realized that if I wanted to optimize for my children’s intelligence, I had to conceive my first child at no older an age than 25 – and my last one at no older an age than 30: and since my then fiance – now husband – agreed that we did not approve of the ‘daycare’ model of child-rearing, somewhat to my now hubbie’s chagrin, I chose not to pursue further studies), I do have a degree in Physics in there somewhere….
What I specialized for (though I did not realize at the time that this was ‘soooooo Aspie’) was data acquisition, test and measurement. I made a career out of helping other scientists (and industry, military etc.) figure out how to measure what it was they were really trying to measure, from designing the data acquisition systems to telling them if they were actually measuring what they thought they were measuring.
As such, am somewhat sensitive to ‘sloppy science’.
Which is why I so happy that my son has forwarded me a link to an absolutely excellent essay about how statistics – especially in the medical field -(where, when I was finishing my degree, I was heavily lobbied to go into post-grad, so that I could ‘clean-up’ the methodology in a prominent Canadian immunology University lab – so I really, really understand the criticism here…) are misunderstood not just by the public, not just by the media people who are reporting on it, but especially by the scientists themselves who are carrying out the studies/experiments!
‘Open a random page in your favorite medical journal and you’ll soon be deluged with statistics: t tests, p values, proportional hazards models, risk ratios, logistic regressions, least-squares fits, and confidence intervals. Statisticians have provided scientists with tools of enormous power to find order and meaning in the most complex of datasets, and scientists have embraced them with glee.
Many of these tools are misapplied or misinterpreted.
In fact, most published research findings are probably false.’
Aye, aye.
The essay is written with the layman in mind: it explains things, from first principles, without jargon but with examples of just how easy it is to manipulate results, even without realizing one is doing so.
IF you are interested in science…
IF you have not taken a lot of courses in statistics – but want to understand the real-life meaning of statistics…
IF you want to keep ‘science honest’ ….
IF you question ‘politicized science’…
…you would benefit from/enjoy reading this simple essay.
H/T: Tyr
Vi Hart: Sonnet on a Higgs-Like Particle (original version)
July 4, 2012 — xanthippaBrian Lilley and John Robson on Free Dominion & Freedom of Speech
July 3, 2012 — xanthippahttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmZJn3s1BkU&feature=colike
OK, John Robson is as close to a genius as it gets – in non-science fields, that is…
Thomas Sowell is even closer – he is as close to divine as you can get without having to surrender your ‘atheist’ identity!!!
Help the Fourniers pay their legal costs: if you are reading this over the internet, you are benefiting from the legal fights they have already won…
TED talk by Jill Bolte Taylor: How it feels to have a stroke
June 22, 2012 — xanthippaInteresting talk!!!
Of course I disagree with her closing remark: we need to pick the left hemisphere, or we will cease to exist as our selves…
I do understand the ‘lala’ land she describes and the brains states…they are not dissimilar from the ones I experienced myself when I went through a near-death experience.
I, too, have had the brain-state of connectedness to all, expansive, one with the universe and all that other stuff the meditation guru’s tout as a desirable state. What is more – having experienced it once, I can induce it at will with only minor meditation effort. (I don’t know if this is an aspect of my Aspieness or not, but it often takes me much longer to achieve something than others – but once I have reached a physical state, I can re-create it with much less effort.)
And while I had that sense of ‘this is profound’ – and, you could see the physiological changes in the speaker in the video just as she re-counted her tale prove just how profound the experience was for her – and while I understood perfectly well that this is the ‘Nirvana’ , I did not like it. Yes, it was ‘blissful’, I’ll admit that.
It’s just that the cost was too high.
I was just 10 years or so old when I experienced this, so I could not properly verbalize the aspects of the experience had on forming my world view. Perhaps I will still have trouble explaining it…but, let me try to simplify:
What kind of person, when forced to choose one or the other, would pick bliss over being true to one’s identity?
Certainly not I!!!
And while she may not realize that that is what she was doing, it is infinitely comforting to have a professional acknowledge that this desire for collectivism is the product of a diseased brain!
Thunderf00t: LAST CHANCE in this lifetime to see one of these!
May 31, 2012 — xanthippaSuccessful splashdown for SpaceX Dragon space capsule
May 31, 2012 — xanthippaWell, this sounds promising!
‘It took half a tonne of food and supplies up to the ISS astronauts, and brought down about two-thirds of a tonne of completed experiments and redundant equipment.
A successful recovery of the capsule and its contents will trigger a $1.6bn (£1bn; 1.3bn-euro) contract with the US space agency (Nasa) for 12 further re-supply trips.’
SpaceX is demonstrating that a private company can do what a national government can, except better and cheaper.
So, why do we stll trust the government to deliver really important programmes, like, say, education and healthcare?
Has the evolutionary ‘missing link’ been found?
May 30, 2012 — xanthippaYes, of course – every fossil found is a link of one sort or another.
But some are just ‘linkier’ than others – and this one, provocatively called Darwinius masillae, might just be one of the ‘linkiest’ by clearly demonstrating the connection between humans and the other apes.
For a picture, check out the article in NY Daily News.
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 