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Why Programmers Need To Learn Statistics
David Gerard writes "Zed Shaw writes an impassioned plea to programmers: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All. Quoting: 'I go insane when I hear programmers talking about statistics like they know s*** when it's clearly obvious they do not. I've been studying it for years and years and still don't think I know anything. ... I have taken a bunch of math classes, studied statistics in grad school, learned the R language, and read tons of books on the subject. Despite all of this I'm not at all confident in my understanding of such a vast topic. What I can do is apply the techniques to common problems I encounter at work. My favorite problem to attack with the statistics wolverine is performance measurement and tuning. All of this leads to a curse since none of my colleagues have any clue about what they don't understand. I'll propose a measurement technique and they'll scoff at it. I try to show them how to properly graph a run chart and they're indignant. I question their metrics and they try to back it up with lame attempts at statistical reasoning. I really can't blame them since they were probably told in college that logic and reason are superior to evidence and observation.'"
110%.
Correlation != causation. Just repeat that and you don't need to know statistics.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All
Okay, two things: First, threatening programmers never work. Management's been trying that for years. Second -- don't you mean 'kill -9' them all, or maybe demalloc(), or cast them to void*, or one of a dozen other witty things you could do besides the mundane answer of threatening stabby bits on them because you have a case of intellectual snobbery?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Zed Shaw says: "I've been studying it for years and years and still don't think I know anything"
Don't you think this might be telling you something, like... perhaps statistics are too hard for you? Leave the real work to the people who do know what they are doing and do know something about the field: programmers.
Or are you simply taking something that seems like a data point and extrapolating it to cover a vast swath of applications?
Well yeah, that's what he was saying -- statistics!
That's ODBC, Junior. Details matter.
(And I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I earned more than you this month.)
Statistics for XXX are uniformly awful, blind leading the blind.
They have statistics for porn? (!!)
What could be wrong with that? And blind on blind action? Strange, but interesting.
Crash course in statistics... The result you got is not 'refined', you get the 'vital' variables like who has a mustache, ugly shirt... things that might be more likely to group people together. Ugly people hang out with ugly people and vice versa, you get the point.
Then you go around asking them to lend you some money, if they don't, their stats go down pretty quick, it's also a plus here if their memory is bad or maybe suffering from early onset alzheimers.
When that's well and done you use a differential algoritm with the other stats and this 'noise' you have gathered to get a nice graph.
And finally you put the values into excel, and make a nice pie chart which you copy paste into Power Point.
Present it to your superiors and tell them how much work you put into it. Also if there is a glitch in the presentation, like odd values or discrepancies, tell them the IT sector screwd up.
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Us programmers are too busy dealing with the first two to ever reach the third..
"Lies, damn lies and statistics" is all you need to know about statistics.
No, Logic and Reason are superior to Cubase.
It's a music joke, laugh.
I can vouch for this. You might think AC just spends all his time on /. but the reality is that he's a real big-shot who can afford to make ridiculous claims.
Always back up, never back down. ---- Think you're cool 'cos your uid is prime? Take mine, modulo the one digit integers
is one half mental.
of course that explains why 90% of all programs written are CRUD.
-with apologies to Yogi Berra, Theodore Sturgeon, and a 20% apology, as a matter of principle, to a guy called Pareto.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
What Spell Check? I didn't know I was writing a Spell. Is it a good or evil spell?
Damn it's evil. Now I've got to listen to da da da de - da da de bop all the time.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
I think your statics are flawed. To give equal weight to each person's opinion we should assume that each person has an independent probability, p, of being right. Then the probability of Zed being right and the others being wrong would be p (1-p)^10 while the probability of the others being right and Zack being would be p^10 (1-p). Since these events are disjoint the probability Zack being right given that one of these two events occured would p (1-p)^10 / (p (1-p)^10 + p^10 (1-p)) = (1-p)^9 / ((1-p)^9 + p^9) while the probability of the others being right would be p^9 / ((1-p)^9 + p^9). Thus if p is less than 1/2 then Zed is more likely to be correct.
"I construct two sets of n=100 random samples from the normal distribution. Now, if I just take the average (mean or median) of these two sets they seem almost the same."
So its true. The n's justifies the means.
Today's vices may be tomorrow's virtues.
I just found a very old hard disk. Double height. MFM/RLL. And after a “strings -n 32 /dev/hdd”, I got the following old saying, carved in the bytes of the disk:
Computer science
Statistics
Social skills
Choose one.
;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
then realized I hadn't even looked at the short skirt-wearing protagonist.
That sound you just heard was a million slashdotters clicking on that link at the same time.....
except me since I'm familiar with the book in question and realized long ago that she has sharp knees,
Oh and by the way he's a hit with the ladies! He never has problems with them (well he is a dashing 6'2" *swoon*) and he's just such a nice guy too.
No, it doesn’t. If someone spends years and years on a topic, and still has the feeling he understands nothing at all, then clearly, he’s just too dumb for it.
It’s like high voltage without high current. The result is a not very bright and maybe even destroyed lamp.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Everyone knows that 98.2% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
From this we can see that 98.2% of that statistic was made up on the spot, meaning only 1.8% of all statistics are really made up on the spot. By repeated application of this we can conclude that either:
My god, TFA is right!
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.