I came here to post a similar sentiment. I think it is a terrible idea to just blow ahead every time an assertion is too confusing. Getting the big picture and developing mathematical intuition is great but it doesn't mean that you'll actually be able to do math. For that, practice.
I actually advise the opposite, to bang your head against a problem over and over until it breaks (the problem, that is). I don't think that we as a society or a species or whatever deal with confusion very well, and tend to take it as some sort of personal deficiency. We've also done a great deal of dumbing math down, so that when someone tries to make the jump from, say, AP calculus to real analysis, minds get blown and souls shattered. It's probably not that mathematicians enjoy crushing students, but rather that higher levels of math are just plain confusing for most people. They're based on abstractions that are pretty far removed from the human experience. None of this is to say that people who are good at math are better somehow, but it usually means that they put in a lot of time. I suspect that a lot of people who are math-phobic would get over it if you locked them in a room with nothing but math books to keep them busy.
One that is clear, however, is that most mathematicians have no fscking clue what the word "obvious" means. There are some brilliant, dead authors that I would love to punch in the face.
A few folk here have commented using incomplete or inaccurate definitions of p-values. A p-value is the probability of finding new data as or more extreme as data you observed assuming a null hypothesis is true. A couple of salient criticisms not mentioned in the article are a) why should more extreme data be lumped in with what was observed and b) what if "new" data can't sensibly be obtained.
In a less technical sense, what the article didn't get into so much is that there is a strong publication bias towards results that are significant (i.e. small p-values), to the point where you need <0.05 to even consider submitting. Some key reading: http://www.stanford.edu/~neilm/qjps.pdf. The short version is to not believe it when the news says that "recent research shows...".
Personally, I wait for evidence to accumulate before, say, changing my diet. And if you really want to get it right, dig through the literature yourself. Some of my saddest moments have come from statistics consulting where mostly people come to you looking for permission to run an inappropriate analysis, not understand their data or fit the "right" model. They want to get published, and that's just how things are done.
Hi, statistician here. That's not what "regression to the mean" is.
Regression to the mean applies when you have a pair of comparable measurements, the first one of which is high (or low) when compared to similar quantities. So a father and sons' heights, for example. High measurements tend to be a combination of nature + luck. Looking at the other of the pair, the luck component isn't likely to be as good, so on average you're left with just nature. Hence, really big regresses back to big.
You are, however, likely correct that the hype is what is at play. Or that there was pent up demand. Or that people love sales. Or whatever. Kind of hard to imagine a good experiment on introducing Steam to Linux over and over again that we could analyze.
Sorry Holmes, but "social justice" does have some meaning. Maybe as it is bandied about now it has no bite, but the term has roots in Catholic, specifically Jesuit tradition. Not that I remember my indoctrination days all that well, but quick perusal of Wikipedia associates it with "life and dignity of the human person", and "preferential option for the poor and vulnerable".
Ethicists long ago figured out how to make decisions that respect such high-minded and abstract principles, so long as you admit that there are tradeoffs involved. You can even imagine a society that operates with those as some of its core values, although that might be bordering on crazy-talk.
Fifty-six percent of domestic terrorist attacks and plots in the U.S. since 1995 have been perpetrated by right-wing extremists, as compared to 30 percent by ecoterrorists and 12 percent by Islamic extremists.
Maybe in air travel incidents you're correct (dunno, haven't looked into it), but the basic insinuation that all terrorism originates from Islamic extremists is misleading.
I was just finishing up my undergrad when Facebook came to my school - one of the first handful of institutions if I recall. Were we being "delusional" when we posted those all those photos, or was what we hoped Facebook would become entirely reasonable? Is it really impossible to believe that someone could make a website on which you could share things with your direct friends and possibly, but no more than, their friends? Aside from the creepy image of Mark in the old banners for the site, there weren't many indications that it would end up like it did.
I suppose you can live by the maxim that everything online will necessarily turn to crap and everyone is just waiting for the right moment to sell you out, but I'm not ready to swallow that pill yet. And you'll have to forgive me if I keep on hoping for better.
That being said, I'll admit that I approached posting to Facebook in its early stages as a risky decision and did my best to consider the potential outcomes and their likelihoods. However, not everyone who was crawling all over the thing at the time spent the 90s plugged in, and belittling them for not making an informed decision without any prior information seems a little extreme.
Studying these folk would be incredibly difficult, as we would end up with a lot of data on the kind of people who are wealthy enough, sick enough, and desperate enough to undertake the procedure, with no real basis of comparison. Scientifically, they're not of much use.
Brownian Motion is a mathematical construct, which, among other things, is nowhere differentiable (almost surely). You can pin a BM down into sets with high probability, but no, you can't really predict it. It is merely used to *model* the movement of a particle in a fluid, it is not actually the process by which the molecules move. Indeed, "such a path represents the motion of a particle that in its wanderings back and forth travels an infinite distance in finite time. [BM] does not in its fine structure represent physical reality." (Billingsley, "Probability and Measure").
At least the science is interesting.
If the original is in a language you can read, of course you're right. If not, you might find years of scholarship paying dividends in the quality of translation. DRM aside, hopefully that's worth a few bucks.
He's officially on the record as saying that the government spending is largely out of control; furthermore has declared that earmarks need to be eliminated. Presumably cut in some instances and moved into the regular budget in others.
When compared with a defense budget of $480 billion and $140 billion more for the war on terror, I'm not entirely sure earmarks are the most pressing case of fiscal irresponsibility. For the 2008 budget, they comprised only $17 billion out of $2.9 trillion. As far as the present discussion goes, it's worth considering that it is McCain who is most adamant about keeping us in Iraq, a war which has cost half a trillion dollars already, and an estimated $3 trillion before it's all done.
I do sometimes wonder how we're going to pay for all of this...
While it's not particularly common to see, a number of plant based gelatin replacements exist, and, unlike a number of ill-conceived meat-product-replacements, there's no taste tradeoff. If the gelatin really makes that big a difference, the veggies will just add some seaweed to their soy beans.
With regards to the !kosher tag, I was surprised to find that kosher gelatins do exist, and that, through a technicality, properly prepared gelatins can be combined with dairy. From the above:
since the gelatin product is from hides or bones - not real flesh - and has undergone such significant changes, it is no longer considered 'fleishig' (meat) but 'pareve', and can be eaten with dairy products
Shame on Apple for trying to claim they invented the idea. A patent isn't just an idea, it requires demonstration of implementability. Occasionally people will attempt to patent pure speculation, but thankfully our economy isn't controlled by science fiction writers.
This would be true if a hate crime ended at the victim and family, as do most random malicious acts. Unfortunately, hate crimes contribute to systems of intolerance and reinforce social conflict. These crimes aren't just assaults on individuals, but instead on the entire communities they represent. As such, it is in society's best interest to nip these in the bud. While we haven't yet figured out what causes psychosis or violent behavior (c.f. the debate over video games), history has well demonstrated the consequences of intolerance.
It's not just finger pointing, there have to be limitations on executive power and the responsibility for that lies with the legislative and judicial branches. Realistically, does anyone expect the next US president to simply play nice because he or she is a good person, or will the system need rebalancing by working for it?
And yes, there is a difference between Clinton and Cheney. One got a BJ and lied about it. The other created programs to illegally spy on US citizens, lied about Iraq intelligence propelling us into a war even Cheney admitted we couldn't win, outed a CIA operative (that's treason, BTW), authorized use of torture, illegally imprisoned "enemy combatants" without cause and without due process, and more.... None of that is particularly under dispute. Clinton likely did more worthy of impeachment, but that's not what all the brouhaha was about.
Should we let all of that slide because it would be a waste of time to prosecute it? Perhaps we can't get the evidence, perhaps conviction would be impossible, but why the hell don't Americans care that their executive branch holds them in contempt? What would be a reasonable response, sit on our thumbs and wait for the next election? The greatest failure of this administration will be that the American populace let them get away with it.
What you're pointing to is part of the broader problem, that Democrats can't pass anything, much less articles of impeachment. And yes, they're spineless wonders, but their "majority" doesn't existent and, with notably few exceptions, Republicans are doing everything in their power to make them appear ineffectual with the hope of winning in '08. Not that the Democrats would do any different if the positions were reversed.
And the sad fact is, more of that money goes to crap like Viagra commercials during the Super Bowl than to the research and development of new drugs and treatments. Don't forget the wining and dining of influential physicians, free product samples, and conferences in exotic locations.
I'm sorry to have to reply, but I don't believe that it is that Apple and MS are "buying out other companies & suing competitors rather than actually innovating." I suppose I personally disagree with that statement but am not even sure that it is relevant. Instead, I think what has changed in 30 years isn't just the face of Apple or MS but rather the whole market potential of the personal computer. There simply was a different culture of users and folks who might actually buy and use an Apple ][ but had hardly glimpsed its future business potential. So while Apple and MS may or may not be innovating, unfortunately they would have difficulty existing were they to continue to provide that same level of detail which was crucial at that time. Perhaps we can lament the choices made along the way by these companies which placed a clear priority on being able to continue to operate in the increasingly competitive fields at the expense of transparency, or perhaps we can feel a little un-special that everyone else jumped on the band wagon and made them PCs so popular, but if I appreciate any of how Apple or Microsoft operate today it's a product of choosing to be competitive and consequently a bit more opaque. There are other folk doing just as crazy and wonderful things on the forefront of new technological fields to whom we owe our thanks.
And as a personal disclosure, while I dislike the functions of most MS products, their R&D department has produced some spiffy artificial intelligence. And from my perspective, Apple's AI innovations are a bit lacking although I certainly acknowledge their innovations in design. If only the world was perfect and every hacker could hack rather than have to pay the bills, and every excessively greedy person got a daily ball/ovary-punch while we're at it.
OLPC seems like a righteous project, so this may not apply herein, but not every not-for-profit group is as with it. Very few people proposing competing with a non-profit, but just because something is free doesn't mean that it's any good. There's no reason not to demand excellence from our charities as well as our corporations, and unfortunately a lot of charities own monopolies in their fields under the assumption that one group doing something is good enough. Privatization likely isn't the only answer, but competition itself isn't inherently a bad thing.
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I came here to post a similar sentiment. I think it is a terrible idea to just blow ahead every time an assertion is too confusing. Getting the big picture and developing mathematical intuition is great but it doesn't mean that you'll actually be able to do math. For that, practice.
I actually advise the opposite, to bang your head against a problem over and over until it breaks (the problem, that is). I don't think that we as a society or a species or whatever deal with confusion very well, and tend to take it as some sort of personal deficiency. We've also done a great deal of dumbing math down, so that when someone tries to make the jump from, say, AP calculus to real analysis, minds get blown and souls shattered. It's probably not that mathematicians enjoy crushing students, but rather that higher levels of math are just plain confusing for most people. They're based on abstractions that are pretty far removed from the human experience. None of this is to say that people who are good at math are better somehow, but it usually means that they put in a lot of time. I suspect that a lot of people who are math-phobic would get over it if you locked them in a room with nothing but math books to keep them busy.
One that is clear, however, is that most mathematicians have no fscking clue what the word "obvious" means. There are some brilliant, dead authors that I would love to punch in the face.
A few folk here have commented using incomplete or inaccurate definitions of p-values. A p-value is the probability of finding new data as or more extreme as data you observed assuming a null hypothesis is true. A couple of salient criticisms not mentioned in the article are a) why should more extreme data be lumped in with what was observed and b) what if "new" data can't sensibly be obtained.
In a less technical sense, what the article didn't get into so much is that there is a strong publication bias towards results that are significant (i.e. small p-values), to the point where you need <0.05 to even consider submitting. Some key reading: http://www.stanford.edu/~neilm/qjps.pdf. The short version is to not believe it when the news says that "recent research shows...".
Personally, I wait for evidence to accumulate before, say, changing my diet. And if you really want to get it right, dig through the literature yourself. Some of my saddest moments have come from statistics consulting where mostly people come to you looking for permission to run an inappropriate analysis, not understand their data or fit the "right" model. They want to get published, and that's just how things are done.
Hi, statistician here. That's not what "regression to the mean" is.
Regression to the mean applies when you have a pair of comparable measurements, the first one of which is high (or low) when compared to similar quantities. So a father and sons' heights, for example. High measurements tend to be a combination of nature + luck. Looking at the other of the pair, the luck component isn't likely to be as good, so on average you're left with just nature. Hence, really big regresses back to big.
You are, however, likely correct that the hype is what is at play. Or that there was pent up demand. Or that people love sales. Or whatever. Kind of hard to imagine a good experiment on introducing Steam to Linux over and over again that we could analyze.
HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!
Sorry Holmes, but "social justice" does have some meaning. Maybe as it is bandied about now it has no bite, but the term has roots in Catholic, specifically Jesuit tradition. Not that I remember my indoctrination days all that well, but quick perusal of Wikipedia associates it with "life and dignity of the human person", and "preferential option for the poor and vulnerable".
Ethicists long ago figured out how to make decisions that respect such high-minded and abstract principles, so long as you admit that there are tradeoffs involved. You can even imagine a society that operates with those as some of its core values, although that might be bordering on crazy-talk.
From Think Progress, April this year:
Maybe in air travel incidents you're correct (dunno, haven't looked into it), but the basic insinuation that all terrorism originates from Islamic extremists is misleading.
I was just finishing up my undergrad when Facebook came to my school - one of the first handful of institutions if I recall. Were we being "delusional" when we posted those all those photos, or was what we hoped Facebook would become entirely reasonable? Is it really impossible to believe that someone could make a website on which you could share things with your direct friends and possibly, but no more than, their friends? Aside from the creepy image of Mark in the old banners for the site, there weren't many indications that it would end up like it did.
I suppose you can live by the maxim that everything online will necessarily turn to crap and everyone is just waiting for the right moment to sell you out, but I'm not ready to swallow that pill yet. And you'll have to forgive me if I keep on hoping for better.
That being said, I'll admit that I approached posting to Facebook in its early stages as a risky decision and did my best to consider the potential outcomes and their likelihoods. However, not everyone who was crawling all over the thing at the time spent the 90s plugged in, and belittling them for not making an informed decision without any prior information seems a little extreme.
Studying these folk would be incredibly difficult, as we would end up with a lot of data on the kind of people who are wealthy enough, sick enough, and desperate enough to undertake the procedure, with no real basis of comparison. Scientifically, they're not of much use.
Brownian Motion is a mathematical construct, which, among other things, is nowhere differentiable (almost surely). You can pin a BM down into sets with high probability, but no, you can't really predict it. It is merely used to *model* the movement of a particle in a fluid, it is not actually the process by which the molecules move. Indeed, "such a path represents the motion of a particle that in its wanderings back and forth travels an infinite distance in finite time. [BM] does not in its fine structure represent physical reality." (Billingsley, "Probability and Measure"). At least the science is interesting.
If the original is in a language you can read, of course you're right. If not, you might find years of scholarship paying dividends in the quality of translation. DRM aside, hopefully that's worth a few bucks.
When compared with a defense budget of $480 billion and $140 billion more for the war on terror, I'm not entirely sure earmarks are the most pressing case of fiscal irresponsibility. For the 2008 budget, they comprised only $17 billion out of $2.9 trillion. As far as the present discussion goes, it's worth considering that it is McCain who is most adamant about keeping us in Iraq, a war which has cost half a trillion dollars already, and an estimated $3 trillion before it's all done.
I do sometimes wonder how we're going to pay for all of this...
While it's not particularly common to see, a number of plant based gelatin replacements exist, and, unlike a number of ill-conceived meat-product-replacements, there's no taste tradeoff. If the gelatin really makes that big a difference, the veggies will just add some seaweed to their soy beans.
With regards to the !kosher tag, I was surprised to find that kosher gelatins do exist, and that, through a technicality, properly prepared gelatins can be combined with dairy. From the above:
since the gelatin product is from hides or bones - not real flesh - and has undergone such significant changes, it is no longer considered 'fleishig' (meat) but 'pareve', and can be eaten with dairy productsThis would be true if a hate crime ended at the victim and family, as do most random malicious acts. Unfortunately, hate crimes contribute to systems of intolerance and reinforce social conflict. These crimes aren't just assaults on individuals, but instead on the entire communities they represent. As such, it is in society's best interest to nip these in the bud. While we haven't yet figured out what causes psychosis or violent behavior (c.f. the debate over video games), history has well demonstrated the consequences of intolerance.
It's not just finger pointing, there have to be limitations on executive power and the responsibility for that lies with the legislative and judicial branches. Realistically, does anyone expect the next US president to simply play nice because he or she is a good person, or will the system need rebalancing by working for it? And yes, there is a difference between Clinton and Cheney. One got a BJ and lied about it. The other created programs to illegally spy on US citizens, lied about Iraq intelligence propelling us into a war even Cheney admitted we couldn't win, outed a CIA operative (that's treason, BTW), authorized use of torture, illegally imprisoned "enemy combatants" without cause and without due process, and more.... None of that is particularly under dispute. Clinton likely did more worthy of impeachment, but that's not what all the brouhaha was about. Should we let all of that slide because it would be a waste of time to prosecute it? Perhaps we can't get the evidence, perhaps conviction would be impossible, but why the hell don't Americans care that their executive branch holds them in contempt? What would be a reasonable response, sit on our thumbs and wait for the next election? The greatest failure of this administration will be that the American populace let them get away with it. What you're pointing to is part of the broader problem, that Democrats can't pass anything, much less articles of impeachment. And yes, they're spineless wonders, but their "majority" doesn't existent and, with notably few exceptions, Republicans are doing everything in their power to make them appear ineffectual with the hope of winning in '08. Not that the Democrats would do any different if the positions were reversed.
I'm sorry to have to reply, but I don't believe that it is that Apple and MS are "buying out other companies & suing competitors rather than actually innovating." I suppose I personally disagree with that statement but am not even sure that it is relevant. Instead, I think what has changed in 30 years isn't just the face of Apple or MS but rather the whole market potential of the personal computer. There simply was a different culture of users and folks who might actually buy and use an Apple ][ but had hardly glimpsed its future business potential. So while Apple and MS may or may not be innovating, unfortunately they would have difficulty existing were they to continue to provide that same level of detail which was crucial at that time. Perhaps we can lament the choices made along the way by these companies which placed a clear priority on being able to continue to operate in the increasingly competitive fields at the expense of transparency, or perhaps we can feel a little un-special that everyone else jumped on the band wagon and made them PCs so popular, but if I appreciate any of how Apple or Microsoft operate today it's a product of choosing to be competitive and consequently a bit more opaque. There are other folk doing just as crazy and wonderful things on the forefront of new technological fields to whom we owe our thanks. And as a personal disclosure, while I dislike the functions of most MS products, their R&D department has produced some spiffy artificial intelligence. And from my perspective, Apple's AI innovations are a bit lacking although I certainly acknowledge their innovations in design. If only the world was perfect and every hacker could hack rather than have to pay the bills, and every excessively greedy person got a daily ball/ovary-punch while we're at it.
OLPC seems like a righteous project, so this may not apply herein, but not every not-for-profit group is as with it. Very few people proposing competing with a non-profit, but just because something is free doesn't mean that it's any good. There's no reason not to demand excellence from our charities as well as our corporations, and unfortunately a lot of charities own monopolies in their fields under the assumption that one group doing something is good enough. Privatization likely isn't the only answer, but competition itself isn't inherently a bad thing.