I didn't read the article but I don't believe the conclusions of the summary. Maybe in epidemiology it is true but not in physics where usually the results are reproducible and I very rarely find papers that are just wrong.
Heh, at least you're the only one who read the summary instead of immediately yammering about creationism...
You're absolutely right, though. The issue here affects epidemiology and other fields where scientists toss around statistical tests with no understanding of their meaning but has nothing to do with the vast majority of "scientific papers", even within biomedical research.
The claim (which is in the New Scientist article) that this affects "most scientific papers" is absolute nonsense.
The issue is that statistical significance is typically reported without regard for correction for the testing of multiple hypotheses. In fact, in areas like "whether a particular gene influences a particular disease", this is a rampant problem, and Ioannidis is hardly the first to identify it. (In academic studies; clinical studies that are being submitted for regulatory approval have to prespecify their hypotheses and don't have nearly the same problems.)
But this has nothing to do with the overwhelming majority of "scientific papers". I doubt if one chemistry paper in a thousand is affected.
So there _is_ another page? I apologize to the author's ass, then.
In my defense, I have a "Previous" button at the bottom of the page, but no "Next". The page looks misrendered, though, so I'm probably getting cut off at the right. I'd consult the PDF, but can't get it to open...
Maybe I'm missing something here, but is there the slightest factual basis for this claim that seems to be pulled straight out of the author's ass? I mean, it may well be true but he doesn't seem to have the slightest idea whether it is or isn't.
Or is there a second page that I was unable to access?
You're still missing the hard part. What are the datasets?
In academic machine learning, where you're trying to train a system to distinguish between chairs and doorknobs, there's at least a consensus on what chairs and doorknobs are. Spam is a moving target that's continually updated to defeat new filtering methods.
...my advice is to buy a junker bike, lock it outside, and if it gets rusty or vandalized, so be it. Maybe there's something I'm not getting (please explain if that's so) but I can't imagine a workplace where there's _nothing_ to chain a bike to.
The only such situation I can imagine is where you ride so far that you need a good road bike that you can't leave locked to a parking meter. But if that's so, wheelie shoes are hardly a workable alternative.
...about IT people that they walk around with such a raging sense of entitlement?*
Yes, you may in fact be a total savant of whatever computing technology. Let's say that your self-assesment is entirely correct. (Because, as we know, IT nerds have superb capacities for honest self-assessment.) The point is that other people don't know that! The questioner seems not to understand why he can't walk into an HR office, proclaim his leetness and be immediately offered a job.
* My theory is that because computers are fully controllable in a way that most things in life aren't, computer people think that everything in the world should be equally predictable.
"Open source" doesn't require a link to source code, let alone that a BBC article about you have a link to source code.
Buy yourself a Blobject, request the source code and complain to us if they don't provide it. When we stop laughing at you in your silly golf cart, we'll get outraged then.
Article text -- the last thing a Louisiana news site needs right now is a Slashdotting!
When higher education officials lobbied for the "LONI" fiber-optic computer network, they called it the ultimate economic development tool that would attract top researchers and federal dollars to the state.
Last September, Gov. Kathleen Blanco committed $40 million over 10 years to build and maintain LONI, which will link eight university campuses to a national network of supercomputers, called the National LambdaRail.
LONI, which stands for Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, has landed a major trophy to the state.
Dr. Thomas Sterling, who helped revolutionize the modern supercomputer, has accepted a position at LSU's Center for Computation and Technology.
At LSU, he hopes to develop the next generation of high-performance computers that will give birth to true Artificial Intelligence.
By making computer chips more efficient, Sterling believes he can change computing by "one to three orders of magnitude" that will transform how humans interact with technology.
"We'll finally stop interfacing with a computer with a keypad," he said. "It's a truly science fiction dream of talking to computers and computers talking back to you."
A senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, Sterling holds six patents and co-created the modern "Beowulf" supercomputer, which combines multiple off-the-shelf CPUs into one operation.
LSU offered him full professorship and tenure. He starts Aug. 22, he said.
"We lured him away from Cal Tech. It was a real coup," said Dr. Kevin Carman, dean of the College of Basic Sciences at LSU
Sterling, who holds a Ph.D. from MIT, said LSU offered the most exciting program and package, especially with LONI going live this fall.
"I would not have come to CCT if not for LONI -- I can't be starved for bits," he said. "Louisiana has positioned itself to being absolutely top-tier when it comes to Internet access for data movement."
Carman also pointed to CCT director Ed Seidel, who has organized the center to collaborate with other departments that use high-performance computing.
Seidel joined LSU in 2003, moving from the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany.
"Ed Seidel is internationally known in his own right. That's what initially attracted (Sterling). If it hadn't been for that, we would not be on the radar," Carman said. "He told me he never imagined moving to Louisiana."
The appointment of former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe as LSU chancellor helped as well. "It put LSU on the map to many of us in the high-tech industry," Sterling said.
O'Keefe has close ties to Washington, D.C., and "understands money, politics and running a very large organization driven by technology and science," Sterling said.
Sterling will bring his research to LSU which involves developing a computer processor called "MIND," which stands for Memory, Intelligence and Network Device.
The MIND architecture uses a new multi-core chip that stacks several processors on a single chip -- similar to those in the upcoming Sony PlayStation 3 game device -- but with greater efficiency, Sterling said.
"Play Station 3 is putting lots more of these functional units on chips, but it's not clear we know how to make them work more effectively together," he said.
Processors generally dedicate a single functioning body that's surrounded by "clever tricks" and mechanisms that keep it working, he said.
"There are many sources of inefficiencies... in the way we put technology on a chip, the way we organize the technology, the way we make the chips work with each other," he said. "We're using the same model we used 50 or 60 years ago developed in the vacuum tube era."
Sterling said the work -- along with other CCT initiatives -- could "catalyze a new industry and bring new talent to Louisiana."
Why does giving credit where credit is due, or naming, or trademarking have anything to do with open source?
Whether or not I agree with that view coming from you, it's absolutely shameless for Stallman, who has spent years ranting and raving at anyone who refers to "the Linux operating system" to now make it when it suits him.
Historical point -- when the word "weblog" was coined, Slashdot was *the* prototypical example. C'mon, judging from your UID, you've been here long enough to know that.
And FYI, Dawson's Creek ended maybe three years ago....
She wondered, if aspirin can prevent heart attacks, then why do they also say it is bad for you (I don't remember what bad effect she referenced)? I was having to tell her that (besides the occasional good-hearted independent study) there is business involved.
This is far less complicated (and sinister) than you're making it out to be. Like every drug, aspirin has benefical effects (pain relief, cardioprotection) and adverse effects (stomach irritation, bleeding). It's not Good or Bad -- you need to balance the benefits and risks.
It doesn't seem like such a difficult concept to grasp, but you and your mom are far from the only people who can't seem to get it.
I think that's the point. CS students in the 70s and 80s had familiarity with mainframes, even if they'd never taken a formal class on them. Late 80s and early 90s students had the same exposure to SunOS or VAXii, and recent grads have it with Linux or Windows.
There's not really an option to bring mainframes back to CS 101 (as you say), which is why the burden is on the companies running them to either invest in training or to get new systems.
How can anyone create an unbiased test (and know so) to be able to prove that men are smarter than women?
It's actually pretty straightforward.
You have a set of questions with easy ones everyone gets, harder ones many people get and difficult ones that only the top scorers get. If you have a question with an aberrant distribution of correct answers (where low scorers in group A consistently get it and high scorers in group B don't), it's a biased question and should be pulled.
That's why the claims of bias in the SAT are nonsense. (Notice that those claims are invariably illustrated with the same example ("regatta") from the 1950s?) Whatever the value of the SAT is at all, there's no question it's internally consistent. The only plausible bias that timed standardized tests are intrinsically biased against some group or another, which is possible, I suppose.
Ummm, maybe I'm missing something but given that you have no idea whether his boss is taking credit for his work and that he didn't say anything about the boss taking credit for his work -- why exactly is he supposed to quit because of a problem you once had with your boss?
Unless John Madden starts raping and eating small children and ruins the franchise's name...
Remember, this is the man who popularized the turducken. Adding a fourth layer ("chilturducken"?) isn't entirely out of the question. (In fairness, his cookbook is surprisingly good...)
Yup, this sounds like one of those PC World reviews of new Macs, where they moan about how it's so much more expensive than a comparable Dell once you add in a 30 inch aluminum Cinema Display and a 60 gig iPod...
I think that what you're saying, plus the obvious superiority of movie screens over televisions, is what the movie industry has been coasting on for decades. The problem is, the "going to the cinema" experience took a huge hit when television came out, another when the sexual revolution made it less necessary to find a place to kiss, was rehabilitated by Spielberg and Lucas, and has been getting hammered ever since by VCRs, cable, the Internet, Netflix and home theaters.
I don't think there will be a next generation willing to pay a premium for the cinema experience.
I grew up... not poor, but without enough money to buy books nearly as fast as I could read them. I'm where I am today because of a library full of books and it kills me to walk into my local library today and see barely a quarter of what I had as a kid.
I blame the professionalization of libraries. Just keeping lots of books on the shelves (and helping kids find what they need) was good enough for the elderly female volunteers of the past, but beneath the dignity of a librarian with an MS in Library Science. So the library becomes a cross between an Internet cafe and a homeless shelter.
Texas is full of ranches like this, for hunting or just for the fun of having the animals.
Breeding big cats isn't particularly difficult and if anything there's a huge excess of them in captivity. Most of them are mutts that are useless for conservation purposes.
Slashdot Mirror
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...?
Heh, at least you're the only one who read the summary instead of immediately yammering about creationism...
You're absolutely right, though. The issue here affects epidemiology and other fields where scientists toss around statistical tests with no understanding of their meaning but has nothing to do with the vast majority of "scientific papers", even within biomedical research.
The issue is that statistical significance is typically reported without regard for correction for the testing of multiple hypotheses. In fact, in areas like "whether a particular gene influences a particular disease", this is a rampant problem, and Ioannidis is hardly the first to identify it. (In academic studies; clinical studies that are being submitted for regulatory approval have to prespecify their hypotheses and don't have nearly the same problems.)
But this has nothing to do with the overwhelming majority of "scientific papers". I doubt if one chemistry paper in a thousand is affected.
In my defense, I have a "Previous" button at the bottom of the page, but no "Next". The page looks misrendered, though, so I'm probably getting cut off at the right. I'd consult the PDF, but can't get it to open...
Or is there a second page that I was unable to access?
In academic machine learning, where you're trying to train a system to distinguish between chairs and doorknobs, there's at least a consensus on what chairs and doorknobs are. Spam is a moving target that's continually updated to defeat new filtering methods.
Aren't there more than enough real legal issues to worry about without having to make up far-fetched silliness like this?
The only such situation I can imagine is where you ride so far that you need a good road bike that you can't leave locked to a parking meter. But if that's so, wheelie shoes are hardly a workable alternative.
Yes, you may in fact be a total savant of whatever computing technology. Let's say that your self-assesment is entirely correct. (Because, as we know, IT nerds have superb capacities for honest self-assessment.) The point is that other people don't know that! The questioner seems not to understand why he can't walk into an HR office, proclaim his leetness and be immediately offered a job.
* My theory is that because computers are fully controllable in a way that most things in life aren't, computer people think that everything in the world should be equally predictable.
Buy yourself a Blobject, request the source code and complain to us if they don't provide it. When we stop laughing at you in your silly golf cart, we'll get outraged then.
But "blobject" is a simply a horror of Lovecraftian proportions.
Article text -- the last thing a Louisiana news site needs right now is a Slashdotting!
... in the way we put technology on a chip, the way we organize the technology, the way we make the chips work with each other," he said. "We're using the same model we used 50 or 60 years ago developed in the vacuum tube era."
When higher education officials lobbied for the "LONI" fiber-optic computer network, they called it the ultimate economic development tool that would attract top researchers and federal dollars to the state.
Last September, Gov. Kathleen Blanco committed $40 million over 10 years to build and maintain LONI, which will link eight university campuses to a national network of supercomputers, called the National LambdaRail.
LONI, which stands for Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, has landed a major trophy to the state.
Dr. Thomas Sterling, who helped revolutionize the modern supercomputer, has accepted a position at LSU's Center for Computation and Technology.
At LSU, he hopes to develop the next generation of high-performance computers that will give birth to true Artificial Intelligence.
By making computer chips more efficient, Sterling believes he can change computing by "one to three orders of magnitude" that will transform how humans interact with technology.
"We'll finally stop interfacing with a computer with a keypad," he said. "It's a truly science fiction dream of talking to computers and computers talking back to you."
A senior scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology, Sterling holds six patents and co-created the modern "Beowulf" supercomputer, which combines multiple off-the-shelf CPUs into one operation.
LSU offered him full professorship and tenure. He starts Aug. 22, he said.
"We lured him away from Cal Tech. It was a real coup," said Dr. Kevin Carman, dean of the College of Basic Sciences at LSU
Sterling, who holds a Ph.D. from MIT, said LSU offered the most exciting program and package, especially with LONI going live this fall.
"I would not have come to CCT if not for LONI -- I can't be starved for bits," he said. "Louisiana has positioned itself to being absolutely top-tier when it comes to Internet access for data movement."
Carman also pointed to CCT director Ed Seidel, who has organized the center to collaborate with other departments that use high-performance computing.
Seidel joined LSU in 2003, moving from the Albert Einstein Institute in Germany.
"Ed Seidel is internationally known in his own right. That's what initially attracted (Sterling). If it hadn't been for that, we would not be on the radar," Carman said. "He told me he never imagined moving to Louisiana."
The appointment of former NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe as LSU chancellor helped as well. "It put LSU on the map to many of us in the high-tech industry," Sterling said.
O'Keefe has close ties to Washington, D.C., and "understands money, politics and running a very large organization driven by technology and science," Sterling said.
Sterling will bring his research to LSU which involves developing a computer processor called "MIND," which stands for Memory, Intelligence and Network Device.
The MIND architecture uses a new multi-core chip that stacks several processors on a single chip -- similar to those in the upcoming Sony PlayStation 3 game device -- but with greater efficiency, Sterling said.
"Play Station 3 is putting lots more of these functional units on chips, but it's not clear we know how to make them work more effectively together," he said.
Processors generally dedicate a single functioning body that's surrounded by "clever tricks" and mechanisms that keep it working, he said.
"There are many sources of inefficiencies
Sterling said the work -- along with other CCT initiatives -- could "catalyze a new industry and bring new talent to Louisiana."
He envisions building his prototype in
Whether or not I agree with that view coming from you, it's absolutely shameless for Stallman, who has spent years ranting and raving at anyone who refers to "the Linux operating system" to now make it when it suits him.
And FYI, Dawson's Creek ended maybe three years ago....
This is far less complicated (and sinister) than you're making it out to be. Like every drug, aspirin has benefical effects (pain relief, cardioprotection) and adverse effects (stomach irritation, bleeding). It's not Good or Bad -- you need to balance the benefits and risks.
It doesn't seem like such a difficult concept to grasp, but you and your mom are far from the only people who can't seem to get it.
Take your $50 and buy Vioxx! You can expect a 50000% return on your investment in a year!
There's not really an option to bring mainframes back to CS 101 (as you say), which is why the burden is on the companies running them to either invest in training or to get new systems.
It's actually pretty straightforward.
You have a set of questions with easy ones everyone gets, harder ones many people get and difficult ones that only the top scorers get. If you have a question with an aberrant distribution of correct answers (where low scorers in group A consistently get it and high scorers in group B don't), it's a biased question and should be pulled.
That's why the claims of bias in the SAT are nonsense. (Notice that those claims are invariably illustrated with the same example ("regatta") from the 1950s?) Whatever the value of the SAT is at all, there's no question it's internally consistent. The only plausible bias that timed standardized tests are intrinsically biased against some group or another, which is possible, I suppose.
I don't know your situation at all...
Ummm, maybe I'm missing something but given that you have no idea whether his boss is taking credit for his work and that he didn't say anything about the boss taking credit for his work -- why exactly is he supposed to quit because of a problem you once had with your boss?
Is there really someone out there eager for Shenmue 3 on the XBox 360?!?!?
Remember, this is the man who popularized the turducken. Adding a fourth layer ("chilturducken"?) isn't entirely out of the question. (In fairness, his cookbook is surprisingly good...)
Yup, this sounds like one of those PC World reviews of new Macs, where they moan about how it's so much more expensive than a comparable Dell once you add in a 30 inch aluminum Cinema Display and a 60 gig iPod...
I don't think there will be a next generation willing to pay a premium for the cinema experience.
I grew up ... not poor, but without enough money to buy books nearly as fast as I could read them. I'm where I am today because of a library full of books and it kills me to walk into my local library today and see barely a quarter of what I had as a kid.
I blame the professionalization of libraries. Just keeping lots of books on the shelves (and helping kids find what they need) was good enough for the elderly female volunteers of the past, but beneath the dignity of a librarian with an MS in Library Science. So the library becomes a cross between an Internet cafe and a homeless shelter.
Breeding big cats isn't particularly difficult and if anything there's a huge excess of them in captivity. Most of them are mutts that are useless for conservation purposes.