There are no arguments in AS, regardless of what the Randroids claim. Making sock puppets spout tripe is not making arguments.
It's great reading though; you can play skinny-bingo.
1) Give yourself 5 points when a skinny or well-formed character tells you something that Rand wants you to agree with. Give yourself another 5 points when a fat or formless character tells you something that Rand wants you to disagree with.
What isn't correct is that the poster is conflating the idea of fitting a parameter and the idea of calculating a function of a moment from sample data (the square root of the variance). Excel does the latter: it calculates the square root of the second sample moment, and does so with the right formula. This formula is, rightly, independent of the identity of the assumed distribution.
Unfortunately, this is not true. It works for only a limited number of species. Take some salix, for example, and shove it in the ground... bingo. New salix. Try it with your average Pinus, though, and all you'll get is stakes.
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There are no arguments in AS, regardless of what the Randroids claim. Making sock puppets spout tripe is not making arguments.
It's great reading though; you can play skinny-bingo.
1) Give yourself 5 points when a skinny or well-formed character tells you something that Rand wants you to agree with. Give yourself another 5 points when a fat or formless character tells you something that Rand wants you to disagree with.
2) Count up at the end.
3) Profit!
What isn't correct is that the poster is conflating the idea of fitting a parameter and the idea of calculating a function of a moment from sample data (the square root of the variance). Excel does the latter: it calculates the square root of the second sample moment, and does so with the right formula. This formula is, rightly, independent of the identity of the assumed distribution.
Unfortunately, this is not true. It works for only a limited number of species. Take some salix, for example, and shove it in the ground ... bingo. New salix. Try it with your average Pinus, though, and all you'll get is stakes.