There is nothing small about the datasets available for this kind of work. What's small is the statistician's insistence of forcing every dataset's distribution into the ones they learnt in Dogma^H^H^H^H^HStatistics 101 when it's plainly obvious that they don't fit. Same goes in finance where after seeing billions of sample points in millions of datasets statisticians will still insist on using normal distributions when they are completely invalid. Small sample size my ass!
To prove the point, they actually did such a reversal in the case of telephone-queue waiting times. Traditionally, these have been assumed to follow a Poisson distribution, but some recent research suggests they actually follow a power law.
Has there ever been clearer proof that statisticians are completely and utterly inept? How much data must there be on call waiting times? How many billions of samples from waiting time distributions must there be? The systems are computerised and the data is trivial to log. And yet there is still debate over whether they follow a Poisson distribution. Every textbook on statistics is full of examples of how to tell if some data comes from a particular distribution.
Why do people say 'sound waves' in contexts such as these? "Sound waves" and "sound" are interchangeable. If sound waves kill cancer cell, sound kills cancer cells. In ordinary conversation we say "sound". We don't say "the sound waves from my stereo are great". So why do we say "sound waves" in this context?
But I certainly don't see having fast bandwidth to your non-commercial sites as a right. I admit that it's nice to have, but private jets are nice to have too.
My mailbox is filled every day with junk mail from non-profits. As far as I know they have to pay for the printing and distribution of these mailings (albeit at a discounted rate). I'm sure that the government can offer tax incentives to internet companies to encourage them to subsidise non-profits if that is felt to be important.
stores will compensate for this by raising their prices
Someone's always paying for internet service. It doesn't just come for free. At least if Amazon charge for it then it's the people using the service that pay for it rather than it being subsidised out of someone else's pocket.
...there is a well known mechanism already in place for them to oppose it in a straightforward way. It's called the 'market'. If they want our business, why don't they pay for our connections to them?
I read that on a bumper sticker this morning. I had just finished "I am Alive and You are Dead" which is a biography of Phil K Dick. He was obsessed with the idea that he was under observation by the FBI. But as we all know, PKD was mad. Except that it seems that most of his fears were entirely justified...
Chinese is much more extreme than Japanese in this resepct. Cantonese, for example, has seven different tones. Without the tones Chinese is insanely full of homonyms.
you could blame others for every aspect of your lot
Personally I think it's only worth blaming others if there is actually some reasonable benefit to be gained. If you're genetically predisposed to obesity then there's no point whining because you're unlikely to change your genetic makeup. Whatever the causes, you need to get up off your lazy ass and do something because that's the only thing that will help. On the other hand, if there's a virus that predisposes you to obesity then it may be worth whining because if there's a vaccine that can help you it's probably smart to use it. You need to sort out the causes that you can do something about from those you can't. But it's always worth knowing about the causes because things you can't change today may be changeable in the future.
It's funny. We're taught to look for cause and effect everywhere. The whole of Western science, technology and medicine is built on it. But the moment you try to apply the notion cause and effect to humans everyone is suddenly in denial. "Oh no, people can't possibly be affected by causes like every single other thing in the known universe, oh no, humans are special, they have personal responsibility."
You need to fix that. Generalizations are the bread and butter of science. I assume you have a problem with generalizations from personal anecdotes or something like that. But that's not at all what you say.
Could it be that the evidence for evolution is pretty solid, the evidence for dark matter is a bit shaky and the evidence for global warming is shakier still? Or is a simple explanation that correlates likelihood of truth with likelihood of belief just too uninteresting?
We're supposed to be pretending that's it's possible to be both a scientist and a normal person at the same time so that we can attract more women into the science and tech world.
Slashdot Mirror
There is nothing small about the datasets available for this kind of work. What's small is the statistician's insistence of forcing every dataset's distribution into the ones they learnt in Dogma^H^H^H^H^HStatistics 101 when it's plainly obvious that they don't fit. Same goes in finance where after seeing billions of sample points in millions of datasets statisticians will still insist on using normal distributions when they are completely invalid. Small sample size my ass!
Why do people say 'sound waves' in contexts such as these? "Sound waves" and "sound" are interchangeable. If sound waves kill cancer cell, sound kills cancer cells. In ordinary conversation we say "sound". We don't say "the sound waves from my stereo are great". So why do we say "sound waves" in this context?
But I certainly don't see having fast bandwidth to your non-commercial sites as a right. I admit that it's nice to have, but private jets are nice to have too.
...there is a well known mechanism already in place for them to oppose it in a straightforward way. It's called the 'market'. If they want our business, why don't they pay for our connections to them?
I read that on a bumper sticker this morning. I had just finished "I am Alive and You are Dead" which is a biography of Phil K Dick. He was obsessed with the idea that he was under observation by the FBI. But as we all know, PKD was mad. Except that it seems that most of his fears were entirely justified...
And there's a warning on any set of headphones you might buy to use with your iPod.
Good answer ignorant_newbie! Now write on the board one hundred times "I will spell separation correctly."
Chinese is much more extreme than Japanese in this resepct. Cantonese, for example, has seven different tones. Without the tones Chinese is insanely full of homonyms.
And how does this differ from any other car with automatic transmission?
It's funny. We're taught to look for cause and effect everywhere. The whole of Western science, technology and medicine is built on it. But the moment you try to apply the notion cause and effect to humans everyone is suddenly in denial. "Oh no, people can't possibly be affected by causes like every single other thing in the known universe, oh no, humans are special, they have personal responsibility."
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It's much worse than that! It's actually been a joke within a joke. The [joke] tag needs to be closed twice.
That's "Clans of the Alphane Moon" for anyone wondering why a web search on that title turns up nothing.
Could it be that the evidence for evolution is pretty solid, the evidence for dark matter is a bit shaky and the evidence for global warming is shakier still? Or is a simple explanation that correlates likelihood of truth with likelihood of belief just too uninteresting?
Yeah, the dinosaurs thanked their lucky stars every day.
We're supposed to be pretending that's it's possible to be both a scientist and a normal person at the same time so that we can attract more women into the science and tech world.
I don't remember entire housing estates entirely populated by punks. Entire towns even. Come to think of it, entire counties. Maybe my memory is hazy.