Friday, January 01, 2016

Bunnies Can't Statistically Prove. . .


With the exceptionally concerning weather the world has been gifted for Christmas and New Years, the Statistical Trolls have been on the Net and the Tweets, proclaiming that "no one can prove that"

Eli has been alerted to the appropriate response, and calls upon the Bunnies for more
No bunny can prove that any race won by Lance Armstrong was caused by doping
No bunny can prove that any home run that Barry Bonds hit was caused by steroids
No bunny can prove that Ben Johnson ever won a race because of "medicines"
OTOH, wanna bet?

26 comments:

Drunk Country Doctor said...

Darwin was wrong, because of punctuated equilibrium. My brother, a Phd material science graduate from Stanford says. So creationism. Being a Republican is a caused by a parasite, like Toxoplasmosis.

PG said...

Nobody can prove that the Pyramids weren't built by King David to store grain.

Unknown said...

Studies have shown that on a Spare the Air Day, when air pollution is above a certain level, deaths from heart attacks are on average 5% greater than on other days. (hypothetical)

Yesterday was an average day and 100 people died from heart attacks, about average. Today was a Spare the Air Day and 104 people died. One was dear Uncle Harry.

Did Uncle Harry die from air pollution?

Maybe he only partly died from it? Or was he one of the 100 average folk who would have died anyway?

This is really not that complicated.

JohnMashey said...

PG: but nobody will need to, Carson's campaign seems to be going downhill.

Maybe he can get an endorsement from Carly Fiorina, who ditched her alma mater Stanford to root for Iowa (Maybe has something to do with upcoming caucus? :-))

Stanford 45-16.

People are mocking her for this, possibly unfairly, as nothing she could do would make her very popular around Palo Alto, so why not?

EliRabett said...

It's the difference between everybunny thinking she is a tool an everybunny knowing.

PG said...

John I'm sure Stanford is mightilly relieved that she's rooting for Iowa State. BTW as I type Stanford is thrashing them

John said...

Myths about Stanford mascot..
Many bunnies mistakenly believe that Cardinal refers to the bird.
It's not.
The Stanford mascot is the color.

Back in the 1960's, some mildly rebellious Stanford students tried to have the mascot changed to
The Robber Barons. This could easily be justified because the original Leland Stanford, industrialist and US Senator, was a ruthless predator not uncommon for capitalists of his era.

But even though the students followed the official procedures, and jumped through all the required hoops, the Stanford Administration said no, because they feared a bad reputation among the alumni.

The story was told to me by a former Stanford student, who later came to a bad end. He became a university administrator :) Names have been omitted to protect the guilty,


John said...

Clarification: my source became an administrator, but not at Stanford or at my university.

JohnMashey said...

Well, the real Stanford Mascot is The Tree.

Especially around the Cal-Stanford game, one sees banners "Beware the Tree" or "Fear the Tree" which are known to puzzle people who don't live around here.
It often appears in "worst mascots" web pages.

See images of Trees.

People audition to become the next Tree, and the outgoing Tree creates their costume.

JohnMashey said...

Unlike the students who failed to be the Robber Barons, those at UC Santa Cruz got their preference, to be known as the fighting banana slugs, which otherwise are encountered when hiking the trails nearby.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Spare Air Day is the anniversary of Schrödinger opening his cat box.

PG said...

John this is clearly the result of the RRRidge and CA ground water depletion. Students now dress up as trees so southern CA residents can reminisce.

BTW john I note that the game was over before my score-line comment. I live in Sydney so I don't have a strangle-hold on American college football.

Andrew said...

Toxoplasmosis is filing a lawsuit regarding the first comment.


In your body, Only 1 in 1 million glucose molecules is in the correct configuration for the relevant enzyme at any one time, so your metabolism doesn't work. Those who are motivated not to get stats can stop metabolising now.

Aaron said...

If LA was climate change, he would have won all the major bike races every year instead of just the TdF.
If BB was climate change, he would have gotten at least a base hit off of every pitch.
If BJ was climate change, he would have entered and won events ranging from 60 m sprints to ultra-marathons.

Apply the statistics of industrial systems control developed by Deming, and used by all electronics manufacturers to any of the basic global metrics of climate. A very good starting point is monthly temperature anomalies for the last 400 months using 1901-1960 as a baseline. When everything is expressed as standard deviations from a mean, all of Watts' objections melt into statistical insignificance.

Since one cannot make microprocessors (even of the 1978 vintage) without understanding industrial control statistics, we can deduce that AW never got very far in his EE classes.

Anonymous said...

Bunnies can't statistically prove that Groundskeeper Willie can read:

[RS, to Judy] Please read the whole essay and its introduction

[GW, after a tu quoque] What short selection of your essay do you think Judith should have added?

Overheard at Judy's.

NB. A variation on this comment got moderated at Judy's. But RC and SkS moderation.

E. Swanson said...

JM, during my brief time at Silicon U., we were called Indians. That wasn't PC, so we became The Reds. Maybe we should have been known as The Blacks, but that wouldn't have been PC either. I haven't been back to The Reservation since...

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Will the UCSC Title IX SWAT team charge Swanson with Stendhal Triggering?

E. Swanson said...

Seitz, what does Title IX have to do with Stendhal Syndrome? BTW, SU isn't UCSC, (though they are neighbors geographically).

Allow me to be the first this year to note how separated from reality you appear to be...

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Pauvre Swanson!

'Ecoute t'on trois minutes, on se demande ce qui l'emporte de l'emphase du parleur ou de son abominable ignorance.'

-- Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir

E. Swanson said...

Seitz, it's said that true wisdom is knowing your level of ignorance. I know I'm just another over educated idiot (aka: human). You, however, still need more work. The subject was college football team mascots, not early 19th century French literature. I did throw in a hidden reference to my university experiences, did you get it???

Fernando Leanme said...

I thought the subject was Lance Armstrong using dope. I think they should have biker divisions, according to the amount of dope they take. This will allow us to experiment with performance enhancing drugs using volunteers who accept the potential bad effects in exchange for cash and a shiny medal. In 50 years we would see bike races at 200 kmph pedaled by amphetamine fueled mutants.

See? I commented on the original subject, and didn't quote no frenchie literature.

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

Tarnation Leanme, y'all can't call folk maroons just cause they got red and black mascots.

E. Swanson said...

Seitz, while a gold-and-white student, we regularly dissed the other state university for their lack of intellectual ability. I can say that you missed my veiled reference again, not that it matters 2 coppers...

THE CLIMATE WARS said...

No one can accuse Judy of being a rambling wreck from Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

At least not in one breath.

Cue Aggie jokes

Mal Adapted said...

E. Swanson: "it's said that true wisdom is knowing your level of ignorance."

That's pretty much what Kruger and Dunning 1999 showed.

E. Swanson said...

MA, Thanks for the link to D&K's paper, which I had not read. Their work is rather stunning and I'm sure there are many responses in the subsequent literature. Perhaps the obvious point has been considered, which is, the population in their study were selected from students who attended a respected educational institution. Thus, these folks were already selected for some level of superior intellectual ability relative to the total population, as seen in high GPA, SAT or ACT scores, etc. One wonders how the other segments of the overall population fit into D&K's conclusions, such as those who didn't make the cut on college admissions or those who didn't even graduate from HS in timely manner.

Another question might be relevant: What is the impact of superior training (aka: competence) have on one's incompetence in other fields in which the individual has no training? I'm think of individuals such as Freeman Dyson speaking on climate change or Ben Carson running for President...