tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2514352312859447561.post8004875759252067973..comments2024-01-30T03:30:45.740-05:00Comments on Bad Data, Bad!: Mission Statementbs kinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02871717971078952304noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2514352312859447561.post-58676146113679166262012-03-28T22:05:20.916-04:002012-03-28T22:05:20.916-04:00...improper uses of data drive me nuts.
Me, too.......improper uses of data drive me nuts. <br /><br />Me, too.<br /><br />The worst offender is the economics profession, whose practitioners willingly torture some irrelevant data into proof of the desirability of proposed gov. programs/actions. <br /><br />If economists wish to regain their integrity, they can start dropping the pretense that tests of statistical significance are the definitive analytical too. <br /><br />Secondly, they can admit that all economists know with certainty is that competition benefits consumers, and that the economics professions has been complicit in countless interventions by Congress to prevent competition.Friedman was right!noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2514352312859447561.post-15680290673877964242012-03-27T05:09:21.650-04:002012-03-27T05:09:21.650-04:00In my experience, the ice cream/ice cream dance co...In my experience, the ice cream/ice cream dance correlation at our house is at least a 0.83.bs kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871717971078952304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2514352312859447561.post-24263805056679423452012-03-26T23:58:36.265-04:002012-03-26T23:58:36.265-04:00Was pointed at your site by maxedoutmama, looks in...Was pointed at your site by maxedoutmama, looks interesting. I was raised an economist but understood that 6.2 billion data points, uncorrelated, meant most economics was a shot in the dark - after getting the requisite degree, a shot in the dark was more likely to be accurate. Read your profile to my 17 yr daughter, she said it sounded like her...when she was little and the ice cream was brought out, she did a dance...she still loves ice cream.Tracy Coylehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13396494193507308556noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2514352312859447561.post-55101913007144818742012-03-26T21:23:59.444-04:002012-03-26T21:23:59.444-04:00On intellectuals: my brother Tim and I got a chan...On intellectuals: my brother Tim and I got a chance to talk quite a bit about my work at Christmas, and he asked quite a few questions. After I'd gone on for a while, I asked him for his thoughts. He just looked at me and said "It's really disturbing to me how differently you approach this from all the people in Washington I hear talking about it". <br /><br />Things look different from the trenches. <br /><br />Also, I love that last point. I'm stealing that point for a future post.bs kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02871717971078952304noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2514352312859447561.post-5669158673800515392012-03-26T18:14:14.539-04:002012-03-26T18:14:14.539-04:00My hero, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (who wrote "Fo...My hero, Nassim Nicholas Taleb (who wrote "Fooled By Randomness" before "The Black Swam") noted that the military research people were the most open to criticism, because they got it that lives were on the line and you don't want to get things wrong. Similar to your "we don't have that luxury." Intellectuals - as a professional class, not as a compliment - can often go on forever theorising in a vacuum, about what should work, or might work, or darn it, just-would-be-so-cool-if-it-were-true. Which is why i hate them. <br /><br />In addition to your stats professor's three choices, there is also "Only apparently correlated." I tend to get fooled by that most often, leaping to conclusions. My freshman physics lab partner, who knew that all the correlations in the first half of the semester were going to be linear, would whoop "It's linear" whenever we got our second data point. "Why waste time?" he would ask.Assistant Village Idiothttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978011985085795099noreply@blogger.com