51–60 of 77 posts
The Type I and Type II errors is especially hurtful to me: I am totally unable to remember which is which and each time I read an article containing them I think: well, I am probably going to get it wrong again but I cannot bother to check the definition one more time... who cares?
Type I: True -> False Type II: False -> True
Meaning something was True (H_0) and our results say it's False (Reject H_0), and vice versa.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have trouble with those too: they're a composition of false/true with positive/negative to denote whether a finding of yes/no is right/wrong, but I can never remember whether false/true corresponds to yes/no or to right/wrong. Just say things like "right yes" or "wrong no" and I'll understand. The only problem with that way of speaking is that it doesn't sound fancy.
> Just say things like "right yes" or "wrong no" and I'll understand. OK. So s/false/right/ and s/right/true/ and s/negative/no/ and s/positive/yes/. Does that work for you? Positive and negative are about the outcome of the test - did it report whatever or not? True and false are about if this result corresponds to reality or not. It might just be me, but "wrong yes" sounds like it's claiming something very specific…
> That's right, ellipses are not elliptic curves, and elliptic curves are not elliptical. I don't know who was responsible for this idiocy, but if I ever meet them I'm going to kick them in the ass. The referenced Wikipedia page contains a perfectly valid explanation for the term "elliptic curves", and a little googling reveals that it was Legendre who's responsible for "this idiocy".
Well, if I ever meet this Legender guy, I'm gonna kick his ass. You can tell him I said that.
The function f(x)=1/x is continuous, but its graph is not connected. It's an interesting one to explain to people.
One I hate is sin^{2}(x) meaning "sine squared" and sin^{-1}(x) meaning "the inverse of the sine function".
The Type I and Type II errors is especially hurtful to me: I am totally unable to remember which is which and each time I read an article containing them I think: well, I am probably going to get it wrong again but I cannot bother to check the definition one more time... who cares?
(Yes, the terminology is stupid and should be changed. But as long as we're stuck with it, this helps.)
> That's right, ellipses are not elliptic curves, and elliptic curves are not elliptical. I don't know who was responsible for this idiocy, but if I ever meet them I'm going to kick them in the ass. The referenced Wikipedia page contains a perfectly valid explanation for the term "elliptic curves", and a little googling reveals that it was Legendre who's responsible for "this idiocy".
Well, if I ever meet this Legender guy, I'm gonna kick his ass. You can tell him I said that.
I can see the point, but I don't think it's a problem as long as the concept is well-defined. It's only a matter of getting used to don't assume, for example, "open" and "closed" to be mutually exclusive. There are other fields that don't have the privilege of this formal setting: I expect the concept of "species" to be very important in biology, but there isn't a clear definition of that (yet) [0]. [0] https://en.wi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Just say things like "right yes" or "wrong no" and I'll understand. OK. So s/false/right/ and s/right/true/ and s/negative/no/ and s/positive/yes/. Does that work for you? Positive and negative are about the outcome of the test - did it report whatever or not? True and false are about if this result corresponds to reality or not. It might just be me, but "wrong yes" sounds like it's claiming something very specific…
I'm not sure I get what distinction you're making. Are you saying that the standard terms don't commit to what we mean by a test's positive/negative, and this generality is more valuable than concreteness? It would be bad to imply too generally that we're talking about a test that says yes or no, a thing is present or absent?