i think we'll have a huge shortage of programmers shortly
Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
91–100 of 122 posts
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
The talk is from CUSEC, probably this one: http://vimeo.com/2723800 As for his "attitude", I've actually met him and talked to him face-to-face. His internet persona is a put-on and he only talks like that to piss people off. In actuality, he's a really nice guy who is super-smart and who does not take shit from people. It's actually too bad that there aren't more of him in our industry. Scope creeps, memory leaks, e…
Thanks for posting this. I went from despising Shaw (based on his writings) to kind of liking him.
You like someone for being a double-faced troll? IMO, I like him less now because he actually doesn't believe in what he says online.
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#93You know, I've read a bunch of Zed's articles, and I always end up thinking that he's the source of most of his problems. There was a talk I saw him give (can't find the link) to a bunch of college kids where he basically said "phone in your job, do the stuff you love on your own time, everyone else is retarded and they'll never understand you." Great attitude you have there. I know guys like that; guys who are extre…
They're team killing, energy sucking, wastes.
You do realize that this could have been written by Zed?
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#94> I think women are better programmers because they have less ego and are typically more interested in the gear rather than the pissing contest. People need to stop writing shit like this. If it's not okay to say that men are better programmers simply because of their gender (it's not), then it's not okay to say it the other way around either.
> If it's not okay to say that men are better programmers simply because of their gender (it's not), then it's not okay to say it the other way around either.
God forbid that someone make an argument and try to support it with data, when one person has already decided for all of us what the correct conclusion is.
WT* ever happened to debate, intellectual discourse, and the marketplace of ideas?
This is one of the things that I find most disgusting about political correctness: that it tries to just wall off huge swaths of POTENTIAL CONCLUSIONS based on an argument that boils down to a misconstrued sense of manners (at best) or political preferences (at worst).
Want to say that ethanol is a stupid idea? THE DEBATE IS CLOSED - NO SERIOUS SCIENTIST BELIEVES THAT GLOBAL WARMING IS ANYTHING OTHER THAN A THREAT OF EXTINCTION.
Want to say that women and men have (a) different average heights; (b) different standard deviations in intelligence; (c) different hormone levels; (d) massively different thicknesses in their corpus collosums, and therefore one or the other might on average, make better programmers/accountants/engineers? THE DEBATE IS CLOSED. IT IS UNACCEPTABLE TO SPECULATE ON THIS TOPIC.
I call bullshit on that.
Intellectually honest people respond to facts and arguments with OTHER facts and arguments.
Intellectually dishonest people try to shut down debates using social control.
WilliamLP writes
"People need to stop writing shit like this"
That's the phrase of a bully, and/or a censor.
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
I might be misunderstanding your comment, but women are not a minority. http://www16.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=male+population+in+no...
It's bad usage, but in sociological terms, women are a minority because they aren't the dominant subgroup.
> in sociological terms, women are a minority because they aren't the dominant subgroup.
This is a useful sentence to read, because it helps remind me that "sociological terms" have little or nothing to do with honest intellectual framing of topics.
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#96> I think women are better programmers because they have less ego and are typically more interested in the gear rather than the pissing contest. People need to stop writing shit like this. If it's not okay to say that men are better programmers simply because of their gender (it's not), then it's not okay to say it the other way around either.
> If it's not okay to say that men are better programmers simply because of their gender (it's not), then it's not okay to say it the other way around either. God forbid that someone make an argument and try to support it with data, when one person has already decided for all of us what the correct conclusion is. WT* ever happened to debate, intellectual discourse, and the marketplace of ideas? This is one of the thi…
I think you have some interesting points. I'm going to play Devil's advocate:
An assumption that you make there is that all forms of social control used for discouraging debates/speculation on certain topics are inherently bad or stem from dishonesty. It could be that knowing in advance the emotional, legal, political, or otherwise time-wasting repercussions that a certain type of debate causes justifies avoiding the discussion altogether. None of us go after truth in a completely unbiased manner with no agendas whatsoever, though we may fool ourselves in thinking so.
There doesn't seem to be any disagreement about the social rule of not discussing politics or religion in this forum. We don't think of this as a moral rule, but then what are morals?
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
it seems pretty mind boggling that people are that bad at stats ... we have a mandatory stats class for CS ... it doesn't teach some of the stuff mentioned in the article but the stuff mentioned is completely intuitive -- you shouldn't need to take a stats class to understand that. like if the variance of your result is really high and you're estimating the mean its clear that the number of samples you take is import…
You're proving his point, which is that people's intuition is often dangerously wrong. The sample size is actually often nowhere near as important as your sampling method. For an extreme example, I can conduct a billion coin flips with a weighted coin, but it's going to tell me jack about the general behavior of coin flips. Avoiding sample bias is a hard problem, far harder than most people appreciate. To complicate…
After doing some research, I think I've completely abused the notion of the confidence interval. Which I think just helps to prove Zed's point. This stuff be hard.
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#98> I think women are better programmers because they have less ego and are typically more interested in the gear rather than the pissing contest. People need to stop writing shit like this. If it's not okay to say that men are better programmers simply because of their gender (it's not), then it's not okay to say it the other way around either.
> If it's not okay to say that men are better programmers simply because of their gender (it's not), then it's not okay to say it the other way around either. God forbid that someone make an argument and try to support it with data, when one person has already decided for all of us what the correct conclusion is. WT* ever happened to debate, intellectual discourse, and the marketplace of ideas? This is one of the thi…
It's wrong because it's a faulty abstraction.
It's generalising. That is, assuming that one or many things are one way just because some things are one way.
Just because one person is one way, doesn't mean they all are, or even mostly are.
I hope you now see why it is FUCKING STUPID TO BE A SEXIST, racist or any other kind of generalist.
Best regards, hugs, kiss, love,
ps. sorry for the non-capital PC parts.
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh, is this actually true? I had been under the impression that the orbital difference was insignificant from a climate standpoint.
there are actually several things at play, eccentricity, precession, and obliquity. the net result is that the north gets milder winters and cooler summers.
the northern hemisphere has significantly larger temperature variation than the southern
the net result is that the north gets milder winters and cooler summers
One of these statements appears to disagree with the other. If I remember correctly what I've read, the proportion of land rather than ocean in each hemisphere plays a major role in climate, as mentioned by the reply saying that the Northern Hemisphere has more variation in temperature.
Re: Programmers Need To Learn Statistics Or I Will Kill Them All (2005)
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's bad usage, but in sociological terms, women are a minority because they aren't the dominant subgroup.
> in sociological terms, women are a minority because they aren't the dominant subgroup. This is a useful sentence to read, because it helps remind me that "sociological terms" have little or nothing to do with honest intellectual framing of topics.
I'm going with the idea that you generally misunderstood, rather than the idea that you are trolling.
Consider a monarchy. The king is the majority. It's hard to imagine a world where everyone you see doesn't have the same power and opportunity that we enjoy. But you can see that cultures have existed where one guy was more important than everyone else combined.
You and I know, a pointer isn't a dog. However, people are often irresponsible, and use jargon in common conversation. Take a moment, and consider what is "honest intellectual framing" and what is a "sociological term". I think that while you may disagree, the assertion that women have less power (aren't the dominant subgroup) is a fairly honest analysis.
I haven't commented here in months, and don't plan on replying, but like xkcd says... someone on the internet is wrong. Take a moment to consider the possibility your parent poster isn't a fucking moron.