101–110 of 254 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah. Eliminating stdev so social scientists don't get confused is the tail wagging the dog.
maybe in an intellectual sense, but a lot more people read http://www.huffingtonpost.com/science/ than http://arxiv.org/
So first about the article: >>The notion of standard deviation has confused hordes of scientists What an assertion! It also proved to be very useful for hordes of scientists... what about some examples of confused scientists ? >>There is no scientific reason to use it in statistical investigations in the age of the computer As someone who uses it daily I am eagerly awaiting his argument. >>Say someone just asked you…
| ..
| . .
| waste | . . | stuff
| of | . . | I
| my | . . | don't
| time | . stuff I'll . | grok
| | . read . |
|(Nassim Taleb) | | .
| . | | .
|______________________________________________________
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
standard deviationsSo first about the article: >>The notion of standard deviation has confused hordes of scientists What an assertion! It also proved to be very useful for hordes of scientists... what about some examples of confused scientists ? >>There is no scientific reason to use it in statistical investigations in the age of the computer As someone who uses it daily I am eagerly awaiting his argument. >>Say someone just asked you…
This comment was great fun to read, and I suspect that I share some of your opinions about Taleb (although mine are decaying with each day that passes since I last finished reading any of his books), but it would have been stronger as an argument if you had left off the part about him being a "vile idiot".
"Nassim Taleb is a vulgar bombastic windbag, and I like him a lot. His books do a good job of explaining some deep, important finance ideas for a general audience. He has helped popularize the notion of "skin in the game". His trolling of economists is also good for some lulz (I particularly enjoyed his coinage of the term "macrobullshitters")."
[0]http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/of-brains-and-bal...
I really tried to get through "The Black Swan" and Taleb's writing struck me as so pretentious and self-involved that it made it impossible for me to finish. He strikes me as someone who is so desperate to be important and recognized that an assertion like this doesn't really surprise me.
Don't try to engage with him critically, but constructively, directly on the internets though, because he prefers acolytes to arguments!
So first about the article: >>The notion of standard deviation has confused hordes of scientists What an assertion! It also proved to be very useful for hordes of scientists... what about some examples of confused scientists ? >>There is no scientific reason to use it in statistical investigations in the age of the computer As someone who uses it daily I am eagerly awaiting his argument. >>Say someone just asked you…
> The guy is a vile idiot of the worst kind: ignorant and aggressive. Your comment is a bit irritating. I don't know the author of this blog post but I think he has a couple of valid points. You seem to dislike him for some other reasons. Feel free to share them. The blog post is still perfectly reasonable. Anyway, I agree some of your comments as well, namely this: > I can give hundreds when std dev is useful and me…
Really ? You think call for substituting one of the most common use measures in science, finance, gambling etc. with some other measure which doesn't have the same crucial properties without giving any examples of one going wrong and the other being better is reasonable ? He also threw some assertions about general confusion and scientist using it because of misunderstanding in 1893. Again without any example while giving condescending analogy of someone asking you to calculating average and realizing it's not standard deviation. It's not reasonable by any standard. The reason I have very low opinion about his writing and him are his books, especially Antifragile.
>I actually agree that standard deviation is a confusing name, why do you think that's a stupid comment?
He claimed that "the confusion", things he described in previous paragraphs about scientists, PhD's and statisticians is caused by misleading name. I am not saying the name is good but implying that so many people are using it just because the name given to it in 1893 is insulting. It's basically Taleb telling scientists: "hey guys, you use this standard deviation thing because of randomish reason and not because you know what you are doing". It's very strong bold statement which undermines credibility of whole groups of scientists which he again didn't even begin to argue for. He just asserts it and continue.
So first about the article: >>The notion of standard deviation has confused hordes of scientists What an assertion! It also proved to be very useful for hordes of scientists... what about some examples of confused scientists ? >>There is no scientific reason to use it in statistical investigations in the age of the computer As someone who uses it daily I am eagerly awaiting his argument. >>Say someone just asked you…
This comment was great fun to read, and I suspect that I share some of your opinions about Taleb (although mine are decaying with each day that passes since I last finished reading any of his books), but it would have been stronger as an argument if you had left off the part about him being a "vile idiot".
Standard deviation and mean absolute deviation are both useful, but I think it's silly to suggest that we all adopt exactly one measure of variability to summarize data sets. When in doubt, make a fucking histogram.
Histograms can be misleading too, especially when the breaks are not set well.
So first about the article: >>The notion of standard deviation has confused hordes of scientists What an assertion! It also proved to be very useful for hordes of scientists... what about some examples of confused scientists ? >>There is no scientific reason to use it in statistical investigations in the age of the computer As someone who uses it daily I am eagerly awaiting his argument. >>Say someone just asked you…
He's inflammatory. Really, really inflammatory. He also tends to write about obvious technical points so if you do pick through the morass and find the gem you'll be a bit underwhelmed. In this instance, standard deviations are obviously important statistics to compute and have many, many useful properties, sure, but Taleb rightly points out that they can be misused and I agree with him that their misuse is endemic i…
NNT is my intellectual superhero but the amount of hate he gets is tremendous. Please understand that NNT's biggest issues are not so much with the way statistical models are applied to economics and finance, but how social scientists sometimes feel compelled to apply them to social fields as well, which is plain unscientific, dumb, and mostly disastrous. So when you bear down on his arguments, please keep this conte…