On belief

D.

I can relate to this statement (from a blog on statistics and inference). I live my life based on strong assumptions, which I try to check and re-check frequently... but I move while I'm checking them.

Sometimes I'm horribly wrong.

-M.

http://andrewgelman.com/2012/04/any-old-map-will-do-meets-god-is-in-every-leaf-of-every-tree/#more-15099 

On the one hand, belief is powerful. By conditioning on assumptions, we can rule out alternatives and move quickly and surely. But belief is risky, especially since all of our beliefs, if stated precisely enough, [are] false. The resolution is that we can use the strength and power of beliefs to better study their limitations.

From a statistical (and philosophy-of-science) perspective, strong assuptions play two roles: First, with strong assumps we can (often) make strong and precise inferences. The likelihood function is a powerful thing. Second, strong assumptions are strongly checkable and falsifiable. We take our models seriously, work with them as if we believe them unquestioningly, then use the leverage from this simulation of belief to check model fit and explore discrepancies between inferences and data.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Cultural sensitivity (story)

[Cc J. as FYI]

D.,

You will find this story amusing. It's embedded in an interesting Greg Cochran blog post about trying to understand the real root causes of homosexuality but I think it stands on its own as well.

-M.

P.S. The comments are worth reading too, for the debate/discussion. 

[Greg Cochran writes] Let me tell you a story.  In certain parts of west Africa,  boys are expected to start menstruating around age 14.  And they do,  sort of:  you  start seeing blood in their urine.  When that happens, there's a big ceremony, everyone says 'today you are a man'.  Whatever.  The thing is, that's about the time they put the boys into the flooded rice fields, where they're exposed to schistosoma haematobium, which causes urinary schistosomiasis.  It's bad for you: it can impair growth and cognitive development in  children, reduces productivity,  and is a potent cause of bladder cancer over the long term.

Our explanation of male menstruation as urinary schistosomiasis must undermine these people's traditional culture. Eliminating schistosomiasis would undermine it even further,  just as the rubella vaccine dealt a heavy blow to deaf culture by cutting the number of congenitally deaf children in half. .

Isn't that just too **** bad.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.

Pioneer anomaly solved

[Cc J. as FYI]

D.,

It's been known for a long time that the Pioneer spacecraft are slowing more than General Relativity predicts. Some people have wondered if, perhaps, this means that gravity doesn't fall off with distance quite as rapidly as we think it does. (I.e. there may be a linear term as well as a quadratic term.)

Another possibility is that it's caused by the spacecraft design emitting more heat in front than in back, thus creating a tiny bit of excess thrust to the front, and slowing the craft down.

How do you answer a question like this? Well, you could try modeling the spacecraft in detail, and comparing your calculations of its heat radiation to changes in the unexplained deceleration over time. Somebody did this, and it looks like the second alternative (anisotropic heat emission) is probably the cause.

Good science!

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003459/ 

-M.

--

Hahahahaaaa!!! That is ME laughing at YOU, cruel world.

    -Jordan Rixon

I could not love thee, dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more.