4 ms·

The only thing I'm advocating for in this thread is clear thinking and clear communication - in particular I oppose overloading a perfectly well defined and cle

The only thing I'm advocating for in this thread is clear thinking and clear communication - in particular I oppose overloading a perfectly well defined and clear statistical term. Similarly, I advocate against new-age uses of the word "energy" - energy is a specific conserved quantity, not some mysterious unobservable thing that emanates from crystals. What benefit do we gain when other people can't even understand the words we use? It's almost as if you want to use a Motte-and-Bailey argument to confuse people ( http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the-motte/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-bric... ). Which is of course something that people do on this very topic: https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying.html https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying....

throwaway729 10y ago
> in particular I oppose overloading a perfectly well defined and clear statistical term. The overloading happened the other way around... > What benefit do we gain when other people can't even understand the words we use? Similarly, what benefit do we gain when we use a term of art in settings where most of the audience doesn't have the technical background to be quite sure what they're even discussing? Also, there is a notion that's distinct from statistical bias and that is highly political and controversial. Today we can say "bias" and most everyone will know we're talking about that topic. Whatever word or phrase we use in place of "bias" will be just as muddy and ill-defined. And probably some mathematician will come along and build some incomplete model and name if after that new word. And then we'll have this conversation again. The problem you're trying to avoid is unavoidable.
smallnamespace 10y ago
It's 100% clear from the article that 'bias' is in the political, or common sense of the word. It's an existing, established usage, and not one that the authors simply made up. I fail to see why you insist that the authors use a word in its statistical sense when they clearly aren't making a statistical argument -- especially since the the statistical sense of the word bias is ultimately derived from the common usage, and not the other way around. The use of 'bias' in the sense of 'prejudice' in English dates from the 1570s, well before the development of statistics [1]. If anything, we should complain that the statisticians overloaded a perfectly good English word, instead of coming up with some Greek or Latin neologism for their own technical use. [1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bias http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bias > Similarly, I advocate against new-age uses of the word "energy" - energy is a specific conserved quantity, Sounds like a stilted way to look at the world. If someone says 'I'm feeling really energetic today', would you object on the grounds that they haven't shown that their biochemical energy reserves are larger than normal, or that their body is burning calories at a faster rate than usual?
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  If you read your source, you'll realize the term "bias" referred to a slant in the floor of a ball game providing an advantage to one player. This slant would (I'm inferring) cause one player to have an advantage over another equally matched player depending on which side of the slant they are on. This agrees perfectly with the statisticians definition, albeit applied to one particular example. Specifically, the slanted ball game field would provide a biased measurement (in the statistical sense) of player ability. Score 1 for the mathematicians. I agree with you that this techcrunch reporter is using the term in some other mysterious "vernacular" way. It's this usage that I'm objecting to since it's misleading and confusing. If someone says 'I'm feeling really energetic today', would you object on the grounds that they haven't shown that their biochemical energy reserves are larger than normal, or that their body is burning calories at a faster rate than usual? If an article were discussing how coal is more "energetic" than nuclear energy, but was actually referring to energetic in the psychological sense (or maybe in the hippy energy crystal sense), I would in fact object. That would be similarly misleading.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    > This agrees perfectly with the statisticians definition, albeit applied to one particular example. Specifically, the slanted ball game field would provide a biased measurement (in the statistical sense) of player ability. Score 1 for the mathematicians. That's silly. It's not a competition between mathematicians and all other people for the 'correct', Platonic definition of a word -- a word is defined by how people use and interpret it. Logical, mathematical deduction from first principles is not the only way to look at the world. Unless I'm mistaken, I think your objection can be summarized as 'we shouldn't talk about things that we don't have airtight definitions for (like racial bias or racial prejudice), because it might confuse people'. I happen to strongly disagree, since grappling with fuzzy definitions is precisely how we get to having better definitions. Otherwise, we should give up on ever talking about anything except math, where we have clear axioms to work with. Even in math, people were profitably doing calculus before we had clear definitions for infinitesimals, integrals, derivatives, or proofs that our procedures produced correct results. The logical machinery and deductive logic often comes after people spent time grappling with fuzzy, intuitive things with unclear definitions.

throwaway729 10y ago

> in particular I oppose overloading a perfectly well defined and clear statistical term. The overloading happened the other way around... > What benefit do we gain when other people can't even understand the words we use? Similarly, what benefit do we gain when we use a term of art in settings where most of the audience doesn't have the technical background to be quite sure what they're even discussing? Also, there is a notion that's distinct from statistical bias and that is highly political and controversial. Today we can say "bias" and most everyone will know we're talking about that topic. Whatever word or phrase we use in place of "bias" will be just as muddy and ill-defined. And probably some mathematician will come along and build some incomplete model and name if after that new word. And then we'll have this conversation again. The problem you're trying to avoid is unavoidable.

smallnamespace 10y ago

It's 100% clear from the article that 'bias' is in the political, or common sense of the word. It's an existing, established usage, and not one that the authors simply made up. I fail to see why you insist that the authors use a word in its statistical sense when they clearly aren't making a statistical argument -- especially since the the statistical sense of the word bias is ultimately derived from the common usage, and not the other way around. The use of 'bias' in the sense of 'prejudice' in English dates from the 1570s, well before the development of statistics [1]. If anything, we should complain that the statisticians overloaded a perfectly good English word, instead of coming up with some Greek or Latin neologism for their own technical use. [1] http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bias http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bias > Similarly, I advocate against new-age uses of the word "energy" - energy is a specific conserved quantity, Sounds like a stilted way to look at the world. If someone says 'I'm feeling really energetic today', would you object on the grounds that they haven't shown that their biochemical energy reserves are larger than normal, or that their body is burning calories at a faster rate than usual?

yummyfajitas 10y ago
If you read your source, you'll realize the term "bias" referred to a slant in the floor of a ball game providing an advantage to one player. This slant would (I'm inferring) cause one player to have an advantage over another equally matched player depending on which side of the slant they are on. This agrees perfectly with the statisticians definition, albeit applied to one particular example. Specifically, the slanted ball game field would provide a biased measurement (in the statistical sense) of player ability. Score 1 for the mathematicians. I agree with you that this techcrunch reporter is using the term in some other mysterious "vernacular" way. It's this usage that I'm objecting to since it's misleading and confusing. If someone says 'I'm feeling really energetic today', would you object on the grounds that they haven't shown that their biochemical energy reserves are larger than normal, or that their body is burning calories at a faster rate than usual? If an article were discussing how coal is more "energetic" than nuclear energy, but was actually referring to energetic in the psychological sense (or maybe in the hippy energy crystal sense), I would in fact object. That would be similarly misleading.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  > This agrees perfectly with the statisticians definition, albeit applied to one particular example. Specifically, the slanted ball game field would provide a biased measurement (in the statistical sense) of player ability. Score 1 for the mathematicians. That's silly. It's not a competition between mathematicians and all other people for the 'correct', Platonic definition of a word -- a word is defined by how people use and interpret it. Logical, mathematical deduction from first principles is not the only way to look at the world. Unless I'm mistaken, I think your objection can be summarized as 'we shouldn't talk about things that we don't have airtight definitions for (like racial bias or racial prejudice), because it might confuse people'. I happen to strongly disagree, since grappling with fuzzy definitions is precisely how we get to having better definitions. Otherwise, we should give up on ever talking about anything except math, where we have clear axioms to work with. Even in math, people were profitably doing calculus before we had clear definitions for infinitesimals, integrals, derivatives, or proofs that our procedures produced correct results. The logical machinery and deductive logic often comes after people spent time grappling with fuzzy, intuitive things with unclear definitions.