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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 (

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.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  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'. No. I give a concrete example of what I want in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161470 Specifically, the word "bias" makes virtually everyone think of one particular concept. I claim expanding the word "bias" to describe two separate concepts misleads people into thinking the second concept is the same as the first. My sole objection is with confusing people by conflating multiple disparate concepts under one label, which is already a perfectly good label that clearly refers to something else (according to everything besides throwaway's mysterious and uncited "vernacular definition").

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.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
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'. No. I give a concrete example of what I want in this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13161470 Specifically, the word "bias" makes virtually everyone think of one particular concept. I claim expanding the word "bias" to describe two separate concepts misleads people into thinking the second concept is the same as the first. My sole objection is with confusing people by conflating multiple disparate concepts under one label, which is already a perfectly good label that clearly refers to something else (according to everything besides throwaway's mysterious and uncited "vernacular definition").