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> I strongly get the impression that much criticism isn't based on my admittedly trite analysis but because a lot of people just don't know how to handle really

by ethbro 7y ago

> I strongly get the impression that much criticism isn't based on my admittedly trite analysis but because a lot of people just don't know how to handle really bad news and are trying to blank a nasty reality. No, you just made a large number of flaws in your initial analysis, and it made people despair of going to the effort to point out where you went wrong. E.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22648730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22648730 You're producing a future estimate, assuming that all properties of your dataset are consistent (they aren't) and will continue to hold (they won't). As a few examples: (1) varying ratio of confirmed cases to actual total, (2) % increase in testing per day, day-over-day, (3) varying time offset according to disease progression and symptoms presentation (aka testing). You seem to be of the opinion that any information is better than no information. In scenarios like this, I'm of the counter opinion that bad information is actively harmful and inferior to no information.

throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
> No, you just made a large number of flaws in your initial analysis Seeing as you don't have access to my analysis, you can't say that. > You're producing a future estimate, assuming that all properties of your dataset are consistent (they aren't) and will continue to hold (they won't). This is just vague stuff to put me down. I worked by confirmed cases in publicly available data. > varying ratio of confirmed cases to actual total I'm not sure what this mean but I went by the total confirmed cases, day by day. As for your 'increased testing', I'm fully aware the US is finally getting going. > varying time offset according to disease progression and symptoms presentation (aka testing). Why would the progress at different rates at different times in different individuals make any difference? I'm going by confirmed cases anyways so unless you know of a new strain with different characteristics that's starting to distort the figures (and there are possibly 2) then it makes no difference. No, save your slapdowns for the people who push garlic as treatment. You are objecting to me for psychological reasons, not logical ones. You can go to the wiki page and see the growth day by day but you don't want to because it's bad news and you don't like that. Well, get used to it. Your life is going to change, nothing will stop that and the sooner you face it the safer you and your country will be. Hard times ahead. Good luck.
- andrepd 7y ago
  This conversation can serve no useful purpose anymore. It's clear that you will never admit that there's anything wrong with your "analysis" (too big a word for pasting data in a spreadsheet), as far as you are concerned, you are a bloody genius (and helping people!) by plotting a bunch of points in a log scale. And of course any criticism of your methods can only be persecution and for "psychological reasons"... I wonder why anybody would post in a discussion forum if they are going to completely ignore any feedback or criticism (and in a very Trump manner say they're victims of personal persecution). Maybe just validation? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. Like other people have said through this thread, it's rather simple: you don't know what you are doing, and at this time bad information is worse than no information, and it will hurt people. And reiterating my remarks on my first post: stop being so arrogant, this is really the only word to describe your attitude as far as I'm concerned.
  - throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
    It does seem to serve no good purpose when we are talking across each other. For example I clearly and immediately modified my original post to state there was a risk of error because I was using the wrong curve (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22645793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22645793). And "I am a bloody genius [...] by plotting a bunch of points in a log scale" - I actually used the words 'admittedly trite' about what I did. Whatever. This gets us nowhere. Your profile says you have a background in physics and logic/automated reasoning. I'm just a general purpose back-end dev. We're facing something that may kill more people than WW2, let's concentrate on that. Can we work together to do something useful? Thoughts?
    - throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
      aaaand silence. I should have known better than to ask.

by ethbro 7y ago

throwaway_pdp09 7y ago

> No, you just made a large number of flaws in your initial analysis Seeing as you don't have access to my analysis, you can't say that. > You're producing a future estimate, assuming that all properties of your dataset are consistent (they aren't) and will continue to hold (they won't). This is just vague stuff to put me down. I worked by confirmed cases in publicly available data. > varying ratio of confirmed cases to actual total I'm not sure what this mean but I went by the total confirmed cases, day by day. As for your 'increased testing', I'm fully aware the US is finally getting going. > varying time offset according to disease progression and symptoms presentation (aka testing). Why would the progress at different rates at different times in different individuals make any difference? I'm going by confirmed cases anyways so unless you know of a new strain with different characteristics that's starting to distort the figures (and there are possibly 2) then it makes no difference. No, save your slapdowns for the people who push garlic as treatment. You are objecting to me for psychological reasons, not logical ones. You can go to the wiki page and see the growth day by day but you don't want to because it's bad news and you don't like that. Well, get used to it. Your life is going to change, nothing will stop that and the sooner you face it the safer you and your country will be. Hard times ahead. Good luck.

andrepd 7y ago
This conversation can serve no useful purpose anymore. It's clear that you will never admit that there's anything wrong with your "analysis" (too big a word for pasting data in a spreadsheet), as far as you are concerned, you are a bloody genius (and helping people!) by plotting a bunch of points in a log scale. And of course any criticism of your methods can only be persecution and for "psychological reasons"... I wonder why anybody would post in a discussion forum if they are going to completely ignore any feedback or criticism (and in a very Trump manner say they're victims of personal persecution). Maybe just validation? I don't know, I'm not a psychologist. Like other people have said through this thread, it's rather simple: you don't know what you are doing, and at this time bad information is worse than no information, and it will hurt people. And reiterating my remarks on my first post: stop being so arrogant, this is really the only word to describe your attitude as far as I'm concerned.
- throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
  It does seem to serve no good purpose when we are talking across each other. For example I clearly and immediately modified my original post to state there was a risk of error because I was using the wrong curve (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22645793 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22645793). And "I am a bloody genius [...] by plotting a bunch of points in a log scale" - I actually used the words 'admittedly trite' about what I did. Whatever. This gets us nowhere. Your profile says you have a background in physics and logic/automated reasoning. I'm just a general purpose back-end dev. We're facing something that may kill more people than WW2, let's concentrate on that. Can we work together to do something useful? Thoughts?
  - throwaway_pdp09 7y ago
    aaaand silence. I should have known better than to ask.