3 ms·
To build on that, most scientists* are also terrible at statistics. Perhaps more controversially, I also don't think statistics in general is a particularly ri
by laingc 6y ago
To build on that, most scientists* are also terrible at statistics.
Perhaps more controversially, I also don't think statistics in general is a particularly rigorous or well-founded field. Where there is any analysis at all in the field - that is, very rarely - it provides guarantees only with hefty assumptions and in the limit. I'm fine with that from a theoretical perspective, but practitioners of all stripes seem to assume that with real world phenomena, the data either satisfy the assumptions or, more defensibly, don't violate the assumptions by enough to invalidate the results.
I don't know about others, but I see real-world datasets all the time that wildly invalidate the assumptions of common regression analysis, to take just one example.
To reign this little rant back into a well-formed comment, perhaps my summary is "everything and everyone is wrong, almost all the time, and I'm not quite sure how to fix that."
* In my personal experience.
- passivate 6y ago>To build on that, most scientists* are also terrible at statistics. BTW, I think your use of the asterisk goes beyond what was intended. Its typically been used to omit things or add caveats that only matter in very specific situations. 'in my personal experience' could mean you know 5 scientists or 5 thousand so mentioning a rough range would certainly give more credibility to your comment over the asterisk. That said, I broadly agree with the rest of your comment, but this did bug me enough to comment I suppose. >I don't know about others, but I see real-world datasets all the time that wildly invalidate the assumptions of common regression analysis, to take just one example. I'm interested in knowing about them. Any major ones that come to mind?
- SantalBlush 6y ago>'in my personal experience' could mean you know 5 scientists or 5 thousand so mentioning a rough range would certainly give more credibility to your comment over the asterisk. Agreed. Providing us with some statistics would help support their argument here.