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>People doing the job poorly should be banned. But the nurse case is interesting because poor statistics became self-fulfilling. >"We have some deaths, and thi
by davorak 14y ago
>People doing the job poorly should be banned. But the nurse case is interesting because poor statistics became self-fulfilling.
>"We have some deaths, and this nurse is present when they happen, and so they are all suspicious", becomes "all the deaths that happen when this nurse is working are suspicious, and the deaths that don't happen when this nurse is working are not suspicious". And that sloppy thinking gets turned into "probability is 1 in a gajillion that these happen normally by chance."
Investigators have been known to be unduly influenced by pretty much any kind of evidence imaginable and then all further evidence is construed to support the original assumption/assertion. I need a more concrete difference or divider to promote other methods above statistics.
- pseut 14y ago> Investigators have been known to be unduly influenced by pretty much any kind of evidence imaginable and then all further evidence is construed to support the original assumption/assertion. A different way of phrasing this is that investigators have been known to incorrectly apply even standard tools that they've been explicitly trained in. > I need a more concrete difference or divider to promote other methods above statistics. If by "promote" you mean that we should try to increase the statistical literacy of lawyers, police, judges, and the general public, than hells yeah. But encouraging armchair statisticians to try to determine causality and guilt from badly-collected observational data that's analyzed by financially-invested parties...? In the highest stakes setting we have? Really?