ak_yo

5 ms·

1.
by ak_yo 8y ago
I find that this guide unhelpfully conflates probability and inference in a few places. Probability theory on its own is interesting but not terribly useful without the infrastructure of estimation.
2.
by ak_yo 9y ago
This is an interesting argument but I think it fails to coherently restate what it means for race to be socially constructed. Nobody is denying that genetic differences between people exist and are important for health. They’re saying that
3.
by ak_yo 9y ago
Cool tutorial, but I'm not entirely sure what makes this ML -- aside from neural nets, this is more or less the material you'd encounter in a basic applied statistics or regression analysis course, minus material on estimating unc
4.
by ak_yo 9y ago
Experimental design and observational causal inference would be excellent skills to have. Especially if you’re working with people who are asking you “why” questions, ML is helpful but isn’t going to cut it alone.
5.
by ak_yo 9y ago
Great guide! Another reason to be familiar with this stuff is for data science: splines in particular are really useful for fitting a linear predictor where you suspect some of the marginal relationships are nonlinear, but you don’t have a
6.
by ak_yo 9y ago
This is right -- plus lm() is faster! Although, from a statistical perspective, if you can't invert X'X, that should first make you think "I have data quality issues" (i.e. multicollinearity) rather than "I need a d
7.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I'd encourage you to think of this from the perspective of the person who's fearing for their life. It's rational to assume that the likelihood of someone potentially harming you is much higher if they're vocally express
8.
by ak_yo 9y ago
That's totally fair -- and I appreciate that you're willing to engage seriously about these things! Your last point is well-taken. It may even be the case these days that the majority of people who hold views similar to yours thin
9.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I think it's completely fair to think that a lot of these thoughts are coming from a good place. But the people who are espousing these perspectives need to understand that there's a lot of really intense history behind ideas like
10.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I agree, we're making the same general point -- it does seem crazy to ask someone to "ensure they hold no offensive opinions". So why, for example, should the opinions of the person who wants to speak their mind about the imm
11.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I believe this evidence is consistent with my point that a robust (and perhaps growing!) network of campus conservatism exists. Specifically, this evidence could be explained by an increasing rate of conservatism on campuses. The rate of di
12.
by ak_yo 9y ago
From my perspective, I don't want to work in an environment where people are voicing their opinion that (e.g.) gay marriage is illegitimate or wrong. How am I supposed to work with someone who thinks a huge part of my life is immoral?
13.
by ak_yo 9y ago
You can definitely stop science. There's a reason we don't secretly infect populations with various diseases just to see what happens anymore.
14.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I completely agree. The exchange seems to go like this: A: "I think black people are genetically inferior." B: "I think that's a bigoted thing to say that has historically caused a lot of harm to a lot of people."
15.
by ak_yo 9y ago
In what world are these opinions not voiced? I don't think this argument stands up to empirical scrutiny -- there's an incredibly robust network of vocally conservative student organizations.
16.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I think you're exactly right. His argument is completely self-defeating: it's a perfect example of shutting down criticism on the basis of tone. He's just dismissing critique out of hand (because it's "politically c
17.
by ak_yo 9y ago
To be clear, I'm agnostic of the guy's motive -- I'm just genuinely puzzled how, if you spent most of your waking hours supporting AI startups and expanding the tech industry, you could possibly see that as "inevitable&q
18.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I don't quite get why this is written as if the author is a neutral observer of this phenomenon, when in reality he works extremely hard every day to make sure it happens.
19.
by ak_yo 9y ago
This is an interesting perspective but it doesn't really mesh with my experience. If I had to describe the typical political sympathies of HN, it would be "somewhat right of center on everything, except far left on tech policy&quo
20.
by ak_yo 9y ago
This problem has been a structural feature of the academic profession for a long time -- Max Weber famously wrote about it almost 100 years ago: http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12&#x2F
21.
by ak_yo 9y ago
To tag on to this: I'd argue that work and school are more engaging than video games. When was the last time you just stopped going to work because it wasn't fun? Having to do these things in order to survive is extremely exciti
22.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I'd be interested in reading evidence that supports a causal link between AAVE usage and segregation. To the best of my knowledge, no research has shown this to be the case, but I might be missing something. Did you have a particular s
23.
by ak_yo 9y ago
The figure in this article* is taken (without citation) from a 2012 article by sociologists Michael Rosenfeld and Reuben Thomas. (open-access preprint: https://web.stanford.edu/~mrosenfe/Rosenfeld_How_Couples_Mee... )
24.
by ak_yo 9y ago
If you like this, you might also like Max Weber's essay on bureaucracy: https://www.law.upenn.edu/institutes/cerl/conferences/ethics...
25.
by ak_yo 9y ago
> P=0.05 is best interpreted as "There is a 95% chance that this data isn't pure noise". This is incorrect. A p-value is the probability of observing a value of the test statistic that is at least as extreme as the reporte
26.
by ak_yo 9y ago
> Anyone looking at the presented data should be able to reason the result without needing to conduct a statistical test. Part of the problem, though, is that scientific results are often counterintuitive, or (particularly in the social
27.
by ak_yo 9y ago
I agree that IRBs are not great -- the book cited above does a great job of unpacking how IRBs fail to live up to their promises, and this covers some good additional examples. I also agree that the author isn't necessarily advocating
28.
by ak_yo 9y ago
IRB review procedures are flawed, I agree. But ethical review by a third party is enormously important for research with human subjects. I'm alarmed by the notion of researchers deciding unilaterally that a study has only "nonexis
29.
by ak_yo 9y ago
The author doesn't seem to take the history of medical research ethics (e.g. the Tuskegee syphilis experiments [1]) seriously. Having a sophisticated understanding of the ethical risks of research is a huge part of doing good science,
30.
by ak_yo 9y ago
How does this compare to 2-gram Markov chains? The results look pretty similar (though perhaps a bit more grammatical...)

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