Misuse of statistics

In article <f234e5$epk$1@xxxxxxxx>,
ted rosenberg <tedrosenberg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chris Malcolm wrote:
<snip>
"NAmE" means North American English, moron. It seems I've been foolish
enough to argue with someone who doesn't even know how to use a
dictionary. Sheesh indeed.



Correction noted - I am an actuary, not a linguist, and shouldn't have
criticized you on a point outside of my fie;d


But you REALLY should learn a little bit about population math and
biostatistics before you open your mouth.

You tinker-toy types learn engineering statistics, and you probably even
stuck with it up to Quality Control. NOT VERY RELEVANT

They teach you concepts like the Gauss Curve and Fibbinocci. but if you
followed POPULATION math, from Markham to Mandelbrot', you would learn
that populations follow Poisson or BiModal curves not Gauss,
Perl-Volshted not Fibbinocci, and some of the more recent stuff even .I
have trouble following.

Been a long while since I tried to look anything up in your library
there, but, as I recall, the relevant texts were THEN filed under
"Natural Philosophy"

The use of the normal distribution as a model for
population characteristics comes from confusion, partially
created by statistics books designed for those who do not
know enough mathematics. Even those for actuaries are so
designed.

The normal distribution might be appropriate for
statistical mechanics, where the distribution of particle
momenta is "shared" among 10^20, but it is rarely
appropriate for real populations. Some statistical
procedures based on normality work quite well without it;
others definitely not. Transforming to normality to get
a scale or to set limits is pure ignorance.

The assumptions in medicine should come from knowledge
of biochemistry, or observation, but not in trying to
use the normal distribution, nor to declare "normal"
to be the middle 95%.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
.

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