Re: OT Is anyone really surprised?


"Tom Kunich" <cyclintom@yahoo. com> wrote in message
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"Sandy" <leurrre@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Dans le message de

You misstate a premise to crown your numbers theology. Statistical
analysis provides no original knowledge. It serves as a shortcut for
those who choose either to let others do the fact collection for
them, or who prefer to perceive each instance as composed of a
variety of countervailing forces with a plurality result. The most
incisive criticism is that a broad statistical report provides zero
certainty about the next relevant event that would have been part of
the distillation. A coin toss (or for multiple, not dual potentials,
a many-sided die) gives as much assurance. Outliers are as welcome as
deer ticks, yet both are admitted in reality.

Your thinking, in this thread, _demonstrates_ no critical perceptive
capability. Your memory may well be sound, however. And since no
one seems to take the time to evaluate your sources, thus no one
cogently contradicts your statements. If some fail to attribute
proper names to related studies, that is the kind of error one could
politely observe and excuse, usually.

A good observer of events falling in his specialty already has
knowledge. The person who hopes for a confirmation of his prejudices
will look to statistical reporting for support, not for raw
information. So, the events featured in this thread - human deaths -
occur in the singular each time, and each time serve no function when
abstracted, other than to eliminate the abomination of each death and
to prop up one or another political view.

That is a completely correct observation though it does need to be
said that statistics demonstrate the chances of something being true
not the "certainty".

That's not a very good description Tom. Once an event has occurred,
probability doesn't come into it; it is what it is. For example, you can
always calculate the probabilities of the outcomes of a fair coin toss
but you can never calculate the probability of a coin being fair from
the outcomes.

5 heads in a row is significant at the 95% confidence level but this
does not mean there is a 95% chance the coin is fixed. It simply means,
out of 100 attempts with a fair coin to get 5 heads, on average you
would be successful only 5 times.

Phil H


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