| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Michael Gray" |
| Date: |
21 Apr 2007 07:16:34 PM |
| Object: |
Bad Science: I felt the P-values, in my R-soul |
No seriously, I felt the p-values, in my soul…
April 21st, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, statistics |
Ben Goldacre
Saturday April 21, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.badscience.net/?p=404
"So this week in the papers a man was allergic to his own hair, bee
colonies were collapsing because of mobile phones, and more. Speaking
as the veteran of a great many squabbles, on MMR, phone masts, drugs,
and more, I can tell you: facts are not entirely welcome. When all the
evidence goes against someone’s beliefs, they will tell you, quite
plainly, that they just know it to be true. They sense it. They intuit
it. Nobody will ever listen to an explanation of why intuitions can be
flawed - presumably because their intuitions have told them not to.
But we have an innate human ability to make something out of nothing.
We see shapes in the clouds and a man in the moon; gamblers are
convinced that they have "runs of luck"; we can take a perfectly
cheerful heavy metal record, play it backwards, and hear hidden
messages about satan. Our ability to spot patterns is what allows us
to make sense of the world but sometimes, in our eagerness, we can
mistakenly spot patterns where none exist.
In science, if you want to appreciate a phenomenon, it is often best
to reduce it to its simplest and most controlled form. There is a
prevalent belief among sporting types that sportsmen, like gamblers
(except even more plausibly) have "runs of luck". People ascribe this
to confidence, "getting your eye in", "warming up", or more, and while
it might exist somewhere, statisticians have looked in various places
and found no relationship between, say, hitting a home run in one
shot, and then hitting a home run in the next.
Because the "winning streak" is such a prevalent belief, it is an
excellent model for looking at how we perceive random sequences of
events, and this was used by a social psychologist called Thomas
Gilovich in a classic experiment. He took basketball fans and showed
them a random sequence of X’s and O’s – telling them that they
represented hits and misses in a basketball game – and then asked them
if they thought the sequences demonstrated streak shooting.
Here is a perfectly random sequence of figures from that experiment.
You could think of it as being generated by a coin being flipped (I
can explain why it’s random if you want but it’s a bit boring,
essentially there is no correlation between one outcome and the next,
and the number of adjacent figures with the same outcome – xx or oo –
is the same as the number of adjacent figures with different outcomes
– xo or ox). Here’s that random sequence:
OXXXOXXXOXXOOOXOOXXOO
The subjects in the experiment, when shown this entirely random
sequence, were convinced that it exemplified "streak shooting", or
"runs of luck". It’s easy to see why, if you look again: 6 of the
first 8 shots were hits. No, wait: 8 of the first 11 shots were hits.
I agree: no way does that look random. But it is.
What this ingenious experiment shows is just how bad we are at
correctly identifying random sequences. We are wrong about what they
should look like: we expect too much alternation, and to us, even
truly random sequences seem somehow too lumpy and ordered.
Why is this important? Because it shows that our intuitions about the
most basic observation of all, from which all others follow – our
abilities to distinguish an actual pattern, from mere random
background noise – are deeply, deeply flawed.
You cannot sense whether a pill improves intelligence, or cures the
common cold, or whether MMR causes autism. Your tiny, beautiful ingot
of human experience in the world does not present you with sufficient
information to spot patterns on that scale: it’s like looking at the
ceiling of the Sistine chapel with one eye through a very long
cardboard tube.
Intuitions are great shortcuts. They’re very valuable for lots of
things in the social domain: deciding if your girlfriend is cheating
on you, perhaps, or whether a business partner is trustworthy. But for
mathematical issues, or assessing causal relationships, intuitions
suffer from inaccuracies, misfires, and oversensitivity. The
challenge, perhaps, is to work out which tools to use where: because
trying to be "scientific" about your relationship is as stupid as
following an intuition about the risks and benefits of a treatment."
.
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| User: "Lucifer" |
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| Title: Re: Bad Science: I felt the P-values, in my R-soul |
22 Apr 2007 04:08:46 AM |
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<snip>
Ah the wonderful Mr Goldacre. To be fair though, a feat such as
hitting six sixes in cricket isn't just a matter of probabilties,
after the first three or four the pressure is so on the bowler that
they tend to perform better, and the batsman, eyeing the chance to get
more easy runs and spotting the bowlers weakness, will be out to get
them.
--
Lucifer the Unsubtle, EAC Librarian of Dark Tomes of Excessive Evil
and General Purpose Igor
The Anti-Theist, BAAWA Lowly Evilmeister and tamer of the Demon Duck
of Doom
Convicted by Earthquack
"Don't worry, I won't bite.......hard"
.
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| User: "Michael Gray" |
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| Title: Re: Bad Science: I felt the P-values, in my R-soul |
22 Apr 2007 04:45:28 AM |
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On 22 Apr 2007 02:08:46 -0700, Lucifer <wyrdology@hotmail.com> wrote:
- Refer: <1177232926.872342.277940@b58g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
<snip>
Ah the wonderful Mr Goldacre. To be fair though, a feat such as
hitting six sixes in cricket isn't just a matter of probabilties,
after the first three or four the pressure is so on the bowler that
they tend to perform better, and the batsman, eyeing the chance to get
more easy runs and spotting the bowlers weakness, will be out to get
them.
My brush with cricketing fame:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-21454840.html
--
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| User: "Lucifer" |
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| Title: Re: Bad Science: I felt the P-values, in my R-soul |
22 Apr 2007 09:16:51 AM |
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On Apr 22, 10:45 am, Michael Gray <mikeg...@newsguy.com> wrote:
On 22 Apr 2007 02:08:46 -0700, Lucifer <wyrdol...@hotmail.com> wrote:
- Refer: <1177232926.872342.277...@b58g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
<snip>
Ah the wonderful Mr Goldacre. To be fair though, a feat such as
hitting six sixes in cricket isn't just a matter of probabilties,
after the first three or four the pressure is so on the bowler that
they tend to perform better, and the batsman, eyeing the chance to get
more easy runs and spotting the bowlers weakness, will be out to get
them.
My brush with cricketing fame:http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P1-21454840.html
It only lets me read a few paragraphs, but I get the gist :p
--
Lucifer the Unsubtle, EAC Librarian of Dark Tomes of Excessive Evil
and General Purpose Igor
The Anti-Theist, BAAWA Lowly Evilmeister and tamer of the Demon Duck
of Doom
Convicted by Earthquack
"Don't worry, I won't bite.......hard"
.
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| User: "Denis Loubet" |
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| Title: Re: Bad Science: I felt the P-values, in my R-soul |
21 Apr 2007 07:56:53 PM |
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"Michael Gray" <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:98al23tkdns5a0rfml17hqlh5qnejcbh8t@4ax.com...
No seriously, I felt the p-values, in my soul.
April 21st, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, statistics |
Ben Goldacre
Saturday April 21, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.badscience.net/?p=404
"So this week in the papers a man was allergic to his own hair, bee
colonies were collapsing because of mobile phones, and more. Speaking
as the veteran of a great many squabbles, on MMR, phone masts, drugs,
and more, I can tell you: facts are not entirely welcome.
Good article!
--
Denis Loubet
dloubet@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
http://www.ashenempires.com
.
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| User: "Michael Gray" |
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| Title: Re: Bad Science: I felt the P-values, in my R-soul |
21 Apr 2007 10:17:06 PM |
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On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:56:53 -0600, "Denis Loubet" <dloubet@io.com>
wrote:
- Refer: <ZYKdncoz_IZLL7fbnZ2dnUVZ_sapnZ2d@io.com>
"Michael Gray" <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:98al23tkdns5a0rfml17hqlh5qnejcbh8t@4ax.com...
No seriously, I felt the p-values, in my soul.
April 21st, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, statistics |
Ben Goldacre
Saturday April 21, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.badscience.net/?p=404
"So this week in the papers a man was allergic to his own hair, bee
colonies were collapsing because of mobile phones, and more. Speaking
as the veteran of a great many squabbles, on MMR, phone masts, drugs,
and more, I can tell you: facts are not entirely welcome.
Good article!
It's the same toxic non-thinking that promotes the irrationality of
most religious faith, and thereby the terrible consequent behaviour.
--
.
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| User: "Denis Loubet" |
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| Title: Re: Bad Science: I felt the P-values, in my R-soul |
22 Apr 2007 03:28:46 AM |
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"Michael Gray" <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:5rkl23pf1lia04uekgt2b639gl9hh1bc26@4ax.com...
On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:56:53 -0600, "Denis Loubet" <dloubet@io.com>
wrote:
- Refer: <ZYKdncoz_IZLL7fbnZ2dnUVZ_sapnZ2d@io.com>
"Michael Gray" <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:98al23tkdns5a0rfml17hqlh5qnejcbh8t@4ax.com...
No seriously, I felt the p-values, in my soul.
April 21st, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, statistics |
Ben Goldacre
Saturday April 21, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.badscience.net/?p=404
"So this week in the papers a man was allergic to his own hair, bee
colonies were collapsing because of mobile phones, and more. Speaking
as the veteran of a great many squabbles, on MMR, phone masts, drugs,
and more, I can tell you: facts are not entirely welcome.
Good article!
It's the same toxic non-thinking that promotes the irrationality of
most religious faith, and thereby the terrible consequent behaviour.
When faith is the glorification of ignorance, that's what you get.
--
Denis Loubet
dloubet@io.com
http://www.io.com/~dloubet
http://www.ashenempires.com
.
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| User: "Michael Gray" |
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| Title: Re: Bad Science: I felt the P-values, in my R-soul |
22 Apr 2007 04:42:14 AM |
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On Sun, 22 Apr 2007 02:28:46 -0600, "Denis Loubet" <dloubet@io.com>
wrote:
- Refer: <ZMednagWTssigbbbnZ2dnUVZ_qWvnZ2d@io.com>
"Michael Gray" <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:5rkl23pf1lia04uekgt2b639gl9hh1bc26@4ax.com...
On Sat, 21 Apr 2007 18:56:53 -0600, "Denis Loubet" <dloubet@io.com>
wrote:
- Refer: <ZYKdncoz_IZLL7fbnZ2dnUVZ_sapnZ2d@io.com>
"Michael Gray" <mikegray@newsguy.com> wrote in message
news:98al23tkdns5a0rfml17hqlh5qnejcbh8t@4ax.com...
No seriously, I felt the p-values, in my soul.
April 21st, 2007 by Ben Goldacre in bad science, statistics |
Ben Goldacre
Saturday April 21, 2007
The Guardian
http://www.badscience.net/?p=404
"So this week in the papers a man was allergic to his own hair, bee
colonies were collapsing because of mobile phones, and more. Speaking
as the veteran of a great many squabbles, on MMR, phone masts, drugs,
and more, I can tell you: facts are not entirely welcome.
Good article!
It's the same toxic non-thinking that promotes the irrationality of
most religious faith, and thereby the terrible consequent behaviour.
When faith is the glorification of ignorance, that's what you get.
When is "faith" anything else?
(Unless you conflate it with "trust")
--
.
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