"A" quoting "B" quoting "C" and so on...
Does that invalidate the quote?
:lo l::lo l:Apparently everyone is lying.
I'm glad there is another rational, practicing scientist on this forum.
Didn't know there were any, who are they?
A couple of backwater creation scientists from Ded Reer AB.
"And I'll ask you the same thing I asked Jack. Do you know in what context that quote is derived from?"
Tonnignton, you are asking two people who only quoted a very quotable quote by a very wise person.
There is one person who could give you the answer to your question, called: Samuel Clements.
It depends how they are used. Statistical probabilities are often very accurate. That's why they can often declare a election winner after a reasonably small sampling of votes.
Statistics are as reliable as the data they're based on and the knowledge and honesty of the person creating them. Somebody once said that statistics don't lie, but liars use statistics, and that's true. Statistics is not a simple subject and most people don't have a good understanding of it, very little of it is intuitively obvious, especially when it comes to the probability component. It's actually fairly easy to produce deceptive statistics and deceptive claims based on them. A poster here, for instance, recently remarked in another thread that the suicide rate is anomalously high among homosexuals and implicitly used that statistical fact to argue that homosexuality is a corrupt and depraved lifestyle choice that leads people to depression and suicide. That's probably the most common statistical fallacy, confusing correlation with causation. Reality just isn't as simple as many people would like to think it is.
27.6% of statistics are made up on the spot.
yeah, that's the figure I was quoted and of those 44.39% didn't have a clue what they were talking about.
Exactly, contrary to being told that we should trust certain "information" because they are "statistics", but never qualifying what kind of statistics they are. For instance I've engaged in phone polling and have given answers to questions but nobody ever checked to see if I was lying about my answers and some of the answers may as well have been lies because the person conducting the poll could not speak English, so half the time I was only guessing at the gist of the question.
Ok...can you name anything which we humans have come up with to describe things that can account for every factor? Sometimes we're not interested in every factor.
No, statistics is just a tool. You don't build an entire house with a hammer, but it does come in handy for some parts of the build. Statistics is no different.
Statistics uses probability. There are some results which are so solid, that the notion that they came about by chance are so improbable as to be negligible.
If you try to make more out of the stats then they can give, then you're using them improperly.
Despite what you all might think of stats, the truth of the matter is that the progress we've made in science would have been a fraction of what we have discovered and learned if we did not use statistics when analyzing scientific results.
I think most of people's problems with stats is that they either get misinterpretations of some set of stats or else they misinterpret the set of stats by themselves. Data is simply data.
I just swished my spoon in my tea 5 times. That is a statistic. Misinterpretation would be, for instance, that I swished my fork in my tea 5 times. Or that I swished my spoon 5 times in my coffee. Or that I swirled my spoon in my tea 5 times. Ot that I swished my spoon in my cold tea.
You have to pay attention to what the details are.
You might not be interested, but I am, and if these forms of research can not give me what I think are important factors in their final conclusions or the factors on how they came to such a conclusion, then they're a complete waste of time, are about as useful as snot on bread and are only given out to the public via news reports or "Scientific Studies" to sway public opinion on a matter, either this way or that.
I think most of people's problems with stats is that they either get misinterpretations of some set of stats or else they misinterpret the set of stats by themselves. Data is simply data.
I just swished my spoon in my tea 5 times. That is a statistic. Misinterpretation would be, for instance, that I swished my fork in my tea 5 times. Or that I swished my spoon 5 times in my coffee. Or that I swirled my spoon in my tea 5 times. Ot that I swished my spoon in my cold tea.
You have to pay attention to what the details are.
Or a lot of times they look for the statistics that bear out their preconceived notions. Statistics like longevity in certain countries mean next to nothing on their own. For instance before you put too much faith in that statistic you might want to look at the one for the "reliability of keeping records" or how many of the deceased had a birth certificate. When you study the output you also have to look at how much bullsh*t is in the mix.
The most common misinterpretation is probably: you always stir your tea 5 times. Error bars (themselves a statistic) are important and often overlooked.
You might not be interested, but I am, and if these forms of research can not give me what I think are important factors in their final conclusions or the factors on how they came to such a conclusion, then they're a complete waste of time, are about as useful as snot on bread and are only given out to the public via news reports or "Scientific Studies" to sway public opinion on a matter, either this way or that.
In the above "Study" they don't exactly explain how they came to their conclusions....
• Were the studies based on a joint vs. a cigarette or piped weed vs. piped tobacco?
• How much did someone take in compared to tobacco?
It states none of these and any or all of these factors being answered can very easily tell a much different story.
Take note that the creator of this statistic is talking to the reporters that his little study is without question and an un-deniable "FACT" considering the very limited information provided.
The THC in cannabis has been shown to have a short term bronchodilator effect. This has lead to suggestions that THC may have therapeutic benefits in asthma. However, the noxious gases, chronic airway irritation or malignancy after long term use associated with smoking would seem likely to negate these benefits.
Now I'm not trying to bring this into a weed debate, as there's plenty of those already around.... my point being is how many (usually those who conducted the study) try to make Statistics out to be un-questionable facts, when in reality, they're not facts and only give a very vague and very limited answer to a much bigger situation.
You may not care about all the extra details and are just happy taking what people tell you to be the truth, so long as what you're told has the rubber stamp of approval "Statistically Proven" that's all you need.....
Don't tell me, tell buddy in my above example who seems to think his study is oh-so-holy true. I take stats for exactly what they are..... useless.
That's debatable..... it could also be easily argued that if people relied less on faulty and limited statistics, we could have progressed even further then we currently have, due to avoiding certain research or studies based on previously flawed statistical probabilities that said something was too dangerous or perfectly safe, when in reality and after the fact, that something wasn't what the statistic claimed.