Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect"

On 12 Dec 2010 at 0:46, Nicholas Thompson wrote: > At least until recently, when the NY-er writes about science, they try very > hard not to write anything stupid. What??? Have you forgotten the whole disgraceful Paul Brodeur episode? Refresh your memory by reading

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect"

The NYer can be obtuse about scientific topics, but this article intrigued me. Is the decline effect real? It's certainly the case that many medical practitioners follow outdated advice. And the use of statistics in medicine (to be sure, a special subset of science) can be awkward. I keep a

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect" and the RTQ method

Nick, et al., I kept flirting with the idea of writing an article for the Journal of Irreproducible Results about the RTQ method of improving test scores for underachieving students. RTQ stands for Re-Test Quickly. The method is well proven. To try it: 1) Create a set of matched multiple choice tes

[FRIAM] Can America change?

One problem I find interesting is the combination of civilization and barbarism. How do the best and the worst of a culture fit together: * Goethe and Buchenwald in Germany * Konfuzius and the live burial of scholars in ancient China * Francis of Assisi and inquisition in the Christian church

[FRIAM] Fwd: The Antikythera Mechanism | Science | guardian.co.uk

Passed on to me by a friend. Absolutely amazing Greek Computer! http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2010/dec/10/1 The first video is quite short, just over 2 minutes and shows how the Lego version works. The second two videos show the longer historical mystery. Nifty use

Re: [FRIAM] Dissertation Browser | Stanford

Not a very good display since it starts with the traditional silos. Another reference is some work my MS student Brian Wylie did at Sandia as part of his thesis. See http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asi.10066/abstract Ed __ Ed Angel Chair, Board of Directors, Santa Fe Comple

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect" and the RTQ method

On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 7:24 AM, ERIC P. CHARLES wrote: [ ... ] > On a more serious note (and the previous part was fairly serious already): > Given that half the "major discoveries" promoted in psychology are assuredly > garbage, how does this surprise you? Are you a "hard-science" snob, and onl

Re: [FRIAM] Can America change?

A bit confusing laid out this way - Goethe and Buchenwald were very different times, over a century apart, despite location. As St. Francis and the more famous inquisitions (the inqusitions near his time I don't think were directly related). The Franciscans were allowed to stay after the Crusade

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect"

... and this is why probability and statistics should be a compulsory class for *everyone* who goes through our education system :-) -- R On Sun, Dec 12, 2010 at 5:38 AM, Pamela McCorduck wrote: > The NYer can be obtuse about scientific topics, but this article intrigued > me. Is the decline ef

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect"

Pamela, What an odd question... Don't you know that your initial chances of getting THAT type of cancer are less than 20% from the start?!? If you can find just one thing to lower your changes by twenty percent, that puts you into the negative probability range, and you can worry about other thin

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect"

Funny how everybody criticizes the question but nobody answers it? From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of ERIC P. CHARLES Sent: Sunday, December 12, 2010 7:57 PM To: friam Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect" Pamela, What an odd question...

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect"

Doesn’t saying that you will reduce your risk of getting cancer of the X by 20% by doing thus-and-so mean that you reduce the risk, for example, from 1% to 0.8% ? And to answer Pamela’s question, I think the only way to be sure you won’t get cancer is to die of something else first. Fran

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect"

Nick - There seem to me to be some good parts, and some not so good parts, to the article. Back when I used to teach "Science, Technology, and Human Values" I had my students read this article from Science (about salt and diet, and science, and public policy): http://www.junkscience

Re: [FRIAM] The "decline effect"

... and (building on Frank's case) if you to something else to reduce it by another 20% your overall risk goes to 0.64% and so on. It can never go to 0% how ever hard you try, but as Frank says your chance of dying of something else first might be much greater (e.g. in a car wreck). Robert C