QOTD: Phantom Eddition

Today’s quote is from an anonymous commenter over at a website I refuse to link.

Still the quote is a great one:

Sadly, you will always consider this a con job until you develop the Excel skills to understand Linoge, the statitician skills to understand Joe, and the open mind to consider that cherry-picked data that supports your notion is worth less than a larger set of data that doesn’t support it.

The bottom line is the vast majority of the anti-gun forces are deeply dishonest and unethical people, and they know it. Hence why they are hell bent to move goal posts and make US play THEIR game.

Sorry I play the same games in politics, and my life, as I do in Science. Data is king, confidence levels must be scrutinized, and largest data sets are king, but still must be scrutinized for bias or error.

BTW the Data he’s talking about is Linoge’s great graphic have a look, and please, try to find fault in it. Its a lot of hard work, and I think he did about as good a job as anybody could.

Even making estimates conservative for very narrow confidence intervals, the data is pretty clear, and I switched from anti-gun to pro-gun, and remain there.

The fact that time-after-time the anti-gun forces only seem to turn to statistics when they can use small cherry-picked data-sets, and later turn to emotional appeal devoid of facts, my confidence intervals that I will live the rest of my life pro-gun grow larger and larger.

BTW Anonymous person, if you want to identify yourself you are welcome to do it openly in the comments, or privately at my listed email in the above “about” page. weerdbeard gmail com.

Great quote!

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0 Responses to QOTD: Phantom Eddition

  1. Linoge says:

    The sad thing? You need precisely zero Excel skills to understand what I put online – in fact, I went out of my way to provide pretty diagrams for those folks who do not want to waste hours digging through the raw numbers, and then explain, in relatively plain language, exactly what I was doing and how I got there. I am fairly certain most high schoolers would be able to figure out what I said.

    As Heinlein said, “Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.” I am not so sure about that last part when it comes to Sparky, though… he seems to delight in making messes in other people’s houses.

  2. Dixie says:

    “At best he is a tolerable subhuman…”

    Translation– Homo domesticus. (chuckle)

    • Weerd Beard says:

      You win the internet, Dixie!!!

      • Dixie says:

        Heh. I did a whole post on that subject.

        I’ve become certain that humans have begun evolving on divergent paths. I’ve seen too many people who have no light in their eyes, no curiosity, no drive to explore or imagine. That’s not the species I belong to… my species went to the Moon, sends probes to the farthest parts of the system, and does things just because they haven’t been done.

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