twstws

9 ms·

1.
by twstws 13y ago
The example was a little clunky, but I don't find it misleading. A biplot of two normalized variables is elliptical, if the variables are correlated. This particular hand-drawn example does indeed look a bit weird, but that doesn'
2.
by twstws 13y ago
It's not dimensionally invalid if you remove the dimensions via normalization.
3.
by twstws 13y ago
Each variable is standardized to mean = 0, standard deviation =1. If you reject this as arbitrary, you are rejecting correlation analysis as a whole - this is exactly the same standardization done to two variables in bivariate correlation,
4.
by twstws 13y ago
In most cases each variable is standardized to put them all on a comparable scale.
5.
by twstws 13y ago
> we can't determine if a computed result is actually a sought result or its reflection/negative That's not how I'd explain it. The 'sought result' and its reflection are not two different things. They are t
6.
by twstws 13y ago
Good point. I do think the frequency of cases where the only option is private fund raising is much reduced under public systems.
7.
by twstws 13y ago
I suspect it is because those with the means to move are generally doing well enough to avoid the failings of the US system.
8.
by twstws 13y ago
I can't understand how Americans, who have the least efficient, most expensive health care system in the world, are so quick to write off public healthcare. The idea that government healthcare is more wasteful than a private system is
9.
by twstws 13y ago
Except for the US, most of the developed world does, via public health care. It's not perfect, but better than the alternative.
10.
by twstws 13y ago
This is truly a wonderful story. But it makes you wonder how many others in a similar situation weren't so fortunate. I lived in the US for two years, and I never understood the aversion to government healthcare. The Canadian system is
11.
by twstws 13y ago
I expect quinoa will be selected for environmental tolerance first. Given how difficult it is to grow in th US, top priority would be getting consistent high yield in North American conditions. Breeding has to meet the farmer's needs b
12.
by twstws 13y ago
True, to a point. Debunking one of these in a class is a good exercise. Preparing a lesson takes time, though, especially when you have to respond to something out of the blue. You could easily get caught spending all your limited spare tim
13.
by twstws 13y ago
This bothers me as a former professor, because these fringe ideas undermine teaching and waste time. Imagine trying to present a lesson on evolution, and one of your students brings this up. You spend a few minutes discussing it. Of course,
14.
by twstws 13y ago
He makes the argument on his website: http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins.html#at_pco=cfd-... 1 people think hybrids are sterile, but they're not 2 people think hybrids don't occur in nature, but they do 3
15.
by twstws 13y ago
This. The author makes the absurd claim that because many hybrids are fertile, any hybrid could be fertile. Using hybridization between two closely related birds to support the notion that pigs and apes could breed is ridiculous.
16.
by twstws 13y ago
The thing I find most depressing about these crackpots is that some otherwise productive scientist has to spend an evening debunking their nonsense. And it still doesn't stop. I taught evolution for undergrads, and occasionally had to
17.
by twstws 13y ago
This is silly. Debian also provides rolling releases, testing and unstable. The release cycle is slow only if you ignore the constant development of Debian Sid.
18.
by twstws 14y ago
This was hard for me to read. I spent four years waiting to adopt a child.Did almost a year of training and home visits, then waited. And waited. Why does it take so long? Because we selfishly insisted that we'd only take one ortwo children
19.
by twstws 14y ago
> There's no such thing these days as a real musician, Dave was part of a dying breed of people who got into music because they love what they do, not because they want to be famous or rich like modern day musicians. I think that says m
20.
by twstws 14y ago
I don't know what this has to do with bayes vs frequentist. I am not arguing that the data do not have a probabilty distribution. I am arguing that it is better to show all the data when possible, rather than an eye-catching but lossy summa
21.
by twstws 14y ago
I think the default should be the method that displays the most information. Why hide information if you don't have to? In the case of one dimensional data, a dotplot shows the reader everything. Using a boxplot reduces information content,
22.
by twstws 14y ago
> The difference between deep red and orange is a lot bigger than the difference between dark blue and slightly less dark blue. That may be true, but is it better? Does the scatterplot underemphasize differen densities, or does the dens
23.
by twstws 14y ago
If your data can be displayed without points overlapping, a scatterplot can display all the information, while a density plot will always display only a summary of the data. The larger your grid size, the greater the loss of information.
24.
by twstws 14y ago
The superiority of your hexbin follows from setting the density too high for the scatter plot. With points this dense, opacity of 5 or lower is necessary to see the uneven distribution along the x axis. With appropriate opacity, the two plo
25.
by twstws 15y ago
1 paren moved and all line breaks and indentation removed. This is intentionally obfuscated. Is there any language that is easy to read when you put five lines of code together like This? I haven't read a lisp style guide, Emacs just ta
26.
by twstws 15y ago
There is an important distinction between not trusting someone without non-academic experience, and not trusting someone with too much academic experience . I agree with the first, but was refuting the second. In my experience, as someon
27.
by twstws 15y ago
This attitude is frustrating and sadly widespread. Basically, you're saying that you can trust someone with some scientific training, but only up to an arbitrary limit. You assume this is a zero sum game, that it is impossible to learn a lo
28.
by twstws 15y ago
You have misunderstood. The current situation has Sony shipping devices running several/many different programs with GPL licenses. They don't want to provide their modified source code for these programs to their users, in violation of the
29.
by twstws 15y ago
It sounds lame, but it in no way reflects reality, so i don't understand what your point is. Under the current system, the recently deceased authors book would earn royalties for his estate for 75 years. Grand children he's never met will b
30.
by twstws 15y ago
> In your system where copyright dies with the author, the interests of others who might invest in a project or stand to gain from it (like a creator's children) are not looked after. This is the problem, I think. If a product requires

More ›