

Chris Anderson: Aware of All Statistical Traditions - nickb
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/581.html

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apathy
This is a nice, succinct condemnation of the same idiocy that motivates people
to pick up a book on "agent-driven swarm learning systems" instead of
understanding how to maximize a posteriori the probability of an observed data
set and apply the results to an incoming stream like it.

(Example kiped from <http://www.autonlab.org/tutorials/mle.html> ; Andrew
Moore is a hero)

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andreyf
Wired (Conde Nast) is in the eyeball business: they sell eyeballs to
advertisers. The real surprise is why anyone expects them to publish something
other than SciFi hand waving which appeals to the "arithmetic mode" of
consumers.

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jobeirne
This may not be the proper place to express this, but does anyone else find
excessive linking in an article obnoxious? Can't they just quote and then cite
at the end? Why do I need 9 tabs open to fully enjoy a short article?

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Tichy
However, the human brain seems to do just fine without scientific theories.

~~~
dmm
Remember though that the human brain came to exist through the processes of
random mutation and natural selection.

You _could_ make an airplane by taking a car, making random changes and
selecting those that fly the best, but I doubt anyone would have the patience
to be successful at this method. You'd probably be better off hiring some
engineers.

~~~
ntoshev
Are you saying that the more complex the system, the better chance it has to
be designed by an intelligent designer versus evolution? ;)

Edit: The whole point in evolution is that the process is automatic. As for
why the human brain may just use Bayesian statistics, see
<http://videolectures.net/icml07_tenenbaum_bmhi/>

~~~
apathy
_the human brain may just use Bayesian statistics_

The art in using Bayesian statistics is properly choosing and weighting
priors, which might explain (assuming your theory is correct) why some people
consistently make better decisions than others.

Note also that computers are good at doing stupid things fast, while people
are better at doing complex things slowly. Use the right tool for the job.

~~~
ntoshev
_computers are good at doing stupid things fast, while people are better at
doing complex things slowly_

It's a good rule of thumb, reflecting our current ability to use computers.
I'm looking at the problem from scientific perspective, not trying to get
things done.

 _why some people consistently make better decisions than others_

You don't have to look that deep to explain this. These people should just
have better understanding of the domain. I don't think there are data saying
some people are consistently better than others across domains. If such data
exist ( _wink_ ), you could say they have better modeling of the world in
general.

