

A world without statistics - johndcook
http://andrewgelman.com/2014/07/23/world-without-statistics/

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carlob
No, seriously there is no physics to be done without statistics. Even in
classical mechanics you need to repeat measures and then average, propagate
the error and so on.

I understand this is all some rhetorical device, but basically all of the
facts he quotes about the domains I know are wrong.

~~~
dragontamer
Indeed. NIST was right down the road from my university, and we were
constantly reminded that "universal constants" are really just statistically
measured values.

There was nothing quite "Here's the value of gravity for today:" set to 15
digits, officially from NIST. Remember people, _Gravity is a measured value_ ,
a _statistic_.

The modern transistor in electronic circuits are also measured values.
Depending on the fabrication process and other junk, every transistor on a CPU
is in fact different. A huge amount of work goes towards making every
transistor on a CPU work similarly to each other (as well as statistics to
measure the variance).

A world without statistics is a world without modern silicon computers. And I
bet you that Vacuum Tubes were similarly measured and specified thanks to
statistics.

~~~
tjgq
> "universal constants" are really just statistically measured values.

Except for the speed of light, interestingly.

~~~
resdirector
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light)

 _Its value is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second because the length of the
metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time._

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mturmon
I usually enjoy his posts a lot, but this one let me down. He didn't really
put much thought into applications of statistics. Maybe the academic
perspective is too limiting.

There are lots of non-trivial problems that depend heavily on statistics for
solutions. Some examples that come to mind --

    
    
      signal processing (optimal detectors, say for radar or modems)
      medical image reconstruction (Poisson counting statistics, regularization)
      wireless channel allocation
      source/channel coding (for all radio comms)
      gzip (and all universal source coding)
      robotics (localization, object detection)
      Kalman filters (navigation for planes, etc.)
      hidden Markov models (for audio/speech processing)
      weather prediction, data assimilation
    

I'm just getting warmed up. Weird post.

~~~
notahacker
He also missed the entire industries that work on statistics (insurance,
finance), which seems a bit like writing an article about "the world without
computers" and not referencing the internet.

The Incas ran a sophisticated and extensive civilization based on statistics
(they had a tax system and central planning functions like grain
redistribution policies) and maintained meticulous records of quantitative
data without bothering to devise a way of writing words or managing to invent
the wheel

~~~
rquantz
You could still have finance without interest. It would consist of lending
money at interest based on a subjective estimation of the debtor's ability to
repay. Like it used to be.

Insurance is harder to imagine...

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cyorir
"Science would pretty much be ok."

Here the author takes a very limited view of science. Specifically, genetics,
neuroscience, and parts of molecular biology are completely ignored in the
discussion of statistics and medicine.

Sure there is a fine line between methods which are purely statistics-based
and methods which have elements of analysis in common with statistics-based
methods, but I think the bottom line is that much of 20th century science has
depended on statistics.

Since the early days of genetics, methods used in statistics have been
important to genetics basically going back as far as Mendel. Earlier
neuroscience, especially in the 19th century, was not so much quantitative as
it was qualitative, but in the past few decades we have seen an incredible
surge in the usage of statistics in neuroscience. Statistics is also important
in molecular biology, although not all the time and not always in an obvious
way. Statistics techniques were important in learning about basic types of
molecules in the early 20th century when it wasn't clear that DNA and RNA were
the key components of genetic information storage and transmission; the events
leading to the development of biostatistics basically paved the way to Watson
and Crick's results on the structure of DNA. Likewise, such techniques have
become commonplace in chemistry in an era of computational molecular modeling.

So a world without statistics would have a very different type of science (a
world in which Karl Popper would probably not be so upbeat about the state of
scientific knowledge...).

~~~
darkxanthos
It's important to note that the author in question is one of the largest
forces pushing Bayesian Statistics forward. I'm not arguing your points but
just pointing out that it's arguably against his self interests to put
something like this out. Again, just adding the appropriate shading for those
not in the know.

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pdkl95
Statistics is not only necessary, it may be one of the _most applicable_ post-
algebra subjects in math to most people. You can probably get by without
knowing trigonometry, and can certainly get by without taking calculus, but
basically _everybody_ faces situations involving odds or risk everyday.

Unfortunately, we barely teach the subject in public education. Bad/incorrect
use of stats is incredibly widespread - even in groups usually considered
"highly educated"[1]. It's even worse once you get to the stuff that can be
very non-intuitive such as Bayes.

Because of this widespread need, we should really inset a full class on
statistics right after algebra in the high-school math schedule.

[1] [http://www.statisticsdonewrong.com/](http://www.statisticsdonewrong.com/)

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herge
I disagree with the trowaway line "And without statistics we wouldn’t have
modern quality control, so maybe we’d still be driving around in AMC Gremlins
and the like. Scary thought, but not a huge deal, I’d think."

In a world without statistics and tools for quality control, it would be
immensely expensive to produce the most basic of industrial goods.

How could I order a nut that would fix a specific bolt without them testing
each and every nut and bolt they produce? How expensive would those nuts be if
each and every one were measured individually? Or how faulty would a package
be if not enough were tested and the factory had no way to guess if their
manufacturing process was faulty?

How can I even conceive of building a car if I cannot trust (or know how much
to trust) each manufactured piece that composes it? Let alone food or
medicine? The great value of the industrial revolution was repeatable
processes that produced the same quality of material.

~~~
mzs
I get what you are saying, but I got to tour a fastener fabrication and
coating facility last year and they in fact do check every one! It was
amazing, the simplest machines would sort by size using graduated rails, old
tech, but most of the stations used high speed photography and computer vision
to validate each one.

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SonOfLilit
Science wouldn't be OK at all. Not only because he's forgetting all those
other scientific discoveries that aren't Newton's or Einstein's, and not only
because he's forgetting that there's a world of difference between a
scientific result and the work done to get there, but also because we'd have
no way to distinguish between a good scientific discovery and
[http://www.timecube.com/](http://www.timecube.com/) re-stated in numbers.

In a world similar to our own but without statistics, probably the first thing
we'd do would be to invent statistics.

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cwyers
God, I love this post so so much. "What good are statistics? At first, I
didn't think statistics were all that important. All we'd lose is most modern
improvements in automobile safety, comfort and fuel efficience, the FREAKING
TRANSISTOR, and possibly even Allied victory in World War 2. But then I
thought about it some more, and realized that statistics really are important,
not just because otherwise we'd all be driving crappy cars without modern
electronics and being governed by the Nazis, but because of how it teaches us
to look at the world!"

Thanks, guy.

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minimax
In a world without statistics you have none of the risk models that underpin
the insurance industry and the financial system. No health insurance. No car
insurance. No life insurance. No mortgages. No credit at all, really. It would
not be a very friendly place.

~~~
scottlocklin
Insurance companies and the financial system existed a long time before
statistics.

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analog31
In my view, a world without statistics would be like a world without 32.
Somebody would eventually fill the hole. Would that be a world without
probability? Without randomness? Sets?

