Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | iQuercus's comments login

How do I make money? - Get lucky in a Casino.

How do I not lose money? - Don’t gamble.

How do I not not make money? - Take more risks.

A true inversion with a negative works better than the not-not structure, and it is easier to wrap your head around.


No. No correlation.


Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History - Good on a cloudy day

Methodically Processing Systems - Good for a quirky evening (I make this one)

Econtalk - Good for commuting.

BBC’s In Our Time - Good during a shower.


At the cellular level it’s a numbers game. The more enemy combatants, the sicker you will be. The more exposure to the virus, the more viruses you’ll have in your body, the more intense the symptoms.

Hospitals don’t have great access to fresh flowing outside air. So as they fill up with infected people the air just becomes a cesspool of virus.


It’s a good recipe for making a lot of estimation errors. Worse, it will leave you feeling more confident than you should be. Then, when you least expect it, it’ll blow up in your face.


It also sounds a bit like real life parody to me. How to find out employee morale?

Well, you need to hire some statistical experts, who model everything and than give you an estimate and if they got the callibration right, the result might be even close to reality.

Definitely easier than the other solution. Like talk to your employees once in a while and have a culture where they are not afraid to speak up if something is bothering them.

Ah no, too complicated. Back to math. That works better when dealing with those irrational emotional humans.


Unfortunately this only works with a small set of workers, in a physical location. If you have 500+ employees, some remote, spanning different countries/cultures, it's not easy to tell how "company morale" is. You can try to send out anonymous surveys and such, but then you run into reporting bias, etc. It's a complicated problem at scale.


What about both though? Or something similar but different, what is better between talking to users or looking at data points? What about both?


True somewhat. That is what bothered me with this book. While the importance of Statistical Models is undeniable, i am not sure whether they are applicable everywhere. Nature has endowed us with certain heuristic decision making models (see the works of Gary Klein on RPDM) and many a time one can decide based on "gut feelings" (see the works of Gerd Gigerenzer).


I worked at a clueless large company, but even they knew morale was bad, thus me being placed on the morale comititee. Our one meeting we decided it was difficult to improve morale, but after some discussion we did end up with an ice cream social..


The morale thing was just an example to help illustrate the principle...


I know. And my point was, that you can take the statistic too far, especially when dealing with humans. And this is happening in my opinion since a while. Even Stalin said: "the death of one man is a tragedy, but the death of millions just statistic." And by his actions, they were just statistic to him.

Humans are more than a number ... but when you are at a desk remote and only have numbers, than you are disconnected and it is much easier to make inhuman decisions as you are dealing with numbers and not humans anymore.

So that being said, yes, having the numbers additional that signal a decline in morale for example, is probably not a bad thing to have. If this does not replace actual human contact, because human moral also drops, when they not feel treated as humans anymore and just as numbers.


So that being said, yes, having the numbers additional that signal a decline in morale for example, is probably not a bad thing to have. If this does not replace actual human contact, because human moral also drops, when they not feel treated as humans anymore and just as numbers.

Agreed. And this is true of every tool... it has a place, and when used properly it can be of benefit. But it can also be misused in a way that is harmful or destructive.


There is merit to what you say, but that's the reason you have to have actual domain experts working on building the model, and why the calibration training matters.

That said:

"All models are wrong, but some are useful"


One of the important points made in the book was that one should always be thinking of a range of values, not a single value. This ensures whatever model you use will capture the uncertainty that is inherent in any measurement.


Exactly! This book has to be read with Nassim Taleb's books for a healthy dose of skepticism.


Even though I am a fan of Hubbard's work, I would agree with this to a point. I am also a big fan of Taleb's work, and I do believe that a healthy measure of skepticism in all things is a Good Idea™.


[flagged]


Please edit this to be less disparaging. I agree with your complaint, it's just presented in a mean spirited way. From the guidelines,

> Be kind. Don't be snarky.


fair enough, I was being more flip than the parent comment warranted.

embarrasingly, I can't seem to figure out how to edit a comment so leaving this here:

OP: I am sorry for harshing ya. I shouldn't be so dang cranky. cheers.

* Edit: I guess I waited too long and the edit button is gone now.


This sounds more like diet marketing. People have such varying success with different diets that one set of foods simply cannot fit all.

Exercise is a different story. The most likely to bring about the improvements you describe.


It's hard to believe you made such a comment without including more doubts in your claim. I will leave one link, I hope it changes your mind and people mind if they agree with your comment. But there's more science supporting that a good nutrition help the brain: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/nutritional-psychiatry-y...


Put down the books and websites and articles. Write music.


I've done it this way for the whole 15+ years I've been playing and producing music. The problem is, I learned by ear (which seems to be a valued skill), but I can't for the life of me tell you which chord I just played or communicate effectively with more classically trained musicians.

This has led me to start learning music theory myself, as there is definitely value in the 'by-the-book' method as well. I believe the combination of both by-ear, and by-theory can increase the possibilities of composition. However I have also seen classically trained musicians not willing to step outside of the box because of the classical music theory mindset, too.


I think it’s better to know it in your bones and then go back and formalize it with theory and terminology.


What does his personality have to do with what he is arguing? Is he using “bad statistical” arguments or not?


Shameless plug, I made a short podcast episode about this, from a systems perspective. It looks at what it takes to clean your teeth...and how systems have a tendency to spiral out this way. It’s a feature of problem solving systems: they generate new/different problems that need to be solved, and therefore propagate the system into something like global collaboration.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-0-cleaning-your-...


It's easy to analyze in a frictionless vacuum.


Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: