this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
309 points (97.8% liked)

Science Memes

16371 readers
2668 users here now

Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!

A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.



Rules

  1. Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
  2. Keep it rooted (on topic).
  3. No spam.
  4. Infographics welcome, get schooled.

This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.



Research Committee

Other Mander Communities

Science and Research

Biology and Life Sciences

Physical Sciences

Humanities and Social Sciences

Practical and Applied Sciences

Memes

Miscellaneous

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 36 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As a biochemist who is better at stats than the average biochemist (which is concerning, because I'm not that great), I greatly appreciate statisticians telling us off when we're fools.

[–] Shiggles@sh.itjust.works 19 points 1 year ago

The second most useful thing I learned from statistics courses was the statistics. The first was just how terrible most people are in their application.

[–] Zehzin@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Statistitians are good people, though I need more data points to say anything conclusively

[–] marcos@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Just to point out, but you need to make sure your data is unbiased much more than you need a lot of points.

[–] merari42@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can you at least say how your prior belief distribution has shifted or been reaffirmed given the observed data points?

[–] Zehzin@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

That would be pretty Bayesed

[–] kender242@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Trust in numbers" was an eye opening book I had to read for a university course.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691208411/trust-in-numbers

The idea that "It's difficult to get numbers to tell you the truth" despite how people tend to think hard data is not falsifiable - was my main take.

[–] undercrust@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For a really good riff on this same idea, I like "How to Lie With Statistics" by Darrell Huff, and it's all illustrated!

Great, easy to understand breakdown of how statistics can be manipulated.

I honestly think that book should be required high school reading.