From: ichudov@algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home)
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 20:26:52 -0800 (PST)
To: nobody@huge.cajones.com (Huge Cajones Remailer)
Subject: Re: In Defense of Anecdotal Evidence
In-Reply-To: <199612122212.OAA27964@mailmasher.com>
Message-ID: <199612130424.WAA13835@manifold.algebra.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


Huge Cajones Remailer wrote:
> Statistics are a useful tool, but they have their problems.  Their
> accuracy is often in doubt.  Most scientific data comes with an error
> analysis so you can tell what the figure means.  For some reason
> statisticians never do this so we cannot tell whether their numbers
> are accurate to within 0.1%, 1.0%, 10%, or even worse.
> 
> There are many other problems.  For instance, users of statistics
> assume they have a random sample, even in cases where that is far from
> clear.

Wrong statistics is usually obtained by idiots who do not know
what statistics is about. 

Social scientists and feminist studies are a frequent example of such
unfortunate situation.

	- Igor.