Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Die Statistics Die


There's been plenty of thrashing-about of late over the proper use of statistics in research and mathematical thinking, and interestingly toward the end of John Brockman's 2015 volume, "This Idea Must Die" (his yearly compendium of responses to an annual Edge question) several writers suggest statistical notions that are "ready for retirement":

Victoria Stodden on "Reproducibility":  https://edge.org/response-detail/25340

Emanuel Derman on "The Power of Statistics":  https://edge.org/response-detail/25349

Charles Seife on "Statistical Significance":  https://edge.org/response-detail/25414 

Gerd Gigerenzer on "Scientific Inference via Statistical Rituals":   
https://edge.org/response-detail/25462 

and perhaps my favorite:
Bart Kosko on "Statistical Independence":  https://edge.org/response-detail/25492

(For some reason Nassim Taleb's essay on "Standard Deviation" is missing from the online version of the volume, though included in the hard copy???)

The entire volume is an interesting read, with a wide range of opinions; most of which are included online below (including some other math-related essays as well):

https://edge.org/contributors/what-scientific-idea-is-ready-for-retirement



No comments: