Status Updates From How Not to Be Wrong: The Po...

DNF

Läste den inte helt klart, men nästan. Handlar om matematik och statistik (iaf sannolikhetslära). Fick den i present av doktorand som jag varit biträdande handledare åt. Väldigt bra, men för lik saker som jag läser på jobbet så därför har den blivit liggande och outläst.

Taking a break

Bill Gates said it was good.

Just finished the part about democracy- he should have talked about the Arrow impossibility theorem, how dictatorship is an inevitability.

I’m very confused as to what the point the statistician complaining about mediocrity in business is going on about. Low profits are actually the hallmark of a competitive, efficient market. Free entry apparently pushes down successful businesses but no one ever explains how. This is nonsensical

The criticism of Bayesianism is valid, that given “unknown unknowns” we tend to short circuit. However, I think Superforecasting by Tetlock gives perfect examples of people who CAN apply numbers to things without known probabilities. He only ever uses a contrived lab experiment to show people don’t always think that way.

The author misses a very opportune time to talk about p-hacking; instead they simply claim we think statistical significance to be too important

101

56

36

25

The

Much better than freakonomics. No math, beyond basic arithmetic, needed so far. A delight.

Good and pimply written book you might find useful. 14019659996

Listening to this as an audiobook was not the wisest choice I've made.

I thought this would be a more fun read than it was, at least for me. Math types would dig this. While the author peppered the lessons with humor, it definitely traveled in the weeds mathematically and lost me.

With all that said, I like and understood the larger context and message he conveyed. So, 50/50 on the book overall.

Dude’s an entertaining writer.

17

The book started out very strong, but has quickly become a drag with multiple chapters devoted to similar (basic) concepts, with the author devoting a sizeable portion of the chapters to rant about the current state of education.

Actually extremely good so far

"Survivorship Bias"

couple weeks ago I was trying to describe to a friend one of the most beautiful principles I learned in medicine: which basically is that sometimes the data that you're not seeing, is ultimatly the answer.

I didn't know that it had a name.. and that it had a beautiful story behind it "Abraham Wald and the missing bullet holes"!

this is only the introduction and I'm captivated!

Great book explaining statistical concepts in layman terms and interesting real life examples. You can skip some of the chapters as they're a bit oversimplified - like explaining standard deviation & variance without actually using those terms. This is a springboard to dive deeper into the subject.

Chapter 7: having a clue about probability of the improbable aka When should we be surprised?

Chapter 6: the improbable is actually very probable.

So far, this is as much a class on sanity-checking statistics in the news as it is aboit math. Ch 4 & 5 focus on proportions and how terribly misleading they can be when used to calculate an accurately computed answer to the wrong questions altogether.

"I blame word problems." (p 84) Me, too, Jordan!

I'm enjoying this guy's tone. Chapter Three, "Everyone is Obese," walks is through the perils of misapplying linear regression and includes quoting Mark Twain at length, plus a footnote about Orson Scott Card.

I keep laughing while reading this and the other humans in my domicile are giving me the side-eye.

I actually laughed out loud on page 22 of this mathy book, which feels like a pretty good sign.