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Wednesday, August 11, 2004 · posted at 2:09 AM

One in a trillion.

… if everyone in the world was tossing coins eventually someone would get 5,698 heads in a row and they would think they were very special. But they wouldn’t be because there would be millions of people who didn’t get 5,698 heads.

- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon

I've taken two statistics classes, run a handful of my own research projects and sat in (cluelessly) on countless meetings to discuss p values, confidence intervals and survival analyses. I can tell you what a Type I error is (rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true) and a Type II error is (accepting the null hypothesis when it is false) but I remember the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test only as the "Vodka Test." Give me a bunch of numbers and probabilities and I will have no clue what they mean or what to do with them.

But the main thing holding me back from being a grand statistician (besides about half a pound of grey matter) is the lack of objective logical-mindedness. I can’t detach myself and look at only numbers.

In statistics, you're not supposed to get excited about an event unless it's "statistically significant," meaning that's it's not what you would expect from chance.

If you won the lottery tomorrow, would you think, "Someone had to win it and I had a 1 in 1,533,939 chance of doing so." Or would you think, "Hot damn, I’m never washing this pair of underwear again!"

So if something really unlikely happened – like, your Gucci heel happened to get caught in a manhole cover and a cab driver drops his ice cream and sideswipes a dumpster that starts careening straight for you… Can you really just write off that it's completely without higher meaning or significance? That this kind of thing happens 1 of 1,370,000 occurrences, or 9,500,000,000 occurrences, or 100^100 occurrences... and you just happen to be the 1?



	Wednesday, August 11, 2004 · posted at 2:09 AM One in a trillion. … if everyone in the world was tossing coins eventually someone would get 5,698 heads in a row and they would think they were very special. But they wouldn’t be because there would be millions of people who didn’t get 5,698 heads. - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, Mark Haddon I've taken two statistics classes, run a handful of my own research projects and sat in (cluelessly) on countless meetings to discuss p values, confidence intervals and survival analyses. I can tell you what a Type I error is (rejecting the null hypothesis when it is true) and a Type II error is (accepting the null hypothesis when it is false) but I remember the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test only as the "Vodka Test." Give me a bunch of numbers and probabilities and I will have no clue what they mean or what to do with them. But the main thing holding me back from being a grand statistician (besides about half a pound of grey matter) is the lack of objective logical-mindedness. I can’t detach myself and look at only numbers. In statistics, you're not supposed to get excited about an event unless it's "statistically significant," meaning that's it's not what you would expect from chance. If you won the lottery tomorrow, would you think, "Someone had to win it and I had a 1 in 1,533,939 chance of doing so." Or would you think, "Hot damn, I’m never washing this pair of underwear again!" So if something really unlikely happened – like, your Gucci heel happened to get caught in a manhole cover and a cab driver drops his ice cream and sideswipes a dumpster that starts careening straight for you… Can you really just write off that it's completely without higher meaning or significance? That this kind of thing happens 1 of 1,370,000 occurrences, or 9,500,000,000 occurrences, or 100^100 occurrences... and you just happen to be the 1?	Recent Posts Appalling mating practices. I can't believe the g... Left on the pedestal. Every week I peruse the Targ... Curtain call. Today was the last day of productio... You brought it upon yourself' It's come to my at... Not your Orwellian drama. The lemonade is squeeze... Action up! Making a movie is really just a lot of... Surely you jest. It's odd for me to think of paren... The one with the boobies. Galvez has a theory that... Author's note: Some programs are required to have ... Blind leading the blind. What do you do when instr... Morning news babie goose ryan bluemouse daves son dawntaught desiree diorama emily escadawg galveric high entropy invisible cube jepgato kyellow lilly mhuang mogbert nudream starfish + coffee verbivore Archives March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 January 2007 March 2007 April 2007 November 2008

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