>>> bmcewen_at_comcast.net 04/22/02 09:27AM >>>
>People with even a modicum of education and training can distinguish
the
>difference, and it does exist (between correlation and causality, I
don't
>care about the gun argument here).
>Those who cannot distinguish the difference, well it doesn't mean they
are
>correct due to their ignorance.
IF YOU have ever wondered about the chances of a Prussian cavalryman
being kicked to death by his horse or if you prefer to work out your own
life expectancy by staring at life tables, then Bart Holland's excellent
primer on probability is a great place to start. He even explains Henri
Poincar*'s technique for finding out if your baker is diddling you.
An unexpected strength of What are the Chances? is Holland's discussion
about testing hypotheses, which illustrates how probability is an
inherent part of so much scientific analysis. For example, in the Second
World War, Londoners frequently asserted that Germany was targeting its
V2 bombs because they fell in clusters, but there was no known
technology that could achieve such accuracy.
To test the targeting theory, London was divided into 576 squares.
While 440 squares suffered no hits or one hit, 35 squares received 3
hits and 8 squares received 4 or more hits. Intuitively, this feels like
targeting, but in fact the data is a very good fit to a Poisson
distribution, implying that the bombs fell randomly. Of course, the same
approach can be used to determine whether the clustering of disease or
anything else is significant or coincidence.
In a time when anecdote and panic seem to influence public policy more
than objective analysis, Holland has provided a welcome reminder of the
power of the analytical approach. Stephen Jay Gould once wrote that a
misunderstanding of probability may be the greatest of all impediments
to scientific literacy. The problem is that the people who read this
book are probably those who already to appreciate the scientific method
to some extent.
http://www.newscientist.com/opinion/opbooks.jsp?id=ns23396
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