Bungee Jumper

Holy Christ, that was !@#$ing awful.

I was only kidding; you didn't actually have to indulge Holcomb's Arm's drivel. I mean, if he doesn't even know that evolutionary theory isn't about genetic variance (oooh, there's that pesky mystery word again, HA) but how the environment selects for beneficial traits, why even bother?

No, that is not what I'm doing. The main difference between his example and yours is that the words "big hairy" are not material to the main point of conjecture "spiders are a common cause of phobias in society". But when HA says "error causes regression toward the mean", the misuse of the words "error" and "regression" are material to the topic at hand. Go back and look it up. I see no need to repost it AGAIN.

Yes, I'm sure about that. He's been calling that "regression toward the mean" for the past two months, and it's not. If you're just reading this thread, you don't have the whole absurd story.

I'm framing that one. That's great...

My apologies. When you specifically said a locality was taking responsibility for upholding federal law, I thought you needed that very basic fact explained to you.

Well...no. The crux of the argument is and has been that he's specifically manufacturing a specific effect and calling it something else, and pretending it's rigorous math. That fails on three points: 1) His example is completely manufactured. 2) He's grossly misusing terminology. To the point where his premise is not correct (specifically, he's confusing two very different things - error distribution and population variance). 3) He's pretending to be mathematically rigorous without being the least bit mathematically rigorous. By way of analogy, he's pointing at a dog and calling it a cat because it happens to be a domestic pet with fur and four legs, so what's the difference? It's a semantic argument because in this case the semantics are actually important. In this case, "regression" has a specific and definite mathematical meaning - either linear regression or multiple regression, take your pick in this context. The math gives the same result either way...regression is directly related to the correllation coefficient of pairs of variables, the random error HA's talking about by definition has a correllation coefficient w/r/t measurable IQ of precisely zero (again, by definition), which means that error CANNOT cause regression toward the mean as HA keep saying. QED. Though I recommend the Oxford Dictionary of Statistics for brevity and price, any decent statistics book covers the math in enough detail that anyone with college math skills can prove it (I'd post the math myself if the board format were conducive to equations). If you're semantically rigorous, that's easy to explain. If you're a complete dunce like HA, and keep using inexact and colloquial terms like "luck", no amount of explanation is going to help. He himself is too semantically challenged to understand the concepts, which is probably why his explanation has changed precisely four times and his only proof is "Stanford said so".

"How come Buffalo gets picked on?" "It's a liberal media conspiracy."

Actually, proper message board decorum pretty much encourages it...

True, EXCEPT... "Regression" has a very specific mathematical definition (again, having to do with that pesky "variance" idea that HA can't wrap his empty little head around). In the strict mathematical definition, what HA is talking about is not regression toward the mean (unless he's talking about regression of the error toward the mean error of zero - which he's obviously not, by virture of the way he arbitrarily constructs his example). Calling his example an example of regression toward the population mean of a population is, in fact, absolute idiocy: it can't even begin to be mathematically correct, as it attributes the variance of the error distribution to the population distribution, which is mathematically complete and utter nonsense. Yes, it's a semantic argument. That's precisely because HA refuses to make it a mathematical one - he's spent a thousand posts arguing vocabulary and calling it math.

Yeah. Because Lord knows, when you've got a woman putting on a show in your living room, you don't want all your friends saying "God, that stripper pole is fugly..."

Very true. Also not my problem.

Don't see why not. He wrote half of it.

We must be old. I was brought up to think of stripper poles as strictly bedroom furniture...

She'll be 26 this February. We are talking about Paris Hilton, right?

I did answer it. Eons ago. He's just too !@#$ing dumb to look it up.

Yep Yep Yep Yep...but I had a 105 degree fever at the time, and it was June, so I don't think it counts. Of course. I've eaten three french toasts, seen four pounds of back-bacon, and even had a beer in a tree once.

Why the hell not? I tell my wife all the time "Honey, you're putting on weight." She responds with "You're pretty fat yourself, lard ass." Then we go out for pizza. Big !@#$ing deal.

Still applies to the rest of us, right? I've been wondering how long it stays at half-staff as well. Thanks for the info.

!@#$ing gorgeous shot, too. And I'd once again like to congratulate the Carolina Hurricanes for beating the Rochester Amerks in six to reach the Stanley Cup Finals last season.

It's not any locality's responsibility to enforce federal law, numbskull.

You'd probably find them funny, on the other hand, if you understood statistics.

I'm not even reading this. Shut up and do the damn math already. Here's the same hint I've been giving you for weeks: "variance".

Yes, it is. I've done it. You should too. I have answered it, several times. You're just too !@#$ing dumb to notice. Go back and look it up.