[R] Inference for R Spam

[Rolf Turner]

On 6/03/2009, at 10:38 AM, Mark Difford wrote:

>
> Hi Rolf,
>
>>> ... From the beginner's point of view it is useful to think of  
>>> random
>>> variables ...
>
> Who, exactly, is the beginner ?

	The OP --- well, not the OP, but the person who introduced this
	line of discussion to this thread, by saying that sports scores
	were not/could not be statistics --- seemed to be pretty much at
	the neophyte level.

	More generally there seem to be lots of subscribers to this list
	who not sophisticated mathematical statisticians and would benefit
	more from the ``random quantity that you are going to observe'' pov
	than from the ``measurable function on a probability space'' pov.

> And was not Sir R. A. Fisher pretty arrogant
> and fractious ?

	Dunno.  Never met him! :-)

> He also was highly dismissive of Sir Richard Doll's
> conclusion that smoking caused cancer (himself being a smoker).  
> Does that
> make him a bad statistician,

	I don't ***think*** so.

> or all statisticians "bad" or arrogant ?

	I can think of at least one counter-example, that being of course
	my very good self! :-)

	What is your point, exactly?

	I asserted that in my experience physicists tend to be arrogant
	(and dismissive and condescending) in respect of statistics.
	That *is* my experience.  I haven't done a carefully designed
	survey, but.

	Many (most?) statisticians have a similar impression of the  
attitudes of
	pure mathematicians.  That is *not* my experience.

	I certainly never said that no statisticians are arrogant; some
	of them may well be.  I never met one, but. :-)

		cheers,

			Rolf Turner

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