Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past

bitwize 13 years ago |

In other news:

Man Crosses Atlantic by Expending Energy

Scientists Find that Virtually All Earth's Water is Wet

weareconvo 13 years ago |

I mean... where else is the data going to come from? The future?

shared4you 13 years ago | |

Exactly! This would be news if they predicted the future without data from the past.

winestock 13 years ago | | |

I forget which comedian made this joke: "I hate it when people excuse a bad picture saying that it was taken when they were younger. Every picture taken of you was taken when you were younger. 'Here's a picture of me when I was older.' Let me see that camera."

Tarential 13 years ago | | |

Mitch Hedberg :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Hedberg

alirov 13 years ago | | |

Here's a clip of that joke: http://youtu.be/u6xaj2fC1jI?t=2m38s

weareconvo 13 years ago | | |

You guys nailed it - Mitch's joke was indeed what I was thinking of when I wrote the comment.

gertef 13 years ago | | |

"I hate it when people excuse a bad picture"

You just added that part, which has nothing to do with the joke. Interesting.

winestock 13 years ago | | |

It's the way that I remember it. Memory is funny. I read that G. K. Chesterton would off-handedly quote lines which he attributed to Shakespeare even though they are nowhere found in Shakespeare, "yet they should have been."

zwegner 13 years ago | | |

Mitch Hedberg.

darkhorn 13 years ago |

By the way, if you want someone to make predictions for you from your data find a statistician, not mathematician.

kyzyl 13 years ago | |

I've yet to meet a good mathematician who didn't know more about probability and statistics than 90% of the folks who call themselves statisticians. Math is math.

This myth that math geeks can't tell you anything useful is rather irritating. Sure some of them speak very abstractly, and they might use a technique that you don't understand to draw their conclusion, by they can also save you a lot of time by identifying a fools errand early on. Proper grounding in maths not simply an academic exercise.

strangestchild 13 years ago | | |

That seems a pretty strong generalisation. A doctorate in Model Theory doesn't give you the authority to talk stats.

kyzyl 13 years ago | | |

Perhaps if one has a doctrate in model theory and has never strayed outside of the abstract algebra/group theory realm, they might not be qualified to speak on statistical problems. However, my experience has been that this is almost never the case. The mathematics people I've known have been, for the most part, extremely well versed in various forms of analysis, algebra, probability and, yes, statistics. You might be surprised how a lot of the deep mathematical concepts tie into statistical methods. There's more to it than performing t-tests.

Comments like yours are more or less exactly what I was speaking about. What makes you think that somebody with an advanced mathematics degree wouldn't know about statistics? Because it's not in the title? Go kick down the door of your local university math department and spring some statistics problems on them. You'll probably come out with the answers.

strangestchild 13 years ago | | |

Perhaps your experience has been different from mine, maybe because I'm based in the UK - I know that US education tends to be more generalised. Among my friends with or pursuing postgraduate degrees in pure mathematical disciplines, none have any particular knowledge of stats above the undergraduate level. As a master's student, I wouldn't imagine I count for much - but what I know about statistics could be written on the back of an envelope. It's something I've been meaning to remedy for a while now. It's possible that tenured professors have a wider breadth of knowledge than the average PhD - and I admit that I wouldn't know if that were the case.

As for the depth of statistics as a field, and its reliance on other disciplines - I agree entirely. I think pure mathematicians are far more likely to be ignorant of statistics than statistical mathematicians are of, for example, analysis.

aristo_mc 13 years ago | |

Or an Actuary

richardjordan 13 years ago |

Love that term "elite overproduction". Never heard it before, but it makes sense to me. It definitely seems to describe a trend we see in this country. The political class, including lobbyists, consultants, pollsters and assorted hangers on, is so bloated it can only be fed by diverting resources through corruption and stagnation in the political process. This is something libertarians tend to warn about, while getting dismissed by partisans from both sides who only see it as a problem in any way when the other team is in power.

SkyMarshal 13 years ago | |

It's not just libertarians, people from both the right and the left are equally concerned about it [1]. The problem is more systemic than partisan.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5507814

sodomizer 13 years ago |

Please alert Hari Seldon.