Quotes of the week

Posted Nov 29, 2012 14:24 UTC (Thu) by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
In reply to: Quotes of the week by man_ls
Parent article: Quotes of the week

Bias, according to Oxford Dictionary at least, is relative to people:

"inclination or prejudice for or against one person or group, especially in a way considered to be unfair."

Certainly, chaotic systems do not prefer any particular person or group.

Quotes of the week

Posted Nov 29, 2012 18:31 UTC (Thu) by man_ls (guest, #15091) [Link] (4 responses)

Interesting. To pull it off you had to take the technical meaning of "fair" as "unbiased", and then take the common meaning of "bias" that you quote. Unfortunately this second meaning clearly refers to "unfair", so we have a circular definition.

In the wikipedia there are many other definitions of "bias", even in statistics. The sense of "a biased coin" is not obvious from any of them by the way. I am starting to see what Paul McKenney meant by his phrase, it's brilliant!

Quotes of the week

Posted Nov 29, 2012 19:05 UTC (Thu) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link] (3 responses)

My Japanese karate master told me: "The only way to treat everyone fairly, is to treat everyone differently."

Quotes of the week

Posted Nov 30, 2012 9:57 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link] (2 responses)

I would go even further: treat everyone randomly. That would be absolutely fair (it won't make you very popular, though).

(Note to mingo: this is NOT a suggestion to change CFS.)

Quotes of the week

Posted Nov 30, 2012 12:39 UTC (Fri) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link] (1 responses)

> (Note to mingo: this is NOT a suggestion to change CFS.)

That would sure be interesting to see though (except for the volumne of random numbers needed).

Quotes of the week

Posted Nov 30, 2012 23:49 UTC (Fri) by dgm (subscriber, #49227) [Link]

Well, you can always ask Kolivas. I'm sure he's crazy enough to try something like this (and actually make it run).

Quotes of the week

Posted Dec 6, 2012 9:27 UTC (Thu) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link] (1 responses)

I suggest that you check the respective breast cancer rates for females and males.

Quotes of the week

Posted Dec 6, 2012 15:16 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Even there, you're almost certainly using a "wrong" definition of bias and/or random.

Breast cancer picks on people with big breasts. Ever heard of "moobs"?

Cheers,
Wol