The Glade 4.0

Sorry I missed this completely, not sure how I managed that.

Ok so I disagree. USA Today is obligated to provide salient information on who their sources are when they get their opinion. So you'll see "Union President whoever says...", "Cato institute analyst says...", "Spokesperson whatever says..." etc. All USA Today is claiming is that is each individuals position, and telling you who they are so you can base your perception of the comment.

When they report that President Barack Obama says this budget will be deficit neutral, they are not saying "We, USA today, have investigated the budget and find it to be deficit neutral" unless they are doing a fact check. They are not arbiters of the issue they simply present the facts and different sides of the story, supposedly. They report, you decide! =p

How often do you see contradicting information in a news article? i.e. Union rep says x, politician says y. They are at odds, so clearly both are not "right".

Now, if DFK wants to say "well she's wrong", then it's just a he said she said thing. So I agree with you when you say you cant discount it completely. But it's not USA today verifying it.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

I lol'd. And I only have one and he is still little. =p

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

It's not your ethics, I believe you have a bias blind spot. You give the evidence right here.

You apparently assume a bias in favor of statistics. Someone reporting information from the table of data in the article is not more accurate than the spokesperson reporting for an organization. Someone believing that has a cognitive bias, in this case, a belief bias.

The people that took the information and compiled it into the table of data managed by the US Department of Labor used as a basis of the report aren't inherently more accurate or more authoritative than the generalization from the spokesperson for the US Office of Personnel Management. It merely demonstrates two different facts where one has a greater degree of precision than the other.

There is no inherent difference in the accuracy of verbal evidence compared to statistical analysis. Any belief that there is indicates a cognitive bias.Exactly, and the article then can't be evidence that one position carries a greater degree of truth than the other. Advocates of X can't say "I'm right, here's proof, and Y is wrong because it's a politician saying it". The article doesn't support that conclusion at all. All the article is doing is reporting 2 different positions, point and counterpoint.

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In time, this too shall pass.

No.

Googles for "hierarchy of evidence"

http://www.shef.ac.uk/scharr/ir/units/s ... rarchy.htm

http://cys.bvsalud.org/lildbi/docsonline/5/9/195-52.pdf

http://www.statemaster.com/encyclopedia ... f-evidence

http://www.us.oup.com/us/companion.webs ... /?view=usa

There's literally millions more citations I could bring.


Now, if you want to argue that the science of medicine, epidemiology, biology, psychology, and public health cannot or shouldn't be extended to labor study, that's fine, but that is a separate argument.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

There is no inherent difference in accuracy, however, when bias is taken into account (such as when a "spokesperson" is making unsubstantiated statements vs. statistical analysis), both the fact that it is unsubstantiated and that it comes from a person with a vested interest denigrate the "evidence" to the point that its accuracy can be called into question.

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"Dress cops up as soldiers, give them military equipment, train them in military tactics, tell them they’re fighting a ‘war,’ and the consequences are predictable." —Radley Balko

You continue to mistake verbal evidence with anecdotal evidence.

For instance,

Which is more accurate - i.e. has a higher degree of precision?

π = 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288...

π = the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter

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In time, this too shall pass.

Without a published methodology, claims of "statistical analysis" are equally unsubstantiated.

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In time, this too shall pass.

They are equally accurate, the former is more precise.

Accuracy and precision are not synonyms.


But fine, let's classify the government spokesperson as an "expert." "Expert opinion" is still lower on the hierarchy than retrospective statistical analysis. It is, in fact, only the next step above "anecdote."

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

Except that they did state the methodology, and no.

The claim of "statistical analysis" is not unsubstantiated if you analyzed statistics..

Perhaps you meant to say invalidated?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I rest my case.

"π = 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288..." is an approximation.

"π = the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter" is an EXACT value. Exact to an infinite precision.

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In time, this too shall pass.

You rest your case on me being correct? Should I take that as a retraction of your insult?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

But you're not correct. You've just demonstrated your cognitive bias.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Your dot dot dot at the end of pi indicates that it's going to keep going until it ends. If that hadn't been there, DFK would be incorrect.

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Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

That's irrelevant. No decimal representation of that constant will ever be equal - it's an irrational number.

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In time, this too shall pass.

But the ellipsis indicates it's not a decimal approximation, but rather an infinitely precise decimal representation.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

/em shakes his head and laughs at all of you.

I'm gonna back out since I'm not sure if I'm following the argument correctly here but this was an interesting point and made me think. I agree with you here if I understand you right. So in this example we have, as a fact, that public sector employees make more on average than the private sector counterparts. You're not denying that, as I understand it, or saying that's equal to whomever giving an unsupported opinion. You're saying any interpretation of that fact is equal. Right? So your position is yeah they make more on average but they do harder work or have more experience or whatever the argument is, and that's as valid as saying they make more just because they work for the government.

Anyway this is going on for a while now so maybe I shoulda just let it die down but wanted to mention at least that bit.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrational_number
You can only approximate π with a decimal number. Look at my question again.

The beauty of numbers is that the rules aren't arbitrary.

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In time, this too shall pass.

But the ellipsis isn't a decimal number. Adding it into the representation makes it no longer a decimal approximation, it makes it a precise and accurate representation of what you cannot fully write down.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

How? By providing evidence of your incorrect stance?

Bare assertion fallacy does not a point make. Furthermore, you've failed to demonstrate why we should ignore the hierarchy of evidence. As such, it stands, and you're wrong.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That's irrelevant. First, an irrational number can only be approximated by a decimal number. Second, the ellipsis just signifies continuation, not precision, and it doesn't change a decimal number into something capable of making a magical mystery tour of infinite precision...and that, my friend, is where π lives.

If you would like to assert that an ellipsis provides "a precise and accurate representation of what you cannot fully write down" I'd enjoy reading any information you could provide on the subject.

I don't dispute any fact presented in the article, I accept all of them as the truth.

My position is really simple. 2 groups. Group A makes more than group B. Group A is comprised of government workers, group B is comprised of public sector workers.

Now, if the facts ended there, it would be cut and dried, nothing to see, move along. However, there was an additional fact in the article… Group A is also older and more experienced.

Now, does group A make more money because they are government workers or does it make more money because the people in it are older and more experienced?

There's no statistical information in the article that resolves that conundrum. It's just not there. However, there is verbal evidence that they make more because.. well, that's in the article.

So, some have gone to great lengths to try to disqualify the fact that group A is older and more experienced by discrediting it as "anecdotal", that something verbally presented by the spokesperson for the US Office of Personnel Management is inherently less accurate than the statistical analysis that resulted in the identification of group A as government workers…which just boggles my mind because nobody is disputing statistical evidence.

I think it's bias. At least, that's the kindest reason one can have for preferring a table of data over the word of an official spokesperson. A table of data has the ability to be true or false. An official spokesperson has the ability to communicate a truth or a falsehood. Neither method of communicating truth is inherently more accurate than the other. In fact, the evidence doesn't conflict with the premise that government workers get paid more, it just conflicts with the conclusion that they get paid more because they're government workers... and there isn't enough information to support that conclusion.

For whatever reason some think because a table of figures says group A makes more money because it's STATISTICAL … and the fact that the group is said to be comprised of older, more experienced people is irrelevant, because the… well, I have to admit, I get a little lost there. Something to do with rhetorical, but I don't think the word means what he thinks it means. DFK! just wants that whole piece of evidence thrown out. However, it's got just as much weight as any other bit of evidence the article introduces, and them's the facts, Jack.

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In time, this too shall pass.

But by continuing ad infinitum, it achieves precision. That's the whole point.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Nothing to argue with there, but it never equals π, just approximates it to however decimal places you care to include. "π = the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter" is EXACT - it has an infinite amount of precision. Numbers (other than "π") will never express it exactly. Ever. Never. To a bajillion times infinity never ever. No matter how many ...'s you add.

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In time, this too shall pass.

No, it doesn't.

Neither anecdotal evidence nor expert opinion are as valid as statistical analysis. Don't get mad at me because you either hadn't heard of, disagree with, or don't believe in the extension of the hierarchy of evidence to labor studies.

Again, if you don't like it or don't think it should be used in this case, demonstrate that; but stop indicating that it is my personal "cognitive bias," and thus attempting to insinuate malicious disregard for a fact, when I'm merely following the generally-accepted hierarchy.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

What generally accepted hierarchy?

And while you're at it, show how the "generally-accepted hierarchy" is used - the statistics from the BLS don't disagree with the statement from the Office of Personnel Management. The two aren't in conflict.

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In time, this too shall pass.