From: osan@cbnewsb.cb.att.com (Mr. X)
Subject: Re: Oh No!  NSW homicides again
Organization: Twilight Zone
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 19:51:00 GMT

In article <LAMBERT.93Jan5225702@henna.spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au> lambert@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Tim Lambert) writes:
>>>>>> On Mon, 4 Jan 1993 18:49:27 GMT, cescript@mtu.edu (Charles Scripter) said:
>> (Tim Lambert) writes:
>>> (Charles Scripter) said:
>>> > Absolutely correct, Tim.  I'm really surprised that it took an "expert
>>> > in statistics" such as yourself **2 MONTHS** to figure this out.  The
>>> > SQRT(N) argument is valid for *unnormalized* data...  Yes, I knew it
>>> > was incorrect at the time I posted it; I posted it as an "exercise for
>>> > the student".  You didn't fare very well... 
>
>>> And at the time I pointed that your numbers were wrong.  And when you
>>> claimed that the homicide rate was Poisson I pointed out that was
>>> wrong too.  What's this two months nonsense?
>
>> Two months comes from that fact that I posted this "idea" back before
>> the end of October and your response (with much prodding) came on:
>> <LAMBERT.92Dec18025613@nankeen.spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au> = December 18th.
>> Very nearly 2 months, Tim...
>
>The two month delay occured between your posting of incorrect numbers
>for the deviations, and between your incorrect argument that homicide
>rates were Poisson distributed.  Your "I got it wrong on purpose"
>claim did follow quite quickly, though.

	Just to keep things straight here, just a bit (and I wish to have
	no further involvement with this thread, thank you very much) I
	received this from Charles on the date shown:

From uucp Sun Nov 15 22:21 EST 1992
	      ^^^^^^
>From uucp Mon Nov 16 03:20:24 GMT 1992 remote from attmail
>From att!phy.mtu.edu!cescript Sun Nov 15 22:13:55 EST 1992 remote from attbl
Message-Version: 2
>To: somerset!avs
Date: Sun Nov 15 22:13:55 EST 1992

	[cut, slash, hack...]

Hi Andy,

   Forgot to say "hi" when I got back, and now I'm about to head out
of town again...  Deer season has started...  

	[cut, slash, hack again...]

A question for you...  I posted a counter-example to Lambert's
statistics model about gun control.  Did he ever respond to it?  I
posted that as an exercise for the student, if he didn't respond, then
I assume he accepts my model as equally valid to his.  The real point
of my model was it provided an example of how stats can be used to lie
(people often use bogus statistics to change public opinion), it was a
counter-example to his, and it was _incorrect_.  If he didn't point
out that my "model" was incorrect, and state what was wrong with it,
he obviously doesn'y understand statistics.  He should have
immediately noticed that sqrt(N) for error bars on the system he was
studying is only true if N is the un-normalized data...  ;-)  With a
large sample size, the relative noise in the statistics decreases, so
the error bars would have been smaller than those I used... 

I just curious how completely incompetent Lambert is in statistics...

--Charles

	Just thought this would fan the flames a bit, as it came to me
	on November 15.

	Have fun clawing each others' eyes out!

	-Andy V.

Newsgroups: talk.politics.guns