mxplx

Memes in the Watson category “/science/mathematics/statistics”

1–20 of 47

Hot Red Chili Consumption Lowers Mortality

The evidence base for the health effects of spice consumption is insufficient, with only one large population-based study and no reports from Europe or North America. Our objective was to analyze the association between consumption of hot red chili peppers and mortality, using a population-based prospective cohort…

Natural Selection Resembles Bayesian Inference

The analogy is mathematically precise, and fascinating. In rough terms, it says that the process of natural selection resembles the process of Bayesian inference. A population of organisms can be thought of as having various 'hypotheses' about how to survive—each hypothesis corresponding to a different allele…

A Lack of Uncertainty Impacts Learning in Adults

Healthy aging can lead to impairments in learning that affect many laboratory and real-life tasks. These tasks often involve the acquisition of dynamic contingencies, which requires adjusting the rate of learning to environmental statistics. For example, learning rate should increase when expectations are uncertain…

Means of Quantifying Violence

Now let’s turn to the present. According to the most recent edition of the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2,448,017 Americans died in 2005. It was one of the country’s worst years for war deaths in decades, with the armed forces embroiled in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Together the two wars killed…

Quantity of Time Spent with Children has No Impact on Outcomes

Does the amount of time children spend with their mothers matter for children’s behavioral, emotional, and academic outcomes? The results from ordinary least squares regression models for the child sample are shown in Table 2. There were no statistically significant associations between maternal time of either type…

RPG as Group Exercise

A roleplaying game (or RPG, for short) is part noémprovisational theater, part storytelling, and part game. A single person (the gamemaster) runs the game for a group of players that pretend to be characters in a fictitious world. The world could be a mystery game set in the 1920s that takes you adventuring around the…

Generational Replacement Behind Growth of Secularims

One important factor behind the growth of the religiously unaffiliated is generational replacement, the gradual supplanting of older generations by newer ones. Among the youngest Millennials (those ages 18-22, who were minors in 2007 and thus not eligible to be interviewed in Pew Research Center surveys conducted that…

Genetic Drift is More Important than Natural Selection

[Motoo Kimura] has been the chief advocate of the neutral theory of evolution. The neutral theory says that, through the history of life from beginning to end, random statistical fluctuations have been more important than Darwinian selection in causing species to evolve. Evolution by random statistical fluctuation is…

Climate Forecasts vs Projections

"Projections are essential for giving us information on long-term trends, but the timescale is beyond what many policy makers (and the public) consider to be relevant to their decision-making processes. Climate forecasts seek to address this issue by providing information on a shorter term (decadal) that can be used…

Is the United States is an Oligarchy?

Each of our four theoretical traditions (Majoritarian Electoral Democracy, Economic Elite Domination, Majoritarian Interest Group Pluralism, and Biased Pluralism) emphasizes different sets of actors as critical in determining U.S. policy outcomes, and each tradition has engendered a large empirical literature that…

Defining "Uncertainty"

‘Uncertainty’ is a complex and multifaceted property, sometimes originating in a lack of information, and at other times from quite fundamental disagreements about what is known or even knowable (Moss and Schneider, 2000). Furthermore, scientists often disagree about the best or most appropriate way to characterize…

Florence Nightingale Worshiped Quantification

[Of her] Her statistics were more than a study, they were indeed her religion. For her Quetelet was the hero as scientist, and the presentation copy of his Physique sociale is annotated by her on every page. Florence Nightingale believed—and in all the actions of her life acted upon that belief—that the administrator…

Gompertz Law of human mortality

What do you think are the odds that you will die during the next year? Try to put a number to it — 1 in 100? 1 in 10,000? Whatever it is, it will be twice as large 8 years from now. This startling fact was first noticed by the British actuary Benjamin Gompertz in 1825 and is now called the “Gompertz Law of human…

Anecdote of Badges Encouraging Tutoring

When it comes to biology, Catherine Lacey is a Level 40 Hero. That's her ranking on OpenStudy, where the University of Western Australia student spends up to 30 hours per week answering homework questions posed by students around the world. The level indicates time spent on the site, and Hero is the hardest-to-attain…

Studies Link Wealth to Unethical Behavior

Studies 1 and 2. Our first two studies were naturalistic field studies, and examined whether upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals while driving. In study 1, we investigated whether upper-class drivers were more likely to cut off other vehicles at a busy four-way intersection…

1991 Definition of Primary and Secondary Information Sources

Information may be categorized into primary and secondary material. If information is new and has never been published before it research, new legislation and survey results, like government is termed primary. It includes original statistics. Primary information is always up-to-date, detailed, accurate and…