I don't think you know what that means.

Yes. It sucks when the previous administration makes you a billionaire. Thank you sir may I have another?

And Windows "8" should be out be the time the first installation is done.

Whoa! hold on a second. This place has a substantial dollar value attached to it. Look. I know this is an emotional moment for all of us, okay I know that. But let's not make snap judgments, this is an important issue we're dealing with, and I don't think that you or I has the right to arbitrarily vaporize the ocean. You know thrillseeker, I was hoping that you would be smarter than this.

I'm not blind to what is going on, but I can not authorize that kind of action, I'm sorry.

Are they hosting this on a netbook? Anybody got a mirror? It is number 3 on the main page now. The /. "effect" should really stop affecting it. Don't you people want to know what your spleen does?

No not really a great idea. So expect it to come out in 2011.

It is not that bad. At least they didn't change the ending to make it more dramatic.

The rescue ship arrived before the Titanic sunk. They attached the super strong ropes and was even able to keep the Titanic from sinking. Then the "bad" man cut the ropes when they were saving poor kids. Then Jake (or whatever Leonardo's name was) pulled out his sword and fought the enemy knocking him to his icy death. But he cut the last "important" rope during the fight. Jake died after saving all of the poor women and children. Only the men died.

3D Lemmings where they walk (and run) in any direction after hitting a wall. No more just erecting a wall because some will just walk around it. You would have to funnel them to the stairs or zip line. Have a way to zoom in and zoom out. That way you can zoom in when they fall off a cliff.

I am sorry I wasn't clear. When I say ignoring 80% of it I mean ignoring 80% of the columns not the rows. You still look at every row. So the exercise was to ignore the columns that did not prove something that you wanted to be proved.

Yes I was griping. I never said anything was flawed. My original point was that as mathematicians we (maybe just me) typically look at things fitting in a box based on rules. If only 4 out of 5 rules say it should be in the box it won't be because one of the rules is false. So going back to my original example the guy was "true" on 5 of 5 things so he qualified for a specific felony. If any of the 5 were not true it would have been a misdemeanor.

No it still happens in the real world. Yes the drug companies experiment. The arbitrary rules are the FDA's. The model still predicts what happens. You are just ignoring 80% of it. It doesn't prove what you are getting paid to prove. You write your paper saying it proves that it treats C. Ignoring the fact that it does not treat A, B, or D with any statistical significance. It treats C and your company will make billions. What you didn't get was that the reason that we students were "wrong" in that we missed that it treated C and only concentrated on A, B, and D. Thinking the drug was a failure. I am glad to hear all "high level" math has no set definition of rules. Obviously since I only have an undergrad degree in Math (not engineering) I missed this. My apologies.

I think you missed it too. A drug company wants to know that their drug works. So when they go to the FDA they will get approved. If you have ever seen the raw data that the drug companies give you, you would probably be surprised. They pay you to prove that their drug works and that it will stand up to FDA scrutiny. Using the data that is given to you if you can't prove it you don't get a second gig. Basically if the drug company has hired you they think they can already prove it works. The reason we got it "wrong" (notice it is in quotes) was we were given the data without anything behind it. Just that it was a drug and you will be "presenting" this to the FDA. We weren't told a lot of things about it (on purpose) and weren't allowed to ask questions. Take a stab at it. The exercise was that regardless of what we saw and thought something was there. It may not have been significant to treat A, B and D but it was significant to treat C. We should have realized that the drug company wanted success not failure, not that the drug didn't "work" for A, B, and D but to say that it was working for C. Now it has been a while and I already told you I suck at composition...

I don't get it. In your examples you are still following well defined rules. Everything you described has rules. If you can shape or bend your data to fit those rules you are golden. Make the data fit your model. That is not fuzzy.

The guy was guilty. His blood was found just outside a broken-in convenience store. No blood was tested inside the store. He was picked up after cashing in some stolen scratch off lottery tickets. He had a badly cut hand. He admitted to being at the convenience store and reaching in to grab beer from someone else handing it to him. The law said if any part of him went inside the store it was breaking and entering. With the lottery tickets it apparently became a felony. His third felony.

Almost every high level math class that involved proofs that I remember were about proving something was a something. Like is this a topography. You had definitions/rules and you proved by using those definitions/rules. The higher level probability and stat classes I remember was finagling the data (inside the stat software without changing one piece of data) to say whatever you wanted it to say. One of the profs had a set of data and we had to write a paper saying what it said. We all got it "wrong" because the company that paid him to report on those stats had an agenda. Nothing made up or fudged but that if you want to have a job doing this you have say what they want you to say. If and only if it can be proven. Even then there were well defined rules like 98% probability (or whatever that magic number was).

Flamebait? Really? 80% of my feelings are hurt.

I have a math degree. I know enough about mathematics to know that I don't think I am that good at it. Compared to my (Math) "peers" I am probably slightly above average. Compared to the rest of the world I am >99%. So by that definition I would categorize myself as Excellent. To get really good you have to study it on a daily or at least weekly basis. I am way too lazy to do anything like that.

In school we were taught that everything has a set of rules. For one set to be apart of another it has to follow these sets of rules. You do each rule/law and try and prove that it is false. Go through each rule/law and when you find ONE rule that is false you quit. The whole thing is false. It is black or white. It is not gray no matter how "black" it was? 4 out of 5 rules that are true does not equal 80% true. It == 100% false. I don't think the outside (people) follow that rule.

I served in Jury duty once for a guy that was clearly guilty. I wanted a free lunch and really wanted the day to be wasted so I didn't have to go back to work. So I convinced 2 other people that there was a chance based on one rule that the guy had a chance of being innocent. We just needed the judge to clarify one point of the law. He clarified it (after lunch break) and he was by definition guilty. I said okay by definition he is guilty lets return the verdict and go home. And one guy looked at me and said these other 2 people still think he could be innocent. I said no based on the letter of the law he is guilty. Here are the rules, they are ALL true. Based on the directions that the judge gave us by definition of the law he is guilty. They had to talk about it for 30+ more minutes. I just didn't get it. It doesn't matter how we feel or if we feel sorry for the guy. We were told these 5 "rules", if all 5 were true, by definition he is guilty. We don't make the rules. There really shoudn't be any emotion in any of this. I really didn't understand any of their protests or questions after that. (I created two monsters.) In the end we voted him guilty. And the guy probably got life (not deserved) for the 3 strikes law.

So in summary (poor to bad Composition skills BTW) laws are really not black and white to the greater public. They let emotion get involved and 80% true might be 100% true to them. Some people just ignore the pieces that are false because they want the man to be guilty. Doesn't matter what the law says. The guy is sick and deserves to rot in jail. Sadly sometimes if a guy is really "bad", 20% true is enough to convict.