I bet on a horse, that's gambling. I bet you can make three spades, that's entertainment. I bet cotton will go up 3 points, that's business. See the difference?

Archive for October, 2007

Einstein’s Low Impact

Monday, October 29th, 2007 Posted in Fun Stuff, Profession | 4 Comments »

This is shamelessly stolen from an amusing talk by Tom Smith last month (delivered at a meeting of associate deans of research). It concerns the RQF measurment of research impact. ... Read more..

More on Pearson and Eugenics

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007 Posted in Profession, Public Interest | 7 Comments »

This is a follow-up to the previous post about Karl Pearson's endorsement of Eugenics and Herr Hitler. The first paper published in the Annals of Eugenics was by Pearson and ... Read more..

An embarassing quote for Frequentists

Monday, October 8th, 2007 Posted in Fun Stuff | 3 Comments »

The following is a direct quote from a giant of the field: The climax culminated in Galton's preaching Eugenics and his foundation of the Eugenics Professorship. Did I say `culmination’? No, ... Read more..

ARC 2007: A debacle for statistics

Monday, October 1st, 2007 Posted in Profession | 5 Comments »

If I am reading the results of the ARC Discovery grants correctly, the profession of statistics has been absolutely decimated in this year's round of grants. I have gone through ... Read more..