Taro T

Magic Power - Triumph.

Meazza, that is, by far, the funniest thing you have ever intentionally written. Thankfully, I wasn't drinking coffee when I read it.

As the article mentioned, Charlie's been pushing for this for several years. It seems the thinking behind it being, if people can get drafted into the armed services against their will (rather than the all volunteer military we currently have), there would be greater protest against US military involvements.

Maybe that would look good on a shirt. "We're less wrong than most teams. (Except when we try to pick a new friggin' logo.)" It would definitely look better than the new logo. I'm not sure what crayons should be used to color the shirt though.

Politics, Polls, and Pundits. You are missing one of the all-time greats right now. Look for the 22 pager near the top.

You are definitely correct that the 3.5 has no predictive use. Nor can the state of the die ever be 3.5.

Yes, you can get a mean value for discrete variables. If you have a 20 year old person and a 30 year old, their average (mean) age is 25. You are correct however in stating that on any particular roll with a fair die you would expect any value from 1-6 with equal probability. You are also correct in stating that you do not expect to roll a 3.5, although if you rolled 1,000 dice the average of all the rolls would be very close to 3.5. You wouldn't expect to have a mode as none of the values should come up significantly more often than any other value. You are also correct in that the outcomes from rolling a single die are not normally distributed.

As Opus famously said "never trust anyone under $30k".

Why would you use the 1st die roll to estimate what your average roll would be? Why do you assume error is normally distrubuted in your IQ examples? Why couldn't (or more accurately, wouldn't) there be a different error distribution (or combination of error distributions)? What do the last 15 pages of this discussion have to do with your position that eugenics are not only desirable but politically feasible? And finally, why has this thread lasted past my prediction of 18 pages? There are several other questions about this discussion, but many of them have already been asked.

He's down in NYC so the guy was probably a Giants fan. OF COURSE he would have still ratted the guy out even if some booze was offered.

That wouldn't make SnR's comment "completely wrong" though, would it? Typically, off year elections get ~40% voter turnout, which is significantly higher than 24%. Elderly voters typically have ~60% turnout rate in off year elections and ~20MM voters. That is, even with 20 year highs in off-year turnout for under 30 voters, voters in general turn out in higher propotion than under 30's and elderly voters turn out in significantly higher #'s and %ages than young voters.

24% turnout. Wow, that's almost 1/2 of a majority of them.

That's possible, but I just get the feeling that Nancy and Harry are going to want to take their new toys out for a ride and with Conyers riding shotgun, things could get interesting early. If the dems are smart, it'll play out as you have predicted. We shall see. Bummer, now I'm gonna have to waste some prime hockey watching time on Fox News and MSNBC. They don't even show those 2 in HiDef.

Actually, there were plenty of screw ups to go around. It appears Abramoff gave Montana to the Dems. Various other scandals took others down. As long as we are set in the 2 party system, I don't mind seeing the Dems in the House of Reps. I can't say I'm thrilled at the thought of the Dems controlling the Senate (judicial nominees and treaty ratification and all), but think it will be interesting to see where/when Lieberman breaks ranks with the D's and puts the deciding vote on Chaney's plate. Hopefully the Dems will do better than I expect that they will. If they do, '08 will be very interesting. If not, the Senate goes back to red and Hill stays out of the big mansion and we hear all the post election charges of voter fraud. It will be an interesting 2 years.

I thought he COULD hold. The problem is, he's Robert Royal CANTCATCH.

Agreed. At a minimum, it would be nice to see them not project winners in a particular state until after the polls have closed in the entire state.

While I did do my tilting at windmills, it really doesn't matter how big the turnout will be. There's only 2 statewide positions that are in doubt (comptroller and AG). It will be interesting to see what happens in Reynolds' and Kuhl's districts. They are the only two Congresscritters in WNY that seem to be in jeopardy. The REALLY unusual thing about the Reynolds/Davis race is that the D&C supports Reynolds. This is the 1st year I've been living near Ra-cha-cha and I can recall the D&C endorsing a Republican in a tight race (and they did it 2 other times). They also appear to finally be doing what they said they'd do about 8 years ago and aren't endorsing Susan John.

Pretty muchly.

Yes, I voted in this poll. Oh, wait, that's not what you meant is it?

Actually, as you admit, your example is extremely simplified. But as BJ points out, you have essentially set up your example so that the result you desire is what you will get out of your experiment. The model you put forth will not necessarily tell you anything about how children's IQ's are effected by their parents IQ's, nor will it tell you how much deviation in IQ from 1 to the other are due measurement of error or other sources and factors.

Actually, giving a particular individual a 2nd (or additional) IQ test isn't the functional equivalent of giving their child an IQ test. If that was anything more than a typo on your part, you are far more confused about this issue than BJ/Raimus give you credit for.

As opposed to a smart idiot like yourself. Right?

Jim, you'll have to use smaller words when you ask him questions. His reading comprehension appears to be roughly equivalent to BF's.

Thank you for answering my questions. I guess next time I ask you questions I'll have to use REALLY small words.

Wow, you truly are a piece of work. It's truly heartening to see that for a cause you feel so strongly about, you don't pony up a single dime directly out of your own pocket. Where exactly do you expect "your" government to get the money to pay for this research that you want to see happen? You do realize that every single penny the government spends has come from either a tax already collected or one to be collected in the future? What exactly do you consider "fully fund(ing)" cancer research? Does the US government need to spend $100B, $200B, $1T? Should the US be paying for French and Japanese researchers working outside the US in order to "fully fund" the research. Why shouldn't private money be involved? Is it because the government is so successful at efficiently providing funding to other industries, that they should be expected to solely pick the "winners" in medical advances as well?