Bungee Jumper

In other words, you're now saying that error does NOT cause regression toward the mean...but you're still right and everyone else is still wrong.

That's our Tenny! As opposed to any other day?

859907[/snapback] I'll look that up when I get home. Not that I don't trust you...but I don't, seeing as how you're quoting a book.

I just want to stress for HA: the error toward the mean ERROR OF AN INDIVIDUAL TEST. If you integrate the error over all space (sum over the number of tests), the net error is zero (approaches zero, for a sum). It has to be; otherwise, the normal probability distribution of the population integrated over all space wouldn't be equal to one... ...which gets back to another question I asked that you never answered, HA: What is the integral of a gaussian over all space, and why is it important to the topic at hand?

You sh--head. I've told you REPEATEDLY you're mislabelling it, that you're mistaking regression of THE ERROR toward the mean ERROR of zero for regression of THE POPULATION toward the mean of the population! You're incorrectly extrapolating a poorly chosen subset of data to a global effect over a whole population. If you understood your own example and could do the math, you could see it yourself.

Evolution vs. Creation isn't about God. It's about Biblical orthodoxy.

Lotion Klansmann? What is he, a white supremacist with really soft hands?

I believe this is called GIGO.

859865[/snapback] So where's the part where he offers peace to England, instead of just musing about it?

My apologies. It was a dig at him and his treatment of you as some sort of magical statistical talisman. Not you.

Okay, we're agreed, that actually does happen, in that it's an observable effect. HOWEVER...there's several questions with that (some of which you ask below): 1) Is it regression toward the population mean? You yourself, just now, were pretty careful to say the scores will "tend to be closer to the mean of the population". I accept this as true...and contend the effect is observable because - to put it very coarsely - the error is regressing toward the mean error of zero, irrespective of the population distribution. HA seems to contend otherwise. 1) Is the methodology appropriate to what HA's trying to demonstrate? I contend: not even remotely. He's chosen a subset of data, demonstrated the subset has a certain behavior, and said "A-ha! The entire population must exhibit the same behavior." And in doing so, he's neglected to realize one thing - that while over the subset there's an observable effect, over the population the effect averages to zero. And he doesn't realize that because he's arbitrarily - and somewhat artificially - chosen a subset of data that excludes data points that would show the net effect is zero. As I keep saying: his simulation is sh--, and he doesn't understand it anyway. Speficially, against me...which was a misunderstanding. I called "the specific behavior" fictitious - by which I meant HA's nonsense description of error causing regression toward the mean in a population. You read it as me calling the behavior of his data subset fictitious. I was obviously not clear about that. And again, this gets down to the basic problem of HA not knowing what he's talking about...you were referring to his actual data, I was referring to his extrapolation to the bulk limit (yeah, I know it's not REALLY a "bulk limit"...the physics training is hard to overcome, so humor me). No, you don't. I understand that. HA doesn't, sorry to say. Apologies if you think I'm arguing with you...I'm arguing with HA, and apologize for him throwing "Well, Wraith says so..." in my face every other post and trying to pit me against you...

Or, instead of the internet, they could...I don't know...go to school.

Of course, lost in all this is the fact that Somalia's a pit that's largely unrepresentative of Islam anyway...this is less an indictment of Islam than it is of one moron saying "I'm Islamic and I have power, so Allah says I can do whatever the !@#$ I want."

But he's got Wraith!

He's not actually advocating it, he's just describing what the plan was.

Except that it would follow, then, that the normal distribution of the population - the variance of the scores, basically - is due to the presence of non-zero error in the test. And that IS counter-factual - the variation in IQ among the population is a feature of the population, not the test. Then there's also the fact that his example is sh--: multiple IQ tests of the same person are not independent. If a given person (of unaverage intelligence) takes 100 IQ tests (of the same format - hence same error - but not content), the scores will be normally distributed around a point that is not the population mean (again, assuming the person is of unaverage intelligence). Really, it's not that his example is sh--, it's that his understanding of it is: he measured the regression of the error in a single instance of the population toward the error's mean of zero, and interpreted it as the regression of the population toward the population mean. (Though it should be enough just to say that the mean error over the entire population is zero...that itself should show that there IS no appreciable net effect due to error in anything approaching the bulk limit. Too bad HA is, once again, too dumb to see it).

But if you check again, they'll regress toward the mean. And since only error can cause that, you're clearly wrong.

Actually, that's untrue. Reference my dice example. The specific behavior only requires a probability distribution. Said distribution can be of perfectly exact measurement, with zero error, and still show regression toward the mean. Error does not only not cause the effect, it is not required for the effect to happen. And Holcomb's Arm DID say that a rubber band stretching is measurement error. That's not your fault though; he's just too damn stupid to understand your analogy.

Actually, the act of applying an external force to a system, removing said force, and watching it relax to its equilibrium point is ENTIRELY UNLIKE regression toward the mean. Other than that...it's still a sh------- metaphor, considering it's actually an analogy...

It just occurred to me, too...what happens if you stretch a rubber band, and it snaps?

It's just because Slavs are error-prone...

Link, AGAIN.

Yep...you stretch a rubber band, it's measurement error. You let it go, it regresses toward the mean. I made the mistake of saying he said a rubber band snaps back because of measurement error...he was very adamant that he never said that, but said that it stretches because of measurement error. He was also very adamant that it was a metaphor...not, mind you, an analogy.

They'd regress toward Germanic the more you checked on them.

Don't tell me you missed the part where he said a rubber band stretches because of measurement error...