From Greg Williams (930412)
Gary Cziko 930411.2210 GMT
Gary boldly flirts with the possibility of permanently being the
Guest Editor (all of the glory, none of the pay) for CLOSED LOOP by
stating:
Greg Williams (930410) boldly flirts with the possibility of having to
fetch the CSGnet archive files on his own by stating:
You're beating a dead unicorn. I have always agreed that to study
mass phenomena, mass statistics are appropriate.No, I was beating (on?) a live Gary Cziko (to whom I sent the original
post, directly), whose commentI agree. It's called the STATISTICAL method, or the METHOD OF RELATIVE
FREQUENCIES. Pretty useless as real science goes (althought the
behavioral sciences seem to like it alot.implied to me that HE (NOT YOU, unless you're ghost-writing Gary's
direct posts to me!) thinks that mass statistics are inappropriate to
"real science." Maybe Gary actually agrees with you (and me, too) that
"to study mass phenomena, mass statistics are appropriate." I suppose he
does, even though he didn't answer my questions about his beliefs in this
regard. At any rate, if he does agree with us, it would appear that he
doesn't count studying mass phenomena as "real science."
Greg, my remarks on statistics were sent directly to you and not intended
for dissemination to CSGnet. They WERE intended to be somewhat facetious
and humorous in the spirit of other private exchanges we have had.
I'm sorry you disapprove of my attempt to clarify the meaning of "my"
poll category "WHAT'S IT TO ME" to the rest of the net after you
announced it with no explanation. Here's a possible deal: from now on, I
won't quote from our private posts on the net if you don't, unless
appropriate permission has been granted. OK?
Perhaps you can point out to me some psychological studies (ed psych would
even be better) which have used inferential statistics properly in this
respect--I would love to have some good examples to show to the students in
my intro statistics class to show how inferential statistics can be
properly used in ed. psych. Maybe such use of statistics can provide
answers to the types of questions I'm interested in (e.g., how learning in
school takes place) and I've been looking in the wrong journals.--Gary
It's in the queue. I'd already promised Bill to try to find such studies.
So far, I've only had time to glance through some recent psych journals
at the local college library. I'll work on this after the Maier stuff has
run its course on the net.
Yours for "real" science,
Greg