The Median Isn't the Message, by Stephen Jay Gould | Hacker News Reader

The Median Isn't the Message, by Stephen Jay Gould

edwardtufte.com

102 pointsdanso11 comments

BTW the Steve Dunn who writes the prefatory note created the cancerguide.org site, a dense reference to cancer studies and treatments. He too had cancer and died in 2005 (from bacterial meningitis)

http://www.cancerguide.org/index.html

Oh nice, thanks for that link, there's a particularly good section on statistics:

http://www.cancerguide.org/scurve_basic.html

Good read, as I prepare myself for a biopsy for a neck bump with relatively decent probability to be non-hodgkins lymphoma at age 26yrs old (thanks to a combination of smoking and taking certain strong medication to treat another illness that happens to cause cancer).

Note: traditional statistics examples rarely go beyond a 5-year estimate (as they claim, most clinical studies are capped at that).

I came across a good Tweet recently: "The best cure for cancer is to not get cancer". There are preventive means, so even if you don't have it, try to prevent it. Ignoring early prognosis (for ex: colonoscopies), smoking, poor environments, basic exercise, and unhealthy food is simply not worth it.

On the other hand, don't make the mistake of thinking that simply eating healthily, exercising, and not smoking or drinking will help you avoid cancer. It won't. I've just watched someone learn that lesson the hard way.

Yes, you can't buy yourself "good genes".

Wishing you all the best for the biopsy. Being young and living in a place with good healthcare mean that there's every chance that you'll live a long and meaningful life, regardless of what they find.

I remember reading this back in 2008 when Randy Pausch shared this on his site as he was fighting cancer: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/Web/People/pausch/news/index.ht...

It's unfortunate that Gould's works are often pushed by those with an agenda and fit his work to an ideology. Not sure if he would mind too much though, but many do this. 1

The true of Darwinism in general -- some of the same people who claim to be Christian believe in social Darwinism and survival of the fittest as they apply it to the poor and struggling.

I read a couple of Gould's book many years ago and they were always very entertaining and informative.

I doubt Gould would mind much, he himself seems to make creative errors when they support his ideology. See the example of Morton:

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjour...

Or see his almost militant misunderstanding of factor analysis.

The article cited disputes Gould's particular allegations about Morton's measurement bias.

The authors however did not dispute his "ideological" position which does have a sound scientific and historical grounding:

"In reevaluating Morton and Gould, we do not dispute that racist views were unfortunately common in 19th-century science [6] or that bias has inappropriately influenced research in some cases [16]. Furthermore, studies have demonstrated that modern human variation is generally continuous, rather than discrete or 'racial', and that most variation in modern humans is within, rather than between, populations [11],[17]."

Also:

"Morton indeed believed in the concept of race and assigned a plethora of different attributes to various groups, often in highly racist fashion."

Gould was wrong in his analysis of Morton's measurements and made his own errors but those were errors of methodology not ideology.

I have read "The panda's Thumb" and don't know what you are referring to. Could you elaborate?

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