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==Vitamin C and cancer==


http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/02/18/vitamin-c-and-cancer-has-linus-pauling-b/
==Bad graphic on Planned Parenthood==
John Emerson sent a link to the following:


<blockquote>
[http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/congressman-chaffetz-misleading-graph-smear-planned-parenthood Congressman uses misleading graph to smear Planned Parenthood]<br>
It’s been noted that there appears to be a tendency among Nobel Prize recipients in science to become enamored of strange ideas or even outright pseudoscience in their later years. Indeed, it’s happened often enough that some wags have dubbed this tendency the “Nobel disease.”  Be it Linus Pauling and his obsession with vitamin C, Nikolaas Tinbergen and his adoption of the “refrigerator mother” hypothesis as the cause of autism (which has led one blogger going by the ‘nym Prometheus to quip that Tinbergen’s Nobel acceptance speech represented a “nearly unbeatable record for shortest time between receiving the Nobel Prize and saying something really stupid about a field in which the recipient had little experience”)
by Zachary Roth, MSNBC.com, 29 September 2015
<br><br>
[T]here’s something about becoming a Nobel Laureate that has a tendency to lead people to becoming cranks. Either that, or maybe it’s because mavericks who make Nobel-worthy discoveries have a tendency not always to recognize that not all of their ideas are as brilliant as the ones that garnered the Nobel Prize for them, although certainly another possibility is that winning the Nobel Prize tends to give some scientists an inflated sense of their own expertise in fields of science not related to the ones for which they won their Nobel Prize in the first place. Maybe it’s a bit of all of these.
</blockquote>


Submitted by Paul Alper
At a Congressional hearing on Planned Parenthood, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) used the following infographic to criticize Planned Parenthood:
 
<center>[[File:Abortion double-y.jpg | 500px]]</center>
 
Albert Kim noted that this is "a mild variant of the [http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3129 Fundamental Law of Media Graphs]."


==Forsooth?==
==Forsooth?==

Revision as of 13:18, 30 September 2015


Bad graphic on Planned Parenthood

John Emerson sent a link to the following:

Congressman uses misleading graph to smear Planned Parenthood
by Zachary Roth, MSNBC.com, 29 September 2015

At a Congressional hearing on Planned Parenthood, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) used the following infographic to criticize Planned Parenthood:

Abortion double-y.jpg

Albert Kim noted that this is "a mild variant of the Fundamental Law of Media Graphs."

Forsooth?

"The sample also includes 924 interviews among registered voters (plus or minus 3 percentage points)."

in: CNN/ORC International poll report, for release 20 September 2015

Some math doodles

<math>P \left({A_1 \cup A_2}\right) = P\left({A_1}\right) + P\left({A_2}\right) -P \left({A_1 \cap A_2}\right)</math>

<math>\hat{p}(H|H)</math>


<math>\hat{p}(H|HH)</math>

Accidental insights

My collective understanding of Power Laws would fit beneath the shallow end of the long tail. Curiosity, however, easily fills the fat end. I long have been intrigued by the concept and the surprisingly common appearance of power laws in varied natural, social and organizational dynamics. But, am I just seeing a statistical novelty or is there meaning and utility in Power Law relationships? Here’s a case in point.

While carrying a pair of 10 lb. hand weights one, by chance, slipped from my grasp and fell onto a piece of ceramic tile I had left on the carpeted floor. The fractured tile was inconsequential, meant for the trash.

BrokenTile.jpg

As I stared, slightly annoyed, at the mess, a favorite maxim of the Greek philosopher, Epictetus, came to mind: “On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, turn to yourself and ask what power you have to put it to use.” Could this array of large and small polygons form a Power Law? With curiosity piqued, I collected all the fragments and measured the area of each piece.

Piece Sq. Inches % of Total
1 43.25 31.9%
2 35.25 26.0%
3 23.25 17.2%
4 14.10 10.4%
5 7.10 5.2%
6 4.70 3.5%
7 3.60 2.7%
8 3.03 2.2%
9 0.66 0.5%
10 0.61 0.5%
Montante plot1.png

The data and plot look like a Power Law distribution. The first plot is an exponential fit of percent total area. The second plot is same data on a log normal format. Clue: Ok, data fits a straight line. I found myself again in the shallow end of the knowledge curve. Does the data reflect a Power Law or something else, and if it does what does it reflect? What insights can I gain from this accident? Favorite maxims of Epictetus and Pasteur echoed in my head: “On the occasion of every accident that befalls you, remember to turn to yourself and inquire what power you have to turn it to use” and “Chance favors only the prepared mind.”

Montante plot2.png

My “prepared” mind searched for answers, leading me down varied learning paths. Tapping the power of networks, I dropped a note to Chance News editor Bill Peterson. His quick web search surfaced a story from Nature News on research by Hans Herrmann, et. al. Shattered eggs reveal secrets of explosions. As described there, researchers have found power-law relationships for the fragments produced by shattering a pane of glass or breaking a solid object, such as a stone. Seems there is a science underpinning how things break and explode; potentially useful in Forensic reconstructions. Bill also provided a link to a vignette from CRAN describing a maximum likelihood procedure for fitting a Power Law relationship. I am now learning my way through that.

Submitted by William Montante