{"id":5307,"date":"2011-01-02T07:12:26","date_gmt":"2011-01-02T07:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2011\/01\/02\/links-for-2011-01-02\/"},"modified":"2011-01-02T07:12:26","modified_gmt":"2011-01-02T07:12:26","slug":"links-for-2011-01-02","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2011\/01\/02\/links-for-2011-01-02\/","title":{"rendered":"Links for 2011-01-02"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul class=\"delicious\">\n<li>\n<div class=\"delicious-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.nature.com\/eva\/2010\/12\/29\/whats-stats-got-to-do-with-it\">What&#8217;s stats got to do with it? &#8211; Expression Patterns Blog | Nature Publishing Group<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-extended\">&#8220;I recently learned that I have an above average number of legs. This is no cause for concern: most of you do, too. It was something I first learned when watching Hans Rosling&#8217;s The Joy of Stats BBC documentary. He pointed out that, since there are a few people with only one leg or none at all, the average number of legs is about 1.99 &#8211; just short of most people&#8217;s two.<\/p>\n<p>It shows that sometimes statistics are meaningless. There is no practical application to knowing the exact average number of legs per person. If you told a jeans manufacturer that he was accounting for too many legs, since the average person has less than two, he&#8217;d rightly say &#8220;What does that have to do with anything?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>And that is pretty much how I&#8217;ve seen all statistics for a very long time. Sometimes I understood it, or at least understood how to manipulate some numbers according to the proper rules, but I always thought &#8220;What does this have to do with anything?&#8221;&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-tags\">(tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/math\">math<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/statistics\">statistics<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/science\">science<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/education\">education<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/blogs\">blogs<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/biology\">biology<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/chemistry\">chemistry<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"delicious-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/pimpmynovel.blogspot.com\/2010\/12\/writer-interrupted.html\">Pimp My Novel: Writer, Interrupted<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-extended\">&#8220;&#8221;How do people just write, then pause, make dinner and whatnot, and then go back to writing?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I was sent this question as a guest columnist for an advice column for writers (Book Divas&#8217; &#8220;Ask A New Author&#8221;), and it made me laugh. Maybe it was the whatnot. But mostly I loved the suggestion that writing is far too fragile a process to be interrupted for mundane tasks, a belief I&#8217;m hoping catches on widely.<\/p>\n<p>I mean, would a surgeon pause mid-bypass to pick up drycleaning? Would the rescuers of the Chilean miners have brought their rock-burrowing shuttle to a screeching halt to collect the kids from preschool? This is delicate and precarious work, people.&#8221;<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-tags\">(tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/writing\">writing<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/blogs\">blogs<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/pimp-novel\">pimp-novel<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/jobs\">jobs<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div class=\"delicious-link\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.scienceforums.net\/swansont\/archives\/7523\">Swans on Tea \u00c2\u00bb Coordinate Transformation<\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-extended\">How about a little motion sickness to start the New Year? Video from a camera on the end of a sword.<\/div>\n<div class=\"delicious-tags\">(tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/video\">video<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/youtube\">youtube<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/blogs\">blogs<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.delicious.com\/orzelc\/swans-on-tea\">swans-on-tea<\/a>)<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s stats got to do with it? &#8211; Expression Patterns Blog | Nature Publishing Group &#8220;I recently learned that I have an above average number of legs. This is no cause for concern: most of you do, too. It was something I first learned when watching Hans Rosling&#8217;s The Joy of Stats BBC documentary. He&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2011\/01\/02\/links-for-2011-01-02\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Links for 2011-01-02<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links_dump","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5307\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}