Does science play a role in your life? Do you value hard data and evidence? Do you think humans are good at proving things? Or maybe you defer to religion or culture to decide what is real? I talk a lot about how science is over or undervalued. Some folks think science proves reality. Others think scientists are full of crap. Regardless of how you feel about science, the scientific method is regarded as one of…
Are you familiar with the ‘bell curve’? It’s also called a ‘normal curve’, or a Gaussian distribution because it describes what statisticians call a ‘normal distribution’. Here’s the wikipedia definition: a probability distribution that is symmetric about the mean, showing that data near the mean are more frequent in occurrence than data far from the mean And here’s a video link if you want a more detailed explanation. Essentially, this picture is a visual image…
You hated statistics, right? And probably didn’t care too much about math? That’s how most people are, anyway. I didn’t really see the point in learning much of the numbers stuff, until I needed the knowledge. Household budgeting, running a business, and understanding what other people are trying to say are just three reasons to understand math and mathematical relationships. This Episode is an example. The normal, or ‘bell’ curve, or normal distribution, is a…
You know you do it. You think you are right about something, only to find out you were incredibly, undeniably, 180 degrees wrong. It happens. To all of us. To all of us humans, anyway. We all think we’re right. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t have conviction. We’d be open. We’d be undecided. Once we have made a decision, well, that decision is correct, correct? I mean, right? But not always. Many of us are…
How do you feel about math? How about statistics? If you are like most people, you don’t really care too much about math OR stats. I, myself, did not really like either – until I needed them. As a budding scientist I was really into field work, collecting data, hypothesizing, and playing in streams. But I wasn’t too keen on the writing and data analysis and stuff. Eventually I realized that you are only as…