frosty99c
@frosty99c@midwest.social
- Comment on Back to the grind. 2 days ago:
You’re exactly right.
- Comment on Back to the grind. 2 days ago:
You’re talking about data that doesn’t back the initial hypothesis. That isn’t bad data in this context, and you’re correct that it is still valuable for reforming hypotheses and re-running the experiment.
Bad data in this context is referring to data quality - things like inconsistent collection, inadequate/missing data, free text vs controlled input, etc. In those cases the data can become almost useless (and this is usually known by the people working on a project but not necessarily by their management). This causes pressure to turn shit into gold when that just isn’t possible.
Imagine that your boss wanted you to predict what the temperature will be next Tuesday. In order to do this, your company has provided you the temperature from every Tuesday for the past 12 years. If that wasn’t bad enough, at first they recorded the date in DDMMYY format but 10 years ago they switched to MMDDYY. However, some records were still collected in the legacy DDMMYY format due to lack of training in the temperature collection department, and there is no way to distinguish the correct date. Also, one employee who was close to retirement only collected the temperature as “Hot” or “Cold” because that is how he was trained to do it when he was first hired 50 years ago and he never bothered to learn the new system. Now, you can probably build a model that tracks weekly temperature over time and approximates the next Tuesday’s temperature based on something like seasonality, the historical average, and the most recent Tuesday. But you’ll know that it’s not the best estimate, you’ll know there is way better data out there, and you’ll probably be able to make a simpler, more accurate estimate just by averaging the temperature from Saturday/Sunday/Monday.
That’s bad data.
- Comment on Exception implies deficiency. Am I the only one who sees this? 9 months ago:
Ok, now take it one more step. Why can’t that person walk? Is it because someone broke their leg? In that case, it’s not an ‘exception’ it’s an aid. It makes the situation more equitable.
- Comment on Exception implies deficiency. Am I the only one who sees this? 9 months ago:
It’s ok to say that a certain class is deficient. Sometimes we need to accept that. The problem is that, at this moment, the poverty class is deficient due to our capitalistic system that has oppressed them for years. And unfortunately, a large percentage of those are people of color due to years of systematic racism and discrimination (red lining, underfund education, food deserts, etc).
It’s wrong to say that people of color are deficient because they are people of color. It’s (more) correct to say that deficiencies do exist due to the current/historical structure of our society and we should start to find solutions to these issues.
Racism and insults occur when someone says “systematic racism doesn’t exist so giving these people handouts is unfair to me.” We need to accept that inequality exists and do our best as a society to help overcome it.
I think this is one of the main reasons that critical race theory became such a hot button issue. This type of systematic inequality needs to be studied and understood so that reasonable, well researched solutions can be discovered. The privileged class is against it because they want to remain privileged; they want the rest of the upper/middle class to put their head in the sand and ignore that the systematic issues exist in the first place, so that fingers don’t end up pointed at them and things won’t ever need to change. It’s easier to demonize the topic all together than to form actual arguments against equality.
- Comment on Anon learns to love the bath bomb 11 months ago:
A friend of mine is a non-native English speaker. He teaches at an elementary school and works with ‘English as a second language’ students. He casually mentioned that he always tells his students to take a ‘horse bath’ in the bathroom sink after recess if needed. He was traumatized when I told him that he’d misheard that phrase for his entire adult life.
- Comment on What is this pit used for? 1 year ago:
I was going to say BMX or dirt bike practice course But the steps and the weird pump thing in the bottom right corner would get in the way.
- Comment on Programming questions for beginners 1 year ago:
This is a great resource: r4ds.had.co.nz
It may not help you search for things if you don’t know the correct terminology, but it is definitely helpful walking through examples of common data and visualization needs. Great to skin through for basic concepts and then keep handy as a reference.
Other that that, stack overflow for sure.
- Comment on How did we come to say something courteous to someone after they’ve sneezed 1 year ago:
“A sneeze is your soul trying to leave your body. Saying God Bless You shoves it back in.”
I always say this as a joke. I’m pretty sure it’s from the Simpsons, and not an actual historical belief. If you have any source that shows this an old wives tale or folkloric legend, I’d love to see it. That’d make it even funnier to me haha.
