Random Ramblings of a Raconteur

The link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

I’m surprised at the space Arch.Inf. provide to Braune’s bit of esotericism. First off, by giving his MY to four significant digits he implies a precision in the order of a tenth of a millimetre. Then he goes on stating (more…)

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

Barham highlights a problem not only for schools but for the changes I’ve seen in universities since the early eighties. Semester exams used to yield only passed or not passed while the grading for Vordiplom and Diplom (loosely BS and MS) came from oral exams covering everything from all years. (more…)

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

As if widespread misuse of data dredging and applying single-outcome tests to multivariate analyses were not enough Nieuwenhuis et al. have uncovered yet another widely spread use of bad statistics. (more…)

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

In de Mel the effects for women dissipate after ten months. They do so too for men and there is no discernible difference after 12, 15, 18, and 62 months. There is one at 22, 25, 30, 35, and 68 months but these inconsistent results seem spurious and random and can hardly be said to result from the intervention. (more…)

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

The current issue of nature has a supplement for Alan Turing’s 100th birthday.

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

At first glance Luby et al. sounds very relevant. They go on in length about maternal support and maternal nurturance without once defining or operationalising these terms in the main text. Hidden in methods we find they are based on one single 8 minute instance in a highly artificial situation. (more…)

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

Well, well, social engineers with something to hide are so transparent. As Villeval states „Balafoutas and Sutter find that, with very few exceptions, the most able men are not overtaken by less able women.“, which immediately leads one to ask what about the less able ones? Supplementary figure one tells us: (more…)

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

Science editor Bruce Alberts cuts to the heart of the matter about education. As I frequently told my daughter, hoping repetition would make it stick, „Auswendiglernen ist das Gegenteil von Lernen“ (“learning by heart is the opposite of learning”) or, as Richard Feynman’s father put it (more…)

First the link to this week’s complete list as HTML and as PDF.

Seeing Hore and Crotty it seems some science is still being done.

In a radio talk last week (Funkhausgespräche, WDR 5, 2012-01-26) the physicist Martin Lambeck stated, that if homeopathy did indeed work, it would not just require an addition to current physics but rather result in a total collapse of the edifice of science. (more…)