User:NormSpier
I have a Ph.D. in mathematical statistics, as well as earlier degrees (BS/MA) in math and computer science.
I am retired now.
I live in Western Massachusetts, U.S.A.
During my working years, I worked mainly as a statistician in the pharmaceutical industry (which involved also a lot of computer programming in the SAS language).
I also have done some programming professionally in engineering applications.
(I have some software I wrote a little while back--not professionally--just for fun, taking a kind of engineering approach to analyzing music and sound, here http://nasmusicsoft.com/ .)
As with many science-skilled people, I have broad interests, running lately into social policy.
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One thing that the education combined with practical applications of the math models has taught me is that you have to be skeptical and careful. Even when the inferences within the model itself are backed up by absolutely-sound, rigorously-proven mathematical theorems. The math tends to fit well in many physics applications, but will often apply inadequately in social science, policy, economics and often medicine, giving "garbage in garbage out".
A further problem is that even if the model applies perfectly, the inferred results often don't justify a conclusion about what one wants to know. (Thus, shorter-term studies on a drug in clinical trials leave unknown long-term effects, etc. Or, more in the news as I write this 7/2020, attempts to model COVID epidemiology for purposes of predicting and controlling magnitude of spread provide "something to give an idea", but as the experts tell as, are far too based on numerous questionable and-unknown-truth-of assumptions to be nearly as accurate as we would like.)
Despite the shortcomings of the math background, I believe the skills (mathematical and analytical) honed are extremely useful and even often necessary in understanding issues such as social policy. Models apply with limits, and give some understanding, even if partial and limited, and if not eliminating contradictory methods to try and reduce or fully solve a social problem.
Further, the analytical skills really are what is needed to figure out what is known, and how to attempt to understand and solve problems, and to determine where policies are failing, etc. (So I recommend the math education for those suitably oriented.)
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Along with many others, I believe all mainstream media that I am familiar with, including the NY Times and Washington Post, are inadequate in skill of analysis. This contributes a lot of noise in political issues (in the terminology of Jason Brennan "hooligans" and "hobbits", with just a few percent of "vulcans" See https://www.c-span.org/video/?417976-2/after-words-jason-brennan.).
The same mainstream media also have a bias and limited points of view issue, which has been publicized a bit on the left by Chomsky / Herman ( Manufacturing Consent ), and as well, by the populist right, nowadays. (There is some truth, unfortunately, to the need to go directly to the people with Twitter, although I don't find the results real good.)
As a craziness, we also a generation of younger people, mostly on the left, who are intolerant of ideas that are not there own, or make them uncomfortable. This is unacceptable, and of my generation (boomers), often involved in conflict and activism, did not try to censor, and did respect free speech. Unimpeded, open expression was important to us.
Thus, I support say this letter, uncomfortable.https://harpers.org/a-letter-on-justice-and-open-debate/ , signed by a large number of good minds.
I might suggest, for those who are censoring free speech, reading the book "The Coddling of the American Mind", by some professors. (There is a video as well as a transcript of a talk by the authors here: https://www.c-span.org/video/?450784-1/the-coddling-american-mind ).
I am not sure if it's in the "Coddling" book, or somewhere else, that you can see the theory that the cause of the problem is facebook, with it's "like", and particularly "dislike", and with junior high school and high school kids having their friends in their faces 24 hours a day, and unable to be individuals. The damage of such may be lifelong, or perhaps it can dissipate with time, or the exercise of the mind.
(Normal kids, raised to function in a free society, shouldn't need a "trigger warning", for chissakes.)
My contributions at Wikipedia have been limited and minor, confined to health-insurance system related matters. Indeed, from my point of view, issues have come up around whether there is a mainstream bias in the articles from the Wikipedia standards, though I of course see that some standards are needed to prevent decay into intellectual nonsense.
(The issue of Wikipedia biases and actually of potential paid media-manipulator editors has been brought up to me in Wikipedia by at least one Wikipedia editor, and, as well, there are allegations on the Web of such paid manipulators. Some of my limited interaction with editors (on controversial issues--like the ACA) has indeed brought forth some behavior consistent with this kind of thing. But, of course, that's only a possibility, and not a definite conclusion that a careful mind would come to!
I feel for the "patrollers", and see their difficulty. They have to hold back a lot of manipulators, and there aren't many "patrollers", and the shortage often yields that don't have technical expertise exactly where it needed.
There are indeed plenty of manipulators to defend against. It's a somewhat corrupt democracy in terms of information deception. (I'm referring to the USA relevant to my experience with U.S. health-system articles, where Wikipedia has to guard against manipulation and lies, but I'm sure in many other countries information-manipulation corruption is similarly massive.) Far higher returns on number of votes come from deceptive manipulation than from a "straight for the truth" approach, and the distribution of personalities contains many with no moral qualms about deception, including many who aren't even intellectually to distinguish a truth-oriented approach from deception.)
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On the Wikipedia standards, I've often noted that they are pretty much ignored in hard science (math/physics) articles, and they in fact have to be ignored.
Thus, I've just been referenced, on a social science article, to WP:Primary, where I see
- "Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge."
- In particular, "A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge." (As well as in other situations, editors have to get everything referenced, except with deductions as can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge.
Jeez. This is not how physics or math can be exposited. People have to learn and know the material, and then present, with a presentation organized for clarity and understaning. In the math and physics I've looked at in Wikipedia, (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banach_space , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine ) it has been ignored, and any professor or undergraduate student or graduate student would laugh, and run away, if told they were expected to do "sentence, reference, sentence, reference." People editing and writing in those article have to be assumed to be able to think competently in the discipline, and understand the material of the discipline, and exposit. Not something like "all unreferenced deductions have to be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge". (Just sayin'.)