The Science of Life

As promised last time , I am going to cover the basics of simple regression analysis.  It is simple because there is only one independent variable for the dependent variable. As a side note here, most of you are likely familiar with the phrase "correlation does not imply causation".  This statement, while true, is misleading.  Yes, it is true that not all correlations are causal, it is also true that all causation's are correlated.  Causation cannot occur without correlation, so correlation is the first necessary step to show causation, but it is also an insufficient step. For example, if we look at the graph of MLB wins on the y-axis and the ratio of runs scored to runs allowed on the x-axis, it is easily apparent that the ratio and the number of wins are highly correlated.  This is a causal relationship as well.  The more runs you score and the fewer runs you give up, the more you'll win, because the winner is the team who scores more runs than...

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." - Unknown As promised last time , I will be covering Anscombe's Quartet.  It is an idea where people may use statistics to lie about a data set.  It is a series of data sets developed by statistician Francis Anscombe and published in the journal American Statistician in 1973. I'm going to provide you with four sets of data.  Do me a favor and apply what you know of statistical analysis to them.  If the statistical data look weird to you, don't be scared; you may have done the analysis perfectly.  Here's the four sets: I II III IV x y x y x y x y 10 8.04 10 9.14 10 7.46 8 6.58 8 6.95 8 8.14 8 6.77 8 5.76 13 7.58 13 8.74 13 12.74 8 7.71 9 8.81 9 8.77 9 7.11 8 8.84 11 8.33 11 9.26 11 7.81 ...

As promised last time, today I will cover basic calculations of data accumulated from real data.  Please take note that all of the following is for the simple case of one group of data.  For two or more distinct groups of data, the calculations will be similar, but slightly more specific due to the nature of 2+ distinct groups of data.  I will cover that in a later post, which will be labeled as ANOVA.  As a side note, I'm a baseball fan, so I'm going to provide examples from the MLB. This information has the labels for the data of a sample, not the population.  The population is the set of all possible people or objects which falls under the category under study.  If we were studying the 2017 ERA's of pitchers, the population would be all MLB pitchers who have pitched in 2017.  The sample is the subset of the population which we are getting the data points from.  If we want to look at the 8 teams who have made it to the Division Series, then ...

In all of the physical sciences, there is a high need to be analytical.  After all, being analytical is how we know with scientific certainty that what we hypothesize and theorize is legitimately true. In a way, the physical sciences have an advantage in the analytical realm that the life sciences and social sciences don't have; it is exceedingly easier to get pull numbers out of experiments in the physical sciences than in either of the other two types of sciences.  After all, the life and social sciences have too many variables which can not be controlled for, for one reason or another.  After all, in economics (a social science), it is immoral to make some people be in poverty while making others financially prosper for any reason, much less to get numbers for analytics.  It is also immoral in medical science (a life science) to infect one group with disease while keeping others disease free for any reason, much less to get numbers for analytics.  So...

Hello internet, and welcome to The Science They Don't Want You to Know.  As I have mentioned in the first post of this series, I am doing research regarding the statistical viability of currently unconfirmed conspiracies (no leaked documents) by way of currently known conspiracies (documents have been leaked).  The primary purpose of this initial research is to gather particular information, specifically how many people were involved in the actual conspiracies and the length of time which these conspiracies took place.  If you have not read the first post, you should  read it here .  For NSA part one of this post, it'll be found here . If you'll recall last time , I was talking about how the Patriot act allowed the NSA to tap into the phone calls and emails during the Bush administration.  I covered the fact that this does not technically fall under the fourth amendment because conversations do not fall under the legal definition of property. ...

Hello internet, and welcome to The Science They Don't Want You to Know.  As I have mentioned in the first post of this series, I am doing research regarding the statistical viability of currently unconfirmed conspiracies (no leaked documents) by way of currently known conspiracies (documents have been leaked).  The primary purpose of this initial research is to gather particular information, specifically how many people were involved in the actual conspiracies and the length of time which these conspiracies took place.  If you have not read the first post, you should  read it here .  In today's world of the internet -- and with the modern obsession with distrust of the government -- there are  few who don't know at least of the existence of the CIA project called MK-Ultra.  For those of you who don't know, it was a project in the 50's and 60's where they attempted to develop direct mind control similar to what happened to Geordi la Forge in the...