Good news

People on Twitter are reporting that Giffords is awake, recognizes her husband and that she is talking. I hope this is really true.

Another area where people simply ignore data when it does not match their narrative – baseball

The Amazing Ability Of People To Simply Ignore Data That Proves What They Believe Is Wrong
[Via Techdirt]

Nate Silver, who, before he became famous as a political data analyzer on his FiveThirtyEight website (now hosted by the NY Times), was famous to a much smaller group of folks for his similar data analysis of baseball data at Baseball Perspectus. Every so often, he jumps back to baseball analysis, such as with his recent effort to question some of the common wisdom concerning the Baseball Hall of Fame. There’s a common complaint among fans and some in the press that the Hall of Fame has become “watered down” in some way, and that they’re letting in players who really shouldn’t qualify. The comment that is repeated way too frequently is “It’s the Hall of Fame, not the Hall of Very Good.” However, Silver breaks down the actual data, and notes that percentage-wise significantly fewer players are getting into the Hall of Fame today than in the past. He shows the following chart to help prove the point:

As he notes, the point is not to say that one period is correct, and the other is not, but simply to challenge the suggestion that admission to the Hall of Fame has become much easier today. And, yes, he also discusses some of the obvious counterpoints — such as the fact that, thanks to expansion, there are now more players — and why there are other equalizing forces (the internationalization of the game, for example).

[More]

The data shows that substantially fewer people get into the Hall of Fame as a percentage of all the players than before. In the 80, perhaps 4% of the active players made the Hall. IN the 90s this dropped to less than 2%.

Yet, people act like it is easier to get into the hall and that they are letting all sorts of people in.

It’s an interesting article if you’re interested in that kind of thing. But, what’s most entertaining is that a large number of the comments on the story seem to simply refuse to accept what the data says. They don’t refute the data. They don’t suggest explanations that would explain the data. They flat-out ignore it and insist that the Hall of Fame has been watered down these days. I noticed this thanks to King Kaufman who aggregated some of the sillier comments. Here are a few:

• “Too stringent”? Au contraire. Over the last couple of decades they have admitted so many bums that it defies description. If anything, the standards should be tightened. There are perhaps six active players who should EVER be considered.
• We’ve dumbed down America and now you want to water down what makes a true athlete great. They should measure up or not be considered!!!! That’s the problem with America continually relaxing standards and codes.!!!!
• The statistical look at the question is entirely misdirected. There have been a handful of standout players in the game, something less than 50 in total.
• i thought the hall was for extraordinary accomplishments not just very good …the hall is so diluted these days.

The data demonstrate that it is not easier to make it in but people think it is. And even when shown that it is not, simply ignore the data? Tats is pretty typical for most people.

Much easier to ignore facts that require some real thought and simply keep spouting no nothing statements.

Let’s try to see why people keep talking about bums getting in so easily when the numbers show this is not true.

Baseball is a very different sport now in many ways than it was 50 years ago. The players are in much better shape, platooning of pitchers has made it much harder for hitter to dominate as they used to.

30 game winners just are not seen regularly. No .400 hitters. Stephen Jay Gould wrote abut this in his book, Full House – while we do not see .400 hitters anymore, the overall batting averages have stayed about the same. What has also disappeared is the awful players batting .190.

It is not that the players as a group are worse today – they are much better. The variation is much smaller than it used to be. This makes it harder to truly stand out.

Looking at statistics may make it seem that players are not as good today. In fact, the numbers indicate that, as a group they are better. But the whole group does not get into the Hall of Fame.
With less variation, the lows may not be as bad but the highs are not as obvious. Thus it appears that lesser players make it in than before, when it may well be that just as talented payers make it in as before. It is just that the entire caliber of the league is higher.

Got the OS X updates done

And I am clicking the Mac App Store Icon Now.

Wow, opened quite fast. And I saw that Delicious Library 2 was on the store so I clicked it. And am told it is already installed. Cool.

And I am downloading Pixelmator now. My evening is shot.

UPDATED: Interesting to read about Gabrielle Giffords

Giffords really represents the complex nature of humanity. A Democrat, she certainly is not liberal on many issues. She voted against Pelosi as Minority Leader earlier this week. She submitted legislation this week to reduce the pay of Congress by 5%.

Her views on energy and green economy fall along liberal lines, but her fiscal views were more conservative. But really liberal members of her caucus respect her tremendously.

And other liberals, who did not like some of her views, are amazed at her abilities and potentials.

It is really sad that America comes to know such a person following a tragedy. It is really eerie to read her last tweet:

My 1st Congress on Your Corner starts now. Please stop by to let me know what is on your mind or tweet me later.
about 6 hours ago via Twitter for iPad

Yes, she used an iPad for her last tweet.

UPDATE: CNN has a backgrounder about Giffords.

I’m loading the new OS X update for the Mac Store

I’d usually wait a few more days but no one has really reported widespread problems and I want to start using the Mac App Store. So, here we go with the update. Hope I’m back soon.

Nokia demonstrates what is so wrong with other app stores

Nokia’s Ovi App Store
[Via Daring Fireball]

Step 1: Click on an app. Any app, just pick one.

You’re going to love step 2.

[More]

What a fragmented world other smart phone people live in.

UPDATED:This could get ugly very fast

Congresswoman Giffords Shot in Tucson
[Via NYT > NYTimes.com Home]

The Democratic congresswoman from Arizona was shot along with several others at a public event at a grocery store, according to her spokesman. The Tucson Citizen reported that Ms. Giffords had been shot at close range in the head.

[More]

I hope this was not an assassination attempt. But with so many unbalanced people out there, and with such stunning rhetoric going on – Sarah Palin had a website where the crosshairs for a telescopic sight were placed on Giffords’ district – my worry is that this shooting was directed at Giffords.

What does a simple examination of the imagery suggest should be done to prescribe the solution?

Palin’s site has since been taken down and now simply redirects to her PAC. Good. Perhaps putting sniper sights on political foes was not a good idea.

Giffords’ political opponent held target practice with fully automatic weapons to “help remove Gabrielle Giffords from office”.

There is a lot of heated rhetoric out there, about how this is the end of the world or the worst ever, and how we need to examine 2nd Amendment remedies. The people who spout this, who demonize their foes. use violent images and promote violent solutions, may have some responsibility in this.

They need to stop.

UPDATE 1: The supposed gunman, Jared Lee Loughner, has a youtube site where he has videos that talk about the illegitimacy if the government, terrorism and some weird stuff about dreaming and mind control. Definitely a whack job. And, wow he already has a wikipedia page.

UPDATE 2: Now getting more information about the other victims. At least 5 dead including a young child. Glad to see that bystanders stopped him. I’m not a big death penalty guy but this is one of those events that suggests there might be a need.

UPDATE 3: Giffords is out of surgery. I hope she can recover as I think she has important things to teach many of us.

Problems in higher science education

by epSos.de

College upperclassmen still fail at scientific reasoning
[Via Ars Technica]

Most of us develop a sort of intuitive logic about how the natural world works. Unfortunately, a lot of that informal reasoning turns out to be wrong, which complicates scientific education. But as students make their way through the science education pipeline, they should gradually start moving beyond the informal reasoning of their earlier years. Or at least that’s what we’d like to think; instead, a new survey of college students, some in advanced biology classes, indicates that most end up with a confused mix of formal and informal reasoning.

The clearest example of the chasm between a typical intuition and scientific reasoning comes from the world of physics. Imagine a marble rolling around a curved track that comes to a sudden end. Physics tells us that, as soon as the marble is off the track, it’ll continue moving in a straight line until it runs into something else. But many people use informal reasoning and conclude that the marble will continue to follow a circular path even after it escapes the track. In other contexts, it involves an interventionist view of the world. As the people behind the survey put it, “When using informal reasoning, students look for ‘actors’ that drive ‘events’ and are aided by ‘enablers.’”

Scientific education, then, needs to convince people to move past their intuitions (at least if they want a more accurate picture of how the world operates).

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The article is not out yet apparently (January BioScience is not there yet. Only December.) The write ups seem to indicate even students quizzed in their specialties have ‘intuitive’ answers that are wrong.

This follows up on some of their previous work that indicated that incoming students had serious problems with what they ‘knew’ versus what was real.

I think science education requires a different approach to pedagogy than other fields. In other areas, our intuitive, heuristic approaches to things serve us well. But in science, even educated people can become fooled, especially when not thinking logically, rationally and deeply.

A fun example can be found in the comments regarding one of the questions:

Maple Mass

A mature maple tree can have a mass of 1 ton or more (dry biomass, after removing the water), yet it starts from a seed that weighs less than 1 gram. Which of the following processes contributes the most to this huge increase in biomass? Circle the correct answer.
A) absorption of mineral substances from the soil via the roots
B) absorption of organic substances from the soil via the roots
C) incorporation of CO2 gas from the atmosphere into molecules by green leaves
D) incorporation of H2O from the soil into molecules by green leaves
E) absorption of solar radiation into the leaf

Now, these questions are given to people who have had classes in botany or biology and so are well versed in the principles involved, if they have learned to think scientifically.

There was a discussion about the ambiguity of answers C and E. Several commenters though E would be a right answer, since without photosynthesis, there could be no growth. But E does not mention photosynthesis. It simply mentions absorption of solar radiation. There are many processes of absorption, such as thermal, that have nothing to do with photosynthesis. And even photosynthesis uses just a small amount of the total radiation.

E only ‘seems’ like a right answer if you take it to mean photosynthesis. But that ‘intuitive’ answer requires a leap to conclusions. Photosynthesis is not explicitly mentioned. Trying to use it for an answer is a leap not based on real data. Those that answer this question were guilty of making a leap to a conclusion that is not supported by the data provided– a very common error in non-scientific thinking.

Then there was a discussion about C and D. Someone found that photosynthesis performs the following reaction:

Hmm, unless the Wikipedia article on photosynthesis is wrong (6CO₂ + 6H₂O -> photosynthesis -> C₆H₁₂O₆ + 6O₂), it seems to me that the students are right to suggest that most of a tree’s mass is brought up from the soil (in the form of water). Six atoms of oxygen plus twelve of hydrogen definitely out-mass six atoms of carbon.

Or am I missing something?

There ensued some discussion about the atomic weights of carbon dioxide and water in order to determine whether the water from the soil is more responsible for the biomass or the carbon dioxide from the air. This is a much more productive and scientific discussion, one that actually really occurred in the scientific examination of photosynthesis and biomass.

Looking at the mass equation – which is greatly simplified but useful for discussion – one sees that oxygen is released at the end. Where does the oxygen come from – the carbon dioxide or the water? Even Wikipedia tells us – the released oxygen comes from the water. The only mass water contributes is its hydrogens.

This is one of the key discoveries regarding the process of photosynthesis. Anyone learning about this should remember that bit of data. I remembered this and the last class I took on photosynthesis was 30 years ago.

Biology students should remember this. Water is simply used as an electron donor. Other molecules can substitute for water in photochemical reactions using carbon dioxide.

And the experiments that were designed to show this is true – work that any student should have been taught – demonstrate wonderfully how the scientific method works and the underlying principles for discovery. How do we determine where the oxygen comes from? We use radioactively labeled oxygen in the carbon dioxide or in the water. When the radioactive oxygen is in the carbon dioxide, radioactivity stays in the plant. When the radioactive oxygen is in the water, radioactivity is released into the surround air.

So, to anyone who is taking science courses in biology and who is learning to think in a ‘scientific’ way should have been able to answer the question properly. The largest portion of the biomass comes from the incorporation of both carbon and oxygen from carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately, very few students were able to think these questions through in a way that brought their scientific reasoning to bear. They simply answered with what seemed like the best answer – the ‘obvious’ one, the ‘intuitive’ one – without engaging the parts of the brains most important for scientific thinking. They made a leap to the conclusion without fully analyzing the data provided.

Or they did look at the data provided but forgot the data they had learned and were unable to combine them in a way to discern whether C or D was most correct.

Thus the need to do better with scientific education. Scientific thinking require a rigor and attention to the systems details that is very different from the sorts of thinking we do to live our daily lives. Now we need to do a better job achieving that.

Great takedown of a denialist’s argument

by christine zenino (chrissy575)

Easterbrook’s wrong (again)
[Via Hot Topic]

Over the holiday period I’ve had a number of people point me at the latest “essay” by Don “Cooling-gate” Easterbrook — it was featured in full at µWatts, translated into German and Dutch, and made headline material for Morano: Geologist: 9,099 Of Last 10,500 Years Warmer Than 2010. I was a little surprised. I thought [...]

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Here we have a great demonstration of how real data is presented and how that data is redone to misrepresent trends by deniaists. Calling 1855, the “present day” does not seem possible to do by accident.

Usually the side that mis-draws graphs and refuses to update them when the mistakes are shown is the side that is denying facts.

I guess it’s a living.