QuoteOriginally posted by: migalleyQuoteActual a real Chimpanzie would not be able to functioning in a academic institution, it is a lot of corporate politics etc. and you need to have some social skills etc. even to get hired as a Professor, and you need to know the language of academics, implied standard deviation, volatility, correlation... Would a Professor of Art History need to know about Std Dev or Correlation? Maybe not. So there could be openings for chimps to become professors...Good point!Check this out: The Postmodernism Generator

Now now, nothing wrong with art history professors. Some of them make very good-looking wives .

What Sokal did is the equivalent of a particle physicists making up phony data and summiting it for publication. Theeditors have no way to verify data generated from a fancy experiment, so they have to trust the authors.

QuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeNow now, nothing wrong with art history professors. Some of them make very good-looking wives .Are you married to one?

QuoteOriginally posted by: migalleyQuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeNow now, nothing wrong with art history professors. Some of them make very good-looking wives .Are you married to one?Not yet.

And don't forget survaival ship bias?Tail Master "What is the probability Star Professor XXX should have got the Noble Prize if we adjust for survival ship bias ?Student "hemmm uhmmm about 80%?, a few of his potential competitors died in a car accident"Tail Master "Less than 0.000002%"Student "How, What???"Tail Master "About 50 to 100 millions sperm in a ejaculation, do not forget that Professor XXX started out competing with many others, and that he simply was fooled by randomness, I have seen him in the swimming pool and I can tell you he is not a good swimmer, that lucky fool!"Everyone that has taken a medical biology class and looked at these swimming idiots under a light microscope know the true meaning of Brownian motion, randomness and survival ship bias. Survaival of the fittest: bull S**t, It is all about survaival of the Lucky One. (PS: I was attending class with only other female students)

A recent survey conducted by Scientist magazine chose Weizmann Institute of Science as the top-ranking multidisciplinary research institution in the eastern hemisphere. In an interview following the poll (of over 2600 academics), several scientists at the institute not only express their satisfaction at work, from their environment but also reveal that intriguing proposals of positions and grants from commercial and prestigious institutions from the US in particular were rejected in favor of working in small labs within a mere 300-acers landscaped campus. Why? Much of this commitment attribute to the working environment and the conditions which are made accessible to the scientists, a surrounding that enable them to use their full potential for the benefit of humanity. By just glancing at one usual research project taken place in the institute, one would see staff from different disciplinary backgrounds join in team and working together. One could be from the faculty of biology, other from biochemistry, and another from mathematic and computer science. This sort of interrelation between scientists from different fields of science has its merit of better vision about what is being done – which in turn energies the participants and so stimulates actions. There is no pressure to put forward findings on published journals for the reason of mere honor as is customary in other institutions. Now the Collector asked:Can academic success stories be explained by pure randomness?? My point is academics typically try to explain successful traders versus unsuccessful traders as a random walk, if 10,000 monkeys select stocks randomly some of them will randomly come up with super returns simply due to randomness, these Monkeys (=Traders) will themselves of course think about themselves as geniuses, even if they simply are fooled by randomness. But what about academics, what if 10,000 chimpanzees (Professors and other academics) over some years publish hundreds of thousands of papers, then by pure randomness some of these papers will be better than others, and some could even by randomness be useful in practice. Are Super Chimpanzies (=Star Professors) simply a result of Fooled by Randomness as well?One of the most common errors in statistical procedures is measuring the wrong variables or using inappropriate or inefficient statistical methods. To my mind however, the most serious error lies in letting statistical procedure make decisions for the measurer himself. Methods of discrimination of indirect variable they as environment, teamwork, work pressure, and liberation of ideas remind behind the veil of ignorance, and hence the reason of why the cliché of pure randomness is praised. Yes, there are reasonable fears from falling into traps of Type I and Type II errors. But still, academic researchers will have to discover means to discriminate facts from numbers, because unlike particle or objects there are people behind the numbers. So it’s not surprising that over 50% of all medical and life science research papers are statistically incorrect, and, worse, misleading.

QuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeQuoteOriginally posted by: migalleyQuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeNow now, nothing wrong with art history professors. Some of them make very good-looking wives .Are you married to one?Not yet.So will you teach her about Std Dev and so on?

QuoteOriginally posted by: migalleyQuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeQuoteOriginally posted by: migalleyQuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeNow now, nothing wrong with art history professors. Some of them make very good-looking wives .Are you married to one?Not yet.So will you teach her about Std Dev and so on?Oh yes.

QuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeQuoteOriginally posted by: migalleyQuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeQuoteOriginally posted by: migalleyQuoteOriginally posted by: TraderJoeNow now, nothing wrong with art history professors. Some of them make very good-looking wives .Are you married to one?Not yet.So will you teach her about Std Dev and so on?Oh yes.Cool!

"Randomness" just means that we do not understand the causes - in that sense, "God does not play with dice"Now suppose you do not understand the causes but you still have to make a decision to hire a trader (resp. an academic.) Ideally you would have infinite time to review and discuss all the past trades (resp. papers) executed (resp. published) by your universe of traders (resp. academics), as well as talk about politics, economy, philosophy, literature etc. over a cup of team to get a good feeling of personality and potential.In practice you have too many candidates and too little time - surely past performance does not guarantee future returns, but are you REALLY being fooled by randomness when picking a trader who has a consistently profitable track record (resp. an academic who has consistently published in top academic journals)?That said, a good selection process is always a mixture between past achievements and personality/potential. Unfortunately too many institutions are fooled by history and instead of detecting the geniuses who will bring top dollars (resp. top papers) they hire hords of talented monkeys to be part of the rat-race game.For talent is the gift to be excellent at anything you want, while genius is the ability to be truly good at what you can.e.

"Randomness" just means that we do not understand the causes - in that sense, "God does not play with dice"eiriamjh,Right on !!! You're the Man.

QuoteOriginally posted by: eiriamjh"Randomness" just means that we do not understand the causes - in that sense, "God does not play with dice"Now suppose you do not understand the causes but you still have to make a decision to hire a trader (resp. an academic.) Ideally you would have infinite time to review and discuss all the past trades (resp. papers) executed (resp. published) by your universe of traders (resp. academics), as well as talk about politics, economy, philosophy, literature etc. over a cup of team to get a good feeling of personality and potential.In practice you have too many candidates and too little time - surely past performance does not guarantee future returns, but are you REALLY being fooled by randomness when picking a trader who has a consistently profitable track record (resp. an academic who has consistently published in top academic journals)?That said, a good selection process is always a mixture between past achievements and personality/potential. Unfortunately too many institutions are fooled by history and instead of detecting the geniuses who will bring top dollars (resp. top papers) they hire hords of talented monkeys to be part of the rat-race game.For talent is the gift to be excellent at anything you want, while genius is the ability to be truly good at what you can.Dude, are you a philosopher?

> Dude, are you a philosopher?Only at year-end

> Randomness" just means that we do not understand the causesrandomness means you do not have enough information to make precise predictions -- even if you do understandthe causes in principle.