Gary Smith

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
December 23, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health

Tagged
Big Data, British Medical Journal Christmas edition, Featured, Friday the 13th paper, Hound of the Baskervilles Effect, Junk science, Surgeon's birthday effect}

The British Medical Journal’s Top Picks in Offbeat Medical Science

_{In its legendary Christmas edition, the Journal highlights interesting findings that are often junk science} _{Gary Smith

December 23, 2020

9

Medicine and Health}

The British Medical Journal (BMJ) is one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious medical journals. Each Christmas, they take time off from the usual dry academic papers and publish studies that are noteworthy for their originality: “We don’t want to publish anything that resembles anything we’ve published before.” Although the papers are unusual, BMJ’s editors state that: While the subject matter may be more light-hearted, research papers in the Christmas issue adhere to the same high standards of novelty, methodological rigour, reporting transparency, and readability as apply in the regular issue. Christmas papers are subject to the same competitive selection and peer review process as regular papers. The articles are often goofy, and four have won the dreaded satiric Read More ›

Data technology background. Big data visualization. Flow of data. Information code. Background in a matrix style. 4k rendering.

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
December 21, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning

Tagged
Big Data, Bottomless bowls study, Brian Wansink, Cornell University, Daryl Bem, Data Mining, Data mining examples, Featured, Fishing expedition analysis, IgNobel prize, Nigel Richards, Retroactive recall}

Torturing Data Can Destroy a Career: The Case of Brian Wansink

_{Wansink wasn’t alone. A surprising number of studies published in highly respected peer-reviewed journals are complete nonsense and could not be replicated with fresh data} _{Gary Smith

December 21, 2020

8

Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning}

Until a few years ago, Brian Wansink (pictured in 2007) was a Professor of Marketing at Cornell and the Director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab. He authored (or co-authored) more than 200 peer-reviewed papers and wrote two popular books, Mindless Eating and Slim by Design, which have been translated into more than 25 languages. In one of his most famous studies, 54 volunteers were served tomato soup. Half were served from normal bowls and half from “bottomless bowls” which had hidden tubes that imperceptibly refilled the bowls. Those with the bottomless bowls ate, on average, 73 percent more soup but they did not report feeling any fuller than the people who ate from normal bowls. Eating is evidently Read More ›

Cybernetic Brain. Electronic chip in form of human brain in electronic cyberspace. Illustration on the subject of 'Artificial Intelligence'.

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
December 7, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Science

Tagged
AI Feynman, Curve fitting, Featured, Judea Pearl, Max Tegmark, Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, Silviu-Marian Udrescu, Theory of Everything}

AI: Still Just Curve Fitting, Not Finding a Theory of Everything

_{The AI Feynman algorithm is impressive, as the New York Times notes, but it doesn’t devise any laws of physics} _{Gary Smith

December 7, 2020

8

Artificial Intelligence, Science}

Judea Pearl, a winner of the Turing Award (the “Nobel Prize of computing”), has argued that, “All the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting.” Finding patterns in data may be useful but it is not real intelligence. A recent New York Times article, “Can a Computer Devise a Theory of Everything?” suggested that Pearl is wrong because computer algorithms have moved beyond mere curve fitting. Stephen Hawking’s 1980 prediction that, “The end might not be in sight for theoretical physics, but it might be in sight for theoretical physicists” was quoted. If computers can now devise theories that make theoretical physicists redundant, then they are surely smarter than the rest of us. The program behind the Read More ›

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
November 23, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Economics, Mathematics

Tagged
Andrew Capron, Dot-com bubble, Featured, Francis Galton, Jack Treynor, Jelly bean experiment, Marcus Lee, Planet Money (radio), South Sea Bubble, Statistics, Steve Jobs, Tulip Bubble, Warren Buffett, Wisdom of Crowds (book)}

The Wisdom of Crowds: Are Crowds Really Wiser Than Individuals?

_{According to the theory, with a large number of guessers, the median number is very likely to be close to the true value} _{Gary Smith

November 23, 2020

9

Business and Finance, Economics, Mathematics}

Statistician Sir Francis Galton went to a country fair in 1907 where a prize was to be awarded to the person who made the most accurate guess of the butchered weight of an ox that was on display. Galton collected and analyzed the 787 guesses and, not surprisingly, found that some guesses were far too high and others were much too low. However, the average guess (1,197 pounds) was only 1 pound lower than the actual weight (1,198 pounds). The average was more accurate than the guesses of the vast majority of both the amateurs and the experts. In the 1980s, a finance professor named Jack Treynor (1930–2016) performed a similar, and now legendary, experiment with jelly beans. Professor Treynor Read More ›

upset sick mature woman in kerchief looking at smiling reflection in mirror, cancer concept

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
November 9, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health

Tagged
Cancer causes, Cancer cluster, Cancer fortress, Cancer maps, Featured, Phantom patterns, Randomness}

Cancer Maps—An Expensive Source of Phantom Patterns?

_{Is the money the U.S. government spends on tracking cancer patterns a good investment? There’s a way we can tell} _{Gary Smith

November 9, 2020

6

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health}

The U.S. government puts interactive maps on the internet that show the geographic incidence (all the way down to census blocks) of various types of cancer. Millions of dollars are spent each year maintaining these maps, but for what purpose? The problem with cancer maps is that they tempt the curious and fearful to scrutinize the brightly colored chunks, thinking that any patterns they discover must be meaningful. However, statistical patterns are sometimes meaningless. For example, I flipped a coin ten times and got these results: There is a cluster of 3 heads in a row and a cluster of 4 tails in a row: These clusters are not at all surprising. If a fair coin is flipped ten times, Read More ›

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
October 26, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
Amos Tversky, Black swan events, Daniel Kahneman, Earthquakes, Featured, James Jung, One Concern, Real estate values, San Francisco, Seattle, Stock market values}

It’s Hard To Estimate Highly Improbable Things Like Earthquakes

_{Some have hoped that AI would provide reliable help with predicting They have been disappointed} _{Gary Smith

October 26, 2020

8

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

Investors often overreact to both good and bad news. When a company’s quarterly earnings turn out to be slightly below forecasts, its stock price might plunge 20 percent or more. Thus, when theoretical models of the stock market models assume that price changes conform to a bell-shaped curve of normal distribution, that assumption is more convenient than credible. Another inconvenient truth is that many investors are prone to chasing trends up or down. After a stock’s price has gone up, they rush to buy, which pushes the price even higher. When these two realities meet head-on, stock returns are sometimes more extremely good or bad than would be true of a normal distribution. On October 19, 1987, the S&P 500 Read More ›

Female doctor analyzing liquid in test tube

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
October 12, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health

Tagged
AI-based medicine, Antibiotics, Clover Assistant, Clover Health, Decline effect (in medical research), Featured, IBM Watson, Kenelm Digby, medical research, Powder of Sympathy, Walmart}

The Decline Effect: Why Most Medical Treatments Are Disappointing

_{Artificial intelligence is not an answer to this problem, as Walmart may soon discover} _{Gary Smith

October 12, 2020

8

Artificial Intelligence, Medicine and Health}

Random variation, post-hoc fallacies, and data mining mean that “proven” treatments often decline in apparent effectiveness when released to the general public. Read More ›

Girl business woman sitting at a wooden table with a laptop and discussing a new project with her mentor boss teacher. The man is fooling around. New business development concept

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
September 24, 2020

Categorized
Mathematics

Tagged
Featured, Intelligence quotient (IQ), IQ, marriage, Regression toward the mean, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Spouses, Statistics}

Why Intelligent Women Marry Less Intelligent Men

_{Are they trying to avoid competition at home as well as at work? Or is there a statistical reason we are overlooking?} _{Gary Smith

September 24, 2020

7

Mathematics}

When I read that Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s late husband was a wonderful man but less accomplished than his wife, I was reminded of “Ivy,” one of the most impressive students I ever had the privilege to teach. Ivy excelled in her coursework, won a prestigious scholarship for postgraduate study in England, went to a top-five law school, clerked for a Supreme Court Justice, and is now a law professor at a great university. Like Ruth Ginsberg (1933–2020, pictured), Ivy married a man who is very nice but less intelligent than she. This is not an unusual situation. I made a list of the dozen most intelligent female students with whom I’ve kept in touch over the years. These women are Read More ›

Worried doctors and medical researchers on conference meeting, discussing possible solutions for resolving a world health crisis. Health and medical care concept. Selective focus.

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
September 14, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Science

Tagged
Aleh Tsyvinski, bitcoin, Featured, James Tobin, Meaningless correlations, replication crisis, Reproducibility, Reproducibility crisis, Ronald Fisher, Statistical significance, Yukun Liu}

Computers Excel at Finding Temporary Patterns

_{Which contributes to the replication crisis in science} _{Gary Smith

September 14, 2020

7

Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Science}

The scientific method calls for the rigorous testing of plausible theories, ideally through randomized controlled trials. For example, a study of a COVID-19 vaccine might give the vaccine to 10,000 randomly selected people and a placebo to another 10,000, and compare the infection rates for the two groups. If the difference in the infection rates is too improbable to be explained by chance, then the difference is deemed statistically significant. How improbable? In the 1920s, the great British statistician, Sir Ronald Fisher , said that he favored a 5 percent threshold. So 5 percent became the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, the establishment of a 5 percent hurdle for statistical significance has had the perverse effect of encouraging researchers to do whatever Read More ›

Bull market trend, green growth arrow. Stock Exchange and concept of a trading chart. Low poly, wireframe 3d Raster illustration. Abstract polygonal image on blue neon background

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
August 28, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
AI and prediction, COVID-19 Recession, Featured, Recession, stock market, Stock market predictions}

The Stock Market Keeps Rising Despite COVID. Is It Nuts?

_{I’ve been asked whether advanced AI can explain the conundrum} _{Gary Smith

August 28, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

What is going on? Our GDP has collapsed and 16 million people are unemployed. Thousands of small businesses and dozens of billion-dollar companies have gone bankrupt, including California Pizza Kitchen, Hertz, JCPenney, Neiman Marcus, and Brooks Brothers. Yet, the stock market keeps hitting all-time high after all-time high. The stock market is supposed to be related to the economy. When the economy booms, corporate profits explode; when the economy collapses, profits crater. That’s what happened during the Great Depression when stock prices fell 90 percent and the unemployment rate averaged 19 percent for a decade. Now, stocks and the economy are moving in opposite directions. What is going on? A friend who knows that I live, breathe, and teach investments Read More ›

Female student holding pencil and examination paper

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
August 19, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Education

Tagged
A-Levels, Featured, Grade inflation, Grades (education), Ofqual, Teachers, Testing in education}

Don’t Blame AI for the British A-Level Test Scandal

_{When 39 percent of the final grades assigned during COVID-19 were lower than teacher predictions, it was headline news. But what happened?} _{Gary Smith

August 19, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence, Education}

Many years ago, when I was a young assistant professor of economics, I had to endure a minor hazing ritual—serving for one year on the admissions committee for the PhD program. As a newbie, I was particularly impressed by a glowing letter of recommendation that began, “This is the best student I have had in 30 years.” The applicant’s test scores were not off-the-charts but the letter was number 1. A dean who chaired the admissions committee year after year advised me to calm down because this professor wrote a recommendation that celebrated “the best student I have had in 30 years” every year. The committee had a chuckle at my expense. I’ve now been teaching for nearly 50 years Read More ›

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post

Author
Gary Smith and Jay Cordes
Date
August 17, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics

Tagged
Cancer (causes), Electromagnetic fields (EMFs), Featured, Klaus Teuber, Power lines, Probability, Settlers of Catan (board game), Statistics}

In Science, We Can’t Just “Settle” for Data Clusters

_{The board game, Settlers of Catan, offers a clear illustration of what can go wrong when we are duped by data clusters} _{Gary Smith and Jay Cordes

August 17, 2020

7

Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics}

Settlers of Catan is an incredible board game created by Klaus Teuber, a German game designer. It has been translated into dozens of languages and tens of millions of sets have been sold. The basic four-player board consists of 19 hexagons (hexes) representing resources: 3 brick, 4 lumber, 4 wool, 4 grain, 3 ore, and 1 desert. Players acquire and use resources based on dice rolls, card draws, trading, and the location of their settlements and cities. Part of the game’s seductive appeal is that there are many, many ways to arrange the 19 hexagons and successful strategies depend on how the hexagons are arranged. The rules are simple but winning strategies are complex and elusive. The official rules of Read More ›

tropical hurricane approaching the USA.Elements of this image are furnished by NASA.

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
August 10, 2020

Categorized
Mathematics

Tagged
Featured, Hurricane Bill, Hurricane names, Hurricane Sandy, Hurricanes, Juanita Kreps, Roxcy Bolton}

Female Hurricanes: How A Mass of Hot Air Became a Zombie Study

_{When a reporter first asked me about a study claiming that “Female Hurricanes are Deadlier than Male Hurricanes,” I was skeptical} _{Gary Smith

August 10, 2020

7

Mathematics}

It is once again hurricane season on the East Coast and social media are reliably abuzz with reports of a debunked study that claimed that hurricanes given feminine-sounding names are deadlier than those given masculine-sounding names. (Full disclosure: I was one of the debunkers.) When a reporter initially asked me about this study, titled “Female Hurricanes are Deadlier than Male Hurricanes,” I was skeptical. Hurricane names alternate between female and male on a schedule set before the hurricane season begins so any relationship between name and death toll was surely coincidental. I looked at the study and discovered that the authors were not arguing that female hurricanes are inherently deadlier but that sexist humans die because they don’t take female Read More ›

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
August 3, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Science

Tagged
2001 Recession, COVID-19 Recession, data, employment, Featured, General Theory (book), Great Depression, Great Recession (2007-2009), John Maynard Keynes, Macroeconomics, New Classical Economists, Theory, Unemployment}

Beware of Geeks Bearing Formulas—It’s Often Pseudoscience

_{Pseudoscience based on data without theory and theory without data undermine the credibility of real science, which is the key to human progress} _{Gary Smith

August 3, 2020

6

Business and Finance, Science}

Elsewhere I have warned of the perils of making decisions based on data without theory. For example, the patterns discovered by data-mining computer algorithms are often nothing more than meaningless coincidences. It is also perilous to go to the opposite extreme—to make decisions based on theory without data. Once upon a time, for example, economists were fond of sketching labor demand and supply curves and assuming that the economy was at their intersection. That is, labor demand is equal to supply, so that everyone who wants to work is working. The unemployed have chosen to be unemployed because they value leisure more than income. True believers were fond of this theory and little troubled by reality. Between 1929 and 1933, Read More ›

man riding on self balancing board graffiti

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
July 13, 2020

Categorized
Mathematics

Tagged
Alan Lichtman, Data Mining, Donald Trump, Elections, Featured, Helmut Norpoth, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John von Neumann, Merlin Heidemanns, Overfitting data, predictions}

Election Models: Predicting the Past is Easy — and Useless

_{You can seldom see where you are going by looking in a rear-view mirror} _{Gary Smith

July 13, 2020

8

Mathematics}

I told my students that I had a model that predicted the popular vote for the the last ten presidential elections (1980–2016) perfectly. Read More ›

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
July 7, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance, Ethics

Tagged
Charles Ponzi, Featured, Ponzi scheme, stock market, Tan Lui, Tim Denning}

Stocks Are Not a Ponzi Scheme and Here’s Why Not

_{Gary Smith

July 7, 2020

7

Business and Finance, Ethics}

When you mail a letter to someone in another country, you can enclose an international reply coupon (IRC) that can be exchanged for that country’s postage stamps and used to mail a letter back to you. It is like enclosing a self-addressed stamped envelope except that you do not need to figure out how to buy foreign postage stamps. It is the polite thing to do but also the source of the most famous swindle in history. In 1920, a Massachusetts man named Charles Ponzi (right, in 1920) promised to pay investors 50 percent interest every 45 days. Compounded eight times a year, the effective annual rate of return was 2,463 percent! He said that his profits would come from Read More ›

The economic crisis of 2020 with the red arrows indicating the economic recession in 2020.

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
June 29, 2020

Categorized
Business and Finance

Tagged
Banking, Debt, Featured, Fed, Federal Reserve, government, Great Recession, Inflation, Money supply, Recession}

Inflation Is the Least of Our Worries!

_{Yet some fear that the inflation dragon is about to roar} _{Gary Smith

June 29, 2020

7

Business and Finance}

The Federal Reserve (the Fed) can throw the economy into a recession whenever it feels that it is in our best interests to be unemployed — typically because the Fed is convinced that an unruly inflation needs to be tamed by the discipline of unemployment. For example, in 1979, as the rate of inflation peaked above 13 percent, the Fed moved to make borrowing prohibitively expensive. When Fed Chair Paul Volcker was asked if the Fed’s policies would cause a recession, he replied, “Yes, and the sooner the better.” Interest rates reached 18 percent on home mortgages and were even higher for most other bank loans. Households and businesses cut back on their borrowing and spending and the unemployment rate Read More ›

Smart technologies in your smartphone, collection and analysis of big data

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post

Author
Gary Smith
Date
June 1, 2020

Categorized
Data Privacy, Surveillance, Technocracy

Tagged
Bill Gates, Birds Aren't Real, China, Conspiracy theories, COVID-19, Dwight Eisenhower, Edward Snowden, Featured, Self-censorship, Tim Cook, Uyghurs}

The Birds Aren’t Real. But Maybe the Spying Is.

_{A defense of our fundamental right to privacy} _{Gary Smith

June 1, 2020

7

Data Privacy, Surveillance, Technocracy}

Technology frees us from drudgery but also enable surveillance that enslaves us. Then, far from computers becoming more like humans, we may become more like computers.

What, Exactly, Do Economists Do?

_{Economist make the world a better place} _{Gary Smith

May 19, 2020

9

Business and Finance, Education, Global Technology}

Thanks to economists, during the economic crisis that began in 2007, the President, Congress, and Federal Reserve did not repeat the errors of the 1930s.

Vitamin D and COVID-19: Is It Data or Noise?

_{Because random clusters occur naturally in large numbers, only randomized, controlled trials can tell us} _{Gary Smith

May 14, 2020

7

Medicine and Health}

Random data shows geographic clusters. Thus some locations will inevitably have higher COVID-19 rates than others. As my example shows, associating these clusters with personal characteristics after the fact is not convincing scientific evidence. That’s where randomized, controlled trials are needed.