Tag: Meaningless correlations

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

^{Type
post

Gary Smith
Date
September 14, 2020

Categorized
Medicine and Health, Peer Review, Science

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

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 ›

^{Type
post

Gary Smith
Date
January 6, 2020

Categorized
Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance

Tagged
Donald Trump, Meaningless correlations, Smith test, stock market, Winograd Schema}

Serious Investors Should Embrace the Stock Market Algos!

_{We can use computers’ inability to distinguish meaning from noise in data to our advantage} _{Gary Smith
January 6, 2020

6

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance}

Computer algorithms are much, much better than humans at discovering statistical patterns but much, much worse than humans at discerning whether the patterns are meaningful. Wise investors can use the resulting blips to their advantage.

Computers’ Stupidity Makes Them Dangerous

_{The real danger today is not that computers are smarter than us, but that we think computers are smarter than us} _{Gary Smith
August 30, 2019

7

Artificial Intelligence, Business and Finance, Philosophy of Mind, Technocracy}

Many marketing decisions, medical diagnoses, and stock trades, loan and job applications, and election strategies are evaluated by computers. But, as my little experiment shows, the computer does not know whether a pattern is information or noise.