[Phys-L] Re: infinite sig. figs.

[Brian Whatcott <betwys1@SBCGLOBAL.NET>]

At 06:33 PM 9/24/2005, Roberet Cohen, you wrote:

> ///    people typically interpret (correctly or incorrectly)
> the uncertainty of such a number [ 0.285714286 m/s ]
>  as being around +/- 0.0000000005
> m/s.  In this case, given typical measurement devices, the
> uncertainty in distance is probably not much smaller than a millimeter
> (if that) and the uncertainty in time is probably not much smaller
> than a millisecond (if that).  These "reasonable" estimates of the
> uncertainties don't support an uncertainty in speed as small as
> 0.0000000005 m/s.  And, rightly or wrongly, that is what
> 0.285714286 m/s (without any further information) seems to imply.
>
> Again, this assumes that no comparisons are being made (between
> two or more measurements/predictions); tracking the uncertainties
> would be crucial in that case.
>
> Maybe I'm still missing the point between significance and uncertainty.
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Robert Cohen; 570-422-3428; www.esu.edu/~bbq
> East Stroudsburg University; E. Stroudsburg, PA 18301

How about this abstract from The Economist - all I could quote
without a paid subscription...

Bad statistics in science
Jun 3rd 2004
 From The Economist print edition

SCIENTIFIC and medical journals, with their august panels of peer
reviewers and fact checkers, are not the sort of places many mistakes
are to be expected. Yet Emili García-Berthou and Carles Alcaraz,
two researchers at the University of Girona in Spain, have found
that 38% of a sample of papers in Nature, and a quarter of those
sampled in the British Medical Journal (BMJ)­two of the world's
  most respected journals­contained one or more statistical errors.
Not all of these errors led to erroneous conclusions, but the authors
  of the study, which has just been published in BMC Medical
  Research Methodology, another journal, reckon that 4% of the
errors may have caused non-significant findings to be
misrepresented as being significant.…




Brian Whatcott    Altus OK    Eureka!
_______________________________________________
Phys-L mailing list
Phys-L@electron.physics.buffalo.edu
https://www.physics.buffalo.edu/mailman/listinfo/phys-l