#suck it statisticians

[antiparticular]

fighting for my life trying to defend python from computer science students. she's my beautiful wife and she makes lovely graphs, don't insult her

[solrin]

I don't like the general sweeping 'estimated 100% of the american population' part of that post but I think lot of the research around how COVID impacts the immune system and the long term damage it causes is pretty intriguing and could be important to know.

[eugenedebs1920]

There’s the children’s story the boy who cried wolf. I assume we’re all somewhat familiar. Shepherd boy gets bored, yells about an imaginary wolf, the whole town gets riled up, yada yada yada, when there is a real wolf no one believes him because he lied so many times before.

I don’t trust Donald Trump. In turn, I don’t trust those who grovel at his feet. In his first term it was calculated that he lied or made misleading statements over 30,000 times. Then there was the “big lie”. His crusade of revenge, his malignant Narcissism, his need to be right all the time (ie sharpiegate). He is an untrustworthy person. Even before he was president.

The way he is trying to alter history about January 6th, how he said he didn’t even know what project 2025 was and definitely wasn’t appointing anyone involved in that, that he didn’t have sex with a pornstar who was under an NDA from him. There’s 30,000 reasons not to trust him.

This time around he has a score to settle, a vendetta against the truth, an absolute NEED to make it seem like he wasn’t wrong.

This is where that concept of authoritarians versus the truth comes in. Because honestly, it’s going to be hard to believe anything coming out of this administration. That lands me in the same boat as maga. Everything is a conspiracy and everyone is a lier. Thats where the bureaucratic state comes in.

These civil servants, a bunch of researchers and statisticians, scientists and doctors, pencil pushers and nerds who work for the federal government, not any particular administration, continuing on from one to the next despite the incoming administration’s affiliation. This group of nonpartisan bureaucrats are, or were, the a-political guardrails tasked with producing facts and conducting research for the public good.

What Trump is doing with this schedule F dictatorial decree is replacing these office workers who are beholden to no one but the general public and the facts as diagnosed, with sycophants who will obey the orders from their higher up.

This is dangerous. I saw this headline and thought to myself, I don’t believe it. Why now? What a coincidence that what tanked Trumps chances for reelection in 2020, all the sudden, when he illegitimately regains power, there’s this groundbreaking evidence that it was all a vast conspiracy against his presidency and reelection bid. To tell you the truth I didn’t read the article because in my mind it’s all bullshit. That makes me just like maga!! It sucks!

There is not a doubt in my mind that there will be headlines like, ‘Jan 6th was Democratic plot against Trump’ or, ‘Dr. Fauci suspected of creating SARS’ some ridiculous shit. This is not good! This is a war on truth!

There’s going to be 30,000 or more, even more elaborate lies, at least, coming from this new administration. Be vigilant. Use critical thinking. Be weary of nearly anything this administration says.

Trump may have fooled us once, it’s up to ourselves if we’ll allow him to do it again. I just hope when there really is a wolf, we will know the difference 😬

[dangerously-human]

Reached out tonight to the professor for the Clinical Research Methods in Public Health class that's my second choice for an elective after the assessment class was unceremoniously cancelled, to request his permission for an override. Assuming he says yes, I still have a couple more hoops to jump through, but I think they'll be fairly easy (fingers crossed). I don't see any reason he would say no; I outlined my coursework that's equivalent to the epidemiology/biostatistics prereq as well as my professional role, which really should set me up for success in the class. I know we are cutting it close, but I'm hopeful that it will work out, even if I have to just show up as an unofficial attendee this week. I do kind of wish I'd known sooner that I could take classes in other programs for my electives; I don't know that it would really change what I ended up taking, but there are sooo many biostatistics courses that look so fun! I was talking to my parents tonight and said maybe if I do decide to go the biostatistician route in the future, instead of a PhD, I'll go back for a second master's and make it an MPH this time. The coursework is a lot more intense than an education-based degree, and I would have absolutely died if someone suggested this four years ago when I started my current program, but it might open enough doors for me to get what I want without a doctorate. Or maybe I will suck it up and do the PhD thing after all, if that's the best way to where I want to be. Really I'm hoping that this degree is enough to get me what I want, given that I've already got my foot in the door and people in the right places championing my cause... even if it might require more time, patience, and flexibility than I initially hoped. I mean, at least in theory, I'll be up to 10-15% of my time on research by this summer, with the possibility of stacking a few more projects on top depending on which grants come through, and mentor-director's plan is to just keep chipping away like that until we're looking at enough of my time to discuss a real role change with my uber-bosses. I think it probably won't hurt my cause that my current position may very well not exist, or at least, won't be funded the same way, a year or two from now, yet I know they want to keep me if they can. This role also isn't meant to be long-term, people usually stay in it 2-3 years and move on, so the fact that I'll have been here 5 years at the start of next fiscal year and everyone's seemingly in agreement that we do not need the next level up of data analyst means it won't exactly come as a surprise that I am giving them an ultimatum to either make room for me as a scientist/statistician or I will be leaving for somewhere that can, with their blessing and no hard feelings.

[amyoffline]

things that make more sense now that i know i'm autistic: an incomplete list

~communication~

i am not an intuitive communicator. i am the opposite of an intuitive communicator. my brain's first interpretation of any statement is always literal and accounting for subtext/context/nuance is something that happens later. i'm practiced enough that sometimes i can do it subconsciously, but when i'm relying on that i sometimes get a situation wildly wrong. sorry if any of you have ever been on the receiving end of one of those mishaps. idk i also learned Basic Speech™ late and only with professional help lol

re: above - lots of "you're embarrassing us, that was an offensive faux pas, be ashamed, go apologize" incidents until i was about 16 and started actively trying to pick apart how people communicate like weird little bugs

………no wonder i became a statistician. we get pedantic about the exact phrasing of a sentence fragment because of the various ways people can interpret things

i was generally the "annoying" or "weird" friend that people barely put up with unless i was in a group of people who were more straightforwardly or openly neurodivergent

i have a few primary interests that i am Very Invested In, and struggle to make conversation if none of those topics are appropriate. luckily for adult amy, most people are at least receptive to chatting about either cooking or politics

maybe martial arts was such a core pillar of community and social interaction for me growing up because virtually every parent of a neurodivergent kid was sticking them in martial arts classes in the 2000s

good old christianity gave me a complex when i was young because i don't experience or express empathy "correctly" (particularly when you layer gendered norms on top of pre-maga christian norms)

i made a really conscious effort in therapy to force myself to be more Type B, but before that i was one of those kids/teens/young adults that would get very anxious if there wasn't a rigid, carefully considered plan for any given activity, and then very upset if a plan didn't work out for some reason

~sensory~

when i was an unmedicated teenager, i'd categorize my frequent menty b's into a few different categories: 1) panic attack, 2) anxiety attack (one of a few specific triggers), 3) anxiety attack ("there's just too much stuff happening at once"). medication dramatically reduced the frequency of those first two, but not the third, which makes sense in hindsight since that's just sensory overload.

i suspect i had sensory overload most often in those years because i was too old for it to be socially acceptable to carry a book or magazine around everywhere (to focus on so i could tune things out), i didn't have a smartphone (to apply the same technique), and i didn't have the agency to be like "no, i'm not going to try to pay attention to everything going on here. it stresses me out and i can't accurately process all that input anyway." if it sucks... hit da bricks!!

while on this thread: i had that classic phobia of balloons popping. sorry to anyone who invited me to a party before about 2007

i've always kept my fingernails very short. i cannot stand them growing much past the nail plate, it's awful, and i borrowed the "sensory reasons" explanation from autistic folks as soon as i learned that vocabulary existed. i had a similar problem with my hair for a very, very long time - i just couldn't deal with the potential for stray hairs. the image below only shows about 1/3 of the barrettes i was wearing (2011 or 2012). it didn't work and looked ridiculous.

that "fidgety" label i got stuck with early on might have just been describing stimming?? sometimes it feels more like a compulsion than an idle animation (like, "i need to do this right now, i can't remain still"). i guess that's what makes it a stim?

i was an EXTREMELY picky eater as a kid. to the extent that, for about a year, i wouldn't eat anything other than chick-fil-a nuggets and kroger frozen pizza - and i hated drinking anything, including water. you have never in your life seen a more constipated preschooler. i ended up in the hospital about it. my food selectivity reduced to more functional level after that, though i continued to have texture issues with beef and most raw fruit (neither of which I frequently eat as an adult), and I didn't become a truly adventurous eater until cooking and baking became one of my primary hobbies. which brings us to...

~special interests~

let it be known that toontown was my very first special interest. in the stereotypically autistic way and also a fannish way (i made friends do toontown roleplay with me, and was accused by adults of having an addiction to the game despite my access to it being strictly restricted to 1hr/day over summer breaks. it was just the only thing i wanted to talk about). it feels very cathartic to be able to label this as a special interest from 20 years in the future.

there were a lot of periods when i'd just replay or rewatch or reread the same thing over and over again. in fourth grade, i watched a ripped copy of madagascar every single day after school. for months. why? why madagascar?

(pov: you try to talk to me about your broad fannish interests, circa 2010-2012) "i can't care about other youtubers or get into one direction. i've already hit my quota with dan and phil"

being utterly consumed by final fantasy vii in late 2015 to the extent that i basically abandoned all other fandoms and all unrelated hobbies for a year and a half

clocked 💀. context: i've written over 400,000 words of final fantasy walkthroughs that i only share with friends. i just... wanted to make them. the most comprehensive guide to ffx-2 in existence lives on my hard drive and you have to ask me for it

[cicaklah]

fic author q&a

thank you @the-lady-general for tagging me, I love to procrastinate by doing stuff like this.

1. Why do you write fanfic?

because my brain is a relentless what-if machine and it can't be stopped or tamed. If I wasn't writing it down I'd be losing time just thinking about it, trust me, its far better this way.

and because I love writing, love the fic community, and just love creativity. I've been reading fic literally every single day since I was 11 or 12 and I'm now 38. I'm passionate about the fic writing world and my experience in the 'conventional' writing space has been nothing but anxiety, inferiority and bitterness.

2. Which of your posted stories do you think about the most, even though the story is “finished”?

I don't tend to feel like that about my stories, because I am always up to write sequels or prequels to things, or add stuff onto various universes. I still think often about weibermacht, which is the name of the sex club in my Hitman stories, and one day I will write a proper weibermacht story, but the reason I still think about stories is because they aren't properly finished. I also think a lot about the watch me series because I feel guilty that I never finished it. I have at least another 3 stories in various stages of writing.

I'm planning on doing a WIP amnesty next year (once One Man is finished), and I'm hoping that it will get me to finish some of these things I want to return to, but haven't since.

3. If you could give yourself fic advice from when you first started writing fic, what would that advice be?

Use the momentum of being really into something to make more art. Write as much fic as you can, and don't let guilt catch up with you. It doesn't matter if it sucks; you have to love it, and if you love it in the moment, you are going in the right direction.

4. What’s your relationship to fic stats?

As a professional sort-of statistician I adore them, I wish there were more of them, specifically available over time, and also the number of subscriptions to series would help me as someone who writes in that way. BUT: comparison is the thief of joy. My big fic-related breakdown was over constantly comparing myself to the people I thought were my peers. Stats don't tell you why you aren't doing better than someone, and I know from my profession that you can't just assume things from numbers.

5. Is there a pairing or scenario or friendship you miss writing? If so, why? If not, why not?

I miss Stormpilot (Finn/Poe) circa 2017. What a beautiful time. It will never come again, even if we got something to make the ship sail again, the world has changed.

6. What motivates you to write?

Much like the lady general, I am motivated by wanting to tell jokes, or by specific ideas that enter my brain and won't let go. I am motivated to keep going on one man because there are specific stories I need to share with the rest of the class, but I must tell the rest of the story in order to get there. The journey is the point, but so is the punchline.

7. Why do you write for the fandom(s) that you write for?

Star Trek, specifically SNW, is my current blorbo, so I write for myself and my id on that one. Hitman is for the thirsty thirteen and because its OTP. Oxventure is...complicated. I am so very burned out on that fandom. Super Secret RPF pairing is because of my co-conspirators <3. I've also written way, way too many things because Phoenix and I have talked about them and I've then be POSSESSED.

8. If you’re stuck writing a WIP, what do you do?

As long as I'm still interested in the project, I do my best to push through. I have the philosophy that a story doesn't really exist until it is published anyway. I do have an abandoned WIP folder, and within that is a folder called 'look I'm never writing these ones'. There are 12 stories in that folder. Meanwhile there are 134 I have yet to give up on, not including the 4 that are currently in progress (not including one man.)

Basically I need another WIP amnesty.

9. What do you wish people knew about comments?

They really are the fuel on the fire. I have finished stories because of comments. I have written entire worlds because of comments. I do my best to answer every single comment, and I try to also leave comments as much as I can. At the same time, I have to, for my own sanity, try not to put too much stock in them, because we have to be self-fuelling machines, we have to be self-raising lazaruses. You have to write for yourself, because if you base everything on other people's opinions, you will die nobody.

10. Maybe there’s a question you wish had been on here. What’s that question (and answer)?

I think the question I'd like to ask is what is your personal greatest fic achievement? Not your most popular story, what was the story that you still look at and go: I will never not be proud of that achievement. Mine is the fact I have published 750,000 words and 130 stories and I still feel like I'm only just getting started. That the perseverance over the last 14 years proves that I can do whatever I set my mind to, that I am valuable in a way that matters, and all the doubters of my youth can go fuck themselves forever.

I'm tagging @postalninja, @stickthisbig, @android-and-ale and @alienfuckeronmain and anyone else who wants to do it. lets navel gaze, lads.

[its-a-hil]

protip if you ever find yourself criticizing the way someone engages with math and theyre not acting from a position of authority in a mathematical field (i.e. statistician, scientist, etc), stop

the culture we've built around math elitism is extremely harmful (and was likely harmful to you as well), and we really need to push back on that

it sucks that teachers made you feel like knowing how order of operations work is more important than being a kind person, but they were wrong and we have to do better than that

[skylilac]

honest to god maybe i should just be a statistician bc i suck at everything else

[nodynasty4us]

Why Do People Say the Economy Sucks?

From the November 23, 2023 item:

Wages are way up but people remember what eggs used to cost and what they cost now. They don't remember what they were earning in 2019 back when eggs were "cheap." In recent months, wage gains have been more than inflation, but only government labor statisticians know this. It is a closely held state secret. ... Another issue is interest rates. They are way up as a result of the Fed's program for trying to curb inflation. This affects different people differently. Borrowers don't like it. Savers and seniors living on the interest from their bank accounts do. But there are more borrowers than savers, so high interest rates are not popular. ... People's actual spending habits belie what they are telling pollsters about the economy. When people are actually pessimistic about the future, they spend less and save more. Data show that people are spending like crazy, not saving. This says that they are largely optimistic in their outlook about the future, despite what they say.

[magicalgirlpenny]

thinking about the monty hall problem and i just realised it's bullshit

if switching your choice increases to a 1/2 chance after the first door is opened, that means sticking with your first choice also has a 1/2 chance, it doesn't stay at 1/3. statisticians can suck my dick

[deliciousstrangeobject]

Marketing major here: They're right.

Marketing classes were not how to make fun graphics or write catchy slogans or even how to design the websites we claim we will make for you. No, most-if not all-of our classes were about the importance of market research, and the statement "statistics don't lie, statisticians do". We are meant to make you think you need us by constantly doing analyses to show you how much you suck at business, no matter how much you're happy with it or how much money you actually make. To the point where, when I actually did an analysis that showed that it was better for the business to continue their practices and treat their workers well by paying them well, I was told that that was all well and good, but aren't my services meant to make them more money right now??

Fuck business school, y'all.

My dad raises grass-fed beef cattle and I help him sell it, mainly by maintaining an online presence. For a while, I kept having the most ridiculous conversations with people who I assume were marketing students. I didn't want to be rude so I'd try to let them down gently but this one guy just kept insisting that with his magical marketing skills he could grow our business.

What he could not seem to comprehend is that we could not grow our business, at least not without significant time and monetary investment. Cows take two years from pregnancy to the size that you can sell. If we buy adult cows, our margins become razor thin or even negative. Even if we somehow could acquire some cows, our barn and hay fields are already near maximum capacity. Renting another field would be relatively easy, building a bigger barn not so much.

Cows are living animals, they aren't widgets that can be produced infinitely. Besides that, many businesses inherently cannot grow, because if they do they'll become something else. The delicious bakery down the street cannot produce much more than they do, if they began mass marketing and production they'd eventually be selling the equivalent of Twinkies. We grow grass-fed, organic beef, if we expanded how long would that last? Eventually we'd become the very factor farms that we hate. Some things can only ever be made on a small scale and they are usually the best things.

But also, what are they teaching them at marketing school and how is it so disconnected from reality?

[nightmarewing]

Grinding in Disgaea 2 sucks so bad... it wasn't even this bad in the first game because of statisticians. The felony system is a pain, especially considering that they managed to make the item world worse. It was still pretty bad in D2, so I'm really not looking forward to item worlds in 3 and 4. I wonder when the xp bar comes in... truly revolutionary stuff there.

Story still solid though. We're about to be done, but they decided to go wild with the geo panels in these last couple chapters. We were able to just brute force most of it until we hit a stage where if you don't go fast enough, increasing amounts of ally damage start moving onto your area until you literally can't survive.

On that note: I will never forgive them for making those bastards move.

[puck-luck]

Can I ask why you hate the oilers? The only people I’ve seen who actually like them are ppl from Edmonton.

I don't have like a GOOD reason, but here we go: while I can admit that they have some players who are good (Draisaitl bc I refuse to think about McDick), I think that all of their fans and the color commentators for the larger NHL organization try and suck the Oilers's metaphorical dick until the skin actually falls off. What I mean by that is that their fans and statisticians/commentators/announcers/journalists/etc. praise the Oilers to high heavens and I just don't think they're that great.

So that's my reason. I don't like them. Apologies to the oilers fans but all of yall that I've met have just proven my reason for disliking your team...

[qllie]

idk generally when people get into the weeds about grading it's like... man...

I mean like "the average is low so the teacher should curve it" cool and true. But like "the teacher should remove the top 2 scores, and then calculate the average, and then curve it" it's like idk man. I mean at some point you're just saying "the teacher should edit the scores so mine is much higher that would be fair :D" I mean you can say "I deserve to get a higher score because this class sucks" but don't pretend to be some statistician calculating the fairest average lol

[tydy-the-megnet]

On Laziness

When you're lazy, you sit around, watch TV, and be a bum a lot, right? Story of America, amirite? Lol, but seriously, for every two hours one spends sitting around watching TV, chances of becoming obese increases by 25%, because they aren't burning off the calories of whatever food they're eating (no matter how healthy that food is).

Me? I don't have this problem, because I'm too lazy to get off my butt and go get groceries and snacks and other various food items.

BEATING THE SYSTEM

[wheeloffortune-design]

Alright alright tonight's lesson before my sleeping pills knock me out is about how to socialize when you don't know how

You will need:

a genuine interest in people

some premade sentences

practice

bravery

So you're a neurodivergent adult who wants to make friends? Let this awkward weirdo of an extrovert explain a technique refined over decades.

The most important lesson I could impart you is:

We all want friends.

So you can go into the world knowing that other person would also like to be your friend.

Step 1, the hardest thing you've done in your life: The opener.

Listen, this sucks, but this whole operation rests on the idea that everyone hates taking the first step so might as well do it yourself.

You and person B are in a social situation. You have never talked, but you would like to. So you can borrow one of these:

I love your dress! Did you make it yourself? I love the pattern.

Oh, nice Deadpool tshirt, hello, fellow fan!

Wow I can't believe Linda left us without making presentations. Hi, I'm Carol.

Oh hey, I've seen you work over there, I'm right over here! 6 am shifts, huh?

Well this awkward silence won't break itself. Hi, I'm Tracy and I like horses. You?

I haven't seen you at these parties before! Come, sit with me, let's talk. Who do you know here?

The point is:

Greeting

point something you might have in common

ask a question.

(you'll find your favorites eventually).

Attention, muy importante:

YOU NEED TO BE GENUINE

It needs to be true. You need to find the other person interesting, and be curious and joyful about them.

These premade examples only work if the feeling behind is true.

Step 2: Be interested

There should be the start of a conversation going. You can ask about what they do, what interests them, whatever follows your opening line. And then react favorably.

Ex:

'Yeah, I'm a statistician.'

'I know absolutely nothing about numbers so I'm impressed. What exactly is it that you do?'

or

'I work at the McDonald's down the street.'

'I heard working there is exhausting, working on your feet and being nice all day long sounds tiring.'

Once again:

You need to be genuine in your delight. People are different, jobs are all respectable and hard to do, you can empathize with everyone over being tired/it's the weekend/can't wait for summer/etc.

Step 3: The middle

We're all awkward, we're all weird, and we mostly all learned how to fit in society despite being err, too much.

So I suggest: go with the level of masking that feels natural at first, and still keep a part of your true self ready to shine, because the goal is for them to get used to you gradually. This is, after all, a first meeting.

Ex: I slow down my speech, try to tone down the excitement, but I won't change my opinions or personality. So you do whatever has worked for you in the past.

Also, we're all a bit too nerd and too online, so I guess we got a lot of quotes and preinstalled humor. If used correctly, they work with regular people and they end up thinking you're super witty when you actually just quoted Parks and Recs.

Step 4: The end

In the end of the conversation, you should get a feel if you'd like to stay acquaintances or if you'd really like them as a friend.

How to close with acquaintances:

I was glad to meet you! Hope to see you at Sam's next birthday, haha!

Yeah, the convention was great, let me give you my discord--

My break is over, gotta go. See you around, Ted!

Vague acknowledgement of seeing them in the future, nothing concrete.

BUT if you want to become friends, you're gonna have to put the work, and plan the next time you'll see each other:

This was great, I loved talking about your opinions on subject X. Do you think we could get a coffee, sometime next week, so we can continue the discussion?

You guys are so cool. Do you want to go see the next marvel movie? Yeah, invite that other friend too! Ok I'm sending facebook invites, I'll make an event--

Next week we can do Mario Party and beer at my place.

Mostly, this step requires you to work, organize, and be dependable. People want to be invited to things, but often won't do it first. They'll be grateful that someone else is taking the initiative.

And you will need to do it more than once, too. Establish channels of communication and feed them with conversations, jokes and memes.

And keep inviting them to things. Becoming friends takes time, you have to make sure to create that time.

Hope this can help a couple of you.

be direct, be genuine, be consistent