Sesquiotica

going all the way with statistics

Posted on August 29, 2008 | Leave a comment

I just happened across an excellent illustration of why you need to go all the way through statistics to the hard numbers rather than stopping at initial impressions. This is in a presentation on newborn screening for a specific disorder. Check out these numbers:

Sensitivity
(probability of correctly identified patient): 100.00%

Specificity
(probability that healthy baby has normal result): 99.94%

False Positive Rate: 0.06%

Looks great, right? No false negatives, and only 0.06% false positives. So if you have a baby who tests positive, what are the odds that baby actually has the condition? Continue reading →

on editing versus linguistics

Posted on August 29, 2008 | Leave a comment

In one of his always good salvos against prescriptivism on Language Log, Arnold Zwicky happened to mention me (see Recency). In apparent reference to an editorial policy I had mentioned having against “X times X-er” statements (e.g., 5 times larger, 8 times smaller), as well as to comments by others who were opposed to the usage, he responded, “Yet I’ve never stopped asking, ‘Why don’t you understand the clear meaning of what people are saying?'”

The following was my response, which I think is worth setting forth as a statement of the different pragmatics governing editing and linguistics: Continue reading →