Thread: South Carolina cuts college funding over books with gay themes

Whoooaaaa there chief. Simmer down now.

I almost responded right away, but a voice in my head said "this isn't fun, and it's not productive - what is your motivation again?"

And so that day went well.

Then it was the next day and this happened:

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

Originally Posted by SmokenScion

You're they only person on the webs with this opinion DG. Just sayin.

Then why the fuck did you have something to say?

... which made responding seem just as unproductive, and likely even less fun.

And then it got to be today, and I re-read it and thought "hmm, what is DG's motivation?"

Because this:

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

Originally Posted by dex71

I loved Theater classes in High School. I also loved Sports. Both have benefits far beyond the ability to skate, throw, catch, tackle, sing, dance, or act.

And what is it you do now?

... makes it seem like your point is that "education" and "job training" are the same thing, and your motivation is to say that it's a waste to learn or do anything which won't lead directly to earning money.

But that can't really be your point or your motivation because both those things are so obviously false.

It also occurred to me that your motivation might have been to be a dick. Couldn't really decide on that one way or the other.

Anyway, now it's today. When you responded to me, it was at least something other than "fuck you." So:

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

Yes i know we similar discussion before BUT you made the argument without statistics there would be no Marine marksman. That is inherently a different discussion.

Now you say without it there will still be marksmen. The problem is your still wrong. Anyone with no knowledge in statistics can be a marksman and that is proven every single week with every graduation from any military boot training that has infantry.

Then you want to place me in your group as an example of having no statistical background but able to shoot. The problem with that is i have a bit of back ground with statistics i'll be it meager but I'll just say i did pretty well on the range. You can also add every sniper to that list because you dont use statistics to make shots you use simple math on close shots and calculus on long one due to the coriolis effect.

When I originally referred to Marine marksmanship, I was referring to the present state-of-the-art.

When I secondarily referenced marksmen, it was in the general sense that if a person is capable of accuracy that is significantly better than most of the population (say, two standard deviations? :) we might refer to that person as a marksman. There were ancient archers who were, among their peers, the marksmen of their day. I've never met them, but I have reason to believe that they existed. There have likewise been, in every era since, marksmen.

The present standard of marksmanship is a direct result of many things; and among those things are the study and application of statistical methods (also other sorts of math). The weapons that are available wouldn't exist otherwise. The formal understanding has directly informed the instruction and technique of the individual, and the tactics of the group.

There is obviously no need for everyone involved to have a profound understanding of stats, but there also isn't any need for everyone to have a profound understanding of biomechanics or metallurgy (both of which are also part of present-day marksmanship).

So of course, yes, absolutely - without probability and statistics there would still today exist Marine marksmen, and they would certainly be among the finest and most-feared musketeers in the world.

Dogged determination and can-do spirit will take you very far.

Dogged determination, can-do spirit, and math will take you much (much, (really, it's rather a lot (please try to undertand how much more this is))) farther.

Without structural steel and modern numerical technique we'd still have St. Paul's Cathedral, but we wouldn't have the Chrysler Building.

The Chrysler Building required men with huge balls, and significant skills, to walk along narrow beams hundreds of feet up. They didn't need to know much math.

St. Paul's Cathedral also required men with huge balls, and significant skills, to undertake the risky jobs.

What has changed since then?

Originally Posted by deathgodusmc

Just to make sure i hear what your trying to say....are you implying the first guy to try and explain ballistic drop was using statistics as his modeling program? I guess you could try and rewrite history many others have.

Maybe you'll mention Newton next but he was just a mere mathematician and not a statistician. Or maybe we should go back to the earliest mathematician we can find and say thats where statistics officially began. In other words your reaching brother.

I'm saying that the first guy to make a study of what happens when you propel a projectile down a tube did many things. For example, he invented ballistics (not that he knew what we'd call it). In an effort to make better gunners and better gunnery, he made a methodical study.

Earlier you mentioned statistical moments, and though you may know them others in this thread may not. Statistical Moments are a way of describing the shape of a collection of data. If you fire a cannon over and over in exactly the same way (for however well you're able to control 'exactly the same'), you can observe a number of things. This guy observed them. The flight path of the projectiles was not what the experts of that day said they would be. The impacts of the projectiles was also not what was expected. His observations (and hypotheses, that he wrote into a book) were important to the discovery of what came to be known as the Law Of Falling Bodies. The arrangement of the multiple impacts is a collection of data. Attempting to describe the shape of that data also lead to important discoveries.

He wasn't trying to explain ballistic drop. Nobody knew of any such thing called ballistics. He wasn't trying to invent the method of infinitesimals or analysis of variance - though he helped both of those along. [... and along the way, and with the help of many other people, we eventually got calculus and modern statistics). He was trying to improve gunnery.

He was not using statistics in the same way that he wasn't studying ballistics. He was making repeated trials in a controlled environment and methodically recording the results. He was analyzing the resulting data - first to describe what had happened, and then to predict what would happen.

And those predictions were correct - certainly more correct than anything which had come before.

Having a tool that allowed prediction helped the gunners and gunnery of the day. It also gave critical insights into how we could make better guns.

Plenty of other people used a similar process of repeated experiment, recorded data, data description, and iterative attempts at prediction. The process worked often enough that the different parts of it were formalized and given names. The process itself has also been named and studied.

I don't have all the dates and names and book titles in my head. I guess I could go back and look it up - but the operative word here is "Back". I already went through it, in some cases more than once. It took a long time. Some parts were hard to understand.

Something I don't understand is why you keep implying (or, in one case, saying) that somehow probability and statistics aren't really math.

Cheers,


AetheLove