2440: Epistemic Uncertainty

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Epistemic Uncertainty

Title text: Luckily, unlike in our previous study, we have no reason to believe Evangeline the Adulterator gained access to our stored doses.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by GEORGE THE DATA TAMPERER. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

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Discussion

I definitely thought "adulterer" referred to someone who commits adultery, as in cheating on one's spouse. I thought it was a secondary joke, introducing another person referred to as "[name] the [undesirable action]er". 172.69.170.56 02:03, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

"Adulterer" and "adulterator" have different definitions - to "adulterate" a substance is to mix it with an unintended additive. 172.69.135.234 06:46, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

Is the "George" referred to here possibly the name of black hat?

I doubt it. The hat silhouette is not the same pork pie hat as Black Hat 172.68.86.20 04:34, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

The name "Evangeline" could be a reference to how "Eve" is usually the name of a hypothetical hacker used when teaching people about computer science. You know, that whole "Alice sends Bob a private message but Eve wants to read it" thing. 108.162.245.122 05:22, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I second this explanation 162.158.63.164 21:47, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I wrote a long explanation of confidence intervals but realised that the study type depicted on the graphs is probably meta-analysis (hence the horizontal scatter plot) rather than single RCT as in my explanation. Got to go, will come back and amend it later if nobody else has. 162.158.165.52 06:55, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I have a feeling that George the Data Tamperer might be a reference to the classic Spiders Georg, since it's about statistical error brought about by a guy named Georg(e). LemmaEOF (talk) 09:07, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

It may be no coincidence that this was posted very shortly after the US/Americas study that announced that the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine was 79% effective against symptomatic Covid. Although maybe adapted to 74% to not inadvertently suggest (for some) an actual equivalence to George, etc. Yes, 74% could come from a lot of places (and it also looks intrinsically more funny, in a 42-ish way, whilst remaining credible as a faux-result to be proud of), but I think its well within the bounds of statistical probability. Or George. 141.101.98.218 14:31, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

I agree that this comic is likely inspired by all the data on vaccines given at the time. However since it states drug, it is too vague to call this a covid-19 comic, but for sure it is inspired by all the fuzz about the vaccines. --Kynde (talk) 15:05, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

The AstraZenica story includes the 74% figure too:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/astrazeneca-oxford-vaccine-concerns/2021/03/23/2f931d34-8bc3-11eb-a33e-da28941cb9ac_story.html?_gl=1*1p0bmh7*_ga*YmYzbjBEamV0bVhHYk5heUJVYm5KV3k5ZDdEQlhoSlQzUmZyRmFzMHM3dVMxVXUzTUFOUTZLSmVUSk5jbV9UVg..

“The letter goes on to explain that while the company announced its vaccine was 79 percent effective on Monday, the panel had been meeting with the company through February and March and had seen data showing the vaccine may be 69 to 74 percent effective, and had ‘strongly recommended’ that information should be included in the news release.”

Honorknight (talk)

Why does the article say that George and Evangeline are analogous to the cryptography Alice and Bob? There’s little there to suggest it and it even if it’s so it hardly makes the joke funnier. More likely they’re just random names that Randall made up. Requiscant (talk)

The analogy is that those are not names of real specific persons or random names, but deliberate placeholder names. And it definitely looks that way, although those are not standard so they also are random names that Randall made up. -- Hkmaly (talk) 03:16, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, 'appropriated', as George and Evangeline are both names out there in the wild. Or 'mashed together' if you mean you're including their "the ..." qualifier. ;) 141.101.99.207 13:51, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

The acronyms made of their names come to mind? ETA and GTDT. At least ETA ... Seems to connect to a known data adulterator, the Estimated Time of Arrival... 141.101.99.207 07:37, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm waiting for the Evangeline the Adulterator fan art. (Oh my, that just made me think... is there such a thing as XKCD fan art??) 172.68.26.134 17:18, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Yes, check out www.deviantart.com/tag/xkcd - [1] Rtanenbaum (talk) 18:28, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Seems worth remarking that in the epistemic evaluation, it is implied the 4 options are equally likely and the data being correct is not even included as an option. The 4 (apparently known to occur) errors are inaccuracies/rounding errors, sloppiness or dyscalculia, fabricated results, or George. I'd argue this field of study addresses real issues in the scientific community (the value of peer review), would not be without merit and could be complementary to the "regular uncertainty" :-). 141.101.105.126 10:27, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Data depiction goof

Not sure if this is worth noting in the article. Real drug efficacy data would not be depicted with a horizontal scatter plot graph as in the first graph - neither for a single randomised controlled trial, nor for a meta-analysis. A single randomised controlled trial gives a percent efficacy which can be depicted as a diamond with error bars - as shown under the number 74% - but the raw data would not look like a scatter plot: for each patient the drug is either "effective according to X criteria" or "not effective" so there's no point graphing it, and there are additional notes on side effects. (For drugs treating conditions which go into remission and may recur rather than being cured, such as cancer, other more complex graphs are used - but in those cases there is no one measure of "effectiveness".) A meta-analysis is commonly shown as a forest plot - a set of several horizontal bar graphs each with its own diamond and error bars. 162.158.166.75 13:08, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Regarding the George Name

To me the name seemed an obvious reference to "Spiders Georg", a meme started in 2013 and still used to refer to statistics and errors caused by outliers. Thoughts? 172.70.178.199 15:35, 12 April 2022 (UTC)