Talk:2440: Epistemic Uncertainty

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 14:31, 23 March 2021 by 141.101.98.218 (talk)
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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 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)