Th3 Core

Yeah, that book gave me a few simple tools like that to evaluate a lot of things.

Another example... This test reduces the risk of dying by this type of cancer by 50% and only costs $1,000 ever five years. Clearly it's worth it right?

Well, the risk of dying from that type of cancers is 3 per 100,000. By reducing the risk 50%, you've brought that down to 2 and saved one life per 100,000 at a cost of $100,000,000 every five years.

If you spent that money in another way, could you save, OMG, TWO lives for $100,000,000? I bet you could.

What does this have in common with the DNA case? In both cases, people are lead astray by looking at percentages. They should be looking at absolute numbers.

I know this is OT, but one last example.

People are told that the test for HIV is 100% accurate because it's actually two tests - a gram negative and a gram positive. If it says you have HIV, it means you have it. Doctors tell people this all the time.

That's not what it means. It means that if you have HIV, the test is basically guaranteed to detect it. If it says you're clean, you can stop worrying.

But it actually has a 1 in 1,000 error rate of false positives. The rate of HIV in the monogamous heterosexual male population is 1 in 10,000. So if you're a monogamous heterosexual male and you test positive for HIV, there isn't a 99.999999% chance you have it. There is a 10% chance.

The author of the book tells the story of a man who lost his job, house and wife only to find out three years later that he didn't have HIV. He has stories of people convicted on DNA evidence just because they were a random match only to have someone else, who also matched the DNA, get caught for the crime later.

“There is no known relationship between the individuals, and that’s what makes these sort of cases so hard to solve,” Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder told WCCO.

There is a fundamental problem here. I recommend

Calculated Risks: How to Know When Numbers Deceive You, by Gerd Gigerenzer

https://www.amazon.com/Calculated-Risks-Know-Numbers-Deceive/dp/0743205561/ref=as_li_ss_tl?crid=2JI0IB5C0B28V&keywords=calculated+risks+how+to+know+when+numbers+deceive+you&qid=1550194344&s=books&sprefix=calculated+ris,stripbooks,152&sr=1-1-fkmrnull&linkCode=ll1&tag=ultraskiercom-20&linkId=baf225ec2df4e5ab84ff369532db07cf&language=en_US

He talks about breast cancer, AIDS diagnoses and conviction by DNA evidence.

The short version is this.

They will say things like "Based on the DNA, there is a 99.99% chance that it is from the same person." So in other words, if you test 10,000 people, you will get one false positive.

So in a city with 2,000,000 people, there are 200 false positives walking around the city. So if I *randomly* find someone ("no known relationship"), my chance that I have the right guy is not 99.99% as juries are led to believe. In the absence of any other evidence, the chance is actually 0.5% (one in 200). People's lives have been completely ruined because most people do not understand the logic there.

The book has similar analyses for other things. Very interesting and very troubling because most lawyers, judges, juries, testing labs, doctors and cops do not understand this simple statistical problem.

Ah... is this the next mesothelioma?

Start your SEO engines. The class action suit could get big.

I knew of day traders with screens all over, but six big CRTs is insane. Did you have a year-round tan from the radiation spilling off those guys :-)

You're lucky the DEA didn't raid your house thinking it was a grow-house based on the power draw

Sounds sumptuous.

I'm going the other way. Aside from spreadsheets, I find I use less and less screen.

But I'm trying to get a more portable workflow, so that drives different compromises

Based on the title of the post, I thought this thread would be you bragging about how a grandchild said you were the greatest ;-)

Had planned mostly on skiing, but weather has not been the best. So got in a gym session and a couple of ski days, but not like I was hoping.

Snow due tonight though!

Meanwhile, back home it's dumping feet and feet and meters and meters (well, over two meters anyway)

I'm looking for a simple online catalog that doesn't need to have a shopping cart or sell things.

This is for a friend (who pays well when he needs work, so no issues with that - but a friend first) who is a collector. He wants to display his collection and he wants it searchable by various different characteristics.

He has no intention of selling these things. I've done three e-comm sites for him, so if he wanted to sell stuff, he would say so. E-comm just makes things complicated and he hates that.

So I'm looking for something that would replicate a gallery catalog, and archive listing, a product catalog with excellent faceted search.

Anyone have something like that they use and like? The simpler, lighter the better.