>>"...as it does more harm than good—particularly with the growing class of people in social science mechanistically applying statistical tools to scientific problems..."
Well, for sure there are problem with people applying tools without fully understanding them. It's not very interesting statement. As obviously many things in nature form normal distribution and standard deviation describes those distributions well while mean deviation loses information about volatility.
If you are going to propose abandoning of standard deviation it would be nice to give some alternative ways for handling those distributions and maybe show how using mean deviation in place where "many scientists" these days use standard deviation improve things.
His study shows that people weren't able to answer his question. That could be for various reasons, like reading it too fast. It doesn't really matter.
What matter are example of decisions/measurement which could be better handled by "abandoning standard deviation" or maybe showing that those people actually make financial mistakes due to not understanding the difference.
Even if he is right that many traders misuse or don't understand the term it's a problem with education and not with tools being wrong. "We should abandon standard deviation" is wider claim and to defend it you need to show how problems currently handled by using the measure should be handled in better way.
It might not be interesting to you and I am sure you know how to apply them.
It is however important if large groups of disciplines are not able to apply it properly.
Instead of calling him a vile idiot and refusing to even look at what he is trying to say you could see this statement as a cry for help, a provocation to start a debate and so on.
The deeper issues here, I think is that he is probably not death wrong nor death right and so it's really impossible to prove anything objectively but rather different experiences yield different opinions.
I personally believe that sometimes you have to simplify in order to get a fundamental discussion started. In fact i find the aftermath of those provocations to be the most enlightening.
>It might not be interesting to you and I am sure you know how to apply them.
I am saying that pointing out that some people misuse some tools is not interesting without specific examples and problems it causes.
>It is however important if large groups of disciplines are not able to apply it properly.
Of course it is, let's try to identify such situations... o just let's try to find one problematic example.
>It might not be interesting to you and I am sure you know how to apply them.
It is however important if large groups of disciplines are not able to apply it properly.
Instead of calling him a vile idiot and refusing to even look at what he is trying to say you could see this statement as a cry for help, a provocation to start a debate and so on.
I've read his 3 books and listened to many talks. He just doesn't have anything specific to say. If he is crying for help as you said why not describe some situations where using standard deviation instead of MAD causes problems ?
I am not refusing to listen to him. The fact that he writes about those problem is the reason I invested a lot of time reading his books despite terrible writing and lack of editing. I was willing to go through just to see what he has to say. It turns out there is nothing, not one example of systematic error people make which could be corrected. It's just hate for anything and everything often paired with failure to understand the most basic statistical concept.
>The deeper issues here, I think is that he is probably not death wrong nor death right and so it's really impossible to prove anything objectively but rather different experiences yield different opinions.
He is dead wrong about standard deviation not being useful for "real life". He is probably right about "some people misuses it some of the time thing" but it's really not interesting unless you give something specific which he never does.
>I personally believe that sometimes you have to simplify in order to get a fundamental discussion started.
I agree. The problem is not simplifying he just doesn't have anything to say. It's not one article without examples or arguments. His whole book is like that and then his talks.
> In fact i find the aftermath of those provocations to be the most enlightening.
And I see danger in it. The guy has some serious following. It can't be good if people read his stuff and start believing that those risk managers are just morons, that scientists misuse standard deviation because of misunderstanding in 1893 and all other ridiculous things he claims. You can really gain an impression that everybody is a moron, academia is a waste and math doesn't apply if you don't know better and take his writing seriously.
Well, for sure there are problem with people applying tools without fully understanding them. It's not very interesting statement. As obviously many things in nature form normal distribution and standard deviation describes those distributions well while mean deviation loses information about volatility. If you are going to propose abandoning of standard deviation it would be nice to give some alternative ways for handling those distributions and maybe show how using mean deviation in place where "many scientists" these days use standard deviation improve things. His study shows that people weren't able to answer his question. That could be for various reasons, like reading it too fast. It doesn't really matter. What matter are example of decisions/measurement which could be better handled by "abandoning standard deviation" or maybe showing that those people actually make financial mistakes due to not understanding the difference.
Even if he is right that many traders misuse or don't understand the term it's a problem with education and not with tools being wrong. "We should abandon standard deviation" is wider claim and to defend it you need to show how problems currently handled by using the measure should be handled in better way.