Thanks for keeping me honest. Related: statmedhumanity.org/2025/09/28/i... One could frame it as a difference between classification/discrimination and sampling

However, I justify this work to myself, because it’s such a privilege to play a role in bringing one of the marvels of modern science and medicine to people.

The schedules are complex, the catch up schedules are even more so, it’s not fun to memorize all the different names, there is a lot of paperwork, etc, and it’s often the very last thing one thinks about, after having an already-complex visit—it can add up.

I called my congresswoman @chrissyhoulahan today to express concern about the current admin’s deployment of federal troops in our cities

Do you have any recommendations In terms of what we can do to oppose this?

Dragon dictation is good now though

This technology is destabilizing things - maybe not even the technology but the difference between how people perceive it and what it truly is

Down with grok!

Stats has responsibility tho to be authorities on all things estimation, for the good of humankind

I also think data science had more intuitive terminology and also realized there is a market for pure estimation (or prediction), which is itself intuitive, which worked out for it. Coupled with easier to use software (with some exceptions, like that written by good stats programmers), it took off.

That said if stats were more focused on estimation and less on inference (inference the real source of confusion often, sometimes also ppl put the work in to understand it and realize they weren’t interested in its deliverable..) - maybe would not have this problem

Huge disservice to medical stats to have people doing that because bc stats more rigorous

Maybe then tendency to shrug off stats as “simple” when really it’s like a defensive mechanism - like the fox and sour grapes in the fable - “I couldn’t understand it, so I’ll just defame it”

And to have any remote hope of understanding something like a ttest need to understand normal distn. So not only nml dist kind of inaccessible but also many extensions thrown at students, leads to frustration and they take the path to data science, which more focused on just minimizing MSE etc