Irritable statisticians.

[noetsi]

The nature of statisticians, well most academics, is to be polite in articles or books. I found this interesting exception...

"It is often supposed that there exists something like a critical missing rate up to which missing values are not too dangerous. The belief in such a global missing rate is rather stupid"

Not much, but by academic standards like calling people a moron

 

[bryangoodrich]

I would have to agree that anyone thinking there is such a global property to missing data is thinking rather stupidly. Though, the quote does not appear to be calling anyone a moron, just the idea. And it is good practice to give the most charitable interpretation to somebody's statement, lest we end up attacking a straw man. That I learned from philosophy.

 

[spunky]

The nature of statisticians, well most academics, is to be polite in articles or books. I found this interesting exception...

"It is often supposed that there exists something like a critical missing rate up to which missing values are not too dangerous. The belief in such a global missing rate is rather stupid"

Not much, but by academic standards like calling people a moron

There's this guy noetsi, Prof Brian Ripley who has plenty of nastiness to go around... one of my all time favourites from him is:

It really is hard to anticipate just how silly users can be.
(2003)

 

[bryangoodrich]

He retired last year for ill health? Have people stressed him out enough to the point of quitting?!

 

[maartenbuis]

I was present at a talk of his. I am not an R person, so I hadn't heard of him. He came across to me as a very reasonable, polite and pleasant person. Only later I heard of his internet persona, which is quite different. I heard of that from John Fox, when he told us that he was visiting the UK once and was really debating whether he wanted to visit Ripley or not. He did, and was pleasantly surprised that his real life persona is much more pleasant than his internet persona.

 

[noetsi]

I am sort of in awe of John Fox so that says something...

Spunky in a similar vein is an old joke. "The problem with creating a fool proof system is that it underestimates the ingenuity of a fool."