[ExI] Randi again

[Damien Broderick]

At 01:08 PM 3/4/2008 -0300, HeMm wrote:
>Randi responded to
>the article 
>(http://www.randi.org/joom/content/view/169/1/#i9) ... This can go on and
>on forever. But I still trust Randi more than the grail and object to the
>term 'bogus'.

Uh huh. You trust this sort of thing, eh?

<Randi quote starts:>

My abysmal ignorance of statistics requires that 
I frequently appeal to statistician Chip Denman 
of the University of Maryland for frequently 
sobering advice and counsel. Having just received 
some of that wisdom, I’m announcing a further 
refinement – and generous it is! – to the JREF 
million-dollar challenge. These changes will go 
up on the rules page as soon as we can get around to it
 Says Mr. Denman:

         ...Setting the bar for significance is 
"merely" a matter of deciding how risk-tolerant 
you're willing to be. I believe that it is 
entirely sensible to set a high bar for the $1M 
prize. Maybe one out of a million is a bit 
extreme, but it's your money and your risk.

         On the other hand, you might consider a 
lower bar for the preliminary test and still 
protect yourself overall. For instance, you could 
use .01 (which is frequently seen in the 
scientific and statistical literature) for the 
preliminary, and a 1 out of 100,000 rule for the 
final test – and taken together, you'd know there 
was only a one-in-a-million shot that someone could get lucky on both.

That’s what we’ll do. We’ll choose the “other 
hand.” So, as of now, we will require that 
applicants beat a one-in-one-hundred chance of 
success – by dumb luck or co-incidence – for the 
preliminary test, and then a 
one-in-one-hundred-thousand chance in the formal 
test – a point that has not yet been reached in 
the past ten years of our trying


<end Randi quote>

So both the abysmally ignorant Randi and his 
stats expert tell us that 1 in 100 multiplied by 
1 in 100,000 equals 1 in a million. Leaving aside 
the impropriety of multiplying these 
probabilities, that's just... amazing, Randi!

Damien Broderick