Emotional_Series7814

From the same guy who brought us spurious correlations, a fun way to show that correlation is not causation via graphs of correlations between very different things that do not cause each other.

I did attach an image but because of a Lemmy/Mbin issue I don't think I can have actual alt text, so here is the alt text.

A website, whose title is "spurious scholar", with the subtitle "Because if p < 0.05, why not publish?"

Step 1: Gather a bunch of data.

Step 2: Dredge that data to find random correlations between variables.

Step 3: Calculate the correlation coefficient, confidence interval, and p-value to see if the connection is statistically significant.

Step 4: If it is, have a large language model draft a research paper.

Step 5: Remind everyone that these papers are AI-generated and are not real. Seriously, just pick one and read the lit review section.

Step 6: …publish:

Then there are two screenshots from papers generated with this method.

Also, clicking the note for step 2 has some pretty educational content on being naughty with data, at least for me, someone who is not an academic:

"Dredging data" means taking one variable and correlating it against every other variable just to see what sticks. It's a dangerous way to go about analysis, because any sufficiently large dataset will yield strong correlations completely at random.

Fun fact: the chart used on the wikipedia page to demonstrate data dredging is also from me. I've been being naughty with data since 2014.

!blood_[email protected]

Very inspired by r/blooddonors on Reddit. Questions about donations, whether from prospective or current donors, welcome!

If you do not see any content you may need to check on the host instance—I have posted 3 things so far.

!blood_[email protected]

Very inspired by r/blooddonors on Reddit. Questions about donations, whether from prospective or current donors, welcome!

If you do not see any content you may need to check on the host instance—I have posted 3 things so far.

From the feelings you have written about, to a cool little doodle you did. And if you do share, with whom and why?

A diagram. Its caption says "Figure 1: Get me off your fucking mailing list." and the diagram itself is a simple flowchart consisting of the nodes "Get" "me" "off" "Your" "Fucking" "Mail" "ing" and "List".

Link to Get me off Your Fucking Mailing List (2005) by David Mazières and Eddie Kohler, originally accepted for publication by the predatory International Journal of Advanced Computer Technology. Proof of acceptance and "peer review" here

Like, they just showed up in my web browsing. On my feed somewhere, or on the profile of someone I talk to. For things I am specifically interested in. Gives me hope for more small sites owned by hobbyists, because if I can find them for my niche hobbies, not just for something huge like fitness or gaming in general or cooking…

Both have that aesthetic that says "I was made by someone who does not do web dev professionally." I'll be totally honest, I do actually prefer the way modern sites look, even corporate modern sites, over that, but nostalgia bias makes me accept that old-time aesthetic too. I know some posts on this community might have put a name to that, maybe neocities? I know the name and have definitely visited neocities pages, but didn't spend enough time there to really remember its aesthetic.

I might actually considering making a little site for myself then, and hooking up on a webring… I'm not much of a journaler but it could probably overlap with what people do with journals if I post every time I engage in the hobby and don't delete the post (or if I use git so I can see the change history lol).

In other words, the biggest bother, the most annoying annoyance. Maybe it's something you wish your system had a nice dedicated tool for but it doesn't, so you have a clumsy workaround. Maybe it's something that your system would work well for if it weren't for this one little thing. Whatever it is, talk about it here!

Found this. I have very light DataView use, but figure if I ever want to go deeper I might swap it out with this because DataView is new to me, while SQL is something I already know.

From the original Mastodon post

Google are breaking my mittens - Sonofa. Twelve years ago I knitted a pair of “self-replicating mittens” (https://www.web-goddess.org/archive/14046) with a QR code that pointed you to the pattern for the mittens, and I entered them in the Sydney Royal Easter Show. I was pretty proud of my cleverness. In the blog post (https://www.web-goddess.org/archive/11192) where I talked about making the mittens, I said: I wanted my code to be as simple as possible, so I needed to use a URL shortener to mask my intended address. I settled on using Google‘s, reasoning that it was likely to be around the longest. (Though who knows these days, right?) You can guess what’s happened, right? Google URL Shortener links will no longer be available (https://developers.googleblog.com/en/google-url-shortener-links-will-no-longer-be-available/) as of August this year. Bastards are breaking my mittens. Perhaps I’ll have to add some embroidery. https://www.web-goddess.org/archive/56383

Click the link to read more in the replies.

A new generation of French seniors is discovering the joy of video games, with e-bowling emerging as their competitive sport of choice.

A judge awarded the trademarked name and symbols to a Washington church to help satisfy a $2.8 million judgment against the far-right group.