User talk:Billjefferys

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[edit] Welcome

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! --Henrygb 18:25, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Signing comments

I assume you found out what to do as you blanked your question, but for the record:

Put what you want on your user page - what you have done is fine. Comment to others on a talk page (yours, theirs, an article talk page, wherever).
~~~ produces your name: Henrygb
~~~~ produces your name and date: Henrygb 20:54, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
~~~~~ produces the date: 20:54, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
the penultimate icon above the edit box makes --~~~~ which may make signing comments quicker (sign comments on talk pages, but not contributions to articles) --Henrygb 20:54, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, Henry, I did find it after some effort; and thanks for your interest.

I have in mind to add to the prior probability page and to create one on admissible decision rules, which seems to be sitting in limbo.--Billjefferys 19:08, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Fine-tuned universe

Thank you for your contribution to Fine-tuned universe. I am trying to understand the Ikeda/Jeffreys Argument.

You seems to be saying something along the lines of: 'If you are arguing for a supernatural god, using arguments that assume a lack of breaking natural laws doesn't help. In fact, it hurts your argument.'

Do you think that your argument does damage to (what I take to be) Barrow and Tipler's argument in The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, that the random, natural evolution of intelligent life is unlikely?

I am not a creationist or IDist, but given, for example, Stephen J. Gould's vision of naturalistic, truly random natural selection, the evolution of intelligent life does seem unlikely to me. --goethean

Yes, you understand the idea. When you argue for a supernatural god, you are arguing for a situation that allows for more possible outcomes than are possible without it (always given what we already know, i.e., that we exist), namely, all of the possible outcomes that allow for supernatural interventions by that god or gods. The more powerful the god(s), the more possible outcomes. The more unscrutable the god(s), the more possible outcomes (because then we cannot rule out certain godly behaviors). Since the same total amount of probability has to be distributed amongst more outcomes, a given outcome has (on average) lesser probability. Then, when you evaluate the probability of what you actually observe (in this case, F), given each of the two hypotheses (god, no god), the data under the "no god" hypothesis will have higher probability than it will under the "god" hypothesis, which undermines the latter via the likelihood ratio.

I do not regard the evolution of life to be unlikely. The evolution of intelligent life is known to have occurred, and pace Gould, we just don't know enough about the mechanisms to state how likely or unlikely it is. But, we know that it happened, so this one data point does give us a lower bound.

Bill Jefferys 13:29, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I would welcome some text like the above in the fine-tuned universe article. It would make it more easily understood to the layman. If the section on your argument becomes too lengthy, we can just put it in a separate, appropriately linked, article. --goethean ॐ 15:33, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I'm not really responsible for this article...but I get your point. Right now we are moving into a new home in another part of the country. The movers came yesterday, the house isn't quite ready for us to occupy, and there are boxes all over the place. I will look into making the changes you suggest (a good suggestion) when I get my head above water. Right now, I don't even have internet at the house, I read my email and look at the net for a short time each day courtesy of a kind neighbor.

Bill Jefferys 15:38, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Fair enough. I have edited and added a paragraph from our above discussion, and you can take a look when you have a chance. I think it enhances the section. --goethean ॐ 16:12, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Townes' Nobel Prize

I don't really want to have an edit war. Is it possible we could work out a compromise? Tlogmer 14:28, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Ikeda/Jefferys argument.

Hello there. Assuming you are who you say you are, you would be in the best situation to help us out with this. The fine-tuned universe article recently grabbed the attention of the editors at intelligent design while we're a scrappy bunch, we're all rather dedicated to getting the facts out. My question is whether you believe that the argument needs its own page. As it stands now, it takes up a rather large portion of the fine-tuned universe article. Can we cut it down and still preserve it, or should we summarize and create a new page?--Tznkai 1 July 2005 04:48 (UTC)

[edit] Disclosure

Greetings. I'm very pleased to see someone of your stature contributing. I personally believe that Wikipedia could become (if it hasn't already) something on the order of Google for encyclopedias. But it needs the participation of everyone. Am I correct in thinking that you're also William H. Jefferys? If so, in the interests of disclosure, would you object to your status as a Wikipedia User being added to the entry? I think it would lend credability to the article, and inform readers in case they were concerned about a conflict of interest.--ghost 1 July 2005 16:12 (UTC)

[edit] Admissible decision rule

Hello. I moved the article admissible decision rules, with the plural title, to admissible decision rule -- singular, and fixed all of the links to that page so that they link to the singular. I also changed some of the capital letters in section headings to lower-case. Both usages -- the needlessly plural article title and the needlessly capitalized initial letters in section headings, conflict with Wikipedia:Manual of Style (the first letter in a section heading should be capital unless there's a reason why it needs to be lower-case, and of course the initial B in Bayes and the like remain capital). Michael Hardy 00:10, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RE: Talk:Intelligent design

You're welcome, I also wanted to add a note that if we do not discuss changes etc. then the person can presume their changes are accepted/ok. With discussion it provides clear evidence of bad faith if the person continues to push their POV in the face of consensus; which can then be used if sanctions are needed later on. - Roy Boy ⁸⁰⁰ 22:55, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

I just read your latest note at the ID talk page, and wanted to comment on two things: [1] the clarity with which you write - really quite elegantly, and [2] congratulations on finding an opportunity to work "myrmidons" into your prose so aptly. Very nice! - Nunh-huh 01:03, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merry Christmas

I would like to wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and all the best for the New Year. Guettarda 17:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you so much

When I think of all of us who worked together so hard for so long, I think of the line from Henry V We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...

It was a fun ride, wasn't it? So thanks you guys, that meant a lot to me.

Who did the Thelonious with a mop artwork? Brilliant! FeloniousMonk 08:20, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hello Bill

Wonderful to see you on Wikipedia! I'm not quiet as active as I was last year, but I still poke around a while. Hope you don't mind that I created an article about you (I would have felt it too personal, but someone had redlinked to your name, if I recall, and figured it was invitation...) -- Decumanus 19:16, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Generalized linear model

You did an rv on the GLM page after I edited it. I was following the wikipedia policy: Be Bold and would appreciate it if you would please (1) rv the article to my last edit OR (2) rv the article and then edit it (perhaps boldly) as you see fit OR (3) point out a significant problem that you had with my edit (such as some there was a gross error) on the talk page.

I'm confused as to why you did this. It looks like you might have spent some time editing hotly debated articles. The statistics articles are often more traditional wikipedia articles. People add to them and change them through time; if there is a conflict, it is resolved on the discussion page. There is almost no discussion on the GLM page and the arcticle was/is very difficult to understand. Pdbailey 01:48, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I think we should move this to the discussion page of GLM Pdbailey 22:15, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I'd also add that I think wiki projects work the best when they are additive, so that each additional author makes the project better. While a rv is an acceptable thing to do to a large edit, if you do that, please add something substantive like a critique of various parts of the new update. If you don't have the time/energy to do that, you may want to realize that you can't work on every page. Frankly, GLM needs lots of help because it is an important field and has received almost no attention in the wikipedia. Taking a bold edit and doing an rv and just saying that you don't like it just discourages people from being bold. Pdbailey 22:38, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stein's example

Hi Bill, I have added a response to your comment in Talk:Stein's example. In the future, please leave comments on people's user talk pages, rather than on their user pages. Editing another person's user page is considered impolite. --Zvika 09:42, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Malaria

Thank you for the reverts. While allowing anyone to edit WP has advantages, it also creates problems.

DrMicro —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 134.226.1.234 (talk) 15:05, 28 April 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Monty Hall problem

Hi - Can you help me address the concerns about Monty Hall problem raised by the anonymous user currently editing from 70.137.136.97 (he uses many IP addresses)? His basic point is that the main solution presented in the article is unconditional rather than conditional. If you care to read through the talk page (it's quite lengthy) you'll see that at least some editors vehemently defend the current unconditional approach. A different anonymous user (Matt) and I ended up being the only two left talking about it, with two rather different approaches to resolve this (my version here and his version here). Matt's version attempts to finesse the issue by carefully constructing a statement that is true both conditionally and unconditionally (much like the solution currently in the article), and then address conditional vs. unconditional in a new section. In my version I attempt to tackle the issue head-on in the Solution section, but without using "conditional" and "unconditional" terminology. I think at least some people don't understand the difference, and certainly most don't think it's worth worrying about. At this point, I think I'm fundamentally on 70.137.136.97's side although he's managed to quite thoroughly antagonize nearly every editor involved. If you think you might be able to help out here, that'd be great. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:25, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about the editing rate. I'll do something else for a while. Maybe work on Mideast peace. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:27, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Statistics project

Hello. Have you seen Wikipedia:WikiProject Statistics? Note that you can add your name to the participants' list there. The talk page Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Statistics could become the main forum for discussion of Wikipedia's statistics articles generally. Michael Hardy (talk) 15:47, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposed Monty Hall solution section

Hi - You've looked at a previous draft, but can you please take a look at this version of the Solution section (just the Solution section, not the rest of the draft) and let me know what you think? I've changed the "three equal cases" in the initial unconditional analysis to match the location of the car rather than the user's pick of car/goatA/goatB, updated the graphics (using svg images), and segued into a discussion of the conditional probability based on a (referenced) decision tree (using the same cases as presented in the unconditional analysis). I don't have any particular qualms about this version, but if you see anything that doesn't sound right please let me know. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:34, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cunningham

Bill: My pleasure. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 02:03, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Well, although I disagree with you (as does Paul Davies, John Barrow, John Polkinghorne and other physicists), I have to respect your credentials.

The Anthropic principle, by itself, does not speak to why the fundamental physical constants of the universe come out as they have (unless you have a multiverse theory to go along with it). Without some possibility of "repeated" trials, all the AP can say to this single universe is essentially a tautology: "Conditions that are observed in the universe must allow the observer to exists". (Or, my spin is, "if things were different, they would be different.") It says nothing to the mechanism of how those conditions came about (to which we don't know, but the AP along with many multiple universes suggests a coherent explaination) in the first place. Of course, if they were much different, we wouldn't be here debating it.

The reason the AP does suffice to answer the similar (but it's not the same) question for why the universe is as old as it is, is because this one single universe does get to have repeated trials of different ages. We know that. And we do not expect all ages of the universe to be particularly friendly to carbon-based life (whether it's intelligent or not). And it's only the age range that would be friendly to life that we would expect to behold the age of the universe and ask why. That's the difference.

Bill, I'm no slouch regarding statistics (and a priori and a posteriori arguments). This is just like taking an honest deck of cards, shuffling them good, and the first card drawn is the Ace of Spades (except the FTU is far less likely). The Ace of Spades is no less likely than the Nine of Diamonds, but we look at the Ace of Spades as a sorta "special card" (it has a nice and special design on it) similarly to we look at universes that support life as "special". You cannot credibly tell me that it would not bestow some sense of "luck" if that card came up right away, first time after we shuffled (because you would have to compare that experience with the other one where, before we draw the card, we ask "how likely is it that we will draw the Ace of Spades" and you know the answer is less than 2%). After the card comes up and one says, with full knowledge of what was drawn, "the probability that the card you have drawn is the Ace of Spades is 1", that says nothing and that is what applying the AP to explain why or how the FTU came about (without any additional premise of a lot of trials) is.

Also, Bill, I have also taught as an adjunct at the very UVM you have. Not in statistics, but electrical engineering. I know (or knew) Wally Varhue, Dr. Mirchandani, Steve Titcomb, Jeff Frolik and a couple of grad students.

You said that the disputed comment "is correct and it is cited", but the citation only supports applying the AP to the question of the universe's age, not of the fundamental constants.

I'm going to remain anonymous here, but if I can find an email address for you, I'll send you an e-mail. I am also, BTW, not some kind of creationist/ID nut.

Best regards, 207.190.198.130 (talk) 01:03, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Monty Hall problem references

Hi - Do you happen to have copies of the 9/9/90, 12/2/90, 2/17/91, and 7/7/91 Parade columns? I have the 9/9/90 column but not the others. I'd like to add references to the others (in the 12/2/90 column she suggested simulating with cards and in the 2/17/91 columns she suggests a nationwide simulation using paper cups and pennies and reports the results in the 7/7/91 column). I think they're reprinted (verbatim) in vos Savant's book (which I have), but I'd prefer the references to be to the original columns. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 00:45, 30 May 2008 (UTC)