The Philosopher's Stone in Statistics. From bad data to perfect
information.
Warning:
Blog with humorous content.
The philosopher's stone, also called Magnus Opus (the Great
Work) or Elixir of life, for magicians and alchemists, was a stone with
extraordinary properties capable of transmuting any metal into gold, curing any
disease, prolonging life and even immortality. By these marvelous virtues was
formerly a coveted and anxiously sought object. (R1)
According to some beliefs there were two types of stones:
• Red: which transforms impure metals into gold.
• White: which transforms impure metals into silver.
It was believed that the Philosopher's Stone could transform
metals or any object into gold. On a more conceptual level, we speak of the
philosopher's stone as a metaphor for perfection, where the human would be the
impure metal that gradually reaches perfection to become gold.
The Philosopher's Stone has inspired many writers in the
past. Currently, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is an example of the
number of books that have the Philosopher's Stone in the central argument of
their stories.
There were exceptional people like Isaac Newton, who were
interested in the search for the philosopher's stone. Recently Newton's recipe
has been found to obtain a material that would be the passage to find the
mythical stone philosopher; And the document contains instructions for
obtaining 'philosophical' mercury, a substance that would be one of the steps
in the alchemical process to obtain the philosopher's stone.
In statistical analysis, data with a normal distribution
have two important values: the arithmetic mean and the standard deviation. It
is called Parameters when referring to the population; Indicators or statistics
when they correspond to the samples.
In statistics and probability the normal distribution, the Gaussian
distribution is a function of continuous variable that more often approaches
the real phenomena (social, natural, psychological) for the distribution of
data. The graph of its density function
has a flared form and is symmetrical with respect to a certain statistical
parameter, the arithmetic mean. The curve is known as the Gaussian bell and is
the graph of a Gaussian function.
In real life, the data are distributed around the mean in
the Gaussian bell, and the distance depends on how homogeneous the entities
from which the data were obtained. When the weight of children between 8 and 17
years is analyzed, the extreme data are so far removed that the decisions that
are taken are useless. It is different when taking children between 15 and 17
years. There are more homogenous data, so a decision about education for
healthy food consumption is more consistent.
Fortunately there is the philosopher's stone to eliminate
the annoyance that originates the existence of the standard deviation (σ, s).
The closer to zero is the value of the standard deviation, the better the data
set. But why not get to zero? There is a statistical software that performs the
data processing and in the end converts the standard deviation to zero. You do
not have to worry if to include a larger range of data, you must admit one or
more deviations around the mean. With zero standard deviation, you will always
have 100% data included.
Do you dare to use this software? Do you know how much you
would improve the quality of your decisions if you use the "philosophical stone of
computing"? The Beta version already exists in the market, one
of the names is NullDeviation ®. You can be the "Stats Wizard".
References
(R1) Piedra filosofal: Alquimia
, Febrero 3, 2011
Recuperan una receta de Isaac Newton para obtener la piedra filosofal
27 marzo, 2016
Distribución normal
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