[WWI] 1 rb paper critique

[iban]

Shane Weier wrote:
> I have a sneaking suspicion that we're talking at cross purposes here. 
> the original article proposed that MvR was merely a statictical 
> outrider - that one in a thousand data point way outside the Bell 
> curve, whose existence can be prediced by statisitics. IOW, *someone* 
> was bound to be lucky enough to survive that long.
>
> A second article comparing the degree of fame with the actual score 
> has also raised it's head (and I can't recall who introduced it) and I 
> think the two of you are talking about different studies
>
guilty, as charged, of having introduced both. 

one is a popular article in a science news mag *about* a recent study, 
which does rather a bad job of interpreting either the point or the 
meaning.  the second is the study itself, which i went and checked out 
after concluding that the most likely wankers were those reporting the 
story, not those who wrote the paper.

iban.