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Comment by stdbrouw | Hacker News Reader

I wonder if the people upvoting the article are actually reading it. It essentially just says "be careful" without any kind of practical advice for how to think like a statistician.

Two much better articles:

* https://source.opennews.org/en-US/learning/distrust-your-dat...

* https://github.com/Quartz/bad-data-guide

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Just telling people to "think like a statistician" is enough to make them consider base rate information, so I wouldn't say that the article is useless, even if the content is a little lacking in the specifics.

Well, if you really want to learn how to think probabilistically in everyday life, I'd recommend Douglas Hubbard's "How to Measure Anything" which contains detailed advice for how to calibrate your estimates (so you don't continually over- or underestimate the probability of various events) and how base risk management and strategic decision making on this knowledge. Probably useful for the startup folk here.

http://smile.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Bus...

Agree, pretty much zero useful / insightful / thought-provoking ideas in that article.

Your first link contains a link back to this article, so it seems there is at least some value to how it says "be careful".

The title is advertising, which I won't hold against the author, but the message certainly isn't a bad one. In fact it's one of the factors I value the most when working with statisticians and data scientists.

The second of those was posted at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10728866, but I don't think the first one has. Perhaps you should submit it.

Thank you! Was quite disappointed by the lack of any even-halfway-substantial thought in the original post.

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