[R] Hello!

[Mike Marchywka]

> Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2011 08:27:00 -0800
> From: markknecht at gmail.com
> To: gunter.berton at gene.com
> CC: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: Re: [R] Hello!
>
> On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 10:11 PM, Bert Gunter  wrote:
> > Are you a fan of James Joyce? Is the Caps key on your keyboard broken?
> >
> > -- Bert
>
> Are your snide comments adding anything to the conversation?



[ ... ]
>
> As for me, this is a farewell to this list which is far and away the
> most negative list I've ever subscribed to. I'll get answers to R
> questions elsewhere. I don't need people like Mr. Berton Gunter in my
> life. (He's now blacklisted in my email tools anyway as he seldom has
> much to offer other than snide comments.)

I can probably find more "negative" ones if you are interested LOL :)
I was hoping to find another interesting technical conversation
to which I could contribute a few thoughts but subjective matters
do come up with statistical analysis and confirmation bias, rationalization,
the "power of positive thinking", believing in your data when you 
should be testing it,  is often the biggest problem to getting
accurate perspective especially with post hoc analysis questions
as often come up here. Look at some ongoing discussions about scientific
literature and you find all kinds of problems with failure to publish negative
results, including clinical drug trials. The power of "positive" thinking, 
seeing what you want to see, wastes a lot of other people's time. You only need to spend
a few days trying to replicate "positive" results, or just integrate
them into your understanding of a complex system like a living organism,
 or buy a few hyped securities to understand how bug this problem really is. 

I personally
question the utility of the post you cite but I often post things
in a hurry and make stupid statements myself ( and I don't let money
change that LOL). You can only type "see the posting guidelines" so
many times. Punctuation problems can make things hard to read etc.
I really wouldn't take it that "negatively" whatever that means.




>
> Good bye,
> Mark
>