User talk:Richard D. Gill

Welcome!

Welcome to Citizendium as a new author! We're very glad you've joined us. We hope you will contribute boldly and well. Here are pointers for a quick start. You'll probably also want to know how to get started as an author. Just look at Getting Started for other helpful "startup" pages, and at CZ:Home for a complete listing of help and other community pages. If you wish, just ask me to create a "personal sandbox" for you where you can test out editing and writing articles. If you need help to get going, it is a good idea to join our discussion forums. That's where we discuss policy, proposals or technical problems. You can ask any constable for help, too. Just put a note on their "talk" page. Again, welcome and thank you! We appreciate your willingness to share your expertise, and we hope to see you begin actively editing and contributing to Citizendium. Milton Beychok 18:22, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Rick, nice to meet you here. Welcome to the club! --Boris Tsirelson 20:49, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Boris, it's good to be here! --Richard D. Gill 22:59, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Rick. A warm welcome by me, too. I am curious: What was the trouble with the Monty Hall problem? --Peter Schmitt 23:08, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Maybe this is a partial answer to Peter's question :-) --Boris Tsirelson 07:19, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Everyone knows the answer is 2/3, not 1/3, and you should switch. But why? For me it is interesting that most "ordinary people" are perfectly happy with simple and convincing informal arguments, while quite a few mathematicians will endlessly argue that the "simple solutions" are plain wrong and that the problem has to be solved by a careful use of conditional probabililty. Both parties - well, on wikipedia at least - are somewhat incapable of appreciating subtleties which I think are rather important, both on points of logic and on points of model-building. So I find MHP a fantastic case-study on how to communicate probability to laypersons, on navigating the interface between mathematics and the real world. I am presently involved in forensic statistics and the role of the scientist in a (criminal) law court. It is not trivial.

It's an interesting challenge for me to try to get something of this across in the context of collaborative encyclopaedia editing, but now in a situation where professional qualifications might be a help, rather than a hindrance.

I have written a rather opinionated and argumentative paper, the preprint is on arXiv, [1], and is about to appear in print. And want to re-present some of that material here. Richard D. Gill 08:13, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

I am aware of the many arguments this question has caused and that discussion (mainly, but not only, didactical) is still ongoing. I meant to ask what type of opposition you met on WP ... --Peter Schmitt 09:33, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

It's a question of demarcation, ownership. Hundreds of articles and several books are written on MHP (Monty Hall Problem) by popularizers of science, journalists, psychologists, educationalists. The problem was defined in a couple of sentences of rather ambiguous plain English in a popular weekly magazine. A rather smaller number of articles are written by "mathematicians", who are mostly not particularly great minds. It is not clear that the way the probem is conventionally mathematized in introductory statistics texts is the only legitimate way. Most of the "mathematicians" who pretend to offer solutions to MHP in articles (on how to teach probability and statistics) or in introductory textbooks do not analyse the original wording of the originally posed problem but rewrite the problem in a solution driven way so as to lead their students to solve it using Bayes' theorem. In order to do so they have to fill in all kinds of missing model assumptions. No attempt is ever made to motivate these assumptions. No attempt is ever made to motivate solving the problem by computation of a conditional probability. I haven't seen anywhere where the modelling stage - how to go from informal problem description to a mathematical problem which can be solved by straight forward deduction - is discussed seriously, nor anywhere where a decent motivation is given for solving the problem by computation of a conditional probability. I think it is essential that the model-building and problem-formulation stage of MHP is treated at a decent intellectual level. No wonder probability and statistics are so much abused if the difficult part of it - the model building, the bridge-building between reality and mathematics - is not taught to students ( or is taught by teachers with zero experience in that field).

The problem with WP is that any logical or mathematical analysis, however elementary, which is not recognisably present in existing published sources is forbidden. Discussions between amateurs about how to solve mathematical problems are resolved by waving rule-books. "The Truth" is an irrelevant concept. The existing literature is of rather poor quality. Most writers on MHP are not particularly good probabilists. Some highly cited references contain startling blunders. So the dedicated WP editor has no option but to write their own "reliable sources" and then hope other people will cite them, so that maybe in ten years time, new WP editors can write a decent article.

WP is, I think, generally of quite high quality in serious mathematics. The articles on elementary probability and especally on elementary statistics are however pretty abysmal. Richard D. Gill 00:35, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Congratulations upon becoming a Mathematics workgroup Editor

Richard, I have just granted you a Mathematics workgroup Editorship. Also, as per your agreement via email that I could use your online CV, I have added a somewhat abbreviated version of your biography details and qualifications as required of Editors by the Proposal PR-2010-024 passed by our Editorial Council.

Congratulations and best regards! Milton Beychok 00:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

If you should find that I have incorrectly stated anything in the Biography section of your user page, please let me know and I will make any changes required. Proposal PR-2010-024 stipulates that your biography must always remain publicly revealable. You are free to augment, delete or revise the rest of the user page in any way you wish at any time. Milton Beychok 00:49, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Many, many thanks! Richard D. Gill 08:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)