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In 1995, Yale University Professor Robert Abelson (1928-2005) wrote an interesting and engaging treatise on a topic that, on the face of it, seems obvious. He presents this in his text, “Statistics As Principled Argument”. The book is a quick and easy read and I would recommend it to anyone, whether or not they are into statistics. The concepts are presented in a way accessible to most readers.
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The book begins, appropriately enough, with Abelson’s Laws which are:
- Chance is lumpy.
- Overconfidence abhors uncertainty.
- Never flout a convention just once.
- Don’t talk Greek if you don’t know the English translation.
- If you have nothing to say, don’t say anything.
- There is no free lunch.
- You can’t see the dust if you don’t move the couch.
- Criticism is the mother of methodology.
The meaning of each of the above becomes clear as the text proceeds through the 9 chapters that follow.
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