Niall Roe

'Poll' in its earliest appearances refers to the top of a head – the modern political meanings of a number of votes or a survey of voters emerge from the 17th century through the act of counting people's heads.

The older 'head' sense is behind terms like 'poll tax', but also 'tadpole' (toad-head).

What a great talk with Mike Travisano about evolutionary innovation and the origin of life, alongside amazing panelists Ken Waters and ‪@mrebolleda.bsky.social ! So happy to be at #ISHPSSB2025 !

It's because of medieval lists that set out their entries with the format 'also... also... also...' (in Latin: item... item... item... ) that English today has the common noun 'item'.

Peirce subtweeting Peirce?

hap" was the root, used in the phrase"fel it hap" to mean "it happened". Much better than "it is what it is" 

It is from old Norse happ, and used to mean positive happenstance. Funny that accidents are bad. fortuitous events are good. haphazard seems bad. But they are all just chance.

And not sure how accident came to mean “a chance occurrence” or “an unfortunate mistake”. Incidental is the same as accidental. And the Greek word (συμβεβηκός) seems to just mean “to happen”.

Accident from ad "to" and cadere "to fall". Also root of cadaver, which supposedly started as a way to say “the fallen one”.

Decadent also comes from cadere, but with the “de” signifying “from”. To "fall from" to "decay". Not sure how that turned into self indulgent though.

Okay so we all knew that an Odyssey is like a big long journey. And that it comes from that fella’s name. But I just learned also that the Greek for journey/path/course is hodos. So you’re telling me the guy whose name we use to mean “big long journey” was himself just already named “JourneyMan”?

arxiv.org/pdf/2103.17058

Haha yes exactly!

That’s a good one. I wonder if they could make these ~ sit where these ‘ sit. Then if you had two of them (~) arranged like this (“) it would be like an “approximate” quotation or something.

Studies in History and Philosophy of Science journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsa Understanding data uncertainty Alisa Bokulich", Wendy S. Parker b," " Department of Philosophy, Boston University, United States › Department of Philosophy, Virginia Tech, United States ABSTRACT Scientific data without uncertainty estimates are increasingly seen as incomplete. Recent discussions in the philosophy of data, however, have given little attention to the nature of uncertainty estimation. We begin to redress this gap by, first, discussing the concepts and practices of uncertainty estimation in metrology and showing how they can be adapted for scientific data more broadly; and second, advancing five philosophical theses about uncertainty estimates for data: they are substantive adequacy-for-purpose view of uncertainty estimation, addresses a weakness in a recent philosophical account of data, and provides a new perspective on the "safety" versus "precision" debate in metrology. 1. Introduction Uncertainty is an inescapable part of science. Yet while much has been written in recent years on uncertainty in computational modeling contexts (especially related to climate modeling; see, e.g., Parker, 2010; Frigg, Thompson, & Werndl, 2015; Knutti et al., 2019), comparatively little philosophical attention has been given to uncertainty associated with scientific data collected via observation, measurement, and experiment. Important preliminary work on this topic examines the evaluation of systematic uncertainty in measurement (Staley, 2020), changing conceptions of uncertainty in metrology (de Courtenay & Grégis, 2017; Grégis, 2019b), and the representation of uncertainty when measurements are discordant (Grégis, 2019a). Overall, however, when it comes to uncertainty associated with scientific data obtained via observation, measurement, and experiment—what we will call "data uncertainty"-the territory remains largely unexplored from a philosophical point of view. Conception…

⏰ Free access to read & download thru August 20 the final published version of Wendy Parker & my paper "Understanding Data Uncertainty" at this link ⬇️
authors.elsevier.com/c/1lMUI8yuR6...

#philsci #metasci 🧪 ⚒️

ABSTRACT In the face of today’s statistical crisis of science, it is often recommended that statistical significance tests be replaced with Bayes factor tests. In this article, I examine this recommendation. Bayes factor tests, unlike statistical significance tests, only depend on the probability of the data under H0 and a competitor H1. They are insensitive to a method’s error probabilities such as significance levels, type 1 and type 2 errors, and confidence levels. It might be thought that if a method is insensitive to error probabilities that it escapes the inferential consequences of inflated error rates at the heart of obstacles to replication. I will argue that this is not the case, and that Bayes factor tests can accord strong evidence to a claim H, even though little has been done to rule out H’s flaws. There are two reasons: their insensitivity to biasing selection effects, and the fact that H and its competitor need not exhaust the space of relevant possibilities. I will show how this results in a disconnect between Bayes factor tests and error control protocols that are being called for by replication reforms. To solve the problem, I propose that commonly used Bayes factor tests be supplemented with a post-data severity concept in the frequentist error statistical sense. The question is not whether ‘severity’ can be redefined Bayesianly—of course it can—the question is whether the resulting concept can address today’s concerns behind obstacles to replication. I will also respond to criticisms of the severity reformulation of statistical significance tests, and show how it enables avoiding fallacies of statistical tests.

Just accepted:

‘Severe Testing: Error Statistics versus Bayes Factor Tests’
– Deborah Mayo

Abstract in alt text or read the full paper here (open access): www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

#philsci #philsky

If you can't even get me being qua being then man, I don't want it.

Chomsky on The Cognitive Revolution, Spain, 1992 - YouTube Apparently this was some kind of course—it’s nineteen hours long. From the video description: “Chomsky spoke on the ‘Cognitive Revolution’ at the University ...

Term is over - time to go through the greatest hits again.

www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Next up, I think I would introduce a kind of quotation mark that indicates a paraphrase rather than a direct quotation.

If I could introduce a new type of punctuation, it would be a question mark with a comma at the bottom instead of a period. This would be useful for sort of run-on questions.

"Fact" comes from a word meaning "a thing done; a thing made; make; do". Makes pragmatism feel more appropriate.

My research question is simple: How does everything connect to everything else in a way is new and yet totally obvious?

"Absurd" is like unheard of, or discordant. "Sound", as an adjective, meaning valid and true, or healthy and stable, comes from old English "gesund", also the root of geshundeit (health).

I saw a grave for a dude with the last name Patterson. My first thought was that it came from Pater Son, or Father Son. But I suppose it’s actually a patronym for Patrick.

The "plane" in "Aeroplane" has the same root (planus, flat), but comes via the French "planer", to soar, and old English "planen" - to glide on motionless wings. I suppose because wings sort of signify a plane in space? Hydroplane makes more sense, as something skimming over the surface of water.

Maps literally explain the globe. To explain is to flatten out. A planisphere is a projection of a sphere onto a plane, like a map. Maps explain globes. It's interesting that explain is "plain" whereas the plane and planisphere are "plane". Both mean flat, but "plain" is also "boring."

I am on a bit of a PhD examining spree lately, so will post links to the great work of the newly minted doctors as they are uploaded. This one is by Ahmad Elabbar (who by the way will be starting as my new colleague next year, yey!). It is a tour de force, co-examined with the amazing Simon Caney

He and I were talking about those sunshine recorders the other day! Very cool that you get to see one. One of my favourites.

Away for a few days. Didn’t bring a book with me because I knew I would use it to procrastinate. But now my work is done and my laptop won’t charge and

We thank Reviewer 2 for their helpful feedback which has greatly improved the paper

The phrase “tele luein” means “Pay your dues”. Maybe that’s why? who knows

Always thought it was funny that Aristotle, Mr. Cause-for-the-sake-of-which, is named Aristo-teles: “Best Purpose”.

A bit on the nose maybe.

And okay now I really can’t think of any others. While telos does mean goal or purpose, it also seems closer to “terminus” than is sometimes suggested. It’s related to a word (I now forget) meaning the boundary of one’s property, used for calculating taxes.