SarahC comments on Open Thread, September, 2010-- part 2 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: NancyLebovitz 17 September 2010 01:44AM

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Comment author: whpearson 24 September 2010 07:11:21PM *  5 points [-]

If people haven't you should read the OKtrends blog, especially about what makes a good picture (good quality camera etc).

Also a bit about what people are looking for dating wise would be useful. Generally that is too dull to put in the profile itself, but required for advice I think.

My profile is currently moth-balled, and not really designed to be attractive (I did get accused of being narcissus, which put me off making it more attractive). I found it horrendously addictive interacting with people and looking at the breadth of humanity and their hopes and dreams.

If not people are nosy, I will divulge my okc identity via private message. I am also quite happy to give out awards, if people want them. Or just look at your visitor list for the guy with the round blue sunglasses on.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 September 2010 12:08:50AM 6 points [-]

I like the OkTrends blog; the analysis is more casual than scientific, of course, but the content is stuff that I was really interested to learn.

Also, as a more general point, I think that non-scientific but enormous back-of-the envelope calculations (like OkTrends) are a good supplement to tiny but scientifically designed studies. If the big&sloppy approach and the little&precise approach give completely different results, that's cause for further investigation. Pre-Internet, we didn't have the opportunity to do that much big&sloppy statistics, except very crude things like the census; but today, I think it might be useful to double-check the results of small experimental studies (e.g. in medicine) with self-reported stuff from an enormous population sample.

Comment author: datadataeverywhere 27 September 2010 05:51:09PM 2 points [-]

I agree with the big & sloppy point, but would also like to point out the parallel between the OkTrends blog and the Mythbusters.