I can’t really figure out what he means by that. His example with dangerous doses of artificial sweeteners seems to be about asking the wrong question. It seems logical that no amount of data can get you the right answer if you don’t ask the/a right (set of) question(s).
He goes on about mutilating datasets, which seems to me a sin. Me, with GBytes of storage on my PC. When the medium of storage is paper, data gets mutilated. Consider a doctor writing up anamnesis: patient talks on and on, but only what the doctor considers relevant data is written down. Seems like a perfect example of a mutilated dataset and what Jaynes was talking about—if the doctor has a wrong model in mind while collecting data, (s)he is more likely not to collect important information.
I heard that the people at CERN don’t let a bit go unstored. But are there variables not measured at all, due to our existing models of the universe.
I believe Jaynes was implying that since the experimenters didn’t have a threshold model in mind, the experiment did not measure a broad enough range of doses to distinguish between a linear response and a threshold. For example, if the only tests of the sweetener were at doses which produced harmful effects, then it might be impossible to derive the correct model based on only that data.
re: old ideas
I can’t really figure out what he means by that. His example with dangerous doses of artificial sweeteners seems to be about asking the wrong question. It seems logical that no amount of data can get you the right answer if you don’t ask the/a right (set of) question(s).
He goes on about mutilating datasets, which seems to me a sin. Me, with GBytes of storage on my PC. When the medium of storage is paper, data gets mutilated. Consider a doctor writing up anamnesis: patient talks on and on, but only what the doctor considers relevant data is written down. Seems like a perfect example of a mutilated dataset and what Jaynes was talking about—if the doctor has a wrong model in mind while collecting data, (s)he is more likely not to collect important information.
I heard that the people at CERN don’t let a bit go unstored. But are there variables not measured at all, due to our existing models of the universe.
I believe Jaynes was implying that since the experimenters didn’t have a threshold model in mind, the experiment did not measure a broad enough range of doses to distinguish between a linear response and a threshold. For example, if the only tests of the sweetener were at doses which produced harmful effects, then it might be impossible to derive the correct model based on only that data.