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Ummm...

So, a massive change to your talk page showed up on my watchlist. Then, I saw it was just you and not some vandal... so I was moving on when your edit summary caught my eye. I'm never looking up any words you use in your edit summaries again. OUCH!!!! Though yes, I agree, a colonoscopy seems the better of the two. :-) Hope things are treating you well here. Best, Rob ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 19:39, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your vigilance, friendly neighborhood Robert!
Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:47, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
LoL. Yeah, I've got "auto add to watchlist" enabled, and have never bothered pruning it. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 21:23, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
Hi Robert!
"Auto add to watchlist" is a wrong answer!
;
Didn't you mistype, "Your colleagues' contributions are so fascinating that your talk page has an honored place on my watch list ...."?
:D
*LOL* etc.
Ridiculously,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:31, 30 October 2011 (UTC)
ROTFL!!! Though, there is truth to that. If I did manage to clean up my watchlist, you and about 2 or 3 dozen others would still remain for such reasons. Best way to learn others' perspectives, gain insights and learn about Wikipedia. :-P ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 21:37, 30 October 2011 (UTC)

You may want to send that mail to another ArbCom member..

As I currently have no power/heat/internet at home (due to a freak October Noreaster that has about 750K people without power in my state). Thankfully, work is fine, but I can;'t promise I'll have a chance to look at it/act on it for several days yet. SirFozzie (talk) 15:25, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi SirFozzie!
The oversight issues do not constitute an emergency, so I am happy to wait for your decision.
You have my sympathies for the outages. My final days of packing for Sweden occured under similar circumstances. :(
Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:31, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Throw me a bone

Please don't leave drive by templates on my talk page and then just make blanket reversions of my edits. If you have issues with any of the additions I made to neoconservatism's article address them individually. The overwhelming majority of the names added can hardly be considered "controversial" and your response to my edits comes off as lazy and defensive. TomPointTwo (talk) 19:22, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

TomPointTwo,
Please consult the history of the page, where I have previously removed many of those individuals from the article, because the reliable source (cited) only calls them conservative and in some cases a reliable source notes that they dislike being called "neoconservative".
Violate WP:BLP and damage the article all you want, just don't dare come close to infringing WP;civility, and you'll flourish.
 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 05:12, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 7 November2011: Plagiarism from Indian students, alas

Arguably the second tallest skyscraper in Topeka, Kansas

Я поздравляю вас!

("Я поздравляю вас!" is Russian for "I congratulate you".  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:25, 19 October 2011 (UTC))
The Workers' Barnstar
This user has shown great editing skills in improving articles related to Communism or Socialism.


Stakhanov on the cover of Time Magazine, 16 December 1935
Agitprop poster by Vladimir Mayakovsky: "Hurry to join shock brigades!"
Dear Brother Carrite!
Thank you very much!
My efforts would be so much easier if I had not reacted to the anti-anticommunism of previous versions with sometimes POV anti-anti-anticommunism. (However, the arch of the universe does incline towards NPOV justice, which is democratic and therefore anti-communist.)

Thank you for your work recently on Penn Kemble. One of the pleasures of writing about Kemble or Tom Kahn is writing about personalities, rather than cookie-cuts.

In solidarity,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:42, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Tom Kahn/GA1

Review waiting for you. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk to me 04:25, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

This was the best news I've heard in a long time. Thank you, Piotrus.

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 09:26, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Tom Kahn image, and other matters

Hello KW in Sweden,

This is to advise you that I have gone over to Wikimedia Commons, and cropped and retouched the image of Tom Kahn a bit. I very much hope that you approve. I have also cropped the image of George Meany and uploaded a higher resolution image of Lane Kirkland. I am now in the midst of a planned major expansion (in my sandbox) of George Meany, which I mentioned to you a while back was in a parlous state. Can you believe that we have a stub on George Meany and incredibly detailed articles about insignificant mid 19th century schismatic ministers and 21st century YouTube sensations? I guess that the encyclopedia isn't finished after all. Please see User:Cullen328/Sandbox/George Meany for a glance at my (admittedly inadequate) work in progress. By the way, welcome back to Wikipedia, my friend. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 04:57, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Cullen!
Thank you for your greetings. :)
I was fed up with WP the last weeks, and the "national socialist" smear really crossed a line.
However, the mathematicians' support and Piotrus's review as well as many kind private e-mails reminded me that the writers do constitute a warm, supportive, and productive community. (Like many writers, I am troubled by developments in the larger Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects.)
I shall try to look soon at your articles and work on the Kahn pictures within a week or so. Remind me if I am lazy.
BTW, friends of Carrite's have found some fascinating documents about SDUSA, Michael Harrington, the Debs caucus, etc. I'm too tired to mail them now.
Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 05:27, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
When sweet rest has revived your spirits and your typing fingers, please do so. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 05:36, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
The cropped picture does look better.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 22:44, 24 October 2011 (UTC)
I appreciate your favorable assessment of the revised image. It was relaxing in a way to spend 15 or 20 minutes wiping out rogue pixels. I hope to have the time soon to address George Meany in more detail, who deserves better here despite his acerbic personality and serious cigar habit. However, I have learned in recent days that the students of India (and several other countries as well) have been assigned to wreak havoc on this encyclopedia, all in the name of "learning" and "education". Many of these students are extremely talented at making messes, and some of us are called upon to attempt to clean up the messes. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:05, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Indian academics and plagiarism

Indian schools have produced some of the best men of our time, like Amartya K. Sen. It is hard to remember that they struggle against plagiarism and cheating as much as we do.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Lest it be thought that I lack sympathy for Indian topics on Wikipedia, I've worked on Kalpataru Day, Hoogar, Rango Bapuji Gupte, National RTI Forum and Rugmark. I know that there are cultural hurdles to be overcome to help ensure that Indian students mess up at roughly the same rate as American and British students. Cullen328 Let's discuss it 06:25, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Cullen,
My pep-talk was aimed (as usual) to remind myself to avoid stereotyping. I couldn't believe students in a second-semester master course in statistical linear-models cheating so brazenly in a final exam as 2 students did (with c. 10 total students), some years ago. Two students are not fair representatives of 1 billion people, I reminded myself .... However, it may be that Indian undergraduates are not better at complying with WP sourcing policies than some of our recent RfA candidates.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 06:39, 2 November 2011 (UTC)
The project of encouraging Indian students to edit Wikipedia was a disaster, because of the plagiarist stereotype being fulfilled.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:37, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Notice taken

Hi Kiefer, Just want to thank you for your welcoming advice, it was appropriate, and it was only out of ignorance that I posted the external links without including it in the page talks first. I still think some of them are relevant, but I will of course include the topic in the page talks for reviewing in the future! Feel free to write at any time, best Esben.juel (talk) 17:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Esben.juel!
The standard template for "spamming" is rather unwelcoming, and you deserved much better, certainly better than I provided.
Thanks for your very understanding and kind reception.
The blog does seem to be of good quality, I want to repeat, and it may well be a resource that would be useful to readers. At present, the articles do not suffer from having many many external links, so it may be appropriate to re-add them. A problem only for the future is that there may be many such resources, and where does one draw the line ...?
Welcome again and best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 17:58, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Incompetent so-called "survey" about women on Wikipedia

The so-called "study" was a convenience sample, and it is essentially worthless for inference about Wikipedia and women/gender issues.

SandyGeorgia discusses its conceptual poverty on her talk page.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:14, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 14 November 2011

King Crimson

Hi, Kiefer. Yes, the term "ProjeKct" has (so far) only been used in the context of groups that included Fripp, as per ProjeKcts. I'm aware of the other activities (and I attended one of the shows in the "Two of a Perfect Trio" tour), but none of them have used the name ProjeKct.

Best, DaveSeidel (talk) 18:38, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi David!
Thanks for the explanation.
I am happy for your having attended Two of a Perfect Trio! :) Not only are Belew and Levin amazing musicians, but their stage presences seem to overflow with joy & music.
(My relatives in Covington, Kentucky have passed on before I could share my enthusiasm for Belew with them.)
Life plays cruel jokes, sometimes. Bruford was just giving a lecture near Stockholm, when I was otherwise occupied! :(
As you have discovered (!), I know very little. Nonetheless, I have hazarded modestly improving the referencing of Robert Fripp and Guitar Craft, mainly by using Tamm's book (available on-line). There is work to be done. :)
Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:30, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 21 November 2011

Odd phrasing needs cite in Pragmatic ethics

I see your reference to "scientists on other planets" add to Pragmatic ethics. You mention Peirce in the comment but don't add the resource to the article. This looks very odd to me, but you seem to be properly engaged here. Please add the Peirce resource and consider clarifying this wild comment further in the article text? jk (talk) 20:01, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Read
  • Peirce's skewering of Karl Pearson's utilitarian "foundation" of science, which discusses how better off the universe will be without humans. I serve appetizers from quoted by Haack: "I must confess that I belong to that class of scallawags who purpose, with God's help, to look the truth in the face, whether doing so be conducive to the interests of society or not. Moreover, if I should ever attack that excessively difficult Problem, 'What is for the true interest of society?' I should feel that I stood in need of a great deal of help from the science of legitimate inference ... (8.143). [A]gainst the doctrine that social stability is the sole justification of scientific research . . . I have to object, first, that it is historically false . . . ; second, that it is bad ethics; and, third, that its propagation would retard the progress of science (8.135)."
  • Susan Haack's hilarious play of Peirce and Richard Rorty "in conversation": "Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief... The truth of the proposition that Caesar crossed the Rubicon consists in the fact that the further we push our archaeological and other studies, the more strongly will that conclusion force itself on our minds forever-or would do so, if study were to go on forever... The same definitions equally hold in the normative sciences (5.565-66)."

It shall take a while for me to fix the sources for the article.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 20:25, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom 2011

Dear fellow Wikipedians,

We are tempted to over-react to the shameful theft and promotion of confidential ArbCom correspondence that we have no business reading.

There is no evidence that any "fresh blood" would have behaved better this past year, either.

Where are the new candidates that have voluntarily published all of their emails?

On the contrary, we see abundant evidence that many of the new candidates have difficulty reading and negligible experience writing quality articles. My fellow Wikipedians, you should express anger at ArbCom members publicly and intelligently, if you must, but not by saddling ArbCom with immature editors with little experience, little evidence of sustained effort at accomplishing goals, and frankly of dubious intellectual maturity. How many of the new candidates can you imagine reading through the Global Warming case or the Monty Hall problem case, honestly?

Sincerely,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 01:07, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

DYK Non-Reliable Source eh?

Discussion of gender & dolls/action-figures

I self-nominated Girl's games and toys template. I want to point out that your criticism is incorrect -- you criticize the hook's source for not being a "journalistic" source -- it is not necessary that it be a journalistic source. The source is a famous global industry financial analysis firm (Euromonitor International) which published its own research, and meets all the rules in WP:Identifying reliable sources; this firm exists in 80 countries and has been around for 40 years, it even has a Wikipedia article (Euromonitor International), maybe if you had done a Wikipedia search for it you would have been better able to familiarize yourself with it. Euromonitor International reports are widely cited in newspapers, television news, etc., and Euromonitor is considered a reliable source by libraries (Diamond, Wendy; Oppenheim, Michael R. (2004). Marketing Information: A Strategic Guide for Business and Finance Libraries. Haworth Press. p. 257. ISBN 9780789060068.); Business journalism often cites research published by international business analysis firms such as Gartner, Standard & Poors, and so on. They are widely considered to be reliable sources by journalists. If you think the Euromonitor International research article should itself cite secondary sources, I have to wonder why you would arrive at that logic, it is original research by a consulting firm, so what do you mean? It's similar in approach to original academic research, what secondary sources would they cite in their publication? Business research is as valid as original research in science fields. OttawaAC (talk) 23:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

OttawaAC, you've been here long enough to know how to wikilink properly, and you made the same mistake of using "http://" etc for an internal link on my talk page as well. More haste, less speed. BencherliteTalk 23:58, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Hi OttawaAC,
First, research is not valid; arguments are valid. Methodologies may be nonsensical, heuristic, deductive, inductive, abductive, etc.; reasoning about methodologies may also be valid.
Having contributed to more than a few articles on Wikipedia on operations research/management science/business economics, I have respect for business research, especially as practiced by decision scientists from Stanford, Chicago, Harvard, Carnegie Mellon, etc. whose bios I have improved.
However, your journal was not the Journal of Political Economy or Management Science or Peter Drucker's ouvre about the Girl Scouts of America. Based on the article you cited, it appeared to be a trade journal, which often are vanity journals that reprint news releases and sell advertising.
You say that it is a good journal. Perhaps it is. However, that article was junk. Serious journalism sources everything. That article did not source the claim in your DYK hook. A claim that girls play longer with some toys should be based on appropriate studies, for example the enormous (i.e. "monstrous", per Strunk and White) literature following Brown v. Board Of Education, e.g. education-school material. A serious article could probably cite a leading journal's invited survey/review of experimental psychology studies on girl/boy differences with dolls/action figures. Donald E Campbell warns us that most studies are so flawed that they should never have been done, however. Don't expect me or any other academic or statistician to play possum if somebody says "study published in a peer-reviewed academic ", when this topic's literature is so vast. A leading textbook, monograph, or invited survey should be expected.
See the discussion of BLT, linked below, where we worked to identify sources to replaced a flawed claim based on flawed journalism, with plausible & interesting claims using reliable sources. I am not picking on Business.
What does not kill us makes us stronger ....
Sincerely,
 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 01:28, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Barnstar for you!

The Half Barnstar
For working well through a difficult dispute at BLT and ending up with a better article for it, I award you and Worm That Turned a barnstar! Jayron32 23:16, 28 November 2011 (UTC)
Hej Jayron32!
Thank you for your writing and very much for the barnstar. From my point of view, a half a barn star is worth more than a whole barn star, because it recognizes cooperation.
I have fond memories of BLTs with big Belgian tomatoes from a farmers' market. I am glad that WTT found two additional reliable sources, and made a good suggestion. (I only wish I had seen his green suggestion an edit or two earlier.) You made constructive edits and level-headed comments throughout.
This cooperation happened too late to be a Thanksgiving story, and too early to be a Jultide story, like the Germans and Allied troups playing soccer/football over Christmas, but it is a good end of November story all the same.
Best regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 01:02, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
You're quite welcome. I've noticed that you and WTT don't always see eye-to-eye in many places, so it was refreshing to see the two of you come to an agreement for the good of the encyclopedia. It was a small thing; one sentence in a pretty minor article, but small victories sometimes need to be celebrated more than the big ones. Cheers! --Jayron32 01:06, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
You can check that I used to commend WTT's friend (who need not be named) whenever I came across a good deed---hoping that evolution would have primed him to follow a tit-for-tat, if I led with some cooperation (tit-for-tat retaliation is prohibited here, of course). I was pleased and commented above on the friend's first correcting a typo---or catching a few paraphrases in an article I've co-written---before I sighed again at his trying to stop a DYK for my relatively new coauthor.
Cooperation is possible and saves antagonists deadweight losses.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 01:36, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 November 2011

Return of the King

thanks man

Roll with the punches and don't let the slings and arrows of fortune get to you (do as I say, not as I do!)  ;) TCO (reviews needed) 20:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

P.s. How come no smiley list to access like other forums have.

I am unfamiliar with other forums with smilies.
However, to make you smile, I wrote you a bon voyage! :)
Warm regards,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:03, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
Very cool gesture. I admit to lurking and seeing it.TCO (reviews needed) 21:08, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
:) KW

I love me some John Tukey

What a badass: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tukey#Quotes TCO (talk) 15:30, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Tukey suggested that the bootstrap be called the "shotgun", because the method "could blow the head clean off a problem, if you could stand the mess"!
Tukey and von Neumann and a few others planned the nuclear defense strategy for the U.S. while taking a cab ride around Washington, D.C.
After Drmies put a turkey test on Sandy's talk page, I noted that it should not be confused with a Tukey test.
But Hotelling was the best---nice social democratic and Methodist boy!
Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:03, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

And the beach with the ice cream sellers. And the essay on what it means to be have a school of statistics. Need for exploration of the most theoretical, strong mathematics. As well as having had some experience of real in the world, experiment design and data collection. As well as having some ongoing consulation to people working on real problems (science, business, weather, etc.) Yeah, he is another badass. both of them know all kind of math I don't. I just get the big blue book by Tukey (has a Milton Friedman,very mathematical, paper in there) and look at all the pretty symbols and such.  ;) TCO (talk) 19:08, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The book edited by George Casella et alia from the JASA 2000 articles survey statistics ends with a note by Casella on his experience at a leading department of statistics that is strong on applied stats, also. He notes the variety of mathematics he'd seen in the last month used to make progress on statistical problems related to scientific/engineering/business problems---a lot besides probability.
Ronald A. Fisher's seductive rhetoric reminds me of the Satan's in Paradise Lost---persuasive and moving of weak minds---but (less than Satan but somewhat) corrupting---certainly confusing. In much of the U.K. and its intellectual colonies---Denmark & Sweden ;) --- one hears absurd definitions of statistics as the science of probability models evaluated with probabilistic properties. Besides the nominalist claptrap of Karl Pearson and Ronald A. Fisher, about the subjectivity of these "models", which is just utterly stupid, this definition leaves little room for scientific statistics---the kernel of which is randomization-based survey-sampling and designed experiments.
In Sweden, the definition of statistics as "building probability models" has meant mathematical statistics having suffered from the Stockholm syndrome, of identifying with its captors, the probabilists; Sweden suffered from having its best Cramer, becoming Chancellor of the Universities, and the other best of the 1950s and 1960s-early 1970s, Ulf Grenander move to the U.S., and Peter Whittle move to the U.K., and Per Martin-Loef to mathematical logic and computer-science foundations.
Whittle is also a bad ass is many ways, but also a Kiwi gentleman whose character was never sullied by the corrupting Public School systems, with its surface civility and bone-deep classist nastiness. He's polite but honest. You should read his autobiography, which happens to be carefully listed in his article here. He has an excellent statement about the narrowness of mathematical statisticians, and their neglect of mathematical economics, control, systems, game, optimization theory, etc. No wonder British departments outside Cambridge have been declining! (See T.F.M. Smith's report) Ditto with Swedish departments---outside of Umeaa; Lund seems to have gotten more interesting in recent years. :)
I was feeling very shy and humble today!
 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 19:31, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Really all that stuff is beyond me. I know there is some fight of the schools and all. Really they are both good to me. I love the Bayesian hunch and betting thing. and then sure Bayes thereom illustrated a dependency. But then probalistic intuitions seem to work fine for semiconductor physics or contract bridge problems and be a little simpler for some basic problems.

(break) Who is a good time series person, you? Pretty basic question. Want someone who has a feel for the practical use. Not some guy with a bunch of matrix algebra notation but no feel for actually gettin inferences from longitudinal data.

I shall be soon improving my time-series experience, which has so far been rather theoretical. To quote Diestel et alia, "tensor products are a necessary evil"!
If you have lots of measurements (e.g. 60-1000) or were doing a study of several Wikipedia (in different languages) with similar policies, then you could use a time-series analysis, although stationarity / Gaussian-normal increments assumptions fail big time.
With fewer repeated measurements, you use techniques called repeated measurements, or longitudinal data, or panel study methods. Vonesh has a new book which I haven't seen, which should be good. The book by Laird, Fitzmaurice, Ware is readable and practical, and I've seen Fitzmaurice teach it to e.g. biologists. Vonesh's old book is good, but can be tough for non-statisticians. A textbook by Davis has more on nonparametrics.
If you have grant money!, then I could probably do something. You probably want the engineers to help, because of the size of the data sets. SAS is very good for large data sets, which will humble R. If I were you, I would have the engineers transform the data into SAS's favorite format, and then just have an M.S. econometrician take a wack at it.
No matter what you do, you will make errors, model errors, etc. The main thing is to raise questions, which should suggest policies that can be tested in randomized experiments---the Google way (American Statistician a few years ago had a 2-page article on Google's experimentation). If you think an observational study can give you good conclusions, then you should send me your financial information and banking codes, and I'll make you a fortune! ;)
Cheers,  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 23:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)
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