>>>>> "Kake" == Kate L Pugh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> At the least, there's a null hypothesis for you to play with.
Kake> I don't think I entirely understand what a null hypothesis
Kake> is. As far as I can tell from a bit of googling, the thing
Kake> that makes it a null hypothesis is the "no-one" in what you
Kake> said; and to disprove a null hypothesis convincingly you need
Kake> a statistically-significant number of counterexamples. Or am
Kake> I completely confused?
Perfect. A null hypothesis is a position[1] you adopt so that you can
prove (or, rather, display a lack of randomness to a significant level)
the reverse (which is the hypothesis itself) and show that you've
concluded something meaningful. I think your explanation is better. :)
Kake> [deletia: social meet stats]
You didn't mention whether any of these people read -announce; just that
they aren't on IRC, which isn't what we're discussing. Is it the case
that they do read -announce?
Kake> Whether or not the hypothesis is true, I want it to be not
Kake> true. The nice thing is that I have the option of aiming to
Kake> make it be not true.
I think you want the hypothesis (the list is useful for this) to be
true, and to reject the null hypothesis. I get the idea, though.
I feel like a Bad Person. I'm not arguing that social meets are bad, of
course, or that you aren't doing a great job as minion; I'm arguing that
the london-pm-announce list isn't a good place to post adverts for
activities like punting in Oxford, which seems to have little to do with
us. What ratio of those who attended are even subscribed to the list?
It seems insignificant, from your last mail.
One solution would be to create a more general social list, and save
-announce for social and tech meets. How many hundreds of people are
subscribed to -announce? How many have benefitted from the reminders so
far? A handful?
[1]: A _hypothetical_ position! I just wanted to get people talking,
not offend anyone who doesn't IRC.
- Chris.
--
$a="printf.net"; Chris Ball | chris@void.$a | www.$a | finger: chris@$a
