[Tim Peters] > I'm sure we mentioned that paper here in the early days; I'll believe you. It may have been prior to the separate mailing list (I only read that far back), or maybe I just don't recall it - when I did read the archives, I wasn't really that interested in reading stuff like that.
> and note that > Gary Robinson's oft-noted site has referred to it too approximately > forever, although via a different link: > > http://arxiv.org/abs/cs.CL/0006013 Yes, but *after* the maths, when everyone has stopped reading <wink>. > I knew the paper, and the choice to model costs in SpamBayes testing > in terms of hypothetical dollars charged to instances of different > kinds of errors was deliberate, but there's really no connection > between those. "Dollars and cents" models are simply intuitively > appealing to people regardless of statistical background, and I didn't > want the volunteer testers on this project to feel put out by a > measure that seemed esoteric. Since I've got you talking <wink>, what was the basis behind the $10,$1,0.20c choices? Just numbers that seemed right, or something more concrete? > If you're going to provide a single figure of merit, there are > constraints pushing in this direction. The choice of a linear model > is convenient and arguably a good first-order (literally) > approximation to a realistic cost model. I think the people asking for more statistics (in the GUI) are probably after a single figure - something to wave in front of people that ask about the accuracy. Straight lines are easier to draw, too, if we ever do provide the requested graphical representation <0.5 wink>. [Tony Meyer] >> (I wish I had found this when I was writing my CEAS paper earlier >> in the year). [Tim Peters] > Then you should have asked <wink>. Well, it didn't really make that much difference, but it would have saved me trying to explain the idea. That's what I get for (co)writing a paper in an area I have very little background in without the luxury of time to do better background reading. If I do wade outside my 'proper' research area again, I'll at least be better prepared (and maybe I will ask :). =Tony.Meyer _______________________________________________ spambayes-dev mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/spambayes-dev
