Although my word means little to nothing to most, I can confirm that it is indeed John List posting. (I emailed him a year or two ago to inform him that someone was posting as him; he told me it was him. We'd had prior communication, for what it's worth.)
By posting on this board Professor List is providing a valuable service: the perspective of someone who's actually informed about the subjects being discussed. To me, this is a welcome respite from the usual (undergraduate) droll about needing a background in differential manifolds and other misguided hearsay.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phdseeker
This is so twisted.
Person A claims that Chicago is much worse than other top 15 schools.
Person B (supposedly JList) says that according to the statistics Chicago is doing pretty well in the last 15 years and challenges Person A to provide statistics for his claim.
Person C verifies what Person B is saying with an academic report from a third party.
Person A responds by saying that his own personal evidence, upon throwing out 33.3% of his data, suggests that Person B's school does not do as well as he would like, saying nothing about the other 14 schools.
Person B says that one should be careful about throwing away useful data, and urges Person A to provide data on the other 14 schools.
It is clear to me now that Person B is not JList from Chicago. No professor of his league would put time in with someone so nonsensical (if he does he needs to find a life). List's five year old could present a more logical argument than this guy, who seemingly wants to make his arguments by throwing away data that do not support his claim. My advisor told me that one should never say an observation is an outlier, and throw it out, if it refutes one's hypothesis.
My advisor also told me that he knows List well, and that he would never spend time on this forum. He said that it is likely List's grad. assistants working here, who are very close with List and report back to him.
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