An occasional series in which the writer of an original piece is given the opportunity to respond to a correction for no other reason than to keep things going in difficult times.
# x=yt²/b Professor Para Bola, MA PhD, Whisky-McNightly Chair of Medical Statistics, University of Afpuddle Department of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Statistic writes:
Dr Norm Alkurve makes a valid "academic" point when he suggests that my statement "assuming x=ab² + y, where y is a constant ... " [see A Statistician writes #286.4+e, Wednesday 15 April 2020] is not technically correct. Rather he suggests "for the record", that "y is not a constant but rather a function of x+yg² / mc, where c is the constant". Were things so simple!
What Dr Norm Alkurve does not make clear in his statement is that the statement "y is not a constant but rather a function of x+yg² / mc, where c is the constant" is itself only valid under "certain abnormal temperatures and conditions" and that at this time of year in all of the relevant parts of Dorset [even allowing for the somewhat unseasonably weather] and certainly in hospital conditions, y is so close to being a function of x/x and thus a proxy-constant that to all intents and purposes it is a constant. We can thus say with a probability level of 44% [e=2.3434334443] that, in practice, the assertion that "y is not a constant but rather a function of x+yg² / mc, where c is the constant" is an unhelpful modifier and not a fundamental restatement or refutation of the original proposal that "assuming x=ab² + y, where y is a constant ...". After all, where y is a constant, y is a constant: a consistent, logical and, I would suggest, irrefutable statement in and of itself.
Where Dr Alkurve himself strays into error is in his - surprisingly lax - suggestion that y is invariably a function of x+yg² / mc. I believe it was in 1964 that the famous Culinary Bio-ethicist Professor Brian Thrupiece established the variability of the function x+yg² / mc, demonstrating to the satisfaction of most open minds [my own included - at a much later date of course] that plant-based lifeforms exhibited different characteristics and were subject to different statistical representations than animal-based forms. I believe that his discovery was a happy, though unsought, finding arising from his attempt to model the statistical likelihood of fluff becoming unstable under certain laboratory conditions: work undertaken as part of the then top-secret thrupiecediet project.
For the record, it is also the case that, in vitro, the description xd/c [where c is a function of by²/g] approximates so closely to the modified function yc that to all intents and purposes we can say that the popular musical rhythm combo AC/DC need not be challenged - a statement as true today as it was when Marcus Tullius [having endlessly sedet in tablino] originally put II and II together and made IV.
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