“– Devil's Chaplain (2003) @page { margin-bottom: 5.000000pt; margin-top: 5.000000pt; } 5.4 Human Chauvinism and Evolutionary Progress120 Review of Full House by S. J. Gould This pleasantly written book has two related themes. The first is a statistical argument which Gould believes has great generality, uniting baseball, a moving personal response to the serious illness from which, thankfully, the author has now recovered, and his second theme: that of whether evolution is progressive. The argu...ment about evolution and progress is interesting — though flawed as I shall show — and will occupy most of this review. The general statistical argument is correct and mildly interesting, but no more so than several other homilies of routine methodology about which one could sensibly get a bee in one's bonnet. Gould's modest and uncontroversial statistical point is simply this. An apparent trend in some measurement may signify nothing more than a change in variance, often coupled with a ceiling or floor effect.MoreLessRead More Read Less
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