A BIAS in the Pensieve: A Batty Idea About Snape

[nkafkafi]

Lyn now:
Some might consider me to be well trained as a "scientist" and as one
who uses
SPSS
almost daily and who has taught statistics to doctoral students, I'm not
unfamiliar with the
proper selection and application of a fair number of statistical
tests. Yes, I
could have
discussed the assumptions required for parametric vs nonparametric tests,
homoscedasticity, power and the like, which is really nothing more than
Statistics 101, but
all of that as it applies to the kind of differences you were
suggesting you
could test rests
on the basic foundation of chance, so why not skip to what is not only
foundational but
also apprehendable to the general audience, which is that Rowling's
choice of
words is not
random, they are driven by a story line. I am confident you don't
believe that
she chose her
words by pulling them from a hat, and I am also confident you know
that there
are greater
complexities to her choice of words than you are indicating. It isn't
"geeky"
to generate
pseudo-statistical arguments, it is deceptive, though I don't think
you meant
for it to be.

Neri:
You are certainly a better-trained statistician than me, and I
apologize if you were offended by my "warning". It was not directed at
you, but as a kind of OT warning for members that find such stuff
boring. I agree with you very much about the inadequacy of my
pseudo-statistics, and I think you'll probably agree with me that if
vampires were mentioned 18 times and hags 12 times, it doesn't imply
that vampires are more important to the story than Hags. My original
meaning (before Charme started counting) was just to say that an
argument like "JKR mentions vampires and therefore Snape could be a
half vampire" is not a stronger argument than "JKR mentions hags and
therefore McGonnagall could be a half hag".

Lyn again:
Yet I would hope you can allow from the posts that have been made,
that at least
for some of us, a "worthy reason" for Snape to have some association
to Vampires and thus perhaps some vampire-like characteristics, has
been suggested. Obviously the things that satisfy some of us, don't
satisfy you. Of course if it we all agreed, then there
wouldn't be much point to these speculations and discussions, and that
would be a real loss of enjoyment, at least for me. So keep firing
away Neri, it keeps us all thinking and
discussing, and indeed, even coming up with new speculations.


Neri:
I was of course only stating my opinion when I talked about "worthy
reason". But it seems that many members here and in HPfGU don't
believe the vampire thing even in the strictly metaphorical sense.
Actually, only two weeks or so ago there was a fun pole in the OTC
list of HPfGU that included also the question "is Snape a vampire?" I
think that out of 20 or 30 people who answered it, only Pippin and
myself answered something other than a firm "no". So, as someone who
thinks that there actually MIGHT be something in the vampire thing, I
was trying to put my finger on why many people don't like this
speculation. 

Neri