Comments on: Mathematicians and statisticians http://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/mathematicians-and-statisticians/ always busy counting, doubting every figured guess . . . Mon, 20 May 2013 16:15:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Peter Cameron http://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2009/07/13/mathematicians-and-statisticians/#comment-907 Mon, 21 Jun 2010 10:02:14 +0000 http://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/?p=27#comment-907 Last week I was on holiday in the vicinity of a statistics conference. I went to a few of the talks.

One statistician said something like this:

I proved the formula. But I didn’t trust my proof, so I did an extensive simulation, which agreed well with the formula.

I do not think a mathematician could have said that!

(This is not to say that mathematicians don’t check their formulae by working examples; rather that, for us, a simulation carries far less conviction than a proof.)

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