W. Stephen McNeil
@wsmcneil.bsky.social
Professor. Educator. Scientist. Dad. Chembassador. *Not* the former Premier of Nova Scotia, should stress that. Likes #chemed #scicomm #boardgames. He/him.
This has been another episode of “Fascists are bad at an awful lot of things, including statistics”. Thanks for watching. (9/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:10 PM
This has been another episode of “Fascists are bad at an awful lot of things, including statistics”. Thanks for watching. (9/9)
What proportion of the folks ICE is screening with this pseudoscience horseshit are undoc’d migrants? I dunno, but unless it’s much higher than the false positive rate (and it’s not) then much more than half the folks they arrest will be false arrests. (8/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:10 PM
What proportion of the folks ICE is screening with this pseudoscience horseshit are undoc’d migrants? I dunno, but unless it’s much higher than the false positive rate (and it’s not) then much more than half the folks they arrest will be false arrests. (8/9)
How many of the 3M people walking by a TSA agent today are undoc’d migrants? I dunno, but even if a system generates only a 5% false positive (again, absurd), it would have to be 150k undoc’d migrants every day for even half the folks you match to actually be who you’re looking for. (7/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:10 PM
How many of the 3M people walking by a TSA agent today are undoc’d migrants? I dunno, but even if a system generates only a 5% false positive (again, absurd), it would have to be 150k undoc’d migrants every day for even half the folks you match to actually be who you’re looking for. (7/9)
To hope that facial recognition software used for any task is as good as 99.9% is an absurdly laughable overestimate. Especially given that facial recognition software trained on images of white people is notoriously bad at PoC faces, and you’re trying to use it to find brown people. (6/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:09 PM
To hope that facial recognition software used for any task is as good as 99.9% is an absurdly laughable overestimate. Especially given that facial recognition software trained on images of white people is notoriously bad at PoC faces, and you’re trying to use it to find brown people. (6/9)
The real accuracy of that test is 10/3010, the number of terrorists you correctly identified vs the number of people you claimed were terrorists, and that’s just 0.3%. You bury yourself in false positives and devote 99.7% of your resources to chasing ghosts. (5/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:09 PM
The real accuracy of that test is 10/3010, the number of terrorists you correctly identified vs the number of people you claimed were terrorists, and that’s just 0.3%. You bury yourself in false positives and devote 99.7% of your resources to chasing ghosts. (5/9)
How many of the 10 terrorists does it catch? 10(0.999) = 10. All of them! Hooray!
How many innocent people are accused of terrorism? 3M(0.001) = 3000. 3000 false accusations every single day!
Hooray! (4/9)
How many innocent people are accused of terrorism? 3M(0.001) = 3000. 3000 false accusations every single day!
Hooray! (4/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:09 PM
How many of the 10 terrorists does it catch? 10(0.999) = 10. All of them! Hooray!
How many innocent people are accused of terrorism? 3M(0.001) = 3000. 3000 false accusations every single day!
Hooray! (4/9)
How many innocent people are accused of terrorism? 3M(0.001) = 3000. 3000 false accusations every single day!
Hooray! (4/9)
Image the facial recognition system is 99.9% “accurate”. That is, for 1 out of 1000 terrorists it gives you a false negative and doesn’t catch them, and for 1 out of 1000 not-terrorists it gives you a false positive and incorrectly says they are a terrorist. (3/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Image the facial recognition system is 99.9% “accurate”. That is, for 1 out of 1000 terrorists it gives you a false negative and doesn’t catch them, and for 1 out of 1000 not-terrorists it gives you a false positive and incorrectly says they are a terrorist. (3/9)
Imagine 3M people get on a plane in the US today. (This is ballpark the correct number.) Imagine 10 of them are terrorists that the current system does not catch. (This is not the correct number. The correct number is, of course, zero, because no planes blew up today.) (2/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Imagine 3M people get on a plane in the US today. (This is ballpark the correct number.) Imagine 10 of them are terrorists that the current system does not catch. (This is not the correct number. The correct number is, of course, zero, because no planes blew up today.) (2/9)
Hey kids, it’s time for a refresher on the False Positive Paradox, which explains why facial recognition can never be used to catch terrorists (or *anyone* that makes up only a small proportion of the screened population)! (Shout out to Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother”.) (🧵, 1/9)
October 29, 2025 at 8:08 PM
Hey kids, it’s time for a refresher on the False Positive Paradox, which explains why facial recognition can never be used to catch terrorists (or *anyone* that makes up only a small proportion of the screened population)! (Shout out to Cory Doctorow’s “Little Brother”.) (🧵, 1/9)
Eeeeeeenteresting. Canvas is working fine at this Canadian university, so we don't use AWS. I wonder if that's a just-my-university thing, or perhaps a wider outcome of provincial / national privacy legislation that forbids Canadian unis to store student information on non-Canadian servers.
October 20, 2025 at 7:09 PM
Eeeeeeenteresting. Canvas is working fine at this Canadian university, so we don't use AWS. I wonder if that's a just-my-university thing, or perhaps a wider outcome of provincial / national privacy legislation that forbids Canadian unis to store student information on non-Canadian servers.
To complete a Canadian Great Lakes maritime distaster song trifecta, Due South fans pour one out for the 32 lives lost on the Robert MacKenzie. What if Paul Gross rewrote Edumund Fitzgerald as an up-tempo multi-guitar rock song with bagpipes and a I think a piccolo?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d-t...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d-t...
32 Down On The Robert Mackenzie Paul Gross
YouTube video by Sami Poulton
www.youtube.com
October 20, 2025 at 6:46 PM
To complete a Canadian Great Lakes maritime distaster song trifecta, Due South fans pour one out for the 32 lives lost on the Robert MacKenzie. What if Paul Gross rewrote Edumund Fitzgerald as an up-tempo multi-guitar rock song with bagpipes and a I think a piccolo?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d-t...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_d-t...
Why, I hear tell that the ship was the pride of the American side!
October 20, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Why, I hear tell that the ship was the pride of the American side!
@nicolemjames.bsky.social has offered a distinction I find very useful, focussed on outcomes rather than methodology: SoTL seeks to improve teaching practice and student learning experiences, while DBER, like any research, seeks to generate new knowledge.
October 4, 2025 at 3:52 AM
@nicolemjames.bsky.social has offered a distinction I find very useful, focussed on outcomes rather than methodology: SoTL seeks to improve teaching practice and student learning experiences, while DBER, like any research, seeks to generate new knowledge.
Ok yes but if I have to choose between Canvas and Workday....
October 1, 2025 at 8:38 PM
Ok yes but if I have to choose between Canvas and Workday....
Define "cheat". Our course is active- and peer-learning, promoting collaboration among students to learn & apply concepts. Quizzes are formative, not summative, designed as tools for students to develop and gauge their understanding. If they want to work together to do that, that's a *good* thing.
August 3, 2025 at 4:04 PM
Define "cheat". Our course is active- and peer-learning, promoting collaboration among students to learn & apply concepts. Quizzes are formative, not summative, designed as tools for students to develop and gauge their understanding. If they want to work together to do that, that's a *good* thing.
I started this skeet thinking we were talking about John Carpenter's THE THING and reader, I very quickly became VERY confused.
July 21, 2025 at 8:33 PM
I started this skeet thinking we were talking about John Carpenter's THE THING and reader, I very quickly became VERY confused.
"I" when you're describing the factors that emerge from your leadership and vision, "we" or "my team" when describing the work and its dissemination, to emphasize student contributions and mentorship / training?
July 19, 2025 at 5:19 AM
"I" when you're describing the factors that emerge from your leadership and vision, "we" or "my team" when describing the work and its dissemination, to emphasize student contributions and mentorship / training?
Sir Clement Charles Cave-Browne-Cave sounds like a character in a Spam meets Silly Party Election Night Special crossover sketch.
July 18, 2025 at 9:57 PM
Sir Clement Charles Cave-Browne-Cave sounds like a character in a Spam meets Silly Party Election Night Special crossover sketch.
At least twice a month I see a skeet that if it had its username erased I would still know with absolute certainty had been posted by Maggie, but this is the Most Maggie Post I have ever seen and I don't think it's close.
June 19, 2025 at 6:25 PM
At least twice a month I see a skeet that if it had its username erased I would still know with absolute certainty had been posted by Maggie, but this is the Most Maggie Post I have ever seen and I don't think it's close.
That sure sounds like some Reviewer #2 horseshit right there.
June 9, 2025 at 7:48 PM
That sure sounds like some Reviewer #2 horseshit right there.
Obviously not. Aquarius is an *air* sign.
May 28, 2025 at 3:37 PM
Obviously not. Aquarius is an *air* sign.