Given Brian’s perplexity about what kind of blog post generates comments, and Matt’s blogxonomy, I thought that what we sciency types really needed was a null hypothesis, which I’ve decided to advance, in my usual spirit of collegial selflessness, cough cough.
A blog post that’s about nothing at all.
This is it.
I wonder if it’ll get any comments?
If it doesn’t, that could simply be because nobody’s read it. But if it does …
Null hypotheses are difficult buggers, aren’t they?
Henry
This is not a good control. It is a blog about nothing not a null blog. Or in mathematical analogy a comment about zero rather than a zero. Perhaps another analogy is the quantum vacuum state in whuich particles spontaneously appear.
Now what you need to do is to devise a double blind test in which you simultaneously submit two posts, one of which contains nothing and the other something but you do not know which one is which.
Perhaps we should include a sealed box, a cat and a vial of poison somewhere too..
Dang. Scuppered by poor experimental design. Still, here’s a picture of some Hot Lawnmowing Action for you to look at while you’re deciding not to comment.
Brian – the closest I can get to a null blog is this – I suppose this isn’t entirely without merit, as one could consider it as something like a sham treatment. In which case, this blog entry here is the News and Views.
Null hypothesis.
That’s the kind of stats I
likeget.This has been done about a year ago. The blank post got hundreds of comments and was linked everywhere.
So, not only have I got poor experimental design – some other bastard has beaten me to publication. Sigh. How like real life this is.