Standard deviation is ready for retirement: Nassim Taleb (2014)
<i>"What is worse, Goldstein and I found that a high number of data scientists (many with PhDs) also get confused in real life."</i><p>Wow. Just wow.<p>Some of people are calling themselves "Data Scientists" who don't know the difference between σ and MAD?<p>I don't care how many letters are after your name. If you don't know the absolute most basic types of summary statistics, you have no business calling yourself a Data Scientist.<p>---<p>To the phonies, please stop. Most of us work <i>hard</i> to stay at the bleeding edge, lest we fall behind, as I'm sure all HN devs strive to do. You're essentially defrauding people, and if you're working on anything important, the cascading effects can hurt a lot of real live actual human beings.<p>It's one thing to play around with data science to satiate your curiosity. It's an entirely different matter to declare it your profession. For example, I play around with KSP. That does not make me an Aerospace Engineer.<p>---<p>Edit in reply @tgb: Actually I think you and I are on the same page about what Taleb means. In fact, MAD is probably the more intuitive summary statistic for most people.<p>I just find the number amongst Data Scientists surprisingly high, since half the job is spotting these kinds of misinterpretations.