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Evolution of a New Atheist

Recent events in global politics seem to have brought the spit-flecked anti-Islamic radicalism of the New Atheists out into the open. Dawkins has had a bit of a thing about Ahmed Mohamed that is perhaps a little strange, but his most recent tweet drawing some kind of weird parallel between Mohamed and some poor child in Syria who was forced/brainwashed into beheading a soldier is really kind of off. Meanwhile in a podcast Sam Harris announced that he would rather vote for Ben Carson than Noam Chomsky because Ben Carson understands more about the Middle East.

Vicious, slightly unhinged attacks on children, and voting for a religious madman because he would keep out religious madmen seem like prima facie evidence for some kind of fevered new level of anger, so is it the case that the New Atheists are finally letting the mask slip, and revealing their prejudices in their full, naked glory? Harris is apparently an atheist but he would vote for an avowed born again christian who is completely immune to facts and probably wants to force the end of separation of church and state: when you vote for someone who is anathema to all your fundamental beliefs because of one specific policy you are signalling your policy preferences very clearly. Meanwhile, Dawkins is just … whatever he was trying to say with that tweet, it wasn’t pretty. Have recent events finally caused them to lose it?

Just recently I wrote an angry post about the Church of England trying to invade my leisure time, so in the interests of balance I think it’s only fair that I have a go at the New Atheists, who I find just as annoying in their own special way, though ultimately I think they’ll be far less influential than the current Archbishop of Canterbury. By the New Atheists I mean that crew of sciency types who publish books about how terrible religion is and affect to be experts on all things religious: people like Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, the late Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers. Although I don’t doubt their atheism, I think they aren’t really acting first and foremost as atheists. Rather, I think they’re establishment scientists reacting in a particularly atavistic way to two kinds of insurrection that really make them feel threatened: the American vulgarist insurrection against science, which is primarily (but not only) driven by fundamentalist Christianity; and the Middle Eastern reaction against colonialism and imperialism, which has sadly shifted from a politically nationalist framework to an avowedly religious framework. The former threatens them intellectually and the latter threatens their identity, so they react viscerally. But in their visceral reaction I don’t think they’re acting against religion generally, and I think their visceral reaction is not a good thing for atheism. Even if they weren’t straight up reactionaries, I think they make poor spokespeople for atheism (to the extent that atheism is a movement of any kind). Here I would like to give a few reasons why.

The New Atheists will never change anything

In attacking Islam so vociferously, the New Atheists have chosen an easy target, but they aren’t going to change anything in Islam, and in any case they can’t even change Christianity. They don’t live in majority Islamic countries, so they’re in no position to make any changes to Islam; and by aligning themselves so closely with the Islamophobia of the religious/militarist right in the USA they instantly render any serious critique they have of Islam inaudible. In any case, Islam is not a monolithic entity like the Catholic church, it has no central leaders or doctrines, so there is no single force they can bend to their prodigious will. But even within their own Christian countries they’ll never effect any change because they’re going about it completely the wrong way. Religions can be institutionally monolithic, like the Catholic church or the Church of England, but they’re also diffuse and incredibly culturally resilient. You can’t change a religion by standing outside it yelling at it, because a strong religion is composed of both a powerful religious institution and a plurality of supporters, who are in a constant cultural tension with that leadership but identify strongly with what that leadership represents. Religions don’t change because people yell at them because changing a religion requires simultaneously changing its intellectual leadership and its adherents.  The best way to change a religion is to slowly move all of society forward, through technological, scientific and cultural advances, and then watch the religion catch up. It’s slow, hard, dirty work, the kind of work you don’t get accolades for and can’t distill into self-aggrandizing tweets, but that’s how religions change. Perhaps the best secular example of this is the relationship between labour unions and labour parties in the early part of the last century in countries like Australia and the UK. To change policy in those environments you had to be active in the union, working at the grassroots, but also active in the elite system of the unions and its associated mass politics. People like Bob Hawke and Gough Whitlam emerged from that environment and they were formidable intellectuals with a very practical understanding of both the levers and the limits of power. Of course, the New Atheists aren’t going to have much of a sense of class politics, so they probably don’t have a clue about the secular equivalents of what they’re dealing with, either.

Furthermore, it’s often the case that the leading agents of change are people within the religion – your Martin Luthers and Gandhis – not angry outsiders. One hundred years from now, when Islam has moved forward to wherever it’s going, people will look back and say “look at that Turkish dude who reformed education in the 21st century” and “how about that Sudanese chick who campaigned against genital mutilation”. No one will be thanking Richard Dawkins for tweeting a picture of an ISIS child soldier brutalizing and being brutalized[1]. These people will never change anything.

Scientists are not good Atheists

There’s a kind of intellectual arrogance in the “elite” branches of science – physics, biochemistry, some parts of evolutionary biology – in which they believe that they can enter any other field of human endeavour and just pwn it with their superb intellectual skills. This is visible at its most nakedly ugly in the behavior of those cosmologists who think they are going to disprove (or discover!) god, and those terrible nuclear bomb makers who turned the whole thing into a sick parody of childbirth. But in this case it means that scientists are entering a world that is very unscientific, that has a completely different language and culture, and trying to understand it in terms that make sense to scientists, and thinking they can. This is why they seem to think that religions are anti-science because their books are kooky, and they think they can effect change through logical debate built on attacking the principles of those books. In science you look at founding principles and build arguments on them; in religion you play fast and loose with founding principles in pursuit of a story (or something; I’m not really au fait with how this stuff works). Yelling at people and claiming to be able to understand the way their religion works because you’re used to logical thinking is not going to get you very far. Laughing at silly origin stories (7 days! ha!) doesn’t get you very far because – newflash – most people don’t give a fuck about how smart you are until they need you to fix their TV and then they’re all like “what do you mean you study geckos?” When you engage with people outside of your field of expertise you need to set aside your field of expertise, or find a way to bring it to the engagement that doesn’t appear arrogant and out of touch. Which brings us to …

The New Atheists are poor scholars

Every field of intellectual inquiry has its own rules, its own language and its own disciplines. You can’t just go into another field of inquiry and start talking about it with the language and discipline of your own field – you’ll misunderstand and get confused. If you talk statistics with a statistician, you need to understand what “consistency” means; if you discuss economics at some point you need to come to terms with their weird and stupid definition of “efficiency”. Believe it or not, religions have their own language and disciplines, and the study of religion is a long-standing and well-respected intellectual field, connected with cultural studies, social science and art theory/history. But the New Atheists don’t give a fuck about that, they just barge on in and start arguing. This is most obvious in Sam Harris’s embarrassing little spanking from Noam Chomsky, where he thought he could engage in debate with one of the preeminent scholars of American foreign policy on the basis of a single reading of just one of his books (“I thought I could read it as a self-contained whole,” what, do you think it’s a Little Golden Book?), without any of the disciplines or scholarly background of international relations. It’s also obvious in the response of scholars of theology to Dawkins’ The God Delusion, which panned it as, for example, work that would make a first year theology student wince[2]. This is what happens when otherwise intelligent, well-educated scientists decide that they can enter into other scholarly debates without the proper debate and, dare I say it, the proper respect. And this is the real problem here: they don’t understand or respect the religious impulse or its history, they don’t respect anyone who believes differently to them, and they base their scholarly approach to religion on this lack of respect for its intellectual origins. This is very, very stupid. For much of human history religion was the wellspring of science, and almost all of our modern intellectual tradition is built on Catholic, Muslim, Jewish[3] or Hindu science. When a scientist goes into their world that scientist is dealing not with weird, kooky idiots who think the world was made in 7 days, but people who understand science and theology, and are comfortable believing in one while working in the other. You can’t knock these people over with second rate arguments about whether god could make a stone so heavy even he couldn’t lift it, and when you try they’ll come back at you with sophisticated discussion of exactly where that question fits into a range of epistemological, ontological and cosmological debates.

These religions didn’t develop through 1000 or 5000 years of history because they had a complete disregard for scholarly endeavour. But the New Atheists approach the mysteries of religion as if they were a first year biology problem. That’s bad scholarship, derived from a lack of respect, which is why I can say that …

They give atheism a bad name

Being an atheist doesn’t mean you think everyone who believes in God is an idiot. Sure, there are some cute jokes about sky fairies and stuff, but they’re rhetorical fluff, not to be confused with the substance of how atheists should (and generally do) approach believers. To me, first and foremost, atheism is about inquiry. I’m fascinated by all this stuff that goes on in this amazing and beautiful world, and that doesn’t just mean I’m interested in what will happen to the polar bears when the ice melts; it also means I want to know what my Muslim colleague thinks about things he maybe didn’t have to think about before he moved to Japan, or what my lapsed Catholic friend thinks about Shinto. It doesn’t mean that I just dismiss all that stuff as dumb-arsed imaginary-friend psychological props. It also doesn’t mean that when I see a member of a certain religion (I’m looking at you Mr. Mohammedan) doing a terrible thing I should immediately decide that all people from that religion are insane arse-hats. But please forgive me if that’s how I interpret the recent behavior of the New Atheists, who seem to have got a real bee in their bonnets about Islam, and are really seriously concerned that it’s the end of civilization. By throwing away their critiques of other religions, siding with religious lunatics, and dropping all pretense at mild manners or rational debate, they make it pretty clear that they have a certain, specific animus against a certain, specific religion. They look, in fact, like racists. Some of them also look like unreconstructed sexists. But in the modern era, they are also the main voice of atheism that most people recognize. Which means that in the public mind they speak for me.

My Muslim colleague is very concerned about the image of Islam that ISIS project. He sometimes talks about it with me – raises the terrible things they have done, tries to talk about how they are perceived by people not like them – and I can see he is worried that I might get a bad idea of his religion from the antics of its worst children. He also makes jokes about his own religion, and is comfortable dealing with the social conflicts living in Japan presents. It’s as if he is just a normal guy trying to get by in this crazy world, who believes some different stuff to me. But to hear Sam Harris’s latest utterings, he’s a monster waiting to blow me up. Or he might be, or something. When people say shit like that about any other group you back away slowly, or you give them hell. But these guys think they’re cool with it, and as the tide of public opinion turns against Islam I guess, increasingly, they will be. But sometime in the future, once ISIS are a bad memory (and they will be!), people will remember that those dudes were atheists, and they will assume that atheism is about racism and hatred or, at best, that it is completely attuned with popular opinion about who the latest bad guys are. Which it isn’t. Atheism is much bigger than that. It is much bigger than this small group of arrogant rich white scientists, and the sooner they let it go and give it back to us the better.

Atheism is not a movement and never will be

At the heart of this is a simple fact that perhaps we didn’t have to think about back when our spokesperson was Bertrand Russell, a man who would never have supported the Iraq war: Atheism is not a movement. It is the antithesis of a movement. It’s a group of people who have quietly decided to go their own way on this spiritual shit. We just don’t do it, but there’s no movement we can form to make that fact public – how can we? We don’t agree on anything! Sure, the Satanists are doing a great job of trolling some Christians in a completely cute and fun way, but they don’t represent us and no one thinks they do. We aren’t A Thing. Sure, sometimes we’d like to be – those atheist bloggers in Bangladesh might not have been killed if they were part of a movement with its own stormtroopers – and being part of a movement has many benefits, but that’s not what Atheism is. In it’s own way it’s as intense and personal as religion, it’s a feeling you have that you can’t project onto anyone else although the best of us will put our case carefully and wait for those we love and care about to maybe feel it, or maybe not. But I think the New Atheists would like us to be a movement, and I think you know who they think should be in charge of that movement.

But I don’t to be part of any movement that turns my inner life into a caricature of itself so they can spit on Muslims and use child soldiers as a rhetorical tool in some kind of shitty twitter war over a fucking clock. I don’t want to be part of any movement whose leaders think they’re intellectually superior to a couple of billion people, and I don’t want to be part of any movement whose representatives would vote for a religious lunatic who’s probably a con artist just because he hates the same people they do.

Once this war on Islam is done – and it will be done, once ISIS are gone, and they will be gone – these New Atheists will discover how fickle their new bedfellows are. When their new anti-Muslim fundamentalist christian friends kick them out, don’t welcome them back. Tell them they sold themselves cheap, and they can be footsoldiers in someone else’s intellectual battle. Atheism doesn’t need them, and neither do the religious people they think they’re helping.

fn1: Seriously WTF were you thinking, dude? Have you been following the movement against child soldiers, are you aware of what a complex, cruel and brutal thing the recruiting and enslavement of child soldiers is? Do you understand that the media have conventions about showing child victims? When the BBC interviews child soldiers they pixelate their faces. What were you thinking, comparing an American kid to a child soldier in the act of beheading someone? Do you have any respect at all for human dignity?

fn2: Read that review. That is how reviews are done.

fn3: Noam Chomsky, for example, grew up in a Jewish tradition heavily steeped in Jewish intellectualism.

Christian doctrine summarized

Today’s news brings us reports that the Church of England’s gentle attempts to frontload the new Star Wars movie with a one minute long advert for their brand of authoritarian fantasism have fallen flat, in what everyone (even Richard Dawkins, apparently) is calling a defeat for free speech. In a stunning moment of unexpected bravery from our corporate overlords, the bosses of three different cinema chains have told the CofE to get fucked. Rather than being horrified by this slow slide into oppression, I am very happy, and extremely angry that the CofE felt they had the right to pull this nasty piece of totalitarianism on the British public. Before you start hyperventilating, dear reader(s), let me explain …

I’m not an easily offended man, I think, and I think I’ve been on the record as supporting free expression for all religions. I’m an atheist but I don’t subscribe to the “Militant Atheist” school of “thought”, which holds that religion is a childish emotional prop and that society should and will grow past it. I respect individual religious belief, I think religions should have freedom in public life and I’m not especially bothered by the special place that some religious institutions hold in public life – e.g. the christian churches of various denominations in various nations, Islam in Turkey, etc. In the modern era I really don’t see religion as a big threat to our continued progress towards enlightenment, and I have no problem with its open expression and with its historical contributions being recognized. I’m also, I think, on record here as saying I suspect that a lot of the militant atheist spokespeople are sexist, racist bigots who are especially fond of using their atheism as a cloak for their obvious anti-Arab or anti-Islamic racism, and I don’t think that their aggressive tactics do atheism any favours. To the extent that atheism is a movement (it’s not) we don’t need these people as our chief representatives. However …

The Church of England, because it has a huge and privileged position in the British intellectual world. It is the establishment church, meaning the head of the church is also the head of a nuclear-armed state. It owns most of the publicly-run schools, and I can personally attest to the way it used those schools to exclude other religions from discussion, to misrepresent them and to force us to learn and recite its doctrine. It gets free public air time for Sunday worship and special events that no one else gets, and its religious events are the key public holidays, during which time it gets almost untrammeled access to both state and private television and radio. Despite this near constant exposure of a large portion of the population to its propaganda message, and despite the fact that the major media organizations treat the corrupt content of that message with kid gloves, it is still losing the intellectual battle with atheism, agnosticism and who-gives-a-fuckism. So, having lost that battle, and aware of that, they are now going to start forcing adults who have graduated from their schools and escaped their slimy clutches to sit through a minute of unbridled power worship before they can enjoy some actually good fantasy.

Why should we put up with this? Why should I be forced to endure that horrible piece of authoritarian “poetry” when I have already been forced to recite it every morning for the first 17 years of my life? If I am not voluntarily reciting it then there is a simple reason: I think it sucks and I don’t want to. So don’t make me read it again, if I never have to read that horrible little cry for help ever again in my belief-free existence I will be a happy man. And most importantly, what gives the church the arrogance and sense of superiority to think that it’s okay for them to afflict me with this crap during my daily activities? Every time I go to a hotel in the English speaking world I’m given a free bible [another public service extended exclusively to the christian church by private companies], hasn’t the church worked out that if I wanted to read that prayer I would?

Most people understand that if you have told someone something a certain number of times and they still don’t believe it or don’t want to hear it, it’s time to stop yelling at them. Apparently the luminaries at the head of the Church of England have yet to learn that lesson, and think they have some special right to lambast us with their brand of patriarchal authoritarianism just once more, because that one more minute will get us back. The thought of sitting there, waiting to watch something I really want to watch, while for one minute this old man lectures me on how much I should love a god I don’t believe in, makes me so angry. It’s a direct reminder that these evil old men still own my society; an attempt to force me back to being my 8 year old self, shivering and powerless in assembly hall while I wait to be free of their pointless rituals. How dare they do this?

Some random dude at the Guardian is complaining that the real reason the cinemas refused is because they’re scared the illuminati might force us to listen to a muslim prayer in the future, and then they’ll be forced to play it if they also play the christian one. For me personally a passage from the Quran is largely meaningless, and if I listen to it it won’t make me angry because I have no historical association with Islam (though I guess this depends on the prayer they choose!) But for the record I think that Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and everyone else should steer well clear of my precious pre-Star Wars advertising time. I also really want to hope that this is not the reason the cinemas said no, but rather that they, like me, are horrified at the thought of allowing any church to preach to us for a minute before a movie. I’m glad they don’t need the money that badly!

The sooner the Church of England is out of schools and television altogether the better. It’s a dying institution that is propped up by the state and the buttresses of history, but its days are numbered. This desperate, mean-spirited lashing out at non-believing adults needs to be stopped early, and rather than seeing this decision as “nonsense on stilts” or some kind of blow to free speech we should recognize that it is a huge victory for modern values over superstition and authoritarianism. Well done those British cinema chains, and shame on the Church of England for thinking that such a move would ever be okay.

Hrmph! I never wanted to go there anyway!

Indiana, USA[1] has just passed a law that discriminates against ordinary arseholes, and especially confirmed atheist arseholes. This law would make discrimination okay so long as the discriminator [hereafter referred to as “the arsehole”] is religious, and clearly sets up three categories of people with different sets of rights: nice people who want everyone to get along, religious arseholes and non-religious arseholes. Into the latter category we can add arseholes who are religious but whose arseholery is clearly not religiously-based, which is a distinction I’m sure the current Supreme Court can have a lot of hours of fun with.

As a confirmed, unrelenting but unfortunately atheist arsehole, I will be boycotting Indiana from now on. I was planning to visit later this year, rent a massive gas guzzling car with sealskin hubcaps and drive around throwing money to passing orphans while snorting cocaine off the naked bodies of zero-size barely legal models, but I refuse to throw away my arsehole currency in a state that classifies me as a second-class citizen. I will instead visit a state that allows all arseholes to be equally arseholey[2].

I mean, what is the point of this law except to redefine arseholes into two categories? It can’t possibly be the case that the LGBT couple who are refused service will be all peachy about it just because the refuser is wearing a funny hat, or believes in some funny beardy dude; I accept that intent is important in framing law (see e.g. manslaughter vs. murder) but usually it is limited to classifying degrees of severity, not allowing some people to break the law with impunity. Sure, if the law defined degrees of discrimination it might make sense (and a whole new season of Law and Order would be born) but to just define away criminality for certain classes of arsehole? Isn’t that … discriminatory?

This Vox article tells me that 20 states in the USA have these laws in place, and suggests to me that arsehole freedom is the next great civil rights movement in America (we could call ourselves the moonies). It also makes me wonder if there are any adults left in America, because it suggests that most of these laws have been passed to protect “religious minorities” and gives an example of Amish trying to protect themselves from a law that requires them to hang a glowing light on their buggies. They had to go to court to get protection against that law? Couldn’t everyone just discuss the law and come up with a compromise? Apparently not in America. And did the Amish really think they were so special that they were willing to go to special legal lengths to ensure that they didn’t have the same road safety responsibilities as everyone else? And why should they?

The same applies to vaccination exemption laws. If you believe in some beardy dude who says that women are second-rate citizens, gay people should be shot (I’m looking at you, Californian arseholes!) and pi is 3.0, you get to endanger other peoples’ kids by refusing  a medically safe and proven technology. But if your intention is simply to endanger other peoples’ kids because you’re a misanthropic arsehole who is too smart to believe the blather of a 2000 year old book that was written before people understood how to be nice to each other then too bad! You gotta be nice or face a fine.

Why this extreme double standard against arseholes?

America needs a movement of arseholes, willing to throw off their shackles and rise up against discrimination, before it becomes impossible to be intelligent and mean in any state of the union! Rise up, arseholes of America, and reclaim your right to be mean to people you don’t like for no other reason, without having to dishonestly cloak it in superstitious blather! Truly, liberation of pure arseholes is the movement 21st Century America needs, and truly 21st Century America is ready for it!

fn1: What is it with Americans thinking they don’t need to specify which country their states are in?

Many people have pondered the real reasons for the Iraq war, the stated reasons being so blatantly false. Most critics have claimed it was a war for oil; some have suggested it was a stupid mistake by a clique of idiots; others have proposed the darker conspiracy theory that it was intended to unleash chaos specifically to keep the oil in the ground. Well, today Tony Blair revealed the truth: it was a crusade by Protestant extremists. In a piece for the observer, Tony “the Vampire” Blair gives his considered opinion of wars in the 21st century, and decides that they will be primarily driven by religious extremism.

Well, the Iraq war was the second war of the 21st century, its longest-running new war, and certainly a fairly serious business. Before it was invaded, Iraq was a secular dictatorship. It was invaded by a ragtag coalition of Christians, and the leaders of the coalition of the willing were two Protestant nations. Surely we should apply the Vampire’s logic to the big war that he started? Western religious extremism is surely the greatest threat to world peace …

We can do better than that though, can’t we? Now we can look to the religious roots of the Senkaku Islands conflict, driven by the irreconcilable differences between Confucian fascists on the one hand and Shinto Extremists on the other. The increasingly tense dispute between Indonesia and Australia is not really over boat people, but over interpretations of whether Jesus was the son of God. And what is this shit about the conflict in the Central African Republic being ethnically based? It’s clearly a threeway fight to the death between born-again christian fanatics, shamanic exterminationists, and moderate Islam. Right?

History tells me that people in the UK voted in quite large numbers for Tony Blair, several times. I find this hard to believe. Was there ever a time when if he opened his mouth, lies or garbage didn’t come out? Because I don’t remember it, but surely millions of British voters (adults, apparently!) couldn’t have been so easily fooled? Once again there can only be one explanation: Tony Blair is an extremely powerful vampire, with incredible powers of mass hypnosis. Put a stake through that beast! Or at least, keep its hideous rantings off the pages of national newspapers …

I think it’s safe to say that God is a pretty forgiving, tolerant, inclusive kind of guy. He’s of the pro-gay-marriage, live-and-let-live, community-action-minded kind of viewpoint, not the kind of person who supports vengeance and judgment. He’s how God would be if God hadn’t written the Old Testament, and caused all manner of trouble with his violence and vengeance. This is not a God that will turn you to salt for disobeying him, and will refer you to a suicide helpline rather than tell you not to do it or you’ll go to hell. He’s also funny, sometimes hilarious, and a generally light-hearted and positive voice on my Facebook feed.

Sadly for God, recently his mother died, and he and his family were rightly distraught about it. He announced this on his website and received a huge outpouring of support. Perhaps buoyed by this, God revealed that the insurance company were being dickheads, and set up an Indiegogo website to raise $5000 to send his dad on a holiday. This got a huge response, and within a couple of days God had raised$20,000. You can read more details about the positive aspects of this story at this blogpost about God as a community phenomenon.

Sadly, God’s Indiegogo successes brought some trouble to his online community, and the very worst of humanity came crawling out from under their rocks to criticize him. The things they said were terrible, and the things they said about those who donated to him were also terrible. The worst of the comments have been weeded out now so I can’t copy them, but there are still some pearlers. For example, one person wrote:

like i said before…it is kind of sad that i asked for money to pay my mother’s cancer bills and did not receive a penny…but YOU raise thousands of dollar’s for ” a vacation”……what a shameful example of humanity !!!

Another wrote:

I’ve had enough. Man, it’s like a car wreck!! I can’t believe how many gullible people there are in the world! Yes this was a fun page to visit on occasion but folks….his reward for putting the page up in the first place is his million followers. That’s the reason he does it. He doesn’t get to expect money for making you laugh. To each their own but you are sending money to a cartoon image. You know nothing about this person except what he/she wants you to know. If you think he or she is going to visit you while on vacation with Dad, you’ve got another think coming. YOU ARE SENDING MONEY TO A CARTOON!!!

while someone else writes

like this god page, but i think asking for money and receiving over $20,000 is kind of bullshit in my eyes, sounds alot like gods taking this stuff to seriously and becoming like the church…… but the nastiest by far for me was a comment that has now been taken down, which I saw with my own eyes when it was put up, in which someone wrote Both my parents died and I didn’t get a cent from anyone. Get a fucking job. These comments to me seem to show the worst of humanity. Some guy with a million followers openly states that he wants to raise money for some personal, completely selfish purpose; people give him money because they like him and it’s no trouble to them; he raises more than expected and decides to use it for himself; but for a sizable minority of the population, this is a terrible terrible sin. The first quoted comment shows the reason for this: people can see a person getting something they couldn’t get, and they are angry about that. But they aren’t just angry – although they know that he is sad from a recent loss of a close family member, they post critical comments and accusations on his facebook wall where he can see them. These comments include personal attacks, accusations that he is lying about his family, that he is a scammer, and demands for him to drop his anonymity. Something that had originally been a source of joy for a person going through a difficult time has obviously turned into a huge and painful chore, simply because a sizable minority of people on this earth hate to see someone else gain something for nothing. And no doubt some of the attacks will rub off on God, making him feel like a dirty person for simply asking for help and receiving it. Is this a microcosm of the reasons why so many people are opposed to welfare in all its forms? And why charity is always expected to come with so many strings and so much shame? I find this particularly amusing when I compare God’s honest and open request for money for jam with the way so many Indiegogo users scam their users through obvious deception. I defriended someone from my Facebook after they began spamming their friends with Indiegogo fundraisers for a project that was clearly dishonest and that they never intended to deliver on; and of course the role-playing world has been beset by very real scams involving large sums of money on undelivered projects, and an entire website devoted to uncovering vaporware. Strangely though, the Dwimmermount project still has supporters even though the author has disappeared for 18 months and taken$50k with him; while God cops a heavy dose of abuse for asking for \$5k for the stated purpose of producing nothing. How can it be that the humans in this world can behave this way? What psychological or philosophical perspective makes people supportive of a scam with no product after 18 months, but critical of a direct and simple plea for money from someone who has been entertaining a million people for 3 years?

It’s as if God has managed to prove that there is no humanity out there, just a deep, untapped well of jealousy and immaturity.

fn1: yes, I am sufficiently shallow to have facebook. And no I don’t use google+.

The Shaikh would not approve!

I discovered tonight that my blog has come to the attention of a Muslim scholar in the UK, in a piece he wrote about the UK census. Like me, this scholar noted the obssessive focus of the UK press on the growth of Islam, rather than the explosion of atheism[1]. Unlike me, the writer of this piece didn’t comment on the simultaneous release of gay marriage laws that privilege the bigotry of the mainstream churches. I wonder why?

Anyway, in previous posts here I have presented the use of Tolkien by fascists as evidence in favour of my thesis that his work is racist. So it’s only fair that I hoist myself on my own petard, and have a look at what kind of people hold my work in high esteem[2]. If we can find even one work by this website that supports the veil, then surely I’m anti bikini? Right?

More interesting is the site’s attempts to describe the nature of the hijab (voluntary, but recommended to all), the issue of immodest hijabs (yes, they exist!) and the problems inherent in treating the hijab as a symbol of identity rather than an act of worship (I actually thought these readings would put many a post-structuralist feminist to shame); and most interestingly, its ongoing series of posts on what it means to be British in an Islamic context, built around a debate with another Islamic scholar about the role of music (very appropriate, given the strength of British culture in the production of music). Would that mainstream journalists in the UK could put as much thought into these issues as this obscure website has done! In this context I thought the open letter to David Cameron was particularly impressive.

Although I think I can say I disagree with almost everything on this site, I think I understand the fundamental struggle it describes: to try to live according to a strict set of moral precepts in a world that doesn’t agree with them, or that agrees with them in principle but doesn’t support them practically. You can see this from christian fundamentalists, vegans, pacifists and some kinds of Marxists and libertarians, and the personal struggles their websites describe are all the same. Unlike some christians in the west, though, this site is more honest: it directly blames the Japanese tsunami on a failure to embrace the correct God – a view this tired atheist would have once got angry about, but now appreciates for its cruel honesty. The more times that religious people say things like this, the more potential followers they will lose, because in statements like this they reveal the fundamental cruelty of the god they claim loves them, and the responsibility of all right thinking people everywhere to oppose those gods if they were real. Anyone who submits to a god that kills 10,000 people even though they have never had a chance to convert to his “love” is lacking some fundamental understanding of what compassion is. Or is being very bloody-minded. Either way, it’s better that these things are stated openly than clothed in mealy-mouthed excuses about “the problem of evil.”

Anyway, the post-colonial critique of mainstream analyses of Islam was good, as was the debate about what it means to be British, and the subjugation of nationalism to the greater struggle – very much in keeping with the major streams of international socialist thought. Shame about the hocus-pocus, but you can’t have everything – but who cares when you can hoist faustusnotes on his own petard, and prove without a shadow of a doubt that my website is opposed to bikinis!? And, no doubt, objectively pro-terrorist …

fn1: incidentally, my spell-checker notes that “Islam” requires a capital “I” whereas “atheism” does not need a capital. Typing here, I also note that “Christianity” requires a capital “C”. I think this is bullshit. I think in all future posts, I will capitalize the “A” in “Atheism.”

fn2: my claiming that this islam21c blog holds me in high esteem might be stretching it a bit, but we don’t get a great many hits around here, so please go easy on me.

fn3: In Australia, vegans generally told each other that Toohey’s Red and Coopers were safe beers to drink

fn4: but your average rioter probably doesn’t want to assume this means they receive any sympathy – if our friendly shaikh had his way, they’d be getting a hand amputated!

Christianity’s fundamental promise is of eternal life, and the risk of refusing to accept God’s grace is generally accepted to be eternal damnation. While the truth of these statements is still subject to debate, there is little empirical evidence of the benefit of eternal life, and little research exploring the possible drawbacks of a decision to forego evil in exchange for the promise of eternal salvation. In a world of finite resources, decisions about how best to dispose of available resources while alive need to take into account the long-term and (if certain cosmological properties are shown to hold) potentially eternal consequences of the choice between good and evil. In this blog post, we will examine the costs and benefits of baptism and rejection of sin from an econometric standpoint. Of specific interest in this blog post is the relationship between the benefits of accepting God’s grace and the discount rate society applies to years of life not yet lived.

The immediate use of an analysis of the costs and benefits of accepting god’s grace is obvious, but from a wider perspective a clear understanding of the economic aspects of this theological decision may help us to understand the persistence of evil in a world where humans have free will, and to answer the eternal question: why does evil exist in a world shaped according to God’s will?

Methods

Standard cost-effectiveness analysis methods were applied to two simple decision problems. The first decision problem is the question of whether or not to baptize a child, on the assumption that baptism grants the child God’s grace, causing them to live a holy life but to lose the benefits that might accrue to an evil-doer. The analysis was then extended to consider a problem implicit in a great deal of modern rhetoric about the soul and sexuality, viz: if homosexuality is a choice, and that choice leads only to hell, is it cost-effective to choose to be homosexual? This question was answered in terms of numbers of partners foregone, and quality-adjusted life years gained from the sacrifice.

The basic decision problem: whether to baptize

The basic decision problem was addressed using standard measures of effectiveness. It was assumed that were a child to be baptized they would be eligible to enter heaven upon their death, and would thus be able to live forever. Were they not to be baptized, they are assumed to enter hell at death. Each year of life lived was assumed to grant the individual a full quality adjusted life year (QALY); each year in heaven (from now until the rapture, i.e. infinite years from now) was also assumed to grant 1 QALY; while entry into hell was considered to grant 0 QALYs. All QALYs were discounted using the standard formula, and the effect of the discounting rate on the benefits of each decision were calculated over three different life expectancies: 45 years (enlightenment-era), 70 years (biblical lifespan) and 80 years (the life expectancy granted by modern materialist living). Effectiveness was then assessed for a wide range of discount rates, varying from 0.5% to 5%. The difference in QALYs gained (the incremental effect) was then calculated for all these scenarios.

Cost-effectiveness calculation for the baptism problem

Having calculated the incremental effect of baptism, the cost was then calculated under the assumption that evil people make more money. This assumption is implicit in, for example, Mark 8:36, when Jesus asks

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

which suggests that doing good requires some form of material sacrifice. This is, of course, also obvious in the early doctrine of the Dominican and Franciscan orders, and much of pre-enlightenment religious debate was focused around this struggle between material goods and goodness.

This contrast was modeled by a variable $\alpha$, which represents the percentage of additional annual income an unbaptized sinner earns relative to a person living in grace. For example, if a sinner earns 10% more than a convert, then $\alpha=0.1$. Then, assuming a fixed average income for god-fearing individuals, we can calculate the lost income due to being good. This is the incremental cost of salvation. From this calculated incremental cost and the incremental benefit, we can estimate an incremental cost effectiveness ratio (ICER), and estimate whether the decision to baptize is cost-effective.

In keeping with standard practice as used by, for example, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, we set the basic income of one of the saved to be the mean income of the UK, and define baptism as “cost-effective” if its ICER falls below a threshold of three times the annual mean income of the UK. We also establish a formula for the cost-effectiveness of salvation, based on the relative difference in income between the good and the evil, the discount rate, and the human lifespan.

All income in future years was discounted in the same way as future QALYs.

The costs and benefits of voluntary homosexuality

Finally, we address a problem implicit in some forms of modern christian rhetoric, that of the wilful homosexual. Many religious theorists seem to think (either implicitly or openly) that homosexuality is a choice. If so, then the choice can be modeled in terms of an exchange of sexual partners for eternal damnation. In this analysis, we calculated the number of sexual partners a potentially homosexual male will forego over a 20 year sexual career commencing at age 15. We assumed that all life years before age 15 are irrelevant to the calculation (that is, we assumed that all individuals make a choice at age 15 as to whether to be good or evil), and that a person foregoing homosexuality will have 0 partners. Other assumptions are the same as those made above. The ICER for being good was then calculated as the cost in foregone sexual partners (discounted over a wide range of rates) divided by the QALYs gained through foregoing this lifestyle and gaining access to heaven.

Faustian discount rates and the problem of heavenly utilities

Commonly used discount rates range from 3 to 5%, but these are potentially inconsistent with the discount rates preferred by evil-doers. In this study we did not model differential discount rates between evil-doers and the elect, but we did consider one special case: that in which everyone observes a discount rate equal to that observed by Dr. Faust. As is well known, Dr. Faust sold his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for earthly power, and after 24 years his soul was taken into hell. Since he knew the time frame at the beginning of the deal, this implies that he was following a discount rate sufficient to rate all time more than 24 years in the future at 0 value. Under standard discounting practice such a rate does not exist, but we can approximate it by the rate necessary to value all time more than 24 years in the future at no more than 5% of current value. This discount rate, which we refer to as the Faustian Discount Rate, is approximately 12.5%. All scenarios were also tested under this discount rate.

A further problem is the problem of calculating utility weights for a year spent in heaven or hell. Given the lack of empirical data on utility of a year in heaven, and the paucity of first hand accounts, we assumed that a year in heaven was equivalent to a year without pain or suffering of any kind, i.e. one full QALY. According to the site What Christians Want to Know, Revelations 4:8 describes heaven as

a constant chant of holy angels that are continually proclaiming Holy, Holy, Holy over the throne of God.  The Mercy Seat in heaven where God sits is surrounded by magnificent angels full of glory and power that proclaim and bless the holy name of God without ceasing.  Some of these are described as beasts, full of eyes, with six wings and neither rest day or night in their proclaiming the holiness of God.

For those of us who don’t enjoy doom metal, this would probably have a utility value of less than one. In the interests of a conservative analysis, we assign heaven a utility of 1.

A similar problem applies to assigning utilities for hell. Many people claim to have been to hell and back, but their accounts of their time at a Celine Dion concert are not convincing and it is unlikely that accurate data on the state of hell exists. Popular conception of hell suggests a realm of eternal torture, but it is worth noting that in standard burden of disease studies even the most unpleasant and torturous diseases – such as end states of cancer, AIDS, and severe disability – are assigned positive utility weights, often quite a lot higher than 0. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that hell should be assigned a positive but small utility. However, again in the interests of conservative analysis, we assign a utility weight of 0 to a year spent in hell – that is, it is equivalent to death.

Results

Incremental benefit of salvation

The formula for the incremental benefit of salvation can be derived as

$LY_{g}=\frac{\exp(-rl)}{r}$

where here,

• $LY_{g}$ is the incremental benefit of being good, in QALYs
• r is the discount rate
• l is the human life expectancy

Figure 1 charts this incremental benefit over a wide range of discount rates for three different life expectancies.

Figure 1: Incremental benefit of salvation for three different life expectancies

It is clear that as the discount rate increases the incremental benefit of salvation decreases rapidly. At the Faustian Discount Rate, the incremental benefit of salvation is a mere 0.03 QALYs for a 45 year life expectancy, or 0.0004 for a human with an 80 year life expectancy. That is, even if Faustus had been offered and then rejected his bargain at birth, and expected to live to 45 years only, he would have seen the benefit to himself as being only about 0.03 years of life, due to his tendency to discount the value of years far in the future.

The cost-effectiveness of baptism

We now consider the cost-effectiveness of baptism. Let the income of one of the saved be given by $c_{g}$, and that of an evil-doer be $c_{e}=(1+\alpha)c_{g}$. Then the income foregone in order to enter heaven is given by the formula

$C=\alpha c_{g}(\frac{1-\exp(-rl)}{r})$

where all parameters are defined as before. Then the incremental cost effectiveness ratio (incremental cost divided by incremental benefit) is

$ICER=\alpha c_{g}(\exp(rl)-1)$

The ICER is plotted in figure 2 for two common life expectancies across a range of values of the discount rate, assuming a mean annual income of 26,000 pounds and that evil-doers earn 10% more income than the saved.

Figure 2: Incremental cost-effectiveness of salvation for two different life expectancies

At a Faustian Discount Rate, life expectancy of 70 years, and 26,000 pound mean income, the ICER for baptism is 16,202,218 pounds per QALY gained.

We can estimate a general condition on society’s discount rate for baptism to be cost-effective, in terms of the additional income gained by being evil and the life expectancy. This formula is given by:

$r \le \frac{1}{l}ln\Bigl (\frac{3+\alpha}{\alpha}\Bigr)$

For a life expectancy of 70 years, assuming that the damned earn 10% more than the saved, the required discount rate for baptism to be cost-effective is 4.3% or less; if the damned earn 20% more this threshold drops to 3.5%. It is clear that damnation doesn’t have to be much more materially rewarding before it becomes attractive even under quite reasonable discount rates.

The costs and benefits of voluntary homosexuality

We now consider the situation of a callow 15 year old youth, considering embarking on a life of sodomite sin. What should he choose? Obviously, from the perspective of a simple youth, the costs need to be weighed up in terms of foregone lovers. Assuming an average of five sexual partners a year, a sexual career beginning at age 15 (which is set to time 0 in this analysis) and lasting 20 years, and the same conditions on discount rates, eternal damnation, etc. as described above, a simple formula for the number of partners this man would be foregoing by refusing to choose the love that dare not speak its name can be derived as

$p=\frac{5}{r}(1-exp(-20r))$

and from this the incremental cost effectiveness ratio (measured in partners foregone per QALY gained) as

$ICER=5\Bigl(\frac{1-exp(-20r)}{1-exp((15-l)r)}\Bigr)$

Note that this ICER is not dependent on the human lifespan. It is in fact almost linear in the discount rate (Figure 3). At the Faustian Discount Rate, the potential gay man is looking at a cost of 4.6 lovers foregone for every QALY gained. Note these values change for different annual average numbers of lovers.

Figure 3: Incremental cost-effectiveness of foregoing a life of sodomy

It might be possible to construct an experiment that assessed individuals’ discount rates using this formula: their answers to the question “how many years of life would you give up to win an additional 5 lovers” could be used to identify their value of r.

Conclusion

In Mark 8:36, Jesus asks the rhetorical question

What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

Although usually presented as a question with no clear answer, it is actually quite easy to investigate this question empirically, and to draw conclusions about its implied cost-effectiveness analysis. The results presented here show that, in general, the good gained by forfeiting one’s soul is quite great, and the decision to forego baptism and live a life of evil (including wilful homosexuality) is generally the best decision one would expect a rational actor to make. At very low life expectancies and unrealistically low discount rates it is more beneficial to forego evil and embrace salvation, but at the discount rates usually used by economists, and assumed to reflect rational decisions made by ordinary individuals, salvation is not a profitable course of action.

These findings have interesting theological implications. First, we note that the Church is most likely to gain converts in a society which has a very low discount rate – but in general, the societies where the Church first took hold were societies with high rates of infant mortality and all-cause mortality, which were likely to put a low value on the later years of life – that is, to have high discount rates. But such societies are not naturally sympathetic to the message of eternal damnation, unless they can be convinced to forego rationality in moral decision making. This might explain the Church’s historical resistance to scientific endeavour, and willingness to foment superstitious practices.

These findings also explain christianity’s historical opposition to usury. It is naturally the case that buying something today and paying for it later – i.e. borrowing – is inconsistent with a very low discount rate, which tends to value future years of lost income almost as much as now. Furthermore, usurers operating in the open market will set interest rates well above 0.05%, and it is likely that the practice of usury plus the publishing of interest rates will encourage a society with higher discount rates (in fact, it is likely that this would be encouraged by the lending class). This directly undermines the church’s lesson of salvation, which depends on very low discount rates to work.

Finally, low discount rates are often associated with environmentalism – care for future generations, priority setting that considers costs in the distant future, etc. – but on the central issue of our time (global warming) many of the born again religious organizations that most fervently preach the message of salvation also vehemently oppose any message of custodianship and environmental care. These organizations would probably make better progress in convincing people to give up the joys of the here-and-now for an indeterminate heaven (that seems to involve a lot of noise pollution) if they could find a theoretically consistent approach to discount rates.

This post has shown a simple explanation for the problem of evil: most people operate with discount rates closer to Dr. Faust than to St. Christopher, and as a result they are unlikely to accept the distant benefits of heaven over the joys of the material world. Until the church can find a way to convince us that all our tomorrows are as important as today, the problem of evil will never be solved.

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# First derivative 3 point forward difference formula

1. Jan 21, 2017

### fonseh

1. The problem statement, all variables and given/known data
Can someone explain why for the first derivative 3 point forward difference formula is 4f(x-h) - f(x-2h) ??

2. Relevant equations

3. The attempt at a solution
Why it's not f(x-h) - f(x-2h) ?
Is there anything wrong with the notes ?

#### Attached Files:

• ###### sdfdfs.jpg
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2. Jan 21, 2017

### Ray Vickson

The formula is not $4 f(x-h)-f(x-2h)$, and the notes make no such claim. Please try again with a correct question.

Anyway, as far as I can see the notes explain things in a perfectly clear way, using the Taylor expansion.

3. Jan 21, 2017

### fonseh

please refer to the circled part .... it's really $4 f(x-h)-f(x-2h)$

4. Jan 21, 2017

### fonseh

here's the full notes

#### Attached Files:

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49.9 KB
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• ###### 544.jpg
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5. Jan 21, 2017

### Ray Vickson

OK, but your first message said nothing about the "circled part"---that makes a difference. So, I have a question for you: have you taken the Taylor expansions for $f(x-h)$ and $f(x-2h)$ and performed the calculation of $4f(x-h) - f(x-2h)?$ Did you get a different answer from that in the notes?

Last edited: Jan 21, 2017
6. Jan 21, 2017

### Staff: Mentor

The reason that your equation is not correct is that this is a first order accurate approximation, and the result they are trying to obtain is supposed to be accurate to terms of 2nd order in h.

7. Jan 21, 2017

### fonseh

No , i get the same as the notes , my question is why should we use 4f(x-h) ? why cant we use f(x-h) ???

8. Jan 21, 2017

### fonseh

Can you explain further ? I still didnt get it

9. Jan 21, 2017

### Staff: Mentor

In my judgment, it is well explained in the visual you provided.

10. Jan 21, 2017

### fonseh

Why we should use 4f(x-h) ? It's not explained in the notes

11. Jan 21, 2017

### Ray Vickson

You can use what works, and 4f(x-h) works. Try it for yourself, without the "4", and see what happens.

In fact, suppose you want a finite-difference formula of the form
$$f'(x) \approx \frac{1}{h} [ a f(x) + b f(x-h) + c f(x-2h)].$$
Expand out the numerator as a series in small $h$ and you will get something of the form $(a+b+c) f(x) + B h f'(x) + C h^2 f''(x) + O(h^3),$
where $B$ and $C$ are some expressions in $a,b,c$. You want a numerator expression of the form $0 f(x) + 1 h f'(x) + O(h^2)$ (so that the ratio is $f'(x)$ to first order in $h$). In other words, you want $a+b+c=0$ and $B = 1$. After evaluating $B$ in terms of $a,b,c$ you will have two equations in the three unknowns $a,b,c$, and can solve for $b,c$ in terms of $a$. If you make different choices for $a$ you will get different "finite-difference" formulas for $f'(x)$. See if you can figure out what value of $a$ gives you $1 f(x-h)$ in your finite-difference formula.

12. Jan 21, 2017

### Staff: Mentor

What they do is eliminate the term involving f'' from the two equations, and solve for f'. This results in a finite difference approximation that is accurate to terms if h2.

13. Jan 21, 2017

### fonseh

why there is a need to eliminate f'' from the equation ?

14. Jan 21, 2017

### fonseh

I tried f(x-h) - f(x-2h) , i get -h'f(x) + (3 /2!) (f"(x) h^2) + (3/3!)(f"'(x)h^3) + ......

I didnt get (a+b+c)f(x)+Bhf′(x)+Ch2f′′(x)+O(h3) though

15. Jan 21, 2017

### Staff: Mentor

Because otherwise you would find that the final finite difference equation would only be first order in h. Try any other linear combination of the two equations and see what you get for f'

16. Jan 21, 2017

### Ray Vickson

That is because you ignored what I wrote. I wrote $a f(x) + b f(x-h) + c f(x-2h)$. I suggest you do the same, then tell us what you obtain.

17. Jan 22, 2017

### fonseh

Do you mean f(x) + f(x-h) - f(x-2h) ?
If so , i get f(x) -h'f(x) + (3 /2!) (f"(x) h^2) + (3/3!)(f"'(x)h^3) + ......

18. Jan 22, 2017

### Ray Vickson

Why would you ask that? Since when does $a f(x) + b f(x-h) + c f(x-2h)$ suddenly become $f(x)+f(x-h)-f(x-2h)?$ (Ok, it would happen in the one case where we choose $a=1, b=1, c=-1$, but I said no such thing.) I left $a,b,c$ as unevaluated constants, because I thought you wanted to see why certain choices are made and others rejected. The first step is to actually write down what you would get with general $a,b,c.$

I am now quitting this thread.


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# standard deviation formula for a sample

Or we can keep the same mean (of 1010g), but then we need 2.5 standard deviations to be equal to 10g: 10g / 2.5 = 4g. STDEV assumes data is a sample only. The Compute the square of the difference between each value and the sample mean. After doing so, we find the standard deviation to be 1.47. Numbers are supplied as arguments. Therefore, a standard error on mean would be expressed and determined as per the relationship described as follows: – After we look at the process, we will see how to use it to calculate a standard deviation. The sample mean is a random variable and as a random variable, the sample mean has a probability distribution, a mean, and a standard deviation. To calculate the standard deviation of a data set, you can use the STEDV.S or STEDV.P function, depending on whether the data set is a sample, or represents the entire population. Where: s = sample standard deviation x 1, ..., x N = the sample data set x = mean value of the sample data set Notes: STDEV calculates standard deviation using the "n-1" method. Population standard deviation takes into account all of your data points (N). OK, let us now calculate the Sample Standard Deviation: Here are the amounts of gold coins the 5 pirates have: 4, 2, 5, 8, 6. By using ThoughtCo, you accept our, Differences Between Population and Sample Standard Deviations, Sample Standard Deviation Example Problem, How to Calculate Population Standard Deviation. Standard deviation is the square root of variance, but variance is given by mean, so divide by number of samples. As such, the "corrected sample standard deviation" is the most commonly used estimator for population standard deviation, and is generally referred to as simply the "sample standard deviation." Sometimes it’s nice to know what your calculator is doing behind the scenes. [number2]: (Optional argument) It is a number of arguments from 2 to 254 corresponding to a sample … Subtract the mean from each of the data values and list the differences. In this section, you will learn about when to use standard deviation population formula vs standard deviation sample formula. The Standard deviation formula in excel has below-mentioned arguments: number1: (Compulsory or mandatory argument) It is the first element of the sample of a population. In statistics, we are usually presented with having to calculate sample standard deviations, and so this is what this article will focus on, although the formula for a population standard deviation … The standard deviation is 20g, and we need 2.5 of them: 2.5 × 20g = 50g. There are formulas that relate the mean and standard … The sample standard deviation would tend to be lower than the real standard deviation of the population. 4. You can learn more about excel modeling from the following articles –, Copyright © 2020. Calculation of the standard error formula is done for a sample, whereas the standard deviation is determined for the population. The standard deviation is a measure of the spread of scores within a set of data. As like the variance, if the data points are close to mean, there is a small variation whereas the data points are highly spread out from the mean, then it has a high variance. For example, you're teaching a large group of students. Now, the deviation can be calculated by using the above formula as. $$s = \sqrt {\frac{{\sum {{{(X - \bar X)}^2}} }}{{n - 1}}}$$ (where n is the sample size). About Sample Standard Deviation Calculator The Sample Standard Deviation Calculator is used to calculate the sample standard deviation of a set of numbers. Sample standard deviation is when you calculate data that represents a sample of a large population. Sal shows an example of calculating standard deviation and bias. Take the square root of the number from the previous step. The squares of the deviations of each variable can be calculated as below, (3 – 4) 2 = 1 (2 – 4) 2 = 4 (5 – 4) 2 = 1 (6 – 4) 2 = 4 (4 – 4) 2 = 0 Courtney K. Taylor, Ph.D., is a professor of mathematics at Anderson University and the author of "An Introduction to Abstract Algebra. 1-3 = -2. Therefore, the sample standard deviation is 1.58. This is approximately 2.7386. So the standard deviation … With samples, we use n – 1 in the formula because using n would give us a biased estimate that consistently underestimates variability. Subtract the mean from each of the data values and list the differences. This is approximately 2.7386. The term population means that you’re considering all the datasets in an entire population. You may need to use a basic calculator to find the square root. There are formulas that relate the mean and standard deviation of the sample mean to the mean and standard deviation of the population from which the sample is drawn. What is the … Continue reading "Breaking it down: Sample Standard Deviation" For example, if A is a matrix, then std(A,0,[1 2]) computes the standard deviation over all elements in A , since every element of a matrix is contained in the array slice defined by … There are two formulae for standard deviation. A common way to quantify the spread of a set of data is to use the sample standard deviation. Using the definitional formula can take a long time, so we usually use a We have a set of data and want to understand its characteristics. In other words, multiply each number by itself. In this post, we will focus on the latter – specifically a standard measure of spread known as the sample standard deviation! Usually, we are interested in the standard deviation of a population. Here are the steps for the calculation. For this sample of measurements (in inches): 50, 47, 52, 46, and 45. Suppose you're given the data set 1, 2, 2, 4, 6. You can refer to the given excel sheet above to understand the detailed calculation. Determine the sample standard deviation based on the ages of the 10 people given: 23, 27, 33, 28, 21, 24, 36, 32, 29, 25, By using the above data we will first calculate the sample mean, = (23 + 27 + 33 + 28 + 21 + 24 + 36 + 32 + 29 + 25) / 10. If data represents an entire population, use the STDEVP function. However, as we are often presented with data from a sample only, we can estimate the population standard deviation from a sample standard deviation. They can be This statistics video tutorial explains how to use the standard deviation formula to calculate the population standard deviation. Subtract 3 from each of the values 1, 2, 2, 4, 6, Square each of the differences from the previous step and make a list of the squares.You need to square each of the numbers -2, -1, -1, 1, 3, Add the squares from the previous step together. The purpose of this little difference it to get a better and So the machine should average 1050g, like this: Adjust the accuracy of the machine. The sample standard deviation is the square root of 7.5. You only have the test scores of 5 students. The Standard deviation formula in excel has below-mentioned arguments: number1: (Compulsory or mandatory argument) It is the first element of the sample of a population. … Lots of different problems can arise while making any solution and out of them, one can be a problem which is not easy to sample with each and every member for the entire population by using the above equation. Place the cursor where you wish to have the standard deviation appear and click the mouse button.Select Insert Function (f x) from the FORMULAS tab. Standard Deviation formula can be used from Insert Function which is situated beside the formula bar by clicking on the fx icon. Step 4: Next, determine the square root of the number of variables taken up in the sample. Therefore, there are different formulas to calculate a sample and population standard deviation. Sample Standard Deviation In practice, the sample data set is often used instead of the entire population. We next add up all of the entries in the right column. You divide these two numbers 16/4 = 4. Let us take the example of an office in New York where around 5,000 people work and a survey has been carried out on a sample of 10 people to determine the average age of the working population. where x takes on each value in the set, x is the average (statistical mean) of the set of values, and n is the number of values in the set.. For a specific sample data, use the sample standard deviation formula. ", ThoughtCo uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. Below is given data for the calculation of sample standard deviation. The formula for the sample standard deviation (s) is where xi is each value is the data set, x -bar is the mean, and n is the number of values in the data set. To get the standard deviation of this data set, all we need to do is take the square root of 2.17. Step 3: Next, determine the standard deviation of the sample. To calculate the standard deviation of a data set, you can use the STEDV.S or STEDV.P function, depending on whether the data set is a sample, or represents the entire population. A great starting point is to measure the central or typical value and the dispersion around that value. Population vs. sample Before we dive into standard deviation and variance, it’s important for us to talk about populations and population samples. As a result, the calculated sample variance (and therefore also the standard deviation) will be slightly higher than if we would have used the population variance formula. But a major problem is that mean deviation ignores the signs of deviation, otherwise they would add up to zero., otherwise they would add up to zero. Calculate the mean of your data set. The equation for this is: One reason for this is that the values in the sample don't include extremes. Subtract 3 from each of the values 1, 2, 2, 4, 6. Statistic equations and fomulas calculator solving for standard deviation of a sample References - Books: Martin Wanielista, Robert Kersten and Ron Eaglin. n = number of values in the sample. Calculate the sample standard deviation of based on their given responses: 3, 2, 5, 6, 4. As a random variable the sample mean has a probability distribution, a mean $$μ_{\bar{X}}$$, and a standard deviation $$σ_{\bar{X}}$$. Finally, we take the square root of this quotient and we are done. Calculate the mean: 2. The rest of this example will be done in the case where we have a sample size of 5 pirates, therefore we will be using the standard deviation equation for a sample of a population. The denominator in the sample standard deviation formula is N − 1, where N is the number of animals. To calculate the standard deviation for an entire population, use formulas in this category: STDEV.P, STDEVPA, and STDEVP. It is very evident from this example that there is a difference between the population and sample standard deviations. John Wiley & Sons Formulas for standard deviation. When the data size is small, one would want to use the standard deviation formula with Bessel’s correction (N-1 instead of N) for calculation purpose. Sample standard deviation refers to the statistical metric that is used to measure the extent by which a random variable diverges from the mean of the sample and it is calculated by adding the squares of the deviation of each variable from the mean, then divide the result by a number of variables minus and then computing the square root in excel of the result. In the example shown, the formula in F7 is: To check more maths formulas for different classes and for various concepts, stay tuned with BYJU’S. Start by writing the computational formula for the standard deviation of a sample: $${s}= \sqrt{\frac{{\sum}{x^2} - \frac{({\sum}{x})^2}{n}}{n-1}}$$ 2. Work through each of the steps to find the standard deviation. This is called the variance. The standard deviation indicates a “typical” deviation from the mean. If you need to find the standard deviation for a population instead, you will need to use the STDEVP formula You need at least 2 number values in the arguments But wait, there is more ...... sometimes our data is only a sample of the whole population.We can still estimate the Standard Deviation.But when we use the sample as an estimate of the whole population, the Standard Deviation formula changes to this:The important change is \"N-1\" instead of \"N\" (which is called \"Bessel's correction\"). s = √Σ n i (x i -x̄) 2 / n-1 Calculate the mean of your data set. This is approximately 2.7386. Practice calculating the mean and standard deviation for the sampling distribution of a sample proportion. To calculate the standard deviation using this data set, use the following formula: =STDEV.S(A2:A10) In case you’re using Excel 2007 or prior versions, … S = std(A,w,vecdim) computes the standard deviation over the dimensions specified in the vector vecdim when w is 0 or 1. Another Approach for Standard Deviation. The formulae. Let us take the example of a sample of 5 students who were surveyed to see how many pencils they were using every week. By closing this banner, scrolling this page, clicking a link or continuing to browse otherwise, you agree to our Privacy Policy, Download Sample Standard Deviation Formula Excel Template, Christmas Offer - All in One Financial Analyst Bundle (250+ Courses, 40+ Projects) View More, You can download this Sample Standard Deviation Formula Excel Template here –, All in One Financial Analyst Bundle (250+ Courses, 40+ Projects), 250+ Courses | 40+ Projects | 1000+ Hours | Full Lifetime Access | Certificate of Completion, Sample Standard Deviation Formula Excel Template, ơ = √ {(23.04 + 0.64 + 27.04 + 0.04 + 46.24 +14.44 +67.24 + 17.64 + 1.44 + 7.84) / (10 – 1)}. In contrast to population standard deviation, sample standard deviation is a statistic. if given a set of data say 10 numbers, which one should we use standard deviation or sample standard deviation.there is no mention of sample or population in the problem. How ito calculate the standard deviation 1. Standard deviation of Population vs Sample. Calculation of Sample mean. Square each of the differences from the previous step and make a list of the squares. This is the standard deviation. STDEV.S The STDEV.S function (the S stands for Sample) in Excel estimates the standard deviation based on a sample. The sample standard deviation for the female fulmars is therefore Divide the sum by n-1. When Is the Standard Deviation Equal to Zero? The numerical population of grade point averages at a college has mean $$2.61$$ and standard deviation $$0.5$$. Create a table of 2 columns and 6 rows. The steps below break down the formula for a standard deviation into a process. The formula above is transformed to calculate a sample standard deviation: where r i is the ith value of the rate of return on Finding sample standard deviation using the standard deviation formula is similar to finding population standard deviation. A high standard error corresponds to the higher spreading of data for the undertaken sample. Step 4: Next, compute the sample standard deviation (s) which involves a complex calculation that uses each sample variable (step 1), sample mean (step 3) and sample size (step 2) as shown below. The formula for this is: =STDEV.P( B3:B14, D3:D14, F3:F14 ) which returns the result 2,484.05. Take the square The standard deviation of a sample — an estimate of the standard deviation of a population — is the square root of the sample variance. Its symbol is s and its formula is. You're only taking samples of a larger population, not using every single value as with population standard deviation. Example of Confidence Interval for a Population Variance, B.A., Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry, Anderson University. N= The summation of frequency. This is the sum of the squared deviations. CFA Institute Does Not Endorse, Promote, Or Warrant The Accuracy Or Quality Of WallStreetMojo. Add those values up. The concept of sample standard deviation is very important from the perspective of a statistician because usually, a sample of data is taken from a pool of large variables (population) from which the statistician is expected to estimate or generalize the results for the entire population. Standard Deviation Formula in Excel – Example #1 We have sample sales data of a product, where we observed the huge deviation in the sale for 10 days. The STDEV formula calculates the standard deviation for a sample. 2. It is a much better estimate than its uncorrected version, but still has significant bias for small sample sizes (N 10). In the example shown, the formulas in F6 and F7 are: = STDEV.P (C5:C14) // F6 = STDEV.S (C5:C14) // F7 The smaller the value of standard deviation, the … Login details for this Free course will be emailed to you, This website or its third-party tools use cookies, which are necessary to its functioning and required to achieve the purposes illustrated in the cookie policy. You began this process (it may seem like a while ago) with five data values. Been evaluated from the mean from each of the data in a set of data is 1+2+2+4+6. Was 4 whereas the standard deviation sample formula subtract the mean from each of the of. Only taking samples of a population, click on STDEV.P ) based on their given responses: 3,,. Of variation or spread in a set of numbers entire population, use the STDEVP.. You will learn about when to use the sample find sample standard deviation into a.... 3 + 2 + 5 + 6 + 4 ) / 5 you refer. 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text:
# which is not a unit of electrostatic potential? a)volt                           c)newton/coulomb b)joule/coulomb       d)newton-metre/coulomb

Dear Student,
Option a) Volt : is a unit of electrostatic potential.

Option b) Joule / Coulomb: Energy per unit charge. Electrostatic potential is electrostatic potential energy gained or lost in moving a unit charge in an electric field. Hence,  Joule / Coulomb is also a unit of Electrostatic potential.

Option c) Newton/Coulomb : Force per unit charge which is electric field. Hence, option c) is not a unit of electrostatic potential.

Option d) Newton-metre/Coulomb: Newton-metre is Joule. Hence Joule / Coulomb is a unit of electrostatic potential.

Regards

• 1
What are you looking for?


text:
federico ardila . matemático
associate professor . san francisco state university

. català . español . english .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

CATALAN NUMBERS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

San Francisco, California
December 29, 2015

Yesterday I returned to San Francisco after a week of being disconnected from the world. Today Luis, the owner of the corner café, treated me to a coffee and told me a news story about Catalonian politics, that leads to a math problem which I'd like to share with you. (I am no expert in Catalonian politics, and I welcome any comments, corrections, and updates. I might decide to publish this somewhere.)

1 - ¿CATALUNYA LLIURE?

Catalonia has spent decades debating whether to separate from Spain, and in recent years, the independentist movement has gained a lot of momentum. In an effort to stay in power, president Artur Mas, a moderate conservative, formed an alliance with sectors of the Catalonian left in favor of independence. However, they fell a few seats short of gaining control of the parliament. To obtain these seats, they need a very unusual alliance with the CUP, a small, anti-capitalist party.

Suddenly, the CUP found itself in an unexpected position of power. After using this power to obtain several political concessions, the party called for an internal vote to decide whether they will support Mas.

Two days ago, 3030 members of the CUP Assembly cast their votes. The result: 1515 in favor of Mas, 1515 against him.

Today the match is still tied. In the meantime, Catalonians are asking themselves (not without some suspicion):
What are the odds?!?!

The problem is an interesting one, and the answer is even better.

2 - THE MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM

Let's suppose that $2m$ people vote SÍ or NO(*) in an election.
The probability that the final result is a tie is approximately $1/{\sqrt{m \pi}}$.
Yes, that's a pi: $\pi = 3.14159\ldots$
In the CUP Assembly there were $2m=3030$ voters.
The chances of a tie were about 1 in 69.

Why $2m$?
. . . . . . . .
Luis told me, laughing: "Imagine a member of the CUP who woke up too late to cast his vote. He could have decided the fate of Catalonia himself!" For a tie to be possible, the number of voters must be even, say $2m$.

Why $1/\sqrt{m \pi}$?
. . . . . . . . . . .
Imagine we register the $2m$ votes, in the order they came in: SÍ, SÍ, NO, SÍ, NO, . . . etc .
Each voter had two options (SÍ or NO), for a total of $2 \times 2 \times \cdots \times 2 = 2^{2m}$ possible votings.

The votings that give rise to ties are those with $m$ SÍs and $m$ NOs. They correspond to the choices of $m$ (out of $2m$ people) who will vote SÍ. There is a name for this: ${2m \choose m}$ = "2m choose m". There is a formula for this, which I could explain to you if we had a bit more time: the number of ties is ${2m \choose m} = \frac{(2m)!}{m!m!}$, where $n!$ denotes the number "n factorial", $n! = 1 \times 2 \times 3 \times \cdots \times (n-1) \times n$. Therefore the probability of a tie is:
$\frac{(\# \textrm{ of ties})}{(\# \textrm{ of possible votings})} = \frac{(2m)!}{m! m! 2^{2m}}$
In the case of Catalonia, if one had a computer within reach, one could ask it to compute this number for $2m=3030$; the result is $1.44938\ldots$%. But I had just returned from a week away from technology, and I had left my phone at home, so I had to use a napkin. (I had to earn the free coffee, no?)

Fortunately, Stirling discovered a very useful approximation: $n! = 1 \times 2 \times 3 \times \ldots \times n \textrm{ is almost equal to } \left(\frac{n}{e}\right)^n \sqrt{2 n \pi}$ We use calculus to derive this. I've proved this formula to my students many times, but it never ceases to amaze me. What are $e = 2.71828\ldots$ and $\pi = 3.14159\ldots$, mathematicians' two favorite numbers, doing there?!

We can use Stirling's formula to simplify the formula above. (My wife May-Li was at the cafe with me and she took the opportunity to dust off her algebra. You should do the algebra too, especially if you are one of those people who enjoy tidying up your desk when it's messy: throwing out everything you don't need, and putting everything else in its right place.) We get:
$\frac{(\# \textrm{ of ties})}{(\# \textrm{ of possible votings})} \approx \frac1{\sqrt{m \pi}},$ and this we can estimate by hand for $2m=3030$, with a bit of effort; ${\sqrt{1515 \pi}}$ is very close to 69.

How good is Stirling's approximation? For $2m=3030$, the real probability of a tie is $\approx 1.44938\ldots$% and Stirling's approximation is $\approx 1.44950\ldots$%. Pretty good!

In any case, the match is even until 2016, when the members of the CUP will decide how to break the tie.

3 - (*) THE FINE PRINT

What does it mean to say that the probability of a tie is 1 in 69?

We can't very well ask the CUP to vote 69 times, and see if they tie exactly once. The only way of making sense of this statement is to choose a model of how people vote. In this case, the model we use is that each person independently chooses to vote SÍ with probability 1/2 or NO with probability 1/2.

Of course this model is not exactly correct -- even if the final outcome was 1515 SÍs and 1515 NOs. But it is probably the most accurate model that allows for a relatively simple analysis, and for this reason, it is the most commonly used.

4 - CATALAN NUMBERS

Allow me a bit of mathematical-poetic license. Let's imagine a delegate of the electoral commission, an unwavering independentist. Following the feminist policy of the CUP, we will use the feminine to include all possible genders. Her deception was enormous when she found out that the final result was a tie. As she was counting the votes one by one she had noticed, with secret optimism, that the SÍ vote was *never* behind!

Now she's asking herself, what are the odds?

5 - THE MATHEMATICAL PROBLEM FOR THE DIE-HARD INDEPENDENTIST.

Let's suppose that $2m$ people vote SÍ or NO(*) in an election, and the end result was a tie. The probability that, as the votes were counted one by one, the SÍ vote was never losing, is exactly $1/(m+1)$. In the case of the CUP vote, where there were 1515 SÍs and 1515 NOs, this probability is exactly 1 in 1516.

In fact, the number of votings which end in a tie, and never favor NO as the votes are counted, is known as the "Catalan number". (No relation to Catalunya). If we had a bit more time, I would explain to you why this number equals $\frac1{m+1}{2m \choose m}$.

The Catalan numbers were discovered by Ming'antu in Mongolia and Euler in Prussia in the 18th century; they are named after the Belgian mathematician Eugène Catalan. These numbers appear all over the place. Richard Stanley collects problems whose solution are the Catalan numbers; he already has more than 200.

In the last 20 years, thanks to the work of experts such as Anna de Mier, Sergi Elizalde and Marc Noy -- and to our hypothetical independentist delegate -- Catalanians have had fascinating stories to tell about Catalan numbers.


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