April 2010 – Page 2 – Amalgamated Contemplation

Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism will try to block certain online games after midnight

Source: Korea to Impose Gaming Black-Out Periods – GamePolitics

I think one of the rather unique features of video gaming as compared to pre-tech ways of spending one’s free time are that it is not predominantly done by the rich (e.g. Victorian fox hunting, world travel) and beyond that is actually amazingly cheap (compared to gambling, prostitutes, or going to a bar even just once a week) at only a few hundred dollars a year (including depreciation of the computer, electricity, internet access, and game access).

Some other interesting aspects include the number of man hours being sunk into video games, the addictive aspect of modern games built with external reward systems and psychology in hand, and the social aspect of modern gaming communities on the internet.

Correctly phrased, experimental data yielding a P value of .05 means that there is only a 5 percent chance of obtaining the observed (or more extreme) result if no real effect exists (that is, if the no-difference hypothesis is correct). But many explanations mangle the subtleties in that definition.

Source: Odds Are, It’s Wrong | Science News

The article takes a valid concern and presents it sensationally / in an exaggerated fashion. However, even when scientists understand p values, that does not mean the research and the statistics behind it are being reported to the public conscientiously and correctly. I would bet most lay people do not know or understand p values, or the difference between “normal” and statistical significance. The article is still a valuable explanation to the general public of how p-values and statistics can be used both constructively in science and deceptively in propaganda.