Editing 2303: Error Types

| titletext = Type IIII error: Mistaking tally marks for Roman neumerals

The comic is inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, as there is a lot of medical testing for the disease being done, including detection of the virus itself, usually by qPCR, or of antibodies present in people who have had the disease (sometimes unknowingly). The quality of these tests is often mediocre and never perfect, leading to discussion of different types of errors that can occur, including "false positives" (calling presence of the virus/antibodies when they are not really there) or false negatives (failing to see the virus/ antibodies).   

|A false negative is a result that indicates no correlation, when there is a correlation in reality. For example, a person may test negative (indicating that they do not have a disease), but in actuality they ''do'' have the disease.

|"{{w|Type III error}}" is a nonstandard term meant to build off the notion of type I and II errors. Randall's explanations of this and of Type IV errors line up with some relatively common definitions of them, but others have also been proposed. None have yet been widely adopted. The Type III and Type IV definitions given here correspond to the {{w|Gettier_problem|Gettier Problem}} in philosophy.   

|Randall's proposed Type III and Type IV errors refer to when a correct correlation or lack thereof is determined, but on faulty grounds. Although harmless in the present, this may lead to false faith in the results at a later date, as the faulty grounds of the result may lead to a type I or type II error in different circumstances.

|Here we get into errors entirely made up by Randall. The idea behind this one is that a botched statistical test might accidentally result in a true conclusion due to completely unrelated errors in the other direction--perhaps during data collection or aggregation.

|An unfortunately common occurrence. For example, statistical tests on observational data can only determine correlation, not causation, yet press releases and subsequent popular articles often imply or explicitly state a causal relationship ([[882|"Jelly beans cause acne!"]] or whatnot). This has actually been [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_III_error#Marascuilo_and_Levin proposed as a definition of a Type IV error].

|It is commonly believed that [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/ data is beautiful]. Sometimes, that's still true even when the data is bogus!

|''{{w|Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker}}'' is the ninth and final film in the ''Star Wars'' Skywalker saga. It received far less critical acclaim than the previous two films in the sequel trilogy. Notably, this entry does not follow the theme of the comic and serves as a non sequitur punchline.

|Mistaking tally marks for Roman neumerals ''[sic]''

|Title text. "I", "II", and "III" could be representations of the numbers one, two, and three in either {{w|tally marks}} or {{w|Roman numerals}}. It's only when you get to "IV" or "IIII" that it becomes apparent which system is being used. Some clocks use Roman numerals but with "IIII" instead of "IV" at the four o'clock position; the exact reason for this is unknown, but [https://www.electrictime.com/news/roman-iiii-vs-iv-on-clock-dials/ several plausible hypotheses] have been advanced. Ironically, Randall seems to have made a typographical error of his own when spelling the word "numerals".

:[A list with nine entries. The left side has 9 types or errors numbered with roman numerals. The right side has a description of each type of error:]

**This may be corrected later, but for now the title text is:

**Type IIII error: Mistaking tally marks for Roman '''neumerals'''.