Proposed: Understanding the brain doesn't suck.

"... recall the famous quip from Jeff Hammerbacher, a former Facebook engineer, who said, 'The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.' We contend that working in biostatistics using complex neuroimaging data to solve the biggest puzzle of them all – understanding the human brain – is a worthy alternative."

-from "WANTED: Neuro-quants" by Brian Caffo, Martin Lindquist, and Ciprian Crainiceanu, which appears in the the Huffington Post.

Your functional neuroimaging update (with study questions).

1. "Graphs are the new blobs."

Discuss. How are graphs and blobs similar? How are they different?

2.  A leading search engine gives no hits on that phrase:

Do you expect this to remain true for long?

Are you a methodologist or an ASS?

In the article "Primary study authors of significant studies are more likely to believe that a strong association exists in a heterogeneous meta-analysis compared with methodologists" in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, Orestis A. Panagiotou and John P.A. Ioannidis report that "authors of significant studies" (a group indicated by the acronym "ASS" in the paper's Tables; for example Table 2 has a column labeled "ASS vs. methodologists") are "influenced by their own investment in the field" and so are "more likely to believe that a strong association exists."

Is abuse of the null hypothesis a felony or a misdemeanor?

Just one sentence from "Activity Metabolism Measurements Made Easy in Metabolic Phenotyping" by Dr. J.R.B. Lighton:

"Thus the null hypothesis is not only falsified, it is smashed into smithereens that daintily and prettily drift down to the floor like dandelion seeds, except that they sparkle in the moonlight."

h/t: Dr. M.R. Laughlin

"A dog is a great walking coach."

  Dr. Mike Evans

h/t: Dr. Brian Caffo