The Power of Statistics
“Aaaaaah…..” “Oh, no!” (returning off the aspirator) “I’m sorry.” “What do we do?” (squeezing the aspirator tube) “Can we break the vacuum?” “Let’s pull together.” (pulling on the aspirator tube in two opposite directions unsuccessfully…) On the third day of Mod 1, my partner and I aspirated our +IPTG induced pellet. I was so convinced that we should aspirate the left over supernatant with an aspirator because it worked well for the –IPTG control pellet. Why did an n=1 experiment convince me that aspirating would be safe? Consider a hypothetical situation where before any experimentation, I think there’s a 1/2 probability that the aspirator cannot aspirate a pellet, and 1/2 probability that aspirator can aspirate a pellet and does it half of the time. One successful aspiration should only increase the probability that the aspirator cannot aspirate a pellet to P conditional = 0.5/(0.5+0.25) = 2/3. So a successful aspiration should increase my confidence in aspira...
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