#greenrevolution — Public Fediverse posts

just started watching this vid and the only part in english so far is "farmers have been getting screwed by government policy since independence" 😆 😭

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF2xDkphqlY

there are english subtitles in cc.

so far, the video is very nice with excellent archival images and primary sources.

#GreenRevolution #india #agriculture #history

just started watching this vid and the only part in english so far is "farmers have been getting screwed by government policy since independence" 😆 😭

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF2xDkphqlY

there are english subtitles in cc.

so far, the video is very nice with excellent archival images and primary sources.

#GreenRevolution #india #agriculture #history

just started watching this vid and the only part in english so far is "farmers have been getting screwed by government policy since independence" 😆 😭

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF2xDkphqlY

there are english subtitles in cc.

so far, the video is very nice with excellent archival images and primary sources.

#GreenRevolution #india #agriculture #history

just started watching this vid and the only part in english so far is "farmers have been getting screwed by government policy since independence" 😆 😭

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF2xDkphqlY

there are english subtitles in cc.

so far, the video is very nice with excellent archival images and primary sources.

#GreenRevolution #india #agriculture #history

just started watching this vid and the only part in english so far is "farmers have been getting screwed by government policy since independence" 😆 😭

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF2xDkphqlY

there are english subtitles in cc.

so far, the video is very nice with excellent archival images and primary sources.

#GreenRevolution #india #agriculture #history

“It’s the bell curve again”*…

Joseph Howlett on how the central limit theorem, which started as a bar trick for 18th-century gamblers, became something on which scientists rely every day…

No matter where you look, a bell curve is close by.

Place a measuring cup in your backyard every time it rains and note the height of the water when it stops: Your data will conform to a bell curve. Record 100 people’s guesses at the number of jelly beans in a jar, and they’ll follow a bell curve. Measure enough women’s heights, men’s weights, SAT scores, marathon times — you’ll always get the same smooth, rounded hump that tapers at the edges.

Why does the bell curve pop up in so many datasets?

The answer boils down to the central limit theorem, a mathematical truth so powerful that it often strikes newcomers as impossible, like a magic trick of nature. “The central limit theorem is pretty amazing because it is so unintuitive and surprising,” said Daniela Witten, a biostatistician at the University of Washington. Through it, the most random, unimaginable chaos can lead to striking predictability.

It’s now a pillar on which much of modern empirical science rests. Almost every time a scientist uses measurements to infer something about the world, the central limit theorem is buried somewhere in the methods. Without it, it would be hard for science to say anything, with any confidence, about anything.

“I don’t think the field of statistics would exist without the central limit theorem,” said Larry Wasserman, a statistician at Carnegie Mellon University. “It’s everything.”

Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the push to find regularity in randomness came from the study of gambling…

Read on for the fascinating story of: “The Math That Explains Why Bell Curves Are Everywhere,” from @quantamagazine.bsky.social.

Howlett concludes by observing that “The central limit theorem is a pillar of modern science, ultimately, because it’s a pillar of the world around us. When we combine lots of independent measurements, we get clusters. And if we’re clever enough, we can use those clusters to find out something interesting about the processes that made them”– which follows from the story he shares.

Still, we’d do well to remember that there are limits to its applicability, both descriptively (as Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out, “because the bell curve ignores large deviations, cannot handle them, yet makes us confident that we have tamed uncertainty”) and prescriptively (as Benjamim Bloom argues, “The bell-shaped curve is not sacred. It describes the outcome of a random process. Since education is a purposeful activity….the achievement distribution should be very different from the normal curve if our instruction is effective).

For (much) more, see Peter Bernstein‘s wonderful Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

* Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love

###

As we noodle on the normal distribution, we might send curve-shattering birthday greetings to Norman Borlaug; he was born on ths date in 1914. An agronomist, he developed and led initiatives worldwide that contributed to the voluminous increases in agricultural production we call “the Green Revolution.” Borlaug was awarded multiple honors for his work, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Congressional Gold Medal; he’s one of only seven people to have received all three of those awards.

source

le lyssenkisme, qui, dans l’Union soviétique de #Staline, entraîna le bannissement de la génétique au nom de l’idéologie #communiste
[...]
Sur #Lyssenko, il y a peu d’archives.
[...]
#TrofimLyssenko est à part. C’est un #agronome de base qui, grâce à #Staline, arrive à dominer la biologie en #UnionSoviétique et à faire interdire la génétique jugée "bourgeoise"

[F]. Conclusions

The work of #Lukianenko and certain other grain breeders led to an explosion of research on HYVs in #Russia from the 1960s onward, as well as substantial genetics research and greatly improved education that began even before #Lysenko’s removal from power. These topics, however, lie outside the scope of this article. (109) This study of #Lukianenko challenges the prevailing view that #Lysenko held back Soviet genetics for a generation. While certainly during the heyday of #Lysenkoism, the #Soviet regime victimized many excellent #Soviet geneticists and wasted money and time on fraudulent Lysenkoists’ “research,” many other scientists conducted valid, substantial, and important work—particularly in the area of plant breeding. #Lukianenko was not the only agricultural scientist who did such research in these years, but his work had more national and international significance than that of any other #Soviet agricultural scientist in this period.

This work differed greatly from the conventional view of scientific research in the time of #Lysenko: #Lukianenko’s work began before #Lysenko’s rise and continued despite his dominance. #Lukianenko’s work relied substantially on plant varieties from outside the #USSR, in many cases brought into the #USSR through the work of #NikolaiVavilov. He also relied on conventional principles of genetics, including the guidelines for plant breeding published by #Vavilov, as well as some breeding theories and techniques from outside the #USSR. In particular he and his co-workers independently sought and achieved the same goals as the Italians around #Strampelli in the early 20th century and #Borlaug in the #GreenRevolution of the 1950s-1960s.

#Lukianenko’s work during #Lysenko’s time and afterwards produced several extremely important wheat varieties that had the same characteristics as the #GreenRevolution varieties created by #Borlaug. #Lukianenko’s Bezostaia-1, a semi-dwarf rust resistant HYV earned the highest praise from European and American breeders including #Borlaug as one of the best of the HYVs. This finding thus goes beyond even #Krementsov’s points about scientists’ evasion of #Lysenko. The work of #Lukianenko and his colleagues, more than simply continuing previous genetics-based work in plant breeding, achieved breakthroughs that put it at the forefront of world wheat breeding, both in their methods and their results. Because of the accomplishments of #Lukianenko and his co-workers in #Krasnodar, a post-Soviet Russian symposium on breeding of wheat and triticale commemorating #Lukianenko was entitled “The Green Revolution of P. P. Luk’ianenko.” (111) Thus despite #Lysenko, Soviet agronomists and #agriculture thus participated in the international #GreenRevolution under #Lysenko’s dominance as well as afterwards.