threatening a customer or not

That's her specialty-stick and move. In fact, that's Rusty's speciality, too, except he's just an idiot.

the squealer and his champion.

Bland and ineffective insults instead of reference to real facts? Let me just fall off my chair in surprise here....

you tell him, Pheelyks. wait, what? oh, sorry; you were referring to me.

Thanks for elevating the level of debate yet again, Buford.

Reminder to readers: pheelks has only 3-year bachelor degree and pretending he know how to write graduate level paper. He is dillusional at best.

It's actually typically a four-year degree, stu4. I earned two of them in four years, taking extra units, and still achieved a 4.0 from a very highly-ranked university. Thanks for bringing it up again.


I'm not pretending, I've done it many times and with a great deal of success.

You took 2nd bachelor degree as you know that Master degree was way too much to get for you. You can take 3nd or 4rd bachelor degree. Still you cannot get to Master or PHD level.

You can finish two high schools. It doesnt make you undergraduate degree holder. You have no formal qualification to do more than simple high school / college essays (for ESL mostly).

If you get no CDL lincence you cannot drive big truck. If you try and police catch you, you go to jail.

I'm not switching anything. Again, the explanation is simple. First, the definition of directly proportional is right (x increases as y increases). Second, when 2 variables are correlated (not perfectly correlated because it's impossible to find this from empirical data), a linear equation can be constructed from it. This linear equation expresses a direct proportion. If you calculate the correlation of this constructed formula (which was based on the data), it would be perfect. Your insistence that two variables need to be perfectly correlated in the first place for research to imply that there is direct proportionality between them is WRONG. When we work with sample data, the correlation is never perfect (except maybe by extreme happenstance). However, we still end up with a "perfect" equation where the variables are directly proportional. Your position that there needs to be a perfect correlation between two variables before it can be inferred that they are directly proportional is wrong. In research, if we get say an r=0.8 (p<0.001), then we can say that the two variables are significantly correlated, and the equation relating them to one another (which is a linear equation and therefore an expression of direct proportionality) is reasonable.What about this explanation on why direct correlation implies direct proportionality (and vice versa) do you not get?


You still sticking to this?

stu4, you're a moron, and your arguments don't make sense. go away.

When you peddle somebody your service or use WritersBeware site for clients - do you reveal you are no qualified to take graduate projects coz you have no formal education to do a graduate project?

That isn't the complete definition. A directly proportional relationship is one in which to variables rise and fall together with a constant ratio. This is a very important distinction. A directly correlational relationship is just one in whihc they rise or fall together. A directly proportional relationship is, again, far more specific.


No, it isn't, and there's no "imply" about it--that's the definition of a directly proportional relationship. You say I found the right definition, but it doesn't seem like you read it.


Yes. Your analogies are all kinds of wrong. A doctor presented with a patient exhibiting some symptoms of sickle cell anemia might be more inclined to test for it in an African-American patient, knowing that they are more susceptible to the disease, while they might rule out other alternatives first in other patients. No reasonable doctor would assume that every African-American patient they see has sickle cell anemia, which is basically what you're saying about education and intelligence.

You are suggesting that if we only now someone's intelligence, we can reasonably predict their level of educational attainment, and conversely that if we know someone's level of educational attainment we can reasonably predict their level of intelligence. I think the first statement is absolutely false, and am still waiting for evidence to the contrary, and I think the second tends to be more correct as the given level of educational attainment increases, because then you're working with a smaller population that was essentially selected for intelligence.

In brief: Most dumb people don't pursue Ph.Ds. That doesn't mean all or even most smart people do.

Again, no, it's not. You keep choosing words from the definition and claiming that somehow, those words prove your point but they don't. A direct correlation, measured by Pearson's r and used in the studies I quoted, is an expression of linear correlation (not quadratic, or cubic, or exponential, etc.). When two variables have a linear relationship, it means that they rise and fall together in a constant ratio. That's why the equation they yield is one of direct proportionality.


Sorry, but this is going nowhere. I understand what you are insisting, but it simply does not work that way in practice. You can't draw perfect correlations from empirical data. You can only draw significant correlations. However, regardless of what correlation you draw, the regression equation that you end up with is always a linear equation, an expression of direct proportion.

Here is the graph of two variables that are linearly (directly) correlated.



Here is the graph of two variables in direct proportion.



Here is a graph of a simple regression analysis, in which the resulting equation is not derived from a perfect correlation, but the equation of the graph is nonetheless a linear equation that plots the two variables in direct proportion.




Really? How is my analogy wrong? You said using known level of education to predict intelligence of an individual is a "gross misuse of statistics." I explained that in medicine, some variables (such as blood chem results, gender, etc.) are used to predict the risk that a single patient would have a specific disease. Education is to "some variables" as intelligence is to "risk of disease." That's my analogy. If you can accept the latter, why can't you accept the former?


Yes, that's how correlation works. If the correlation is significant, we can predict one variable in terms of the other using an equation that expresses a direct proportionality between them. You still fail to grasp that I am not talking about causality here. If you give me a person and tell me his educational attainment, I can use the results from the studies I quoted (if I had them) to predict what that person's IQ likely is. Similarly, you can give me the IQ of the person, and I will simply reverse the formula and predict his educational attainment.

However, if you give me a person's educational attainment and have me predict his IQ, and then you have him take a higher degree (thereby raising his educational attainment), and then ask me to predict his IQ again, there is no guarantee that his IQ would rise because while the two variables are highly correlated and the equation used to predict one in terms of the other expresses them in direct proportion, causality is not implied.


That's your unfounded inference of causality. I have mine too (higher intelligence makes people pursue higher degrees). However, this has nothing to do with the topic on direct correlation implying direct proportionality.

If by "choosing words" you mean "including all of the words," yes. once again, here's the definition of "direct proportion" that I provided, and that you said was right:

"proportional in the order of the terms; increasing or decreasing together, and with a constant ratio;"

and here's the definition of "direct correlation":

" a correlation in which large values of one variable are associated with large values of the other and small with small; the correlation coefficient is between 0 and +1"

The strength of the correlation is dependent on the magnitude of the correlation coefficient. At a magnitude of 1, there is a direct proportional relationship--any change in one variable will correspond with a change in another variable at a constant and fixed ration, thus the two are perfectly correlated. Any coefficient less than 1 means the relationship is not perfect, for any number of reasons. It could be a non-linear relationship, it could be that there are other mediating variables, etc.

One more time, if you have a definition of "direct proportion" and "direct correlation" that agrees with your interpretation, please provide them.


You're the one that keeps bringing up causality. If you think I did in my last comment, please quote me.

There is nothing wrong with the definitions. You remain unwilling to accept that in research practice, when two variables are found to be correlated, an equation of direct proportionality is derived from the relationship.

Here's a question. Can you give me two practical variables that you believe are directly proportional (that is, you think that their correlation is perfect)?

Also (and this is a slightly different topic, centered on your flawed understanding of what misuse of statistics is),

you guys are too serious. take the load off!!!

Seriously? People actually do this? Unbelievable. I've been away from the forum for too long. Can't believe the things I'm reading today on the front page.

...you mean the things you're bringing back to the front by posting in old and long-dead threads?

fyi, Psycho, this was on the front page...and all the other threads I posted in today were either on the front page or had a link at the bottom of another thread that I was reading. And it's a free bloody country. I can post wherever I want. You are not the boss of anyone on here.

Having said that, I've been away from the forum for quite some time (unlike you I do have a life and work to do); but I guess I've kinda missed you... Very disturbing indeed. Lol!

Actually it's a forum, not a country at all.


Yes you can. Did I ever say otherwise?


When did I act like your boss? For someone throwing out the "psycho" pretty liberally, you sure have some pretty paranoid delusions.


Yeah, like a whole week or two.


There's that delusional presumption again. If you'd like to compare workloads over the past two weeks, I' be more than happy to oblige.


The feeling isn't mutual. How sad for you.

Oh geez, I forgot what I was dealing with here: The painstaking breaking down of every single sentence to construct pseudo arguments with the aim of proving how sophisticated your intellect is. It's not fooling anyone Psycho. Unfortunately for you, you're already spent far too much time displaying how stupid and easily-wound-up you are. But even more alarmingly, your last quote and response shows that you have no grasp whatsoever of sarcasm. Shall I do another Google search for you?

Furthermore if you think anything about you or remotely related to you has enough of an effect on my life to make me "sad" (or affect me in any way for that matter) then you are clearly the delusional one here. You pathetic waste-of-time "breakdowns" are boring.

Where do you find the time? If anything I probably envy you the leisure. I can barely find a couple hours in a day to browse the internet. You seem to be available to comment on every entry in every thread 24 hours a day. Are you sure you're as busy as you so often claim on here?

How forgetful of you.


It really isn't that painstaking, and it's not every single sentence--just the ones that contain false premises or otherwise call out for a response.


Actually, that's what you did by implying I did things like tell you where your allowed to post and pretend I'm the boss.


No, my aim is to help you prove you're an idiot. I've been fairly successful so far.


Oh, irony.


You really ought to stop using psychological terms until you've at least read a basic textbook on the subject. Or take your own advice and Google words before you use them incorrectly.


So far, this post has taken be about two minutes of my time. How long does it usually take you?


Well, now you're just making s-i* up. I've been posting very infrequently over the past several weeks, and there are many threads I have nothing to contribute to, so I don't.


Having already completed approximately 1000 pages in May alone, yes, I'm pretty sure.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: You're hilarious pheelyks.

Now I'm off to do something more constructive with my time. Goodnight.

I'll repeat myself on a recurring point, as well: your posts are meaningless and don't contribute to the conversation.

It's not a conversation, Psycho. It's a senseless convoluted monologue of tripe where you overuse the 'Quote' button. And I just read one of your posts on another thread where you were pointing out to someone that their CAPS lock was on. Not every helpful or contributing anything. Other times you just butt into conversations to insult other forumers. Just posting for the sake of posting... On and on with the quoting and unnecessary arguments. Blah blah blah. Like you're some kind of forum police. **** off already.

You're not interesting enough to converse with Psycho. All we can do is trade insults and even that gets boring after a while. Now I'm exhausted from my night out so am off to bed. I suggest you get some sleep so you can keep up with me tomorrow.

I know. You don't actually respond to most of what gets said to you, so it can't be.


When you get ahold of that dictionary, make sure you look up "monologue" and "oxymoron."


Well, their caps lock was on. They typed an entire post all in caps (actually, the copied and pasted the exact same post many times all in caps). I was letting them know. I think that's pretty helpful, because I'm sure they didn't mean to be typing everything in caps.


You mean like directing comments at people/on threads that no one has cared about for really long periods of time?


Where does this keep coming from? I have never presented myself as having any sort of authority over this forum. I think you're an idiot, and I will continue to point out your idiocy, but that has nothing to do with "policing' the forum.


And yet you keep replying.


Speak for yourself. I have asked you many specific questions and made many statements of fact that aren't insults at all (they don't speak well of your intelligence, but that can't be helped).


Took you awhile to chase down the goats tonight?


Well, it's 4 in the afternoon here, so I think I'll wait, but again I thank you for your concern about my well-being and my daily routine. The disinterest in me you claim elsewhere notwithstanding, I'm really very touched.


You woefully overestimate yourself.

Sorry about this slight derailment guys.

The above quote has me in tears.

Straying from the original topic, why is it wrong for the student to exact the same extortionist moves on a writer (not Phyleeks) when the writer seems to think that it is perfectly legal to use this maneuver on a student ? A scam writer that is. Regardless, that doesn't make what Phyleeks did right. 2 wrongs, as the saying goes, never make a right. Both of you were wrong, but only one suffered the consequences. Sad, but true.

I would not say that there has been a spate of student client blackmails these days but, there have actually been 2 cases of extortion reported here by students. These happened during the off season / summer vacation season. They were threatened with academic exposure both times, but only one actually had a more creative blackmailer who was even willing to negotiate a lower price. It is highly unfortunate that due to the way the academic writing business is conducted, it is difficult for the students to bring these criminals to justice. Not having an actual office location is a benefit to the scammers. As for the 2 students, they have not added to the information placed here so the assumption could be one of 2 things:

1. They paid off the blackmailer due to their fear of being found out.
2. They successfully ignored the threats based on useful advice from other users at this forum.

Will these types of scams ever disappear? I doubt it. There will always be criminal minds that are willing to do anything illegal for a quick financial turn around.

I actually contacted the first one through a private message and initiated an email exchange. He was so panicked that he was talking about contacting his school, himself, preemptively, to admit his guilt and plead for their assistance. I told him that was like burning down his own house, first, because someone was blackmailing him and threatening to burn it down unless he paid. In any case, the school would have taken action against him based on his confession (even if they'd have ignored the report from the writer); and they'd have just advised him to call the police and/or hire a lawyer. According to his last email to me, he ended up taking my advice to block all forms of contact from the blackmailer and not to do anything like contacting his school to confess. He also shared that it wasn't actually a writer "on" this forum, but a scammer who'd previously been mentioned on this forum in connection with a similar blackmailing scheme that he, apparently, has been perpetrating for years, through various social media, where he finds his victims.