EPTAsk and answer stupid questions here! - Page 113
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Najda
United States3765 Posts
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Zess
Adun Toridas!9144 Posts
On June 28 2014 13:07 Najda wrote: Statistics are so misunderstood and misapplied by the majority of people, it's saddening more people don't understand how a statistic is derived or how to interpret one. As evidenced by the previous page of people use the term "statistic" in the colloquial sense i.e. the one most likely to be misinterpreted. | ||
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3FFA
United States3931 Posts
On June 28 2014 13:07 Najda wrote: Statistics are so misunderstood and misapplied by the majority of people, it's saddening more people don't understand how a statistic is derived or how to interpret one. Would you mind teaching us then? | ||
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Najda
United States3765 Posts
Mataza's post regarding statistics was good, but also they are usually just made to determine trends or to look at an overall group. Statistics are rarely made to be applied on an individual basis. Example: Take a blanket statistic like divorce rates are 50% (made up number). That doesn't mean your specific marriage has a 50% chance of failure since obviously there are a lot of factors that go into it, you aren't just flipping a coin whenever you get married. The collection of the information generally seeks to normalize those external factors and effectively cancel them out to give the best general idea. That's why if you're doing a study that is supposed to determine something like chance of success in the job marketplace, it would be dumb to only sample kids going to Harvard or something. Or like Mataza's post said you could intentionally only sample Harvard kids because you had an agenda when performing the study because the people funding your research want a certain result. | ||
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3FFA
United States3931 Posts
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Najda
United States3765 Posts
On June 29 2014 11:00 3FFA wrote: So how would you look at a statistic? Would you apply it to your life at all or consider it useless? Well that depends on what it is and what information it's trying to get across. If something is like "80% of people who do X get Y result, whereas 30% of people who did Z got Y result" then I'll try X before I'll try Z if I'm trying to get result Y, or you can look at the data collected and see if there's a trend among the 30% of people who did Z in order to get Y, and maybe you fit into that trend and actually don't line up with the 80% of the people who do X. Sorry if that's confusing, I can try to think of a more concrete example rather than using X Y Z if it would help you. | ||
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Zess
Adun Toridas!9144 Posts
On June 29 2014 11:14 Najda wrote: Well that depends on what it is and what information it's trying to get across. If something is like "80% of people who do X get Y result, whereas 30% of people who did Z got Y result" then I'll try X before I'll try Z if I'm trying to get result Y, or you can look at the data collected and see if there's a trend among the 30% of people who did Z in order to get Y, and maybe you fit into that trend and actually don't line up with the 80% of the people who do X. Sorry if that's confusing, I can try to think of a more concrete example rather than using X Y Z if it would help you. For a more specific example, you're way more likely to die in a car (on a per-trip basis, and since you use a car more, on a per-lifetime basis) than in a plane. So you should stop worrying about planes and focus on driving safer. The marriage statistic example you gave is also flawed. Most people conform to the base rate than being exceptions; America has a focus on exceptional individualism but most people are average (for anything without some crazy tail distribution, that's basically what average means). So if you see that texting while driving is super dangerous; it is more likely that you are just a terrible driver if you text and drive and are super endangering yourself and others than it is that you are some godly professional super driver than can pull of texting and driving. The same base rate ignorance and self-confidence bias is also why people try to start their own businesses even though most entrepreneurs are failures and also why tons of people get married even though most marriages are failures. On the other hand, the fact that America preaches this kind of individual power (and thus ignorance of base rates) is good for the growth of the country as a whole, because entrepreneurship is one of those crazy tail distributions where most people are failures, but the rare successes are amazing and blow everything out of the water. | ||
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sunshinehero
Norway89 Posts
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On July 02 2014 10:44 sunshinehero wrote: where can i buy weed in london Shouldn't have to buy weed. Just start a garden and you'll get an infinite amount of it for you to pull for the rest of your life. | ||
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AlternativeEgo
Sweden17309 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11911 Posts
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rudimentalfeelthelov
Finland268 Posts
On July 02 2014 10:44 sunshinehero wrote: where can i buy weed in london there are actually often black people with big coats hanging around park entrances who will sell you anything i'm not even joking, last time I was in london I've seen 2 arrested in 5 days, which is infinity times more arrests than I've ever seen happen in my home country | ||
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appletree
Denmark109 Posts
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Simberto
Germany11911 Posts
He should already have a pretty good understanding on how a triangle is arranged in space just from touching them over long periods of time. Spacial awareness should not necessarily be linked to sight. So the only problematic step is making sense of actually seeing and what those nerve impulses convey. Color should be something completely new, but shape is just mapping the visual image to the already existing 3d touch image in his mind. So if you give him a while to get aquainted with seeing itself, and then show him a square and a triangle for the first time, he should recognize which one is which. | ||
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frogrubdown
1266 Posts
On July 02 2014 21:32 appletree wrote: So, if a man loves to feel/touch triangles & squares, but he was blind and deaf, and had been his entire life, if that man suddenly got his sight back, would he be able to tell the which was which, just by looking at them ..? Molyneux's Problem | ||
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appletree
Denmark109 Posts
Thanks, yeah i'm reading through 'Thinking about thinking' by Joan Wynn Reeves, and although I passed this question in the book hundreds of pages ago, I still cant get it out of my mind. Thought it would fit in well here. | ||
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AlternativeEgo
Sweden17309 Posts
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Najda
United States3765 Posts
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Pazuzu
United States632 Posts
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On July 03 2014 04:46 Najda wrote: How are the world cup teams formed? carefully and with a great deal of money. | ||
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