2021-2022 MAVS NEWS: 4th in West | WCF loss [ARCHIVED]

[mavsluvr]

So if your wife cheated on you once you wouldn't find that "statistically significant" and would just move on with life as normal? How many times does she have to cheat on you for it to be enough data for you to pay attention to?


The point: Even a single data point is INCREDIBLY significant and is telling you something. Obviously MORE data is helpful, but oftentimes in life your data sets are small and you have to discern with wisdom how to interpret what is going on. The NFL deals with this ALL the time. Y'all are having fun mocking me for using a ten game set, but damn in the NFL that is a TON of data.

Well, I respectfully don't think that example is apropos. I think any professional statistician would tell you that for statistics to mean anything, the subject has to be something that lends itself to statistical analysis, and many things don't. Among them, how many discrete times a person is likely to cheat on his/her spouse, given that the person has cheated once. Even if you could aggregate enough cases to come up with a number, statistics don't predict the specific outcome of any particular situation -- they give you a percentage of outcomes when applied to a large group. 

Agree that in life, we often have to make decisions with incomplete information, but that doesn't mean that a statistical analysis can shed light on every situation. For example, if I were making decisions with regard to an unfaithful spouse, I would not decide whether she were going to keep cheating based on a statistical analysis of the usual breaking point between a fling and a full-fledged affair. I would make it based on the unique facts of the specific circumstances, and statistics wouldn't even enter into it. For certain things, statistics just aren't helpful. And they're almost never helpful when the sample size is too small to be representative. Which is not to say that a single data point isn't meaningful in itself, as in the case of an adulterous event. 

I don't perceive that anyone is mocking you. Just taking issue with a few of your positions, and isn't that what a discussion board is about?