Pat Farrell;179980 Wrote: > P Floding wrote: > > Negative results: > > > > 1. We would like to prove that there exists red cars. > > 2. We observe cars. > > 3a. We see red car. We have proven that at least one red car exists. > > or > > 3b. We never see a red car. We didn't prove a single thing. This is > > what's called a "negative result". > > Pretty silly example. All you have to do is find one of anything to > prove that X exists. > > A better hypothesis is that there are so many red cars that you can see > > one if you sit at the Holland tunnel for even one hour, you will see > one, and from that you can extrapolate that there could be as many as Y > > zillion red cars. > > You could start with an analysis that 17 million cars are sold in the > US > every year, and they last about 20 years, so there are about 340 > million > cars on the road. If 2% of cars are red, and you sample ten thousand of > > them (sitting at the front of the Holland Tunnel for Z minutes) then > you can test the hypothesis that red cars make up A percent of the > cars, > and you should see one at the Holland Tunnel. > > If you sat there measuring for a year of rush hours, and never saw a > red > car, then you could claim that the probability of there being any red > cars is low. And you could back that up. > > What you will not know that all the red cars are in California and > Florida.... > > > > -- > Pat > http://www.pfarrell.com/music/slimserver/slimsoftware.html
It was a very simple example of why a negative result means nothing on its own. I don't see any need at all to complicate matters. As someone said above, if the reseacher is colour blind as well, then a negative result will be guaranteed. Although he might not know it. -- P Floding No, I didn't ABX it. And I won't even if you ask me. (Especially not if you ask me.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ P Floding's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=2932 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=32352 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/audiophiles
