Robert J. MacG. Dawson wrote: > Now suppose I tell you - surprise - the barrel has a false bottom and > only contains 10,000 jellybeans, 1% of the number you'd assumed. Does it > seem reasonable that your estimate has just got a lot better? (People > making this mistake usually assume that a small population can be > estimated better, not worse.) > > Or suppose the barrel is connected to a huge underground warehouse > contianing a billion well-mixed jellybeans. Do you suddenly lose > confidence in your estimate? >
I like that. I was going to say for the same reason a doctor needs same amount of blood from a toddler as from an adult. The estimates of concentrations of various components are not affected by the size of the donor. Still, I like that. It works in both directions and admits the FPCF, i.e, surprise - there are only 100 and a bunch of mirrors! . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
