bill margolis <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]:
> Howdy all, > The elementary statistics textbook (which shall remain nameless) which > we are using in class defines a normal distribution as a distribution > that is symmetrical. > > Is this a very isolated case? How long have we been falsifying our > concepts for the sake of the equationless society!? My experience has been that if I encounter any argument that asserts that there is no such thing as bisexuality in human males, I will not have to read very far before the author defines a "continuous distribution" in terms roughly corresponding to "symmetric," and then asserts that all distributions are either symmetric or dichotomous (though without using either term). I've actually seen, flatly stated, "if a distribution can take on more than two values, then most of the population has to be in the middle." More generally, these types of confusion seem to be based on the logical fallacy of affirming the consequent, or what I consider to be the probabilistic analog of the fallacy, namely confusing P(A|B) with P(B|A). And both of those fallacies would be *much* harder to commit if people merely had a grasp of extremely *elementary* set theory. I think you're shirking your moral duty by not naming the textbook. . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
