On 1/13/2011 12:26 PM, Michael Madigan wrote:
> Nick,
>
> If your cholesterol averages 180 and your doctor tells you it's now 183.6, do
> you panic?
>
> If your blood pressure averages 120 and your doctor tells you it is now 122.4
> do you admit yourself to the hospital?
>
> If your electric bill is normally 200 bucks a month and this month it's 204,
> do you beat your kids?
Michael,
To paraphrase some of your posts, you don't seem to understand much
about statistics.
To take your second example, that is not a parallel. You are correct
that if your blood pressure averages 120 and it is now 122.4 that is not
a big deal. But if your blood pressure has averaged 120 over the last
20 years, and THIS YEAR'S AVERAGE is 122.4, then that is evidence of a
non-trivial variation. Probably not a good reason to kill yourself, but
certainly cause for some continued attention.
A "world average" is the mean of thousands of data points. The more
data points you have, the more reliable the measurements (mean, stddev,
etc) are, and the smaller a variance has to be to be significant. Which
is why some of us keep trying to tell you that whether it snows or rains
on any given day is ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT.
Notice that I didn't call you an idiot. (But the thought is always there.)
Dan Covill
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