Re:How the Idea of a ‘Normal’ Person Got Invented
by VladKovac on Thursday February 25, 2016 @01:06AM
(#11172665)
Hold on though, statistics actually work in real life. If you're taking into account base-rates based on measurements of "normality" or "regularities" you will win more on average. It doesn't matter how you choose to carve up some ideological category of "normal", probabilities are conserved, and taking that into account will improve your decision making.
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Re:How the Idea of a ‘Normal’ Person Got Invented
by rdancer on Thursday February 25, 2016 @02:34AM
(#11172926)
The average person has 1 testicle an 1 ovary.
That one is obvious.
But you have less obvious non-representative means: average # of sex partners (Pareto distribution), average life expectancy (bathtub curve), average autism-spectrum quotient (camel curve). In all these cases the averages obscure, rather that elucidate.
Re:How the Idea of a ‘Normal’ Person Got Invented
by VladKovac on Thursday February 25, 2016 @10:13AM
(#11174904)
I mean if you intentionally increase the entropy of your model, sure. But knowing the average person has 1 testicle and 1 ovary is still better than if you really didn't know anything about that before.