Re:What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely k...
by yequalsx on Saturday December 31, 2016 @05:29PM
(#13293553)
The percent change is often a much more informative value than the absolute change. Also, when something decreases by x% it requires more than an x% increase to get back where you started. Political discourse would greatly benefit from these two simple facts.
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Re:What scientific term or concept ought to be more widely k...
by rabidrat on Saturday December 31, 2016 @08:21PM
(#13294178)
On the other hand, I came here to suggest that knowledge of Simpson's Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox) could resolve a lot of political fights. And Simpson's paradox is only applicable when data is presented as percentages, so the key to unraveling the paradox is to show the absolute numbers and changes, instead of the percentages.
The real problem is that percentages hide the size of the groups, and even if you show the sizes of the groups separately, focusing on the percentages still obscures the reality unless this is called out explicitly.