Re:The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
by Nomentatus on Monday May 28, 2018 @06:36PM
(#17175264)
9.9 is the top ten percent minus the .1 percent - he agrees the .1% are a problem, but wants to address his own class, the rest of the top 10% = 9.9%. That bin has the size it has, and the measured effects he points to presumably deduct the stats for the .1%. There's no trickery, just a stat or two to conjure with.
If you think he's skewed the measure by using mean instead of median or mode and not subtracting the contributions of the .1% that's an interesting argument but you have to make it - show evidence of that, plus make the calculation to demonstrate that the effect is large. If that's the argument I might suggest dropping "bin size" and employing the term "skew."
Re:The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
by AstralStorm on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @03:31AM
(#17177125)
There are ways to estimate right bin locations and sizes given a relatively known distribution - maximising information. He's done none of them.
(As opposed to disinformation.)
Even simple PCA would figure it out.
Re:The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy
by Nomentatus on Tuesday May 29, 2018 @02:44PM
(#17181896)
You want the hair split more finely - but doing so changes nothing. Not to mention that ya need two possibly correlated variables for a PCA not one, wealth: so unless you doubt that wealth yields social power in the U.S., there doesn't seem to be any work for a PCA to do.
It's like having a y-axis on a graph that reads: 10 100 5000 10000 (with equally spaced points) and then talking about how there's more action between 100 and 5000 than there is between 5000 and 10000.