The 9.9 Percent Is the New American Aristocracy

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."

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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.

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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.

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