News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Increasingly Competitive College Admissions: Much More Than You Wanted to Know. Parent comment

Re:Increasingly Competitive College Admissions: Much More Th... by ordinaryperson on Thursday April 18, 2019 @07:22AM (#19690174)
I'm sorry, I'm not following your description.

Saying there is a quantitative strength to a relationship is, to a regular person, meaningless. Am I .56 in love with my wife?

Can I fit in a straight line to her?

These are not good descriptions. Of course HN is full of data scientists who wildly object to oversimplifying statistical relationships -- luckily you are here to give the detailed mathematical context. But these are not simplified descriptions for a general audience.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Increasingly Competitive College Admissions: Much More Th... by dragonwriter on Thursday April 18, 2019 @07:00PM (#19695535)
> Saying there is a quantitative strength to a relationship is, to a regular person, meaningless.

That the average person would not understand a particular accurate description of a subject does not, in and of itself, make a completely inaccurate alternative description less wrong or even a good simplification.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Increasingly Competitive College Admissions: Much More Th... by ordinaryperson on Thursday April 18, 2019 @07:47PM (#19695794)
"less wrong" -- as if what's important is a gradient of "wrongness" and just helping the average person understand stuff without technical jargon.
[ Parent | on HN ]