It’s a more general statement that applies to say orange production as various plants only grow well in specific climates. Basically, if you’re looking at total calories consumed that is mostly a function of population size, but large samples don’t average out inherent differences.
Re:The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019
by denzil_correa on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @10:40AM
(#21192814)
> I'm not really sure what you mean by that but I don't think you're correct.
Can you explain, in context to what I said - what exactly is incorrect? I am very well versed with the theory of Law of Large numbers. The question is - "Why does the Law of Large Numbers tell us that per capita is a the right metric to compare Nobel Prize output of different countries?"
All he’s saying that the further mean and median are from each, the more importsnt it is that we think about what an average implies about the sample.
Re:The Nobel Prize in Physics 2019
by soVeryTired on Tuesday October 08, 2019 @07:02PM
(#21198230)
Well the median number of nobel prizes in any country is pretty obviously zero...
I'm not really sure what you mean by that but I don't think you're correct. The law of large numbers applies to any distribution with finite first moment.
You're probably right in that factors like wealth (and wealth distribution rather than per-capita wealth) affect a country's scientific output. But your stats argument is a bit wobbly :)