Re:The Anthropic Economic Index
by alwa on Monday February 10, 2025 @03:49PM
(#43004970)
True! Consistency and representativeness matter, in soup samples as in social samples!
Is the soup smooth or lumpy? Striated or uniform? For that matter a soup could (and often does) involve huge soup bones that give it important parts of its flavor, but never show up directly in a spoonful. And you might need something different from a spoon to convincingly rule out some specific rare lumpy ingredient.
The didactic value of sampling the soup pot goes well behind its basic function: correcting the beginner’s misperception that a sample’s statistical power is directly related to population size :)
Is the soup smooth or lumpy? Striated or uniform? For that matter a soup could (and often does) involve huge soup bones that give it important parts of its flavor, but never show up directly in a spoonful. And you might need something different from a spoon to convincingly rule out some specific rare lumpy ingredient.
The didactic value of sampling the soup pot goes well behind its basic function: correcting the beginner’s misperception that a sample’s statistical power is directly related to population size :)