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Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by stavros on Monday April 28, 2025 @07:50PM (#43827353)
The plural of anecdote is data.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by rtaylorgarlock on Monday April 28, 2025 @08:07PM (#43827437)
Only in the same way that the plural of 'opinion' is 'fact' ;)
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by stavros on Monday April 28, 2025 @08:18PM (#43827501)
Except, very literally, data is a collection of single points (ie what we call "anecdotes").
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by rwj on Monday April 28, 2025 @08:29PM (#43827546)
Except that the plural of anecdotes is definitely not data, because without controlling for confounding variables and sampling biases, you will get garbage.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by scubbo on Monday April 28, 2025 @10:31PM (#43828199)
Garbage data is still data, and data (garbage or not) is still more valuable than a single anecdote. Insights can only be distilled from data, by first applying those controls you mentioned.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by jimmySixDOF on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @09:00AM (#43831992)
Or you can apply the Bezos/Amazon anecdote about anecdotes:

At a managers meeting "user stories" about poor support but all the KPIs looked good from the call center so Jeff dials in the number from the meeting speaker phone, gets put on hold, IVR spin cycle, hold again, etc .... His take away was basically "if the data and anecdotes don't match always default to the customer stories".

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by fhd2 on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @03:24AM (#43829589)
Based on my limited understanding of analytics, the data set can be full of biases and anomalies, as long as you find a way to account for them in the analysis, no?
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by LegionMammal978 on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @04:16PM (#43837542)
The accuracy of your analysis becomes limited to the accuracy of how well you correct for the biases. And it's difficult to measure the bias accurately without lots of good data or cross-examination.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by bcoates on Monday April 28, 2025 @08:39PM (#43827593)
No, Wittgenstein's rule following paradox, Shannon sampling theorem, the law that infinite polynomials pass through any finite set of points (does that have a name?), etc, etc. are all equivalent at the limit to the idea that no amount of anecdotes-per-se add up to anything other than coincidence
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by inimino on Monday April 28, 2025 @10:31PM (#43828198)
No, no, no. Each of them gives you information.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by bcoates on Monday April 28, 2025 @10:39PM (#43828234)
In the formal, information-theory sense, they literally don't, at least not on their own without further constraints (like band-limiting or bounded polynomial degree or the like)
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by inimino on Monday April 28, 2025 @10:41PM (#43828238)
...which you always have.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by nurettin on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @01:14AM (#43828865)
They give you relative information. Like word2vec
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by whatnow37373 on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @01:34AM (#43828962)
Without structural assumptions, there is no necessity - only observed regularity. Necessity literally does not exist. You will never find it anywhere.

Hume figured this out quite a while ago and Kant had an interesting response to it. Think the lack of “necessity” is a problem? Try to find “time” or “space” in the data.

Data by itself is useless. It’s interesting to see peoples’ reaction to this.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by bijant on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @01:49AM (#43829057)
@whatnow37373 — Three sentences and you’ve done what a semester with Kritik der reinen Vernunft couldn’t: made the Hume-vs-Kant standoff obvious. The idea that “necessity” is just the exhaust of our structural assumptions (and that data, naked, can’t even locate time or space) finally snapped into focus.

This is exactly the kind of epistemic lens-polishing that keeps me reloading HN.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by tankenmate on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @02:43AM (#43829331)
This thread has given me the best philosophical chuckle I've had this year. Even after years of being here, HN can still put an unexpected smile on your face.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by Der_Einzige on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @07:48AM (#43831290)
Anti-realism, indeterminancy, intuitionism, and radical subjectivity are extremely unpopular opinions here. Folks here are to dense to imagine that the cogito is fake bullshit and wrong. You're fighting an extremely uphill battle.

Paul Feyerabend is spinning in his grave.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by cess11 on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @01:30AM (#43828948)
No. Anecdote, ἀνέκδοτον, is a story that points to some abstract idea, commonly having something to do with morals. The word means 'not given out'/'not-out-given'. Data is the plural of datum, and arrives in english not from greek, but from latin. The root is however the same as in anecdote, and datum means 'given'. Saying that 'not-given' and 'collection of givens' is the same is clearly nonsensical.

A datum has a value and a context in which it was 'given'. What you mean by "points" eludes me, maybe you could elaborate.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by acchow on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @03:42AM (#43829694)
“Plural of anecdote is data” is meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

Actual data is sampled randomly. Anecdotes very much are not.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by 9rx on Wednesday April 30, 2025 @03:29AM (#43842197)
> “Plural of anecdote is data” is meant to be tongue-in-cheek.

To be fair, possibly because of this tongue-in-cheek statement, anecdote is sometimes used in place of datum and not as anecdote is usually defined.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by absolutelastone on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @03:09PM (#43836745)
one point is a collection of size 1. It is always data.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by 9rx on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @03:16PM (#43836823)
Technically we call it a datum. An anecdote is a story, not a point.

But it is true that colloquially anecdote is sometimes used in place of datum.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by WhitneyLand on Monday April 28, 2025 @09:06PM (#43827757)
The plural of reliable data is not anecdote.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by tomrod on Monday April 28, 2025 @09:44PM (#43827966)
Depends on the data generating process.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by WhitneyLand on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @08:30AM (#43831715)
Of course, but then you have a system of gathering information with some rigor which is more than merely a collection of anecdotes. That becomes the difference.
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by dymk on Monday April 28, 2025 @09:14PM (#43827815)
Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by wizardforhire on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @01:22AM (#43828898)
Ahhhahhahahaha stavros is so right but this is such high level bickering I haven't laughed so hard in a long time. Ya’ll are awesome! dymk you deserve a touché for this one.

The challenge for sharing data at this stage of the game is that the game is rigged in datas favor. So stavros I hear you.

To clarify, if we post our data it’s just going to get fed back into the models making it even harder to vet iterations as they advance.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by tankenmate on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @02:45AM (#43829348)
"The plural of anecdote is data.", this is right up there with "1 + 1 = 3, for sufficiently large values of 1".

Had an outright genuine guffaw at this one, bravo.

Re:Qwen3: Think deeper, act faster by dataf3l on Tuesday April 29, 2025 @12:27PM (#43834783)
I think somebody said it may be 'anecdata'