{"id":9065,"date":"2017-04-15T09:40:22","date_gmt":"2017-04-15T14:40:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=9065"},"modified":"2017-04-15T09:40:22","modified_gmt":"2017-04-15T14:40:22","slug":"how-to-tell-an-apple-from-an-orange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2017\/04\/15\/how-to-tell-an-apple-from-an-orange\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Tell An Apple From An Orange"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kenneth Anderson on Lawfare <\/b><\/i>wades <\/a>into the problem of statistical comparisons:<\/p>\n

What’s\u00a0\u201cThe Bathtub Fallacy,\u201d according to [Justin] Fox? Following a terrorist incident or government counter-measure, he says (quoting a recent\u00a0Financial Times<\/em>\u00a0(paywalled<\/a>) column by its principal political columnist,\u00a0Janan Ganesh<\/a>),\u00a0statistics are \u201cdug out to show that fewer Westerners perish in terror attacks than in everyday mishaps. Slipping in the bath is a tragicomic favourite. We chuckle, share the data and wait for voters and politicians to see sense.\u201d ..
\nThe conclusion that terrorism is different relies importantly\u00a0on Fox\u2019s characterization as a “fat-tailed distribution<\/a>” of risks.\u00a0 Fox cites\u00a0Nassim Nicholas Taleb<\/a>\u2019s (of\u00a0Black Swan<\/em><\/a>\u00a0fame) extensive\u00a0writing<\/a>\u00a0on this, but then moves on to an interview Fox conducted\u00a0with\u00a0Carnegie Mellon University professor Baruch Fischhoff<\/a>\u00a0in researching\u00a0this column.\u00a0 Who\u2019s\u00a0Baruch\u00a0Fischhoff<\/a>, you ask? Well, among (many) other things, Fischhoff is a “past president of the Society for Risk Analysis, past member of multiple national and international commissions on the risks of terrorism and other bad stuff, and author of lots of books with \u2018risk\u2019 in the title.\u201d \u00a0Also, Fox adds, he was\u00a0Daniel Kahneman\u2019s former\u00a0research assistant at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the early 1970s, and thus someone “present at the creation of the school of psychological research that has shown how bad we humans can be at processing probabilities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople who just look at the average are doing the analysis wrong,\u201d Fischhoff tells Fox.\u00a0 Fischhoff does not\u00a0think, either, that \u201cit\u2019s irrational to fear terrorism more than falling in the bathtub.\u201d Why? It\u2019s different in terms “of the uncertainty and the shape of the distribution, how well we understand it and the possibility of these large-scale events.\u201d \u00a0Moreover, Fischhoff adds, in another deceptively simple observation, that \u201cpeople tolerate risks where they see a benefit.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seems to me that when comparing statistics this way, the magnitude of the difference in the standard deviations of the two averages will be a measure of the incommensurability of the comparison, taken as a ratio to the average value.<\/p>\n

That is, a big standard deviation indicates the importance of the average value as a predictive tool is very low; a small standard deviation indicates the value of the average as a predictive tool is quite high, as compared to the actual value. As a species, we do value predictability, so when the deviation is high, we need to be more concerned about the phenomenon in question.<\/p>\n

And I’m sure all the risk analysis and statistical nerds are already chanting We knew that already<\/i>. Ah, but I didn’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kenneth Anderson on Lawfare wades into the problem of statistical comparisons: What’s\u00a0\u201cThe Bathtub Fallacy,\u201d according to [Justin] Fox? Following a terrorist incident or government counter-measure, he says (quoting a recent\u00a0Financial Times\u00a0(paywalled) column by its principal political columnist,\u00a0Janan Ganesh),\u00a0statistics are \u201cdug out to show that fewer Westerners perish in terror attacks \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9065","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9065"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9066,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9065\/revisions\/9066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}