3 ms·

How many spoonfuls of soup must you taste to know if the pot is salty?

• mattmanser 11y ago
  A soup is binary salty/not salty. 5 characteristics measured - openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism 5! = 120. So are you arguing 2 === 120 or are you arguing 2 === 5, but whichever one it is, you're missing the point. Do you know why adverts have 'when 80 women were asked 73% agreed pantene makes my hair shinier'? Because it's not scientifically significant, so can't be held as a clinical trial, therefore the product doesn't need regulating. And that's for a binary, shiny/not shiny (salty/not salty). Not for a possibly open, sloppy, introverted, agreeable neurotic. Or a closed, conscientious, introverted, agreeable non-neurotic.
  • Retra 11y ago
    A soup can be sweet, sour, tangy, meaty, bitter, in addition to plenty of other characteristics. >So are you arguing 2 === 120 or are you arguing 2 === 5, but whichever one it is, you're missing the point. It's pretty clear that I'm not arguing either of those (being that I made no mention of cardinality,) but if you want to put words into my mouth, I can see why you'd think I'd be focusing on those kinds of irrelevant details. My point is that the number of samples taken, in and of itself doesn't tell you anything about the significance of a conclusion. You need to know how the sample relates to the population, and how the results characterize the population through the sample.