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This is what passes as science in 'scientific american'?! There's not a single absolute number reported aside from the laughingly small sample size of 400 adul

This is what passes as science in 'scientific american'?! There's not a single absolute number reported aside from the laughingly small sample size of 400 adults in a world of 7,000,000,000.

kevinwang 10y ago
How are you judging that that's a small sample size?
- candiodari 10y ago
  Given the claim in the title they talk about "men and women". So the sample size is small because: 1) zero variance in location 2) very little variance in age (all undergraduate) (variances of the ages: 1.33 to 7.19, so 70% of their samples all were in two age ranges, one 3 year wide, one 14 year wide) 3) cultural variation : essentially zero (?) they didn't even bother to check AFAICT
phailhaus 10y ago
If your bar is that high then you can say that about literally any study. What do you expect, a study involving a million people?!
- jbigelow76 10y ago
  The sample size is irrelevant, what people expect is to confirm what they already believe.
kbenson 10y ago
The paper is linked. Feel free to take a look[1]. 1: http://bleske-rechek.com/April%20Website%20Files/Bleske-Rechek%20et%20al.%202012%20Benefit%20or%20Burden.pdf http://bleske-rechek.com/April%20Website%20Files/Bleske-Rech...
azakai 10y ago
A random sample of 400 is enough to give a good estimate, regardless of the size of the population. This is a non-intuitive result from statistics. The standard deviation - the average expected error - does not actually depend on the population size. It could be 7 billion or 7 hundred. The standard deviation only depends on the sample size, and is O(1/sqrt(n)). In this case, with n=400, we have O(0.05). If we are testing a random variable with two values, then the true deviation is less than 0.5, so the expected error is 0.025 - we expect no more than 2.5% of mistake. That's very good! (The bigger question is whether the sample is random or not.)
- bullsandabears 10y ago
  I agree on the bigger question. I thought I was communicating the lack of random samples, but I appreciate you pointing out why just referencing the sample size is not good enough in a sense. Anyways, they practically required lack of randomness. Their sign-up took place at the same school and "requested that participants be traditional college students of heterosexual orientation". Then they obtained the older generation participants by getting the first group to hand over addresses of their older relatives, neighbors and employers. I don't think it could get much less random.

This is what passes as science in 'scientific american'?! There's not a single absolute number reported aside from the laughingly small sample size of 400 adults in a world of 7,000,000,000.

kevinwang 10y ago

How are you judging that that's a small sample size?

candiodari 10y ago
Given the claim in the title they talk about "men and women". So the sample size is small because: 1) zero variance in location 2) very little variance in age (all undergraduate) (variances of the ages: 1.33 to 7.19, so 70% of their samples all were in two age ranges, one 3 year wide, one 14 year wide) 3) cultural variation : essentially zero (?) they didn't even bother to check AFAICT

phailhaus 10y ago

If your bar is that high then you can say that about literally any study. What do you expect, a study involving a million people?!

jbigelow76 10y ago
The sample size is irrelevant, what people expect is to confirm what they already believe.

kbenson 10y ago

The paper is linked. Feel free to take a look[1]. 1: http://bleske-rechek.com/April%20Website%20Files/Bleske-Rechek%20et%20al.%202012%20Benefit%20or%20Burden.pdf http://bleske-rechek.com/April%20Website%20Files/Bleske-Rech...

azakai 10y ago

A random sample of 400 is enough to give a good estimate, regardless of the size of the population. This is a non-intuitive result from statistics. The standard deviation - the average expected error - does not actually depend on the population size. It could be 7 billion or 7 hundred. The standard deviation only depends on the sample size, and is O(1/sqrt(n)). In this case, with n=400, we have O(0.05). If we are testing a random variable with two values, then the true deviation is less than 0.5, so the expected error is 0.025 - we expect no more than 2.5% of mistake. That's very good! (The bigger question is whether the sample is random or not.)

bullsandabears 10y ago
I agree on the bigger question. I thought I was communicating the lack of random samples, but I appreciate you pointing out why just referencing the sample size is not good enough in a sense. Anyways, they practically required lack of randomness. Their sign-up took place at the same school and "requested that participants be traditional college students of heterosexual orientation". Then they obtained the older generation participants by getting the first group to hand over addresses of their older relatives, neighbors and employers. I don't think it could get much less random.