3 ms·
The event that wiped out the Dinosaurs was 65 million years ago, but the Mesozoic era lasted for ~200 million years. Your point stands, though.
by GauntletWizard 8y ago
The event that wiped out the Dinosaurs was 65 million years ago, but the Mesozoic era lasted for ~200 million years. Your point stands, though.
- klodolph 8y agoThe question of how many data points to use is a subtle one, though. I can say that I picked one data point because I was lazy and doing back of the envelope math, which is reasonable because we can be somewhat assured that I didn't choose a number of data points that was convenient for the hypothesis. But if you're choosing two data points, my question is... why two? If you are choosing whether or not to reply based on whether or not the second data point fits with the first, then you're introducing selection bias. The chance that the second data point disagrees with the first by at least as much as the 200 My interval disagrees with the 1/65 My rate is equal to 1-(exp(-65/200)-exp(200/65)) = 0.32, which is not especially high.