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> If it happened once, so early in the age of Earth - it should happen more than once. You can’t extract a (meaningful) probability from a single sample no mat

> If it happened once, so early in the age of Earth - it should happen more than once. You can’t extract a (meaningful) probability from a single sample no matter how intuitive it seems.

perl4ever 7y ago
People calculate probabilities with a sample size of zero, even. For instance, people frequently talk about the probability a given voter will cast the deciding vote in an election.
- ajmurmann 7y ago
  But we use proxy effects like polls to simulate the actual event. On this case we haven't even been able to do that.
hhs 7y ago
> You can’t extract a (meaningful) probability from a single sample no matter how intuitive it seems. It's possible to get insights from a single sample. Science journals, especially in fields like medicine, do it to talk about atypical case studies. It's a good learning experience, too, when reflecting on the structure and context of those edge cases.
- SomeOldThrow 7y ago
  The terms “atypical” and “edge case” are not meaningful with a single sample size that is also the only known observation. There is only the one sample and that’s all you can observe. There’s nothing to compare it against to give “atypical” and “edge case” meaning. Individual samples can be meaningful in a larger distribution, but you still need multiple samples to establish any distribution at all. I think you are referring to outliers within the distribution.
ACow_Adonis 7y ago
Ah, but is it a single sample, or multiple repeated samples at times t subscript n, with several negative observations and (at least) one positive? Indeed, posit n repeated trials over a given time line, it seems equally implausible that an observation of a positive outcome earlier in the timeline contains no information on implied probabilities relative to a positive observation occurring later in the time lines.

> If it happened once, so early in the age of Earth - it should happen more than once. You can’t extract a (meaningful) probability from a single sample no matter how intuitive it seems.

perl4ever 7y ago

People calculate probabilities with a sample size of zero, even. For instance, people frequently talk about the probability a given voter will cast the deciding vote in an election.

ajmurmann 7y ago
But we use proxy effects like polls to simulate the actual event. On this case we haven't even been able to do that.

hhs 7y ago

> You can’t extract a (meaningful) probability from a single sample no matter how intuitive it seems. It's possible to get insights from a single sample. Science journals, especially in fields like medicine, do it to talk about atypical case studies. It's a good learning experience, too, when reflecting on the structure and context of those edge cases.

SomeOldThrow 7y ago
The terms “atypical” and “edge case” are not meaningful with a single sample size that is also the only known observation. There is only the one sample and that’s all you can observe. There’s nothing to compare it against to give “atypical” and “edge case” meaning. Individual samples can be meaningful in a larger distribution, but you still need multiple samples to establish any distribution at all. I think you are referring to outliers within the distribution.

ACow_Adonis 7y ago

Ah, but is it a single sample, or multiple repeated samples at times t subscript n, with several negative observations and (at least) one positive? Indeed, posit n repeated trials over a given time line, it seems equally implausible that an observation of a positive outcome earlier in the timeline contains no information on implied probabilities relative to a positive observation occurring later in the time lines.