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No, a fat tail would do just the opposite. A fat tail is where more points are far from the threshold. But it's a moot point because an increase of 2 points a
by SamReidHughes 7y ago
No, a fat tail would do just the opposite. A fat tail is where more points are far from the threshold.
But it's a moot point because an increase of 2 points among people in the 99th percentile implies little about those in the 99.99 percenteth quantile.
Some description of a fat tail from 60-99 percentile doesn't say much about the top one percent. At a certain point, the dating market tops out.
- pmart123 7y agoI believe it is the same case with height. https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/07/20/why-heights-are-not-normally-distributed/ https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2008/07/20/why-heights-are-no... It's close to a normal distribution one or even two deviations away from the mean, but real-life has way more samples appearing +5 deviations away from the mean. I haven't really looked into it ever, but this could be because of a positive skew versus a distribution with purely fat tails?
- SamReidHughes 7y agoThe difference is, it's easy to make a long-boned freak or a blithering idiot. But there's no hormone (I know of) that makes you a genius. (Also, intelligence/aptitude/performance scales like IQ, SAT, or ASVAB scores are arbitrarily numbered, so I'm don't know what a "fat tail" means in that respect. Maybe there's a standard definition that isn't completely arbitrary.)
- gwern 7y agoNo, it would. Simulate it at a threshold like 1600 scores. The steeper increase in that part of the range yields the same phenomenon as normals. > (Also, intelligence/aptitude/performance scales like IQ, SAT, or ASVAB scores are arbitrarily numbered, so I'm don't know what a "fat tail" means in that respect. Maybe there's a standard definition that isn't completely arbitrary.) Er, you can look at plenty of cardinal-scaled things like vocabulary or digit span. Doesn't change the non-normality at the tails.