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Yes, less fireflies and ladybugs, yet plenty of bloody tiger mosquitoes... I’d say is a typical case of “half chicken statistics”
by eecc 6y ago
Yes, less fireflies and ladybugs, yet plenty of bloody tiger mosquitoes... I’d say is a typical case of “half chicken statistics”
- MereInterest 6y agoI'm not familiar with the phrase "half chicken statistics", and a basic google search was unhelpful. What does that generally refer to?
- m4r35n357 6y agoI think it might be an in-joke about modelling animal populations with floating point numbers. [EDIT] Just realized the poster said _less_ fireflies, so my guess might be correct ;)
- KineticLensman 6y agoI'm guessing stats where the basic question doesn't reflect reality. "If a chicken and a half lays an egg and a half in a day and a half, how many eggs will three chickens lay in thirty days".
- Recursing 6y agoIt's a famous saying in in Italy on the problem of losing information when averaging "If one person eats a chicken and another person doesn't eat anything, on average they both ate half a chicken" Or in a similar way something like: "If I eat two chickens and you eat none, statistically we both ate one"
- ryanwaggoner 6y agoThis reminds me of this old joke: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1089588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1089588
- skocznymroczny 6y agoIn Poland we use "on average, me and my dog have three legs"
- strbean 6y agoIn Latvia, we say "on average, all have no potato." Then we are sad.
- boring_twenties 6y agoIn America we have: "The man who has feet in the freezer, and his head in the oven, on average feels fine!"
- riffraff 6y agoTo expand, it comes originally from a poem from Trilussa[0], a poet which wrote satirical poems in the Roman dialect. I'm afraid they lose a lot in translation. [0] http://www.fotografi.org/studi_settore/polli_di_trilussa.htm http://www.fotografi.org/studi_settore/polli_di_trilussa.htm
- Guest42 6y agoAgreed, I think that a lot of info gets lost by over-aggregating and by over-summarizing
- tralarpa 6y agoYes, number of aphids goes up, number of butterflies goes down. Conclusion: no net change. The study has been criticised by German scientists for this reason. With rather drastic words, e.g. "I don't understand how a paper with such obvious weaknesses can pass through the peer reviewing process" and "This paper is not a good example for scientific best practices".
- mirimir 6y agoYeah, this ought to be the top thread ;) A few careers ago, some agribusiness dude asked me why I opposed the introduction of nonnative species, given that I was concerned about biodiversity loss.
- adventured 6y agoCan you link to the huge, comprehensive studies spanning the entire US that show a large decline in fireflies and ladybugs?
- jjt-yn_t 6y agoEasier to derive anecdotal 'haven't seen fireflies since' threads of which I've seen quite a few...