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The point is that you expect a normal distribution without fat tails. Fat tails are a sign of non random processes. Which lets you know some non random proces
by worik 5y ago
The point is that you expect a normal distribution without fat tails. Fat tails are a sign of non random processes. Which lets you know some non random process is happening.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoAs the sibling comment wrote, it's not non-random processes in this instance, it's processes that aren't independent. That is, when generally looking over any death rates in a relatively large population, most deaths in a given year are uncorrelated, so things look like a normal distribution. Obviously with a transmissible virus, the fact that two people died in the same year of Covid is correlated. Similarly, if you did the math from the insurance company's data, I'd bet you'd find the chance of everybody dying in the same year would be like 1 in many, many trillions of years. But of course things like supervolcanos or meteor strikes are possible. Those aren't non-random, it's just that everyone's death would correlate with that single event.