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That's a clever way of looking at it. Did you come up with it yourself? If not, I wonder what you think it says about a person that they were exposed to this id

That's a clever way of looking at it. Did you come up with it yourself? If not, I wonder what you think it says about a person that they were exposed to this idea before they interviewed with you, versus after.

klodolph 5y ago
IMO it seems obvious to me, but that might be because I took a statistics class in college. (Not “obvious in retrospect”—I’ve had a number of personal discussions with people where we talk about the difference between critic & user scores on Metacritic.)
- wccrawford 5y ago
  You also don't have any emotional or financial investment in the situation, though. ;)
  - klodolph 5y ago
    I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
Kranar 5y ago
No I did not come up with it myself. It's a common pitfall in statistics known as selection bias [1]. My problem is that if I ask a researcher about selection bias, they have no problem defining it for me and even giving me a textbook example of it. But when I present to a researcher a real life scenario that is highly susceptible to selection bias, they will almost all fail to identify it. It's a problem where many people are able to compartmentalize knowledge but fail to actually make use of that knowledge in practice. As a run a quant firm I see this among so many researchers across many disciplines. They fully understand a concept when you ask them directly, but they fail to put those concepts to use outside of a very direct and artificial setting. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
- Cederfjard 5y ago
  Do you agree that without proper research backing it up, you can’t say for sure that this discrepancy is due to selection bias, even if on the surface it looks like a nice fit? If you had said that you’re looking for candidates to raise it as a possible explanation, instead of seemingly firmly asserting that it is the one and only correct answer, you’d probably have less replies arguing with you here (or perhaps if you do have such research readily available, to have shared it).
  - Kranar 5y ago
    No I don't agree with you. I think my comment is a reasonable statement of the situation. Is it a 100% correct statement that is absolutely categorically true? No, but most people who are not looking to be pedantic and win an Internet argument won't go looking to nitpick the details of my statement. What most level headed people will do is understand that my statement is about how you can not reliably compare a group of people who are predisposed to enjoy a movie to a group of people who review almost every single movie that's released, regardless of their predisposition towards it. People are welcome to argue that and honestly I'd expect nothing less, but it's a basic statistical principle that I expect every single researcher I hire to be well familiar with and if they're not, then I make the choice to not work with them. >you’d probably have less replies arguing with you here... There is also a selection bias among the people who comment on HN and they too are not representative of how most of the community feels towards a topic. The people who want to nitpick the specific wording of my statement are certainly entitled to do so and will likely find something to nitpick regardless of how I framed my statement, but it's not a particularly interesting discussion to follow up on.
    - yakak 5y ago
      Sure, though I think the other implication from the difference stated is that critics have sampled randomly or more often and can therefore recognize derivative work where a target audience that shares a limited interest in film will almost uniformly perceive novelty. I think realizing something is a poor knock off is the basis of snobbery.. so it is strange not to accept that answer.

klodolph 5y ago

IMO it seems obvious to me, but that might be because I took a statistics class in college. (Not “obvious in retrospect”—I’ve had a number of personal discussions with people where we talk about the difference between critic & user scores on Metacritic.)

wccrawford 5y ago
You also don't have any emotional or financial investment in the situation, though. ;)
- klodolph 5y ago
  I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.

Kranar 5y ago

No I did not come up with it myself. It's a common pitfall in statistics known as selection bias [1]. My problem is that if I ask a researcher about selection bias, they have no problem defining it for me and even giving me a textbook example of it. But when I present to a researcher a real life scenario that is highly susceptible to selection bias, they will almost all fail to identify it. It's a problem where many people are able to compartmentalize knowledge but fail to actually make use of that knowledge in practice. As a run a quant firm I see this among so many researchers across many disciplines. They fully understand a concept when you ask them directly, but they fail to put those concepts to use outside of a very direct and artificial setting. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias

Cederfjard 5y ago
Do you agree that without proper research backing it up, you can’t say for sure that this discrepancy is due to selection bias, even if on the surface it looks like a nice fit? If you had said that you’re looking for candidates to raise it as a possible explanation, instead of seemingly firmly asserting that it is the one and only correct answer, you’d probably have less replies arguing with you here (or perhaps if you do have such research readily available, to have shared it).
- Kranar 5y ago
  No I don't agree with you. I think my comment is a reasonable statement of the situation. Is it a 100% correct statement that is absolutely categorically true? No, but most people who are not looking to be pedantic and win an Internet argument won't go looking to nitpick the details of my statement. What most level headed people will do is understand that my statement is about how you can not reliably compare a group of people who are predisposed to enjoy a movie to a group of people who review almost every single movie that's released, regardless of their predisposition towards it. People are welcome to argue that and honestly I'd expect nothing less, but it's a basic statistical principle that I expect every single researcher I hire to be well familiar with and if they're not, then I make the choice to not work with them. >you’d probably have less replies arguing with you here... There is also a selection bias among the people who comment on HN and they too are not representative of how most of the community feels towards a topic. The people who want to nitpick the specific wording of my statement are certainly entitled to do so and will likely find something to nitpick regardless of how I framed my statement, but it's not a particularly interesting discussion to follow up on.
  - yakak 5y ago
    Sure, though I think the other implication from the difference stated is that critics have sampled randomly or more often and can therefore recognize derivative work where a target audience that shares a limited interest in film will almost uniformly perceive novelty. I think realizing something is a poor knock off is the basis of snobbery.. so it is strange not to accept that answer.