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So you would have trouble telling whether a given person is taller or shorter than average?
by enasterosophes 4y ago
So you would have trouble telling whether a given person is taller or shorter than average?
- hcks 4y agoThanks for illustrating what parent comment said: it would be ridiculous to categorise only between “tall” and “short” when most people would fall into “kinda average”
- runarberg 4y agoA friendly reminder that height is not normally distributed either. Within a population it has a bimodal distribution. Also a friendly reminder that a quarter standard deviations above the mean vs. the same distance below the mean is quite often a trivial difference in population statistics. And it should be nonsense (pseudoscience if you will) to make the distinction. A much more interesting statistic are the outliers. And grouping an outlier with a person who is 0.05 SD from the mean is just confusing at best.
- HWR_14 4y agoDoes it have a bimodal distribution because you're combining male and female normal distributions?
- runarberg 4y agoPartially yes. But a distinguished homogeneous population of a single gender probably has a normal distribution. Luckily humans usually don’t live in a distinguished homogeneous population of a single gender, so comparing your self to the average is at best fun. (unless you are an outlier, then it can be interesting or medically useful).