4 ms·

for whom is this unintuitive? pick two random numbers whose sum is 0.

• nerdponx 4y ago
  > pick two random numbers whose sum is 0. It's unintuitive if you don't realize that the numbers sum to 0. This stuff can creep up on you in real-world data without realizing it.
  • bmacho 4y ago
    Is that still happening? I'd guess that statisticians figured it out by now? Is it hard, or impossible maybe? But I agree with GP, how is this surprising? The example in the article is stupid, and I am not convinced whether there are any real surprising or counter-intuitive examples.
    • mxwsn 4y ago
      This can happen all the time in data science. Just add a few layers of bureaucracy and department separations between data gathering, cleaning/filtering, and analysis and it's easy to make the wrong conclusions on observed correlations without carefully thinking through all the filtering steps that might induce Berkson's paradox.
    • ZephyrBlu 4y ago
      It’s possible to implicitly filter your population, like in the hospital example given on the wiki page. Any situation where you make assumptions about the population could cause Berkson’s paradox. The Ellenberg example on the wiki page is a classic situation. Less attractive people are filtered out of the dating pool due to standards. This is reasonable, but it creates Berkson’s paradox. It’s often hard to realize this is happening.