4 ms·

Why would it be? All careers with leverage seem to follow a Pareto distribution. It would surprise me if any sport, art, or creative endeavor was normally distr

by eloff 4y ago

Why would it be? All careers with leverage seem to follow a Pareto distribution. It would surprise me if any sport, art, or creative endeavor was normally distributed.

jonahx 4y ago
You're right. I was thinking the "initial talent" might be normal in the way IQ scores are, but the parent was talking about actual performance, where history, training, etc all come into play. And empirically, you have Gretzky in hockey, Jordan in basketball....
- OscarCunningham 4y ago
  IQ is normally distributed because it's graded on a curve to make that true by definition. I'm not sure how it's distributed on any sort of 'natural' scale.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    What would such a natural scale look like?
    - derefr 4y ago
      Maybe a cross-species IQ score would be interesting. Chimpanzees and corvids both can solve many IQ-test problems, but also are not experiencing the Flynn effect as far as we know. So we could measure IQ in multiples of a chimp's IQ, just like we measure cars in multiple's of a workhorse's sustainable pulling output. (Which is actually a less objective measure, when you think about it; we were breeding workhorses to increase that very target at the time the concept of "horsepower" was invented!)
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        That would be a great start. And it would also force us to acknowledge that a lot of the things that we are doing with these animals are utterly un-ethical.
    - OscarCunningham 4y ago
      I'm reminded of the paper 'Measuring universal intelligence: Towards an anytime intelligence test' https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370210001554 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000437021....
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        Thank you for the pointer.
  - derbOac 4y ago
    No, it's scaled but linearly and not redistributed. There's still studies of relatively raw distributions and it still looks normal. The biggest deviations from normality are due to an excess mass in the lower range due to disease, and a tendency for scores to spike a tiny bit at certain numbers, probably due to people administering the test fudging a bit sometimes for various reasons.
- eloff 4y ago
  I don’t even think initial talent is normally distributed. Take Usain Bolt, for example, he’d be a far outlier in a Pareto distribution for sprinters just on the basis of his natural heritage.
  - hgsgm 4y ago
derefr 4y ago
I suppose the distribution of aptitude would be a normal distribution in a world where careers were assigned randomly at birth and advancing in your career was on a strict seniority basis. So, for example, you'd see it in career paths that are mostly followed as generational family businesses.

by eloff 4y ago

Why would it be? All careers with leverage seem to follow a Pareto distribution. It would surprise me if any sport, art, or creative endeavor was normally distributed.

jonahx 4y ago

You're right. I was thinking the "initial talent" might be normal in the way IQ scores are, but the parent was talking about actual performance, where history, training, etc all come into play. And empirically, you have Gretzky in hockey, Jordan in basketball....

OscarCunningham 4y ago
IQ is normally distributed because it's graded on a curve to make that true by definition. I'm not sure how it's distributed on any sort of 'natural' scale.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  What would such a natural scale look like?
  - derefr 4y ago
    Maybe a cross-species IQ score would be interesting. Chimpanzees and corvids both can solve many IQ-test problems, but also are not experiencing the Flynn effect as far as we know. So we could measure IQ in multiples of a chimp's IQ, just like we measure cars in multiple's of a workhorse's sustainable pulling output. (Which is actually a less objective measure, when you think about it; we were breeding workhorses to increase that very target at the time the concept of "horsepower" was invented!)
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      That would be a great start. And it would also force us to acknowledge that a lot of the things that we are doing with these animals are utterly un-ethical.
  - OscarCunningham 4y ago
    I'm reminded of the paper 'Measuring universal intelligence: Towards an anytime intelligence test' https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0004370210001554 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000437021....
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      Thank you for the pointer.
- derbOac 4y ago
  No, it's scaled but linearly and not redistributed. There's still studies of relatively raw distributions and it still looks normal. The biggest deviations from normality are due to an excess mass in the lower range due to disease, and a tendency for scores to spike a tiny bit at certain numbers, probably due to people administering the test fudging a bit sometimes for various reasons.
eloff 4y ago
I don’t even think initial talent is normally distributed. Take Usain Bolt, for example, he’d be a far outlier in a Pareto distribution for sprinters just on the basis of his natural heritage.
- hgsgm 4y ago

derefr 4y ago

I suppose the distribution of aptitude would be a normal distribution in a world where careers were assigned randomly at birth and advancing in your career was on a strict seniority basis. So, for example, you'd see it in career paths that are mostly followed as generational family businesses.