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But the method needs to be consistent over time for comparisons to be meaningful. If for example, they did rough extrapolations in the 50s, and then in the 90s

by bambax 4y ago

But the method needs to be consistent over time for comparisons to be meaningful. If for example, they did rough extrapolations in the 50s, and then in the 90s they were able to do an exact and exhaustive count, it's a problem. IDK if that's what happened, but we would want to know.

IanCal 4y ago
Consistent in certain aspects, not all. > If for example, they did rough extrapolations in the 50s, and then in the 90s they were able to do an exact and exhaustive count, it's a problem. That's not a change that's happened, smaller volumes are still analysed, but no that's not necessarily a problem. At such scales, "small" samples can be totally fine and have an extremely high chance of matching a complete analysis. That's why polling and sampling works. The problem shrinks even more when you're looking at averages over groups. Smaller samples are noisy, not biased. Averaging over many doesn't lower bias but it does lower the noise.