4 ms·
I have been seeing more and more usage of 'ex post' and 'ex ante' lately. What do they convey that isn't conveyed by 'after' and 'before'?
by hawk_ 3y ago
I have been seeing more and more usage of 'ex post' and 'ex ante' lately. What do they convey that isn't conveyed by 'after' and 'before'?
- timidiceball 3y agoit conveys that you know what ex post and ex ante mean
- jhardy54 3y agoOr, quite often, conveys that you don’t know what they mean.
- yt-sdb 3y ago"Before" and "after" are generic terms. A car might stop before the crosswalk (space). You might eat dinner after work (time). But "ex ante" and "ex post" specify a relationship to an (random) event or to specific information. For example, a data scientist might compute a quantity "ex ante". This means that the quantity was estimated using only forecast data. No historical data was used. It would not make sense, however, to say that a car stops ex ante the crosswalk. I could have easily said "afterwards" and "beforehand", but I like "ex post" and "ex ante" when referring to before/after having access to specific information.
- hawk_ 3y agoGot it. I will try to leverage the synergies between Latin and English ex post.