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People on HN (maybe elsewhere too) devote a lot of attention to sample sizes. I don't know the upthread commenter at all, but in general I suspect it's because
by wolverine876 3y ago
People on HN (maybe elsewhere too) devote a lot of attention to sample sizes. I don't know the upthread commenter at all, but in general I suspect it's because that is an easy thing to understand about research and statistics, and it's a valid critique they've seen professionals use.
A normal human fallacy is to focus on the thing you understand, that is easy to understand (e.g., easy to quantify), and overlook the difficult issues that are far more important. There is much more, of much more importance going on in most of these studies, and in their statistics and validity, than the sample size.
- treflop 3y agoElsewhere too I first took stats in high school and we read a bunch of valid small sample size studies so I don’t know where people are failing to get educated. There were so many factors going into whether a study was good.
- ajb 3y agoExactly. Famous example: Lady tasting Tea [1]. N=1 or N=8 depending on how you look at it. Still significant. This is the one that proves that it's possible to tell whether you added the milk first or second. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_tasting_tea