4 ms·

sample size: 490 people iq difference between living and dead: 3 iq points statistically significant?

• Tichy 18y ago
  Do the maths? There are established algorithms for calculating statistic significance.
  • aaronblohowiak 18y ago
    But at the end of the day, where the line was drawn between significant and not was arbitrary and has no special meaning. The standardization around p values helps us to compare studies, sure, but it is not magical.
    • Tichy 18y ago
      It is true that "significance" can be arbitrarily defined, but I think if you can calculate the confidence, it is not arbitrary. If you have the number that with x% probability something is the case, you have learned something. I suspect that 490 is quite a big sample actually, but I am too lazy to do the maths (and I am missing background information - of course if it was just one battle, it is a different thing than looking at the whole of WW2, and so on).
      • utnick 18y ago
        490 might be an ok sample, I don't know I've never taken a statistics class I mainly thought that 3 iq points is not a big difference in intelligence, pretty much a wash.
        • Tichy 18y ago
          Even the 3 IQ points I am not sure about - it might on depend where on the curve the difference appears. 30 points is a very big difference apparently (IQ 100 makes you smart enough for high school, and IQ 130 makes you smart enough for the Mensa club of highly intelligent people, or something like that). The 3 is not "3% difference in intelligence". I am not familiar enough with the whole IQ thing to be able to judge if the difference is significant, though.