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Three significant figures for a somewhat rough measurement of poverty over a sample of a population as diverse as India should have one's BS alarms blaring. Ac
by ta20240528 2y ago
Three significant figures for a somewhat rough measurement of poverty over a sample of a population as diverse as India should have one's BS alarms blaring.
Actually both 28,7 and 29,2 = 30.
Social workers playing at science.
- saagarjha 2y agoI fail to see how diversity in the country would change those metrics.
- abdullahkhalids 2y agoEconomic class is highly correlated with social, religious, ethnic, tribal class. If there are more social, religious, ethnic, tribal classes in a single country (i.e. the country is diverse) then in another, then you do need to sample more of the groups to get sample means free from systematic bias. Simple example: image you are asked to compute the mean diameter of all balls in each of two bags. You open the first bag, and it is all blue balls, and they all look very close in radius. So you measure a few and call it a day. You open the second bag, and there are balls of about 50 different colors, and it seems like all the colors have different radius. So, then to get a good result, you need to measure almost the diameter of most of the colors.
- ta20240528 2y agoIt makes it harder (impossible even) to take precise measurements deep into the decimal places if you have massive contours in the very thing (wealth) you are trying to measure with just one scalar number. Diversity is not meant in the modern political interpretation. As an less triggering exercise: try record in a single number the temperature - and change - of a large geographically diverse place like Australia - which has deserts and forests and is also subject to large periodic fluctuations like el Niño/la Niña. I submit that you would be embarrassed to say it went from 28,7°C to 29,2°C and think it meant anything. The misuse (and misunderstanding) of significant figures (let alone averages) is rampant in the social sciences. To the disadvantage of the folk we are all trying to help.
- defrost 2y agoIf the mean rolling average of all tempreture readings across Australia moved by 0.5 across a twelve month period that would indeed be a significant change that would certainly mean something.
- spinningarrow 2y agoCan you elaborate on that? Why would it be significant and what could it mean?
- exe34 2y agoit would mean it was warmer.
- bluGill 2y agoThat is also something really hard to measure correctly. There are many sources of error that are hard to correct for.
- defrost 2y agoThe Central Limit Theorem smooths any errors. Decades of observation data make instrument errors very easy to spot. In recent decades daily MODIS (satellite) polar orbit overpasses provide air column and ground temp data that infills station data (from 1900 onwards). There's a science to ground truthing, error detection, and data correction. Here's the gross single number continent wide average over a century: http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/climate/change/timeseries.cgi It's not hard to find raw data, finer grids, methodology, etc.
- bluGill 2y agoOnly sometimes. It is easier to measure in cities, and thus introduce bias based on whatever pavement is populate. There is a lot of data, and the people who measure this (or at least some of them) are aware of the issues and so correct for them. However you cannot just blindly apply the central limit theorem.