Does anyone understand statistics anymore?

[snotmare]

You mean like, "I will give you 110% of my effort"?


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He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive. - King Solomon

 

[sbudzynski]

haha it reminds me of Maury Povich shows.

Maury I'm 1 million percent sure he is the father!

(she was only a thousand percent sure about the last guy)

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Steve Budzynski


"So, pass another round around for the kids. Who have nothing left to lose and for those souls old and sold out by the soles of my shoes"

 

[Dollie]

Does anybody else get annoyed about this sort of thing?

I'm annoyed by it 150% of the time!

 

[snotmare]

But what about in the movie "Hunt for the Red October", where the Russian sub is ordered to sink the other defecting Russian sub. The captain is flustered because he gets the orders late, and he tells the engineer to go to "105 percent on the reactor!"

Isn't that a real-life scenario where you would think that 100% was the max, but something above 100% is still logical?


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He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive. - King Solomon

 

[CajunCenturion]

The leads to the question, 100% of what? As with so many things linguistic, it comes down to context.

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[snotmare]

I'm no expert with submarine reactors, but I'm sure they have a recommended range of usage, where 100% is the max recommended.


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He who has knowledge spares his words, and a man of understanding is of a calm spirit. Even a fool is counted wise when he holds his peace; when he shuts his lips, he is considered perceptive. - King Solomon

 

[edfair]

Somewhat like the Atlanta streets where 120% of the speed limit is the norm and 150% isn't unusual except for motorcycles where they have clocked above 225%.
Yeah, they have power limits above which there is risk of damage.
Had a kid on a boomer when HRO was published. It was so lifelike that his entire crew bought the book rather than wait for hand-me-downs. I can't verify the ownership but he was pretty sure that everybody had a copy.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[SilentAiche]

Had a kid on a boomer...

Was the kid okay?

I'd heard that contractions come in waves, but that's really taking it literaly (imbedded book joke - "litter asea"). Anyone notice when the water broke?

Tim



[gray] Ed, for the record, your kid's my hero. As well as all the brave souls who served with him, before him, or since. [/gray]


[blue]________________________________________________________
"To be rather than to seem" - Official Motto of the State of North Carolina[/blue]

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> Was the kid okay?
Sorry Tim, but that isn't up to your standard. Definately, a sub-par joke.

--------------
Good Luck
To get the most from your Tek-Tips experience, please read FAQ181-2886
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[SilentAiche]

CC,

At least it didn't rhyme.

That would have been sub-versive!

Tim

[green] I have a standard? Nobody told me![/green]



[blue]________________________________________________________
"To be rather than to seem" - Official Motto of the State of North Carolina[/blue]

 

[rosieb]

One scary example of this is the mother convicted of murdering her two babies, after both had died of SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).

An "Expert" argued that, as the statistical chance of each death was 1 in 8,500, the chance of two in one family was 1 in 8500 squared ie 1 in 73 million. This assumes that the deaths were totally unrelated.

It was subsequently demonstrated that a family which has suffered from one SIDS death is much more likely to suffer a second death, 1 in 130,000. Roughly speaking this means that rather than happening once in 100 years (1:73million), a double death is likely to happen 5 times each year (in the UK).

I've lifted these figures from

http://plus.maths.org/issue21/features/clark/index.html

(The woman was cleared, after spending 4 years in prison.)

However, at the time, no-one - not even her defence - questioned the statistics.



Rosie
"Don't try to improve one thing by 100%, try to improve 100 things by 1%