If your feet are in a bucket of ice and your head’s in a oven, on average you’re at a comfortable temperature.
The average family has 2.4 children.
And as for correlations, some years ago I wrote this brief note on how little predictive use you get from the typical magnitude of published correlations.
You probably know the story of the three statisticians hunting a tiger? The first statistician’s shot goes wild, one meter to the left. The second statistician applies a correction, but overcompensates and misses, one meter to the right.
Ya… i need to expand on that in the post—we have that sort of understanding of how the averages fail (‘average temperature in a hospital’), but we don’t seem to apply it well to correlations (which are still just averages).
edit: your brief note is great. You can expand on something popular—e.g. IQ tests—consider different IQ scores and what they actually tell about probability of individual doing this well or this badly on another IQ test (using correlation between 2 IQ tests). Or assuming that there is some ‘IQ’ that IQ tests correlate with, what does IQ test actually tell about the IQ.
The average human has one ovary and one testicle.
If your feet are in a bucket of ice and your head’s in a oven, on average you’re at a comfortable temperature.
The average family has 2.4 children.
And as for correlations, some years ago I wrote this brief note on how little predictive use you get from the typical magnitude of published correlations.
You probably know the story of the three statisticians hunting a tiger? The first statistician’s shot goes wild, one meter to the left. The second statistician applies a correction, but overcompensates and misses, one meter to the right.
And that’s when the third yells “Got ’im!”
Ya… i need to expand on that in the post—we have that sort of understanding of how the averages fail (‘average temperature in a hospital’), but we don’t seem to apply it well to correlations (which are still just averages).
edit: your brief note is great. You can expand on something popular—e.g. IQ tests—consider different IQ scores and what they actually tell about probability of individual doing this well or this badly on another IQ test (using correlation between 2 IQ tests). Or assuming that there is some ‘IQ’ that IQ tests correlate with, what does IQ test actually tell about the IQ.