Learning the color means you can make further predictions about the general distribution of ability over the general populace—not over the populace you have already selected/hired.
You didn’t give a reason for your wrong claim, so it’s hard to guess why you held it.
Maybe this will help: only if the test is infinitely long (produces an infinite amount of evidence as to the actual skill of the tested subject) will the prior evidence be completely irrelevant.
Ok, but I had the sense that, one you’ve already hired, based on skill, learning the colour will no longer give you any help in determining the skills of the people you have already hired… but will only give an indication of what percentage of each colour in the general population has the level of skill you hired-for.
Um—I’m not sure how this relates to what I said… can you please expand/clarify? :)
What I mean is: once you learn the colour, you can reason backwards that “oh, given we have X people with a skill roughly between 13 and 15… 90% of them are blue… this must imply that in the general population, blue weasels are more likely than red weasels to score roughly between 13 and 15 on skill tests at a ratio of roughly 9 to 1”
I don’t know that you can prove much else base don just that data alone.
Learning the color means you can make further predictions about the general distribution of ability over the general populace—not over the populace you have already selected/hired.
I have no problem with being wrong… but I do like to know why :)
You didn’t give a reason for your wrong claim, so it’s hard to guess why you held it.
Maybe this will help: only if the test is infinitely long (produces an infinite amount of evidence as to the actual skill of the tested subject) will the prior evidence be completely irrelevant.
Ok, but I had the sense that, one you’ve already hired, based on skill, learning the colour will no longer give you any help in determining the skills of the people you have already hired… but will only give an indication of what percentage of each colour in the general population has the level of skill you hired-for.
Instead of thinking “I perfectly measured his skill level; it’s 14”, think “I obtained X bits of evidence that his skill is between 13 and 15″.
Um—I’m not sure how this relates to what I said… can you please expand/clarify? :)
What I mean is: once you learn the colour, you can reason backwards that “oh, given we have X people with a skill roughly between 13 and 15… 90% of them are blue… this must imply that in the general population, blue weasels are more likely than red weasels to score roughly between 13 and 15 on skill tests at a ratio of roughly 9 to 1”
I don’t know that you can prove much else base don just that data alone.