A different kind of “bias-variance” tradeoff occurs in policy-making. Take college applications. One school might admit students based only on the SAT score. Another admits students based on scores, activities, essays, etc. The first school might reject a lot of exceptional people who just happen to be bad at test-taking. The second school tries to make sure they accept those kinds of exceptional people, but in the process of doing so, they will admit more unexceptional people with bad test scores who somehow manage to impress the admissions committee. The first school is “biased” against exceptional students with bad test grades—the second school has more “variance” because by attempting to capture the students that the first school who wrongly reject, they admit more low quality students as well. You might interpret this particular example as “sensitivity vs specificity.”
Another example would be a policy for splitting tips at a restaurant. One policy would be to have all the staff split the tips equally. Another policy would be to have no splitting of tips. Splitting tips incurs bias, not splitting incurs variance. An intermediary policy would be to have each staff member keep half of their own tips, and to contribute the other half to be redistributed.
A different kind of “bias-variance” tradeoff occurs in policy-making. Take college applications. One school might admit students based only on the SAT score. Another admits students based on scores, activities, essays, etc. The first school might reject a lot of exceptional people who just happen to be bad at test-taking. The second school tries to make sure they accept those kinds of exceptional people, but in the process of doing so, they will admit more unexceptional people with bad test scores who somehow manage to impress the admissions committee. The first school is “biased” against exceptional students with bad test grades—the second school has more “variance” because by attempting to capture the students that the first school who wrongly reject, they admit more low quality students as well. You might interpret this particular example as “sensitivity vs specificity.”
Another example would be a policy for splitting tips at a restaurant. One policy would be to have all the staff split the tips equally. Another policy would be to have no splitting of tips. Splitting tips incurs bias, not splitting incurs variance. An intermediary policy would be to have each staff member keep half of their own tips, and to contribute the other half to be redistributed.
Thanks, these are great examples. How did you come up with them?