fubarobfusco comments on Generalizing From One Example - Less Wrong

259 Post author: Yvain 28 April 2009 10:00PM

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Comment author: TheOtherDave 21 January 2012 07:30:36PM 2 points [-]

That doesn't make it an invalid question. There are tall women and short women, and there are tall men and short men, but asking whether women as a class are taller than men is a perfectly valid question, made no less so by my not happening to know the answer.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 21 January 2012 10:28:22PM 4 points [-]

Sure, it's a valid question, but an ambiguous one. It isn't at all clear that the only right way to answer "Are class X taller than class Y?" is to compare the mean height of members of X and Y. There are other metrics — for certain purposes, you might want to compare the maxima, the 95th percentiles, or the medians. Depending on why you're asking the question, any of these (or others) could be the right answer to comparing populations.