epursimuove comments on 2012 Survey Results - Less Wrong

80 Post author: Yvain 07 December 2012 09:04PM

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Comment author: epursimuove 14 November 2014 11:11:42AM 7 points [-]

There seems to be a pretty big potential confounder: age. Many respondents' younger siblings are too young to be contributing to this site, while no one's older siblings are too old (unless they're dead, but since ~98% of the community is under age 60 that's not a significant concern).

Comment author: DanielLC 14 November 2014 10:42:16PM 7 points [-]

You're saying that if we randomly picked 22-31 year-olds, a disproportionate member would be eldest children? For that to work, there'd have to be more eldest children in that age-range than youngest. Given the increase in population, that is certainly plausible. You would expect more younger families than older families, which means that within an age range there would be a disproportionate number of older siblings (unless it's so young that not all of the younger siblings have been born yet) but it doesn't seem like it would be nearly that significant.

Many respondents' younger siblings are too young to be contributing to this site, while no one's older siblings are too old

The fact that most of the respondents are eldest children is a confounder for this.

(unless they're dead, but since ~98% of the community is under age 60 that's not a significant concern).

In that case, wouldn't people over 60 also be too old?

Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 26 November 2014 12:31:17PM 0 points [-]

Can somebody redo the analysis by controlling for age?