Vulture comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong

88 Post author: Yvain 26 October 2014 06:05PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (724)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: TobyBartels 23 October 2014 07:07:14AM *  4 points [-]

I'd be much more comfortable answering the probability sections if I knew what epsilon is. I usually say 0% when the value is less than 0.5% and 100% when the value is greater than 99.5%, rounding to the nearest whole percentage, on the grounds that the whole point of using percentages is to avoid explicit fractions (common or decimal). But then you ruin this by explicitly mentioning 0.5% and 99.99% as possible answers. If you had put a hard limit on the number of digits allowed, then I could have used that. In the end, since I saw no consistent guidance, I fell back on my usual practice. The result is that I had a lot of 0s and 100s; hopefully that won't mess up your algorithms.

ETA: It is probably relevant here that I am a naturally lazy person.

Comment author: Vulture 25 October 2014 09:40:23PM 0 points [-]

Even though percentages are typically used for cases where precision is less important, I'd say that in this context it would be better to err on the side of precision.