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TobyBartels comments on 2014 Less Wrong Census/Survey - Less Wrong
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I think it might have been better to ask people to estimate what are the odds that a given statement is true. If a probability of a statement is close to zero or close to one, it gives us better precision without having to worry about digits after the decimal point (however, if a probability is close to one half, it is probably better to ask for a probability). Although it is easy to convert odds to probabilities, how many people in this survey actually took the mental effort to remind themselves to calculate the odds first and only then to express them as probabilities? I might be wrong, but I guess that only a minority. An idea for the next year survey - it might be interesting to compare the answers of two groups, one of which would be asked to estimate probabilities, the other one to estimate the odds.
Yes, odds are good (and log-odds are even better), but people are bad at both dealing with very large absolute values and dealing with very fine precisions. I think that the survey is correct to put in a cut-off (whether an ϵ for probabilities, an N for log-odds, or one of each for odds); it should just tell us where. (Edit: put in stuff about log-odds properly.)