Will_Sawin comments on Beyond Statistics 101 - Less Wrong

19 Post author: JonahSinick 26 June 2015 10:24AM

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Comment author: VoiceOfRa 27 June 2015 01:36:21AM 3 points [-]

That's because outside of physics (and possibly chemistry) there are enough constants running around that all quantities are effectively dimensionless. I'm having a hard time seeing a situation in say biology where I could propose dimensional analysis with a straight face, to say nothing of softer sciences.

Comment author: Will_Sawin 27 June 2015 10:01:32PM 2 points [-]

One thing that most scientists in these soft scientists already have a good grasp on, but a lot of laypeople do not, is the idea of appropriately normalizing parameters. For instance dividing something by the mass of the body, or the population of a nation, to do comparisons between individuals/nations of different sizes.

People will often make bad comparisons where they don't normalize properly. But hopefully most people reading this article are not at risk for that.