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beoShaffer comments on Open Thread, October 1-15, 2012 - Less Wrong Discussion

1 Post author: David_Gerard 01 October 2012 05:54AM

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Comment author: beoShaffer 05 October 2012 04:41:51AM *  2 points [-]

During a recent real life encounter I saw something that I am almost certain is a statistical fallacy, and I am trying to find the formal name for it. As the incident involved a political topic I am filling the serial numbers off. Someone pointed out that in population P, a rather nonstandard group, subgroups a and b suffered from (high number)% frequency of untimely death and presented this as evidence that a and b were being discriminated against, without provided the base rate for population P/ the death toll for non a, non b, members of P. Can anyone help me out here?

edited for grammar/clarity

Comment author: Kindly 05 October 2012 05:01:10AM 1 point [-]

The base rate fallacy seems like an appropriate name, but in practice it seems like that's reserved specifically for confusing Pr[A|B] with Pr[B|A] in the way outlined in the Wikipedia article.