This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
To any future monthly posters of SQ threads, please remember to add the "stupid_questions" tag.
For a stupid questions thread the language sounds remarkably domain-specific. Consider rephrasing in ELI5.
There is a variable X, x belongs to [0, 100]. There are n ways of measuring it, among them A and B are widely used. For any given measurer, the difference between x(A) and x(B) can be up to 20 points. Between two any measurers, x(A)1 and x(A)2 can differ on average 10 points, likewise with B.
Measurer 1 wants to know if it is meaningful to compare her results, x(A)1, with Measurer 2's results, x(B)2. Does the interval in which the true x lies include 40 points?
If Measurer 1 herself establishes the difference between x(C)1 and x(D)1, where C and D are two ot... (read more)