tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307187040250193857.post7560385603079722837..comments2024-03-20T03:33:22.357-07:00Comments on Skeptophilia: The law of small numbersGordon Bonnethttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06003472005971594466noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307187040250193857.post-64255060266044130852011-11-16T11:10:13.850-08:002011-11-16T11:10:13.850-08:00I don't know about Benford's Law -- I'...I don't know about Benford's Law -- I'll have to look that one up. I love those statistical effects -- I'm no expert in statistics, but that sort of thing explains so much in the way that we interpret what we experience.<br /><br />It also brings to mind what a statistican once said -- that the lottery was a "tax on people who don't understand statistics."<br /><br />Thanks so much for your thoughtful & interesting comments on my posts -- they make my day (and I've missed them!).Gordon Bonnethttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06003472005971594466noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4307187040250193857.post-2685175708084706982011-11-16T10:37:33.096-08:002011-11-16T10:37:33.096-08:00Very nicely explained; truly a difficult point to ...Very nicely explained; truly a difficult point to make clear<br />And all this without mention of the amazingly counter-intuitive Benford's Law. That the first digit of most data-fields lists of numbers is much more likely to be a '1', with the probabilities approaching a known percentage as the base becomes larger. I'm not doing it justice here, of course. I only recall that I did understand, after hours of brow-wrinkling, why this should be so. Back years ago on a great hair day.jsolberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06841488269105958013noreply@blogger.com