Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

I have no opinion on the matter at hand, however I do have an opinion making ANY conclusions on a sample size of n=5...


Even a sample size of 5 allows us to reject some claims. Consider claim - "this die is fair". If it comes up a six 5 times out of 5, we're justified in being suspicious.


Well sure, your example here is objective based on pure numbers. Statistically there is much less than a fraction of a percent of that occurring by chance alone, so being suspicious is absolutely justified.

But a dice is the antithesis of human behavior. The example I was talking about was almost completely subjective in nature and with 5 samples from an (assumingly) untrained observer (given he/she was a reporter, not a clinical researcher) leads to a whole lot of observation/experimenter bias.

So while my original if n=5, reject may not have been 100% accurate, in the case of human behavioral analyses, I stand by it.


Thirteen bits suspicious.


... scratch that. Closer to ten bits, since the first throw isn't suspicious, assuming we had no reason to privilege 6 coming in.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: