[HN Gopher] Frequency Format Hypothesis
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Frequency Format Hypothesis
Author : Agraillo
Score : 40 points
Date : 2023-03-26 10:55 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| smodad wrote:
| Really? I've always been the opposite for some reason. I find it
| easier to visualize 20% of a pie chart, or of a crowd, or a
| length, etc. It's a lot harder for me to think about 1/5 of a
| crowd or 1/5 of a length.
|
| It's tangentially related to this, but I've seen posts on social
| media over the years of how people visualize different kinds of
| information. For example, some people think of the months of the
| year in a vertical fashion, others horizontal.
|
| I'm curious if this is something similar where some people find a
| certain way of thinking of probability easier than others.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| Think of it this way: if I said that 0.001 or 0.1% of people
| had a certain congenital disease; that may seem like not many
| people at all. Say it as 1 in every 1000 people, or about
| 330,000 people in America, and it seems like a lot of people.
| kevmo314 wrote:
| That sounds a lot like prompt engineering for humans.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| It's important to remember that a substantial fraction (at least
| 20% -- 1 in 5 [0]) of the adult population is really
| uncomfortable with percentages. Percentages are abstract, but it
| is easy for me to think of 5 relatives and estimate how many can
| do simple math.
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2016/mar/07/a-fifth-
| of...
| tshaddox wrote:
| That article is about adults being uncomfortable with both
| fractions and percentages. Considering "20%" just means "20 in
| 100," I doubt "1 in 5" is going to be much more comfortable for
| these adults.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| I think the point of that article (and the larger point about
| math anxiety) is that many people do not realize that 20%
| "just means" 20 in 100. And it probably gets worse for
| percentages < 1%.
| wirrbel wrote:
| the information leaflets for medication are written here
| (Germany) in case numbers and not in percentages, following a
| "1 in X" scheme (1 in 100, 1 in 1000, 1 in 10000) which I
| think kind of makes sense for inclusiveness, on the other
| side I do think this way is almost as if providing values on
| a logarithmic scale, due to the X in "1 in X" being given in
| base-10 magnitudes.
|
| I wonder if it would actually be more intuitive to use dice
| for comparison. Like 1/36 would be the probability to roll
| doubles of 6, 1/216 would be the probability to roll triples
| of 6, etc. Rolling 6 dices to 6 would be 1/46656 and 7 dices
| to 6 would be 1/279936, ...
|
| At least my generation has played enough Yatzeeh to have a
| feel for dice-throwing :-)
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