[HN Gopher] The inspection paradox is everywhere (2015)
___________________________________________________________________
The inspection paradox is everywhere (2015)
Author : ColinWright
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-03-04 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (allendowney.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (allendowney.blogspot.com)
| dang wrote:
| Related. Others?
|
| _The Inspection Paradox is Everywhere: a surprising statistical
| illusion_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20665234 - Aug
| 2019 (4 comments)
|
| _Inspection Paradox (2015)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18342560 - Oct 2018 (13
| comments)
| twic wrote:
| One i noticed when working with star catalogue data decades ago:
| most stars are in binary (or higher) systems. But most star
| systems are single!
| layer8 wrote:
| The link to the "new version" 404s, but this is probably a copy
| of it: https://medium.com/towards-data-science/the-inspection-
| parad...
|
| Also, this relates to renewal theory:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewal_theory#Inspection_para...
| lisper wrote:
| "Inspection paradox" seems like a misnomer. It has nothing to do
| with inspection and it isn't a paradox. It's just selection bias
| [1] or more specifically, sampling bias [2]. In the case of class
| sizes, are you asking the average class size from the point of
| view of a student (N per class) or a teacher (1 per class)? Take
| the extreme case where you have one class with 99 students and
| one class with one student. From the student's point of view, the
| average class has 98 students. From the teachers' point of view,
| the average class has 50.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selection_bias
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_bias
| roenxi wrote:
| It is called that because one of the most common places it
| turns up is managers/inspectors doing routine work. Typically
| if a manager checks in on their report they'll be stuck doing
| something that takes a lot longer than usual. If an inspector
| inspects ... I dunno, widgets, then the widget will typically
| be unusual because of selection biases.
|
| I'd expect that since this is the usual workplace introduction
| to the economic value of knowing about the bias it got its name
| there. A lot of confused people trying to work out why their
| data makes no sense.
|
| The other fun workplace paradox would be if HR ever tries to be
| data driven, does some metrics over the engineering department
| and works out that a degree is inversely correlated with any
| attempted at measure of skill. Fortunately most HR persons are
| not interested enough in stats to try that approach.
| hatthew wrote:
| It's a veridical paradox, because while it's logically
| consistent it still runs counter to most people's intuition.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > The same effect applies to passenger planes. Airlines complain
| that they are losing money because so many flights are nearly
| empty. At the same time passengers complain that flying is
| miserable because planes are too full. They could both be right.
| When a flight is nearly empty, only a few passengers enjoy the
| extra space. But when a flight is full, many passengers feel the
| crunch.
|
| But my complaints about flights being too full is based only on
| my own experience. I don't think people are upset about airplanes
| crowdedness because _they surveyed a bunch of people_ and
| concluded from the survey that airplanes are crowded.
| m463 wrote:
| Even while they're empty, you don't have enough legroom.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-03-04 23:00 UTC)