• flora_explora@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    20 days ago

    Oof, I totally get the frustration of this person. I hate questionnaires because they often have logical fallacies or edge cases that they’ve missed. If it is a questionnaire about a systemic issue, I feel that it lacks complexity to see these edge cases. But if it is about a personal issue, it’s even worse because then my edge case isn’t even considered in the questionnaire.

  • Armand1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    25 days ago

    I mean, they’re right. It’s a very well explained problem and reasonable question.

    I guess here the “funny” is that the researcher did not consider this when writing questions, but it’s not particularly surprising.

    • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      25 days ago

      I mean, I LOL’d at the “this data is internally valid in the sense that I am precisely average in all respects, in relation to all the other [zero] people I know of the same sex” part just because it’s a clever way of saying it.

      • SpongyAneurysm@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        24 days ago

        Mathematically speaking it can’t be, because if you put it in relation to only the OTHER people, you’d have to divide by zero which ends up non defined.

        It only works out when you put it in relation to ALL people within those criteria, thus dividing by one.

        I know statistics is different from simple fractions, but the arithmetic mean is close enough to nitpick the phrasing like that.

        But the consequence is the same: it’s nonsensical. N=1 means: “B*tch, I am the mean, the median, ALL the percentiles and the outlier!”

        Somebody should put this in a rap track.