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When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

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Re: When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

#101
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly enough, even the proportion of points within a distance of 1/2 to the midpoint becomes really small for higher dimensions.

takeaway: With enough dimensions everyone is weird

Bad news for advertisers who want to use a zillion targeting factors -- and yet somehow not be disappointed by the minuscule audience that results ...

Re: When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

#102
post #90
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or as one of my professor would say (after showing the calculation for n-dimensional spheres): "and that's why infinite dimensional oranges are all skin!"

This must be a common saying. I've heard it from every lecturer I've ever had for machine learning and sampling techniques.

I suspect it comes from statistical physics, as it's a very common approximation when you're in the thermodynamical limit, which basically means that the phase space has a very large number of dimensions.

Re: When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

#103
For anybody getting a message that says "Please try loading the page again after activating mobile data or connecting to a Wi-Fi network." = it's not your connection, despite what the page says. The mobile site, http://m.thestar.com/ , is giving that message on desktop too and it comes from the site itself.

Re: When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A cockpit is not a suit. The opposite is true. To fly an airplane with precision, you need to "strap the airplane on." That means sitting in the position with the best visibility and best reach inside the cockpit, even a Cessna 172. (In a 172, you should sit high enough to be able to see each of the rivets on top of the cowling.)

Yes, but the seat does adjust. It isn't the case that the cockpit must be tailored to every person. Each Cessna, 747 or f-16 seat is practically interchangeable amongst the type. These aren't WWI biplanes with nothing more than a cushion. Even then, the cushion height, the prime dictator of eye level, is adjustable.

The seat adjusts because of the study described by the article...

Re: When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly, imputation of "race" by genome testing depends crucially on assuming that the average genome is informative, This is a nonsensical mischaracterization of both modern genetics and the theory of high dimensional vector spaces. The phenomenon the article is discussing is the fact that the mass near the center of a normal distribution approaches zero as the number of dimensions goes up, and that most of the ma…

I can talk about some of this, if only because of some of the ethical dilemmas facing me and genome testing as of recent. Racial Groups as described by a geneticist vs say, a government doing polling on its citizens are different animals. Goverments == mostly sociological. An example would be Hispanic in the US, where growing up data collection would ask if someone was Hispanic, and now it asks if you are white vs no…

Great post, thanks! You use 'Mestizo' once, and then 'mezito' several times. Is this slang, a repeated typo, or a term of the art? Google doesn't find much for it.

Re: When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

#109
post #90
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or as one of my professor would say (after showing the calculation for n-dimensional spheres): "and that's why infinite dimensional oranges are all skin!"

This must be a common saying. I've heard it from every lecturer I've ever had for machine learning and sampling techniques.

It's undoubtedly pithy. (sorry!)

Re: When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages

#110
post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can talk about some of this, if only because of some of the ethical dilemmas facing me and genome testing as of recent. Racial Groups as described by a geneticist vs say, a government doing polling on its citizens are different animals. Goverments == mostly sociological. An example would be Hispanic in the US, where growing up data collection would ask if someone was Hispanic, and now it asks if you are white vs no…

Great post, thanks! You use 'Mestizo' once, and then 'mezito' several times. Is this slang, a repeated typo, or a term of the art? Google doesn't find much for it.

Mestizo means mixed Amerind European ancestry, exactly like mulatto means mixed African European ancestry. They're both from colonial Spanish racial categories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mestizo

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