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0 pointsjohn-h-k9mo ago0 comments

It doesn’t imply that. I’m pretty sure it is all false positives, but that number does not imply that. It could simply be that only ~1 in 84 smokers was being fined before

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jfengel9mo ago

A large number of false positives would likely show up as a deluge of negative reviews. "They charged me $500 and I've never smoked in my life". Surely some of those would be lies, and you'd have to dig them out from the existing pile of petty grievances that result in bad reviews. But I suspect it would still be pretty clear if there were that many false positives.

hinkley9mo ago

No, this is a statistics trope. “Our revenue has grown 50x this year” always means “our revenue was <something laughable like $100> and now it’s <something still laughable like $5000>”

Because when your revenue goes from $10 million to half a billion, you just say that. Percentages are papering over bad initial or final conditions.

SoftTalker9mo ago

Drug companies do it all the time. They market something as providing a "50% reduction" in some metric and in the fine print you find it's a change from 0.5% to 0.25% in occurrence.

hinkley9mo ago

50% reduction in death rate sounds impressive until you find out it’s 3 out of 8 billion people, true.

john-h-kOP9mo ago

> No, this is a statistics trope. “Our revenue has grown 50x this year” always means “our revenue was <something laughable like $100> and now it’s <something still laughable like $5000>”

Orthogonal. I said it doesn’t imply it, and it doesn’t. It may suggest it’s likely - and it does - but it does not imply it.

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jfengel9mo ago

hinkley9mo ago

No, this is a statistics trope. “Our revenue has grown 50x this year” always means “our revenue was <something laughable like $100> and now it’s <something still laughable like $5000>”

Because when your revenue goes from $10 million to half a billion, you just say that. Percentages are papering over bad initial or final conditions.

SoftTalker9mo ago

Drug companies do it all the time. They market something as providing a "50% reduction" in some metric and in the fine print you find it's a change from 0.5% to 0.25% in occurrence.

hinkley9mo ago

50% reduction in death rate sounds impressive until you find out it’s 3 out of 8 billion people, true.

john-h-kOP9mo ago

> No, this is a statistics trope. “Our revenue has grown 50x this year” always means “our revenue was <something laughable like $100> and now it’s <something still laughable like $5000>”

Orthogonal. I said it doesn’t imply it, and it doesn’t. It may suggest it’s likely - and it does - but it does not imply it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse