Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Comments on How to intuit : married smokers × all people < all smokers × all married people ?

Post

How to intuit : married smokers × all people < all smokers × all married people ?

+0
−0

How can I intuit inequality (3) in my previous post? The author intuits inequalities (1) and (2), but not (3).

Scilicet, how can you explain inequality (3) to a 10 year old? I can't intuit the meaning of multiplying smokers $\times$ people!

      If you multiply both sides of each inequality by the common denominator (all people) × (all smokers) you can see that the two statements are different ways of saying the same thing:

(married smokers) × (all people) < (all smokers) × (all married people) Why doesn't $\tag{3}$ work?

      In the same way, if smoking and marriage were positively correlated, it would mean that married people were more likely than average to smoke and smokers more likely than average to be married.

Ellenberg, How Not to Be Wrong (2014), page 348.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

1 comment thread

General comments (1 comment)
General comments
r~~‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

Completely off topic, but: if you've been taught that, in English, choosing a more obscure word always demonstrates mastery of the language, you've been taught incorrectly. Inappropriate use of obscure words looks far sillier than common words used correctly. (If you are fortunate enough even to find a native English speaker who uses scilicet naturally, this is not how they would use it.)