Re: STATISTICAL THOUGHT IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES Pt. II

From: Ray Recchia (rrecchia@mail.clarityconnect.com)
Date: Mon 23 Dec 2002 - 02:49:05 GMT

  • Next message: joedees@bellsouth.net: "One more note on my paper..."

    >When perusing whether and to what degree an existent
    (I'll just substitute 'item' where ever I see 'existent')

    > such as a behavior
    >or belief facilitates or hinders niche occupation in a spectrum of variable
    >environments (and the prevalence and concommitant social benefit or
    >superfluity of a particular behavior or belief is part and parcel of the
    >memetic environment), a fitness landscape is indeed a better
    >representation, but when simply perusing the spectrum of occurrence of a
    >particular existent, such as manifestation of a particular behavior
    >pattern or
    >belief in a certain concept, where some percentage is likely to manifest
    >such a behavior or hold such a concept more than others and less than still
    >others, the Bell curve is the most Occamically efficient faithful
    >representation of such a statistical spread.

    No. I think that if you want to describe what percentage of a population has a certain belief as opposed to another then a bell curve would not be appropriate unless you have gathered statistical evidence that a bell curve is the appropriate distribution for that belief. A two dimension array such as you were describing would also imply a range of behaviors along a scale and not just the percentage of one behavior. Such a range would have to have linear relationship so that one item differed from the other in such a manner that one could be said to 'increasing' from another and that another was 'decreasing'. The advantage of a multidimensional array is that there doesn't have to be a continuum of increasing or decreasing relationships between items.

    I couldn't find 'Occamically' . I think Occam would have preferred that you use 'simplistically'.

    Ray

    > >
    > > Ray Recchia
    > >

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