Re: clarify or clogify? re: Why the human race is growing apart

tgdenning@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Kent Paul Dolan <xanth...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
tgdenn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Kent Paul Dolan <xanth...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
tgdenn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

Huh?

I hope that clarifies the issues a bit rather
than muddying them still further. My technical
writing tends to set saints into frothing fits.
-- Kent Paul Dolan, kdo...@xxxxxxxx,
internal email, 2000/11/15

What exactly is a 'group metric'?

A measure of some statistic of a group, in the
current case, IQ, averaged across the group
membership.

When you give an IQ test, you are measuring some
characteristic of an individual.

A group, as you are using it, is a subset of the
set of humans who have taken the test. So you
are talking about the average of the individual
scores for the selected individuals. OK.

And why must some 'group' score highest?

We're dealing, conceptually, since IQ isn't
really an integer concept, with real numbers.

The real numbers are uncountably infinite,
which makes picking the same one at random
twice in a row really *really* hard to do.

But that has no relationship to the question at
hand, since we are not selecting at random from
the set of all integers.

Huh?

1) We are selecting from the set of integers
which represents the range of scores of the
entire population that has taken the test.

No, we are not. Read what I wrote, above.

2) We are not selecting group average scores at
random, but from real data.

Sigh. That level of ignorance is invincible, as you
go on to prove.

If we were to divide the population at random
into two groups, for example, the probability
would be *extremely high* that the average of
the scores would be identical.

You apparently don't understand what "identical"
means when you are talking about the real numbers.
The probability of that happening in the existing
universe is essentially zero.

Thus, the chance of the group metrics for the
top two groups being identical is an event of
probability zero.

See above.

No, _you_ see above.

You cannot just ignore what was written, then drag
in some unrelated red herring instead to support
your case.

Thus, in all cases of measuring statistics for
groups but a set of such case of measure zero,
among all such cases, one group will score
highest.

You may be saying something that makes sense,
but the way you are saying it doesn't.

And yet it still reads like plain English to
me, but then, I'm a math major, using words I
know in their technical senses, so I suppose it
would.

I understand the words in their technical sense,
thank you.

Apparently not.

I think you just don't understand the thing you
are talking about.

You tell me you understand the words, and then
argue against the selection necessarily being
unique as if it were a selection from among the
_integers_.

Read what I wrote until you _do_ understand the
words, please.

If the concepts are beyond you, that's fine too,
but right now you're arguing from ignorance, and
that is very much _not_ fine.

I gave a very clear example of the case.

Your example was very clear, and very incorrect, as
it had nothing to do with the case at hand.

If you randomly select two groups from a
population N, each consisting of N/2 individuals,
there is a high probability that the average score
of each group will be equivalent to IQ=100, as
calculated for the entire population.

Why don't you explain why this is incorrect, since
you are a 'math major'.

Because the math is being done over the reals, not
within the integers.

Did you never learn math past counting on your
fingers?

Sorry, until you read, and comprehend, what I wrote,
instead of arguing some completely unrelated integer
arithmetic case, I am _not_ going to spend any more
time attempting to educate you in what you claim
already to know.

You have to learn to chew your own food, not keep
asking others to do the work for you.

"It's not the things you don't know, it's the
things you think you know that aren't so."

Your eyes seem to heve just glazed over everywhere i
wrote "real number", which seems to be why you keep
talking about integer math instead.

Trying reading for comprehension this time.

http://www.google.com/search?q=define%3A"real+number";

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedekind_cut

http://www.math.ucsd.edu/~gptesler/283/283_exp_09-handout.pdf

xanthian.

.

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