When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages
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HN comment orderThe concept of no members of a group fitting into the average range for all observations is reminiscent of the 'curse of dimensionality'. Can anyone with a data science background make the connection here? Secondly, this seems to explain why everyone hates autocorrect.
Note that this is not some sort of unexpected effect due to humans not behaving mathematically ideally; this is what happens when your intuitions about 1, 2 and 3 dimensions are applied to higher dimensional spaces. Consider the goal of being in the middle 50% of a random value on one dimension; you have a 50% chance. But if you have two dimensions, and you want to be in the middle 50% for both of them, it's a 25% chance…
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- Breakout years
- 2
- Total points
- 795
- Total comments
- 218
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016-01-22 | When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages | Splines | 2 | 0 |
| 2016-02-09 | When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages | GolDDranks | 2 | 0 |
| 2016-03-05 | When the U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averagesFirst breakout · Best thread | hecubus | 471 | 103 |
| 2018-01-24 | When the U.S. Air Force discovered the flaw of averages (2016) | nostrademons | 3 | 0 |
| 2020-04-23 | When U.S. air force discovered the flaw of averages (2016)Hall induction | elorant | 273 | 112 |
| 2021-12-28 | When U.S. Air Force discovered the flaw of averages (2016) | tosh | 1 | 0 |
| 2022-07-09 | When U.S. Air Force discovered the flaw of averages (2016)Latest 20+ point return | skanderbm | 43 | 3 |