Peter Duniho wrote:

"Jessica Taylor" wrote in message
...
Not true. The very foundation of Statistics is infering facts about an
entire
population through the use of a much smaller representative sample.

The "facts" that one infers describe a known *portion* of the population.
You cannot prove anything about 100% of a population with statistics. It is
impossible.

Again, the only one who is tossing "100%" around is you.



Not true. We can prove that a medicine is effective at treating a malady
without testing its effectiveness on 100% of its population.

You cannot use statistics to prove that a medicine will be effective on 100%
of the population.

So what? That is what confidence intervals are for. But you already knew that,
right?



We can prove that
chronic smokers have a higher risk of bladder and lung cancers than their
peers
who have never smoked without needing to find the entire populations of
smokers
and non smokers.

The very term "risk" precludes an absolute statement about 100% of the
population. That's why statistics can be used to describe risk. You can
use statistics to prove "risk", but you cannot use statistics to prove
actual outcomes. In this example, you cannot use statistics to prove that
100% of chronic smokers WILL have bladder and lung cancers. The best you
can do is prove that it is likely a certain percentage of them will.

Of course you cannot prove something that is not true.



Those are two different things. If you fail to comprehend that, you have no
idea what statistics actually is.

Statistics has nothing to do with it.

Not true but then again, I don't believe that the original poster said
100%.

Any blanket generalization is necessarily applied to the entire population.

Maybe.


That's why blanket generalizations are so offensive in the first place.

Sort of like somebody stating that they know their politics will be different
because they "are from mass [sic]," right?


I'm not surprised you're having trouble understanding this. You're a woman.
Those people are the least mathematically inclined around!

I understand just fine, thank you.