Re: percentage of popcon submitters
On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 10:00:04PM +0100, markus schnalke wrote:
> I know it is not possible to _know_ the real percentage of uses which
> submit popcon stats of all users. But I want to ask for guesses,
> because more oppinions do likely improve the result.
This question of trying to figure out whether a book is good or bad by
looking at it carefully or by taking the reports of a lot of people who
looked at it carelessly is like this famous old problem: Nobody was
permitted to see the Emperor of China, and the question was, What is the
length of the Emperor of China's nose? To find out, you go all over the
country asking people what they think the length of the Emperor of China's
nose is, and you average it. And that would be very "accurate" because you
averaged so many people. But it's no way to find anything out; when you have
a very wide range of people who contribute without looking carefully at it,
you don't improve your knowledge of the situation by averaging.
-- Richard P. Feynman, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!
--
Noah Slater, http://tumbolia.org/nslater
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