Parable of the squirrels
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Once upon a time, there was discord in the kingdom of the squirrels. The red squirrels, being the more photogenic, the more popular and the more basically indigenous, rose up and complained to the statistician-general. They said, “O, great statitician! The grey squirrels have more nuts than us! This is unjust! It is due to illegitimate hierarchical structures in the squirrel community, which unfairly skew nut distributions towards the greys.”
The greys couldn’t be reached for comment, because they were too busy munching on all their nuts.
The statistician mumbled something about multivariate regressions but the reds would not be deterred. Their spokesquirrel continued:
- “Look: on average, grey squirrels have more nuts than red squirrels. This cannot be denied. Is it not so?”
- “It is so,” said the Statistician. “The data are very clear about this.”
- “Exactly. This, as we have said, is unjust. Social structures are illegitimately weighted to favour those great big fat, greasy grey squirrels.”
- “Hey!” said a passing grey squirrel. “Enough of the fat-shaming. And the trash-talking about grease, for that matter.”
- “Therefore,” continued the Red Leader, “as we red squirrels are systematically repressed, it follows as a matter of inexorable logic, that this red squirrel, Errol, has fewer than his rightful allocation of nuts..”
- “I do?” said Errol.
- “ ... and this grey squirrel, Frank, has too many.”
- “What?” said Frank, crinkled his brow, but got on with munching.
- “Well, I suppose so,” said Errol.
- “Don’t let the side down!” hissed the Red Leader.
- “Therefore, great Statistitican, we propose that henceforth wel systematically deprive Errol, and grey squirrels like him, of nuts, and give them to Frank, and similar red squirrels, to correct the imbalance.”