Parable of the squirrels: Difference between revisions

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 :“What?” said Frank, crinkled his brow, but got on with munching.
 :“Therefore, O, Great Statistician, we propose that henceforth we systematically deprive Errol, and grey squirrels like him, of nuts, and give them to Frank, and similar red squirrels, to correct the imbalance.”
-The Great Statistician thought about it  for a while, and then said
+The Great Statistician thought about it  for a while, and then said,
+:“Now, the [[average]] for the red squirrels is the sum of existing nut allocations to re squirrels, divided by the total number of red squirrels. Is that not so?”
+:“Yes, that is so.”
+:“And it is the same for the grey squirrels?”
+:“Yes, it is so. And that would be true, too, of the median, mode and range.”
+:“Let’s come back to the [[median]] in a little while. But in many cases these are historical data, are they not?”
+:“Yes, O Great Statistician, they are.”
+:“Now, it seems to be either there ''has'' been a systematic preference in favour of grey squirrels, or there has not?”
+:“There has been! There has been!”
+:“And if there has, we should be able to find where it has happened in the historical record?”
+:“Well —”
+:“For the average that you point to is derived purely from historical cases. Is that not so?”
+:“It is so.”
+:“That might be difficult. And a bit awkward.”
+:“But if you could not find any historical examples of actual injustice in individual nut allocations, would it not also follow, that the data do not represent a systematic inequality at all, being as they are a mathematic function of of those individual nut allocations?”
+:“Well me might not be able to prove them but we know it is”