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by smallnamespace 3569 days ago
But are your coworkers representative of the general public?
1 comments

I fall into this trap so many times. You know in your logical brain that what you see isn't a good enough sample for any kind of statistical significance but at the same time you keep seeing things that every other part of your brain reckons is significant.

Like I see Belgian drivers driving terribly every day and I'm pretty certain that they're much worse than British and German drivers in every way. But the only statistical thing I can go back to is the number of deaths [1], which could include other aspects rather than just stupid driving.

My brain wants to shout out that their's clearly a problem, but that 'clearly' is only on the stretch of road I see. It could be that Belgian drivers are really good everywhere else in Belgium.

  [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate