[PascLeRasc]

Is the inspection paradox what would happen if you surveyed everyone on how many siblings they had, and every sibling double-counted N-1 times (where N is the number of siblings in their family), inflating the resulting "average number of siblings", or is that something different?

[combatentropy]

This is my first exposure to it, but yes, I think so. My paraphrase is: The Inspection Paradox is when you ask someone "in the mix" about the mix. You're only going to get an accurate estimation of the mix by standing outside of the mix.

So yes, if you want an accurate count of siblings, you would consult some spreadsheet that just lists how many children each family had. If you go and start asking the families themselves (those "in the mix") then your results will be skewed.

I thought the article that this article linked to was also very good, "The Inspection Paradox Is Everywhere," by Allen Downey, http://allendowney.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-inspection-parad...