[snitzr]

Why isn't 7 greater than 5?

[DeepSeaTortoise]

Statistics gave him the superpower of predicting the future:

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/fight-club-57-movie

[glitchc]

That's hilarious!

[avg_dev]

yes, and informative. i was looking at the article and i thought everything made sense but i could tell i was missing something about this line...

[senkora]

Treat them as two draws from possibly different, independent distributions.

The question is whether the distribution that drew 7 “stochastically dominates” the distribution that drew 5. You may or may not be able to conclude that based on the available data and assumptions about the distributions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_dominance

For example, if you assume that the two distributions are approximately normal with very small variances, then you can probably conclude that the distribution that drew 7 stochastically dominates the distribution that drew 5. But if you assume that the variances are large, then you probably can’t conclude that.

[dlivingston]

Sounds like you should read the article. :)

Kidding. The idea is that there may be some statistical uncertainty associated with the measurement of 7, and also of 5, and so the "real" value of 7 may actually be less than the "real" value of 5.