alt Hacker NewsI’d counter that if we were doing a good job gathering data that these structural biases could be compensated for with more conservative initial numbers.
At some point a lack of decision to take compensating action becomes faking the numbers.
I’d counter that if we were doing a good job gathering data that these structural biases could be compensated for with more conservative initial numbers.
At some point a lack of decision to take compensating action becomes faking the numbers.
> if we were doing a good job gathering data that these structural biases could be compensated for with more conservative initial numbers
There is no more conservative. The data will bias in the direction of trend. The point of the data are, in part, to measure that trend. Fucking with it to make it politically correct to the statistically illiterate is precisely the sort of degradation of data we’re worried about.
(They’re also useless as a time series if the methodology changes quarter to quarter. That’s the job of analysis. Not the data.)