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jmalickitoday at 3:12 PM2 repliesview on HN

No, they shouldn't. Timely estimates as to the best knowledge of our current situation is extremely important for decision making under uncertainty.

If the error bars are large, that is important information to know.


Replies

vlovich123today at 3:33 PM

What decisions are so important and time sensitive they depend on these numbers right after a month is over? And also we at one point were making decisions without these numbers yet the quality of the decision making isn’t clearly improved.

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win311fwgtoday at 3:35 PM

> If the error bars are large, that is important information to know.

The data is available. If it were important to the causal reader, however, then those casual readers would have already demanded its presence. But they don't care. What difference does it make to Hilary Homemaker? She just wants to get to say "Did you hear about the bad economic news?" when gossiping with her friends.

Those who need to understand the uncertainty will already be looking at more than a news headline anyway.