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And then he proceeds to happily make a vanilla average out of ratios that are up to a full order of magnitude different in both numerator and denominator. You're not allowed to do that. When you divide a very small number by another very small number, you get a higher uncertainty on your ratio than when you divide a very big number by another very big number. One or two wrongfully indicted Serbs from the Croatian war - or one or two hundred civilians miscounted - would count far more towards the ratio than a similar number for Bosnia.

So the three ratios cannot be given equal weight. You avoid all these problems by using a weighted average. But of course, the "signal" goes away when you do that...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue Mar 17th, 2009 at 04:58:29 AM EST
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