Edward Elliott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Ben Finney wrote: > > > I responded to a post that seemed to claim that anecdotes about events > > can be treated as data about events. They can't; that's what I'm > > arguing. > > And conveniently ignoring the key part of my post. Here it is again for > those who missed it: > > "Before the days of cheap video, lots of scientific data was gathered by > lone observers recording unrepeatable events. You build statistics by > accumulating a vast number of such observations over time." > > Sounds like anecdotes can become data to me.
Note the transformation though. You're not collecting data *about the unrepeatable events*, you're collecting data *about the reports*. Thus my assertion: anecdotes about events cannot be treated as data about those events. At best, they are data about *reports* of events. > It's a stupid argument anyway. Anecdotes *are* data. They're a different kind of data though. Anecdotes about UFO sightings says *nothing* for or against the existence of UFOs, only about the incidence of people reporting sightings of UFOs. Treating an anecdote about X as though it were a data point about X is a fallacy. Treating an aggregate of anecdotes about X as though it were data about X is a very common practice, but is equally a fallacy. -- \ "The reward of energy, enterprise and thrift is taxes." -- | `\ William Feather | _o__) | Ben Finney -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
