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First you have to define what you consider to be a health plan that is crappy, then explain why someone is stupid for buying such a plan and then explain how doing so hurts anyone else. All you are demonstrating here is a statist reflex to defend anything the government commands you to do
Perhaps we need to get government involved, to establish some minimum standards for a forum discussion to meet, and to make it illegal to start a discussion based on a crap premise.
By definition half the population will have a below average IQ and it doesn't follow from that that simply because one has a below average IQ one is incapable of sound decision making.
What makes for a bad insurance policy? And is the policy bad or is it that people are buying policies that are ill suited for their needs? Those are I think two completely different things.
Technically all those things already exist for example if I lived in Qubec it is technically illegal to possess and sell soy butter now that is stupid but making things such as the incredibly stupid beer made form jet fuel I agree with. I would love to see sagging pants in public laws. Though for the places you can live unlike Americans we have a right to it. We also limit professions such as we do not allow voodoo healers. So far we haven't slid down that slippery slope. Many other countries have already done it by eliminating health insurance. We have things called regulations if you have a right to buy crap why do we need food inspectors?
By definition half the population will have a below average IQ and it doesn't follow from that that simply because one has a below average IQ one is incapable of sound decision making.
It's probably true that more than half the population do not understand the difference between median and average.
Experience has shown that too many people are not capable of choosing the policy that is right for them as demonstrated by the fact that an inability to pay medical bills is the leading cause of bankruptcy in the US
It's probably true that more than half the population do not understand the difference between median and average.
I'm guessing in some of those cases (many) it's not that people are incapable as much as having their choices limited by economics.
If getting a good policy means you can't pay for college but getting an okay policy means you can I'm guessing lots of people would roll the dice and take the latter. Especially if they figure in the worst case, if they happily live long enough to be presented with a million dollar bill, they can get the debt discharged via bankruptcy.
By definition half the population will have a below average IQ and it doesn't follow from that that simply because one has a below average IQ one is incapable of sound decision making.
What makes for a bad insurance policy? And is the policy bad or is it that people are buying policies that are ill suited for their needs? Those are I think two completely different things.
It's probably true that more than half the population do not understand the difference between median and average.
Damn. Open mouth insert foot.
I actually do know the difference for whats its worth. And given the population size and the rather small range of IQ scores I'm willing to bet the mean and median are close enough to each other that for all practical purposes half the population is below the mean IQ. Doesn't excuse my misstatement.....
It may be true that half the population is below average (or mean), but you were incorrect when you said that it is true by definition.
By definition, it is true that half the population is below the median. That's what the median is—the point that divides the top half from the bottom half. Also known as the 50th percentile. It may or may not be very close to the average/mean, but nothing about the definition of any term requires this to be so nor guarantees that it will be.
In the case of IQ scores, the median is the same as the avg. The test is designed that way
It depends on what you mean by "the definition". If you're referring to the general meaning of the words mean and median, then you're right; It's not "by definition". They don't have to be the same #.
However, if you're referring to the words as they're applied to the IQ test, then you're wrong because the IQ test is designed so that the avg is the mean *and* the median.
Not possible.
At best, the test can be designed so that the average will tend to be as close as the designers of the test can get it to the median; but it will never be possible to guarantee how the data will be distributed. All it takes is enopugh excptional outliers on one side, without a corresponding weight of exceptional outliers on the other side, to skew the average away from the median.
I recall hearing claims about the average human life expectancy at some time in the distant past being about thirty or forty years. This was probably true, but it is misleading. On would tend to take this claim to mean that a large part of the population lived until about the age of thirty or forty and then died at around that age. In fact, the average would be skewed heavily downward by a high infant mortality rate. The first year or so of one's life is the most vulnerable, and in poor conditions, many might not survive past those first few years; but if they do make it that long, they then have a good chance of living until their sixties or seventies, at least.
You do have a point. It is probably not exactly the same. However, the test is designed to produce results that when put on a graph, the line describes a perfect bell curve. Given the #'s of people involved in taking the test, I believe they come pretty damn close. Any deviation is insignificant.
That shows a serious misunderstanding of some basic principles of statistic. The bell curve isn't an artificial construct, to which statisticians try to fit their data. It's a natural phenomenon, that most natural data tend to produce, when properly analyzed. If one measures a lot of data, graphs them, and finds that the results do not appear to fit a bell curve, then one needs to take that as a sign that either one is doing something wrong, or else that there is some odd phenomenon that is causing the data to take on an unnatural distribution.
I didn't say that a bell curve is an artificial construct.
And there's nothing wrong with datasets that do not conform to a bell curve. Such non-conformance is not, in any way, a sign that the data or the process is wrong . There's nothing unnatural about it.
Here's an example:
However, the IQ test is designed to produce results that graph out to a bell curve based on the assumption that intelligence is distributed in a bell curve
It may be true that half the population is below average (or mean), but you were incorrect when you said that it is true by definition.
By definition, it is true that half the population is below the median. That's what the median is—the point that divides the top half from the bottom half. Also known as the 50th percentile. It may or may not be very close to the average/mean, but nothing about the definition of any term requires this to be so nor guarantees that it will be.
The bell curve pertains to the distribution of data. That's not what the above chart shows, so there's no reason to expect that it would show a bell curve.
That's nonsense. If the data are expected to be normally distributed, then you don't have to “design” anything to make them fit a bell curve. Normally-distributed data will fit a bell curve without any such tinkering.
Data distributions do not have to conform to a bell curve. I'm not sure where you got that idea.
Yes, and for the BLUE ones, too. The only difference now is that it is institutionalized through codification.Do I still have to pay for RED scofflaws who buy crap when they are forced to emergency scare ?
Do I still have to pay for RED scofflaws who buy crap when they are forced to emergency scare ?
Well, I would think you had better hope the government doesn't one day decide some of your stupid decisions are no longer allowed because they've decided they hurt others.
Like what kind of clothes you wear, or what kind of food you eat? Maybe where you chose to live, or what profession you chose to follow?
Why is it that history shows slippery slopes are so hard for some to see.
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