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Comment by glaugh | Hacker News Reader

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glaugh·

OP here. Thoughts/questions/comments?

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I would recommend toning down the advertising a bit. Leave it in the beginning, or at the end, but not both.

Duly noted. Thanks for the feedback.

edit: Deleted the ad at the end, replaced with a link to the front page.

Ugh, it ended just when I was getting really excited. I wish you'd incorporated more rules (or at least rules of thumb) on when to use and trust group level data.

Why is it called the "ecological" fallacy?

Ecology is the scientific study of the relationships that living organisms have with each other and with their natural environment.

An ecological fallacy (or ecological inference fallacy) is a logical fallacy in the interpretation of statistical data where inferences about the nature of individuals are deduced from inference for the group to which those individuals belong.

The article was relatively short. Perhaps you could expand (or follow it up) with some consideration of how to spot the ecological fallacy and how to avoid it?

Also you don't go into much detail explaining the smoking cancer example. Is it the case that the data turned out to be right 'in spite of' the fallacy or was it a case where the data was immune to the problems of other cases?

Can you describe how the ecological fallacy is related to Simpson's paradox?

Simpson's paradox is an example of the ecological fallacy. I think specifically when you have the signs of the group relationship being the opposite of the individual relationship like in http://blog.statwing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ecologic....

Wikipedia has more specific math for this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_fallacy#Simpson.27s_...

You make a lot of counter arguments without supporting evidence.

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