this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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collapse of the old society

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[–] Got_Bent 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It's been quite some time since I took stats, but wouldn't six standard deviations put it in the true outlier category? If I'm even twenty percent correct in what I'm trying to communicate, that's frightening.

[–] coffeeguy 27 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Person who does lots of stats checking in. That's a good question. We usually refer to Sigma (1-sigma, 2-sigma... 6-sigma) as the probability that an observation could occur by random chance.

The probability of 6-sigma occurring by random chance is about 1:1-billion.

So you're definitely right to characterize it as an outlier. In terms of sea-ice this means that based on our observations of ice extent recorded going back to 1989 (based on the image) it is extremely unlikely we would expect to observe a sea ice extent so far below the norm suggesting something else (climate change) explains the deviation.

[–] Dagnet 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Been a while since I studied standard deviations but I remember 2 being already an outlier, 6 is a lot of deviation

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I never took statistics, but 6 is at least triple the deviations of 2, and probably even more for math reasons I neither will nor can get into.

[–] AstroKevin 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did take statistics and forgot most of it, but I think I'm totally fine eating 2 hotdogs but the closer I get to 6 hotdogs, the increasingly more difficult it is.

[–] Coreidan 1 points 1 year ago

It makes you wonder how people eat hundreds of those in competitions

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Correct, outlier until it's repeated next year and the following. Then we can statistically say we're fucked.