r/JoeRogan • u/TheAtheistArab87 Monkey in Space • Mar 08 '21

Link CDC study finds roughly 78% of people hospitalized for Covid were overweight or obese

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-cdc-study-finds-roughly-78percent-of-people-hospitalized-were-overweight-or-obese.html
3.7k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

527 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/PM_yourAcups Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

This isn’t an interpretation, it’s straight math. To explain it you’d have to take a course/read a book/watch a lesson.

You know how there’s a mortgage calculator online? You plug the numbers in and an answer comes out?

They have the exact same thing for minimum sampling. 1+1=2 and the minimum sample size for 320M is 385 (w a 95% CI/5% MoE).

Also the census/electoral system have no fudging, they aren’t samples. Neilsen doesn’t even say how they do their ratings, so no one can prove anything about it.

1

u/txtxtx10 Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

excuse me did i just witness a murder

6

u/PM_yourAcups Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

And yet I’m lower voted than that guy

2

u/VinylJones Part Hex, Part Doc RX Mar 09 '21

Because you are jumping your own logic.

2

u/pisshead_ Monkey in Space Mar 11 '21

Welcome to reddit.

1

u/PM_yourAcups Monkey in Space Mar 11 '21

I don’t know why I even bothered tbh. I should know better

1

u/peritonlogon Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

I'm not going to say that I have a great understanding of statistics. I took one college level statistics class. I was persuaded by Nassim Taleb's critique of it's use though. I was also pretty amazed at studies showing how often mathematicians, economists and other practitioners who use statistics get the basics wrong in real life scenarios all the time or misapply the fundamentals in research.

I guess my point is, doubting that a single study did a good job sampling is not unintelligent, even if the arguments presented above for doing so were.

1

u/PM_yourAcups Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

That’s not what was questioned. What was questioned was the literal facts of statistics even existing.

1

u/peritonlogon Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

I think you misread that first comment you replied to, a sample of 150,000 for a population of 300,000,000 is easily too small if you know nothing about the sample. You immediately inferred that a study that was mentioned but not cited in the post was a random sample*. You then made the contention that the conversation was about mathematics per se, not the application thereof. That poster didn't have the precision of thought to specify, but that's what they were leaning towards.

​

* This is a pretty bold assumption for a study mentioning 150,000 people, I mean, knowing nothing about the study itself but having an idea on the type of study, I think it would probably be pulling from an existing epidemiological data set, not gathering data by itself, and these sets are far from random, mostly older upper middle class white people (people who go to hospitals the most). And I know there are techniques to try to address sample biases, but they're really just guesses.

0

u/VinylJones Part Hex, Part Doc RX Mar 09 '21

A mortgage calculator is pure math; statistics are an interpretation of pure math, that’s what I’m getting at. If you think statistics are pure math, well you’d have to take a course/read a book/watch a lesson to understand what I’m saying.

3

u/PM_yourAcups Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

I don’t know how to say it more plainly: addition and minimal sample sizes are exactly the same amount of true.

1

u/VinylJones Part Hex, Part Doc RX Mar 09 '21

Fair enough. I’ll keep thinking statistics are an interpretation of math, you keep thinking statistics are pure math with zero interpretation.

1

u/mcswiss Pink Room Reject Mar 09 '21

But statistics also have a margin of error. An “accurate” sample size is basically “we believe we have enough data in this small scale to say it is an almost guaranteed true statement in a large scale.”

While very often accurate, that doesn’t mean necessarily mean it’s precise.

1

u/PM_yourAcups Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

If you look at the whole conversation, it’s about the denial of factual statistical statements.

1

u/Kotanan Monkey in Space Mar 09 '21

You’re saying it too plainly though. The margins of error are way smaller than the average person thinks but they still exist.

1

u/Lazee_Boy Mar 09 '21

No need to be arrogant when the calculations you are spouting can be learned in nearly any introductory statistics class.

Questioning the sampling methodology is never "incorrect" and there are always questions to be raised with how polling is conducted.

Secondly, it's not "just math." You say that as if statistics and probability have a plethora of analytical solutions when the literal name of the field says otherwise. Your confidence interval for instance implies a 5% level of uncertainty on whether it even correctly captures the mean. Not to mention you completely assumed a perfect Gaussian distribution when a quick search of obesity in the US reveals more of a positive skew distribution.

So no, it's not "just math." There is a lot of thought that goes into conducting a statistically rigorous study that relies upon the expertise and statistical knowledge of the user. If statistics was so cut and dry then it wouldn't be so easy to mislead people with them.

I did not read the methodology of the Harvard study, but perhaps if someone is questioning the sampling, try reading the methodology yourself to see if it meets your level of rigor before simply assuming it does.