Statistics and Philosophy
Statistics and PhilosophyWhen I was in college somehow I liked the business statistics class. And I liked coninuous data more than attribute data. For the benefit of non-statistics readers, data can be categorized into two distinctly different groups at the extreme. Purists would say there are more than two categories (like ordinal data and discrete data) but at a higer level there are essentially two types: continuous and attribute. Continuous data means your ability to define the quality in precise terms is high - like temperature you can state 90 degrees or 90.5 degrees or 90.25 degrees etc. Attribute data on the other hand is just categories - like hot and cold - where you do not necessarily know what level of temperature is defined as hot and what is not.
The reason I liked continuous data is mainly because the number of tests that you can perform to define the subset or population in precise dimension increases tremendously as compared to attribute data. Being the kind of geek I was with mathematics and statistics I naturally liked continuous data as I can engage myself for long time with that - and just like a unreasonable teenager I thought how nice it would have been if everything is continuous rather than attribute!
Over the period I learnt more about statistics and about life! As I learnt more about Statistics I realized that having a continuous data does not mean that it is good (or bad) and having an attribute data does not mean bad (or good). We need both (and other types like discrete and ordinal) types and they all make up the whole! And ofcourse you can make a continuous data to be classifed as attributes by drawing some boundaries about attributes and by the same token by defining a measure even attributes can become continuous. In short, there are no 'good' or 'bad' data - there just is data.
It is the same in life. There are certain things I like to go for continuous scale - like time spent with my family - not just saying I spent time but more keen on how many hours (and how good it was - an attribute!). And there are certain things I want to go for attribute scale - like doing atleast one 'good' deed every day - the 'good' here is just a judgmental attribute of mine not necessarily measurable in a scale.
More than this I also see the philosophy of Zen - emphasizing in 'attribute' (or discrete) way - emphasizing on the 'present', and the continous angle of the Hindu philosophy - that life is just a cycle that flows from birth to death to birth again. The famous quote "You never step into the same river twice" actually describes the interviening nature of continuous scale and attribute scale at the same time. When you are alive, you are there and when you are dead there is corpose and you are not there! You and the corpse are the same - yet different! Sounds paradoxical but yet it is so!!
posted by ரங்கா - Ranga @ 5:11 AM
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