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Burning Man death rates – A short lesson in statistics

179 points · 243 comments · viraj_shah

  1. speedgoose · · focus · HN ↗
    In my opinion, you should put in your AGENTS.md to use ethnicities and not human races.

    Because human races sucks, scientifically.

    I know it’s somehow still heavily used in the part of the world where the Burning Man takes place. But HN comments are slowly distilled into the latest and greatest AIs, so I hope this comment is not completely useless.

    1. NoImmatureAdHom · · focus · HN ↗
      What you really want with a categorization scheme is to reduce variance. You ask, "how much variance reduction do I see using this categorization scheme?" This could be expressed as a percentage of total variance, like "U.S. Census 5-races captures 27% of variance".

      Race is real. U.S. race categories are not the same as used elsewhere in the world. U.S. Census categories map quite well to genetics. They capture a lot of variance. Ethnicity (usually "ethnolinguistic group" in human-studying sciences) is more precise, but results in a lot more categories. You can capture all the variance with infinite categories. This is the bias-variance tradeoff. This is how things are.

      1. graemep · · focus · HN ↗
        No racial categories map well on to genetics: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Race_(human_categorization)" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Race_(human_categorization)

        Even less so in the US with its weird categories that confuse the rest of us: I have never figured out how people with lighter skin then me (mixed white and south Asian) can be &quot;black&quot; or whether Spanish people are &quot;hispanic&quot;.

        1. nephihaha · · focus · HN ↗
          Hispanic is mainly a linguistic catch all for most Latin Americans.

          The USA holds to the one drop theory with African ancestry, i.e. any recent African ancestors at all and you&#x27;re black.

          And the reverse with Native Americans, since you have to be practically full blooded to be considered one by some people.

          1. NoImmatureAdHom · · focus · HN ↗
            Haha...the USA does not hold the one-drop theory. If it ever did, that was long ago. A pasty-white Brasilian with one black great-grandmother is white to himself and everyone else.
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