The Deadly Sin of Statistical Reification

Created
Thu, 04/05/2023 - 20:59
Updated
Thu, 04/05/2023 - 20:59
People sometimes speak as if random variables “behave” in a certain way, as if they have a life of their own. Thus “X is normally distributed”, “W follows a gamma”, “The underlying distribution behind y is binomial”, and so on. To behave is to act, to be caused, to react. Somehow, it is thought, these […]