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Joined 1 year ago
Cake day: June 12th, 2023
  • billwashere@lemmy.worldtoAsklemmy@lemmy.ml•What do you secretly judge people for?English
    21·
    22 days ago

    I’ve got a great example. My wife and I argue about directions all the time. I usually think Google and Apple maps are going to give me the quickest route because it’s an algorithm based on more data than I currently have like traffic and current road conditions. She’s usually all about her “gut” feeling and it involves these very convoluted paths that involve way too many extra intersections and very unknown conditions like others thinking the exact same thing and making it way more congested. I wasn’t even going to get into things like game theory since that would be way over her head. She very smart just not about nerdy things like that. Anyway I was like fine, ok let’s test it. Let’s see which way is quicker. Of course no two situations are going to be exact given changing variables like traffic patterns, times of day, construction, etc. but given enough data we could definitely prove which way is better: her gut feeling or taking the suggested route from the appropriate app. That’s science. Come up with a hypothesis, then a method to test the hypothesis, and then do the test. In this case it’s pretty simple to figure out if it works. You’re just comparing times. But nope, doesn’t wanna do it. And she’s all about the science. During COVID she even said we should be doing what the epidemiologists and doctors suggest since they “have done the science”. Here’s a chance for use to do a very simple version of that same thing.