Writing fetishes: Introductory experiment · 8:59pm Mar 30th, 2014
BLECH. Post to be deleted. I will make a new post later. Please ignore.
Half of undergraduates at ivy league schools scored at the 98th percentile or above on their SATs.
If we assume that 2% of students at American undergraduate colleges could score in the 98th percentile or above on their SATs, and you choose a student who could or did score in the 98th percentile or above on their SATs, what are the chances that they’re in an ivy league college?
A) 10%
B) 50%
C) 90%
If you don't think there's enough information to know, just guess. (Yes, I'm going somewhere with this.)
ADDED: Okay, that was stupid, for 2 reasons.
First, as theGECK pointed out, only half of students took the SAT. Would the students who didn't take the SAT score, on average, the same as those who took it? Probably not.
Second, I was trying to illustrate a common reasoning error, but you guys are mathing all over me instead of just guessing like ordinary people. This question isn't really the kind of question I want to talk about. I'll think of a better way to pose a problem & write a new post.
Not enough information to answer this, because we'd need to know the populations of students who score 98% or above on the SAT's versus those who are accepted into Ivy League colleges.
Not enough info to know, but I guess I'll go with 10%. If you hadn't given me three choices, though, I would have guessed a lot lower. I mean, you figure about 20% of people go or have gone to college in the US (a number I happen to know off the top of my head); that means that (even without trying to factor in the "what's a good SAT score worth" bit) a 10% figure is essentially saying that one in fifty Americans who do well on the SATs attend or have attended an Ivy-League school. That sounds way too high to me, but I don't really know.
I suspect that far less than 2% of the population of students taking the SATs go to Ivy League colleges. So I'm gonna assume that it's 10%, but I don't know.
I can also confirm on a firsthand basis that good test scores mean jackshit to elite colleges without the grades to back it up.
Statistically speaking, I want to say 10% (A). Non-'Ivy League' colleges are in the far majority here for sheer numbers.
I agree with 1967209 that there isn't enough information to know for sure, but I'll guess (A). Just because someone ranks at or above the 98th percentile on their SAT doesn't imply that they want to go to an Ivy League school. It depends on the individual students' goals. To put it simply, a student's SAT score is not necessarily connected to which colleges they decide to apply to.
I enjoy a numbers challenge, so I'm game. Based on what I can find for 2012 statistics, approximately 1.5 million students took the SATs, so 98th percentile and up would be about 30,000 students. In the same year, Ivy League schools expected to take in 14,000 total new students (again, according to numbers quickly found on google, may or may not be accurate). Assuming these are true, and half of those Ivy Leaguers scored 98th percentile or above, then 7000 of those 30,000 who scored 98th percentile ended up in Ivy League schools.
Therefore the likelihood that someone who scored 98th percentile on the SAT goes to an Ivy League school would be around 7000/30000, or close to 20%. No idea if this is accurate in any way, but it was fun to analyze quickly.
Well, let's see. 90% would mean the population of Ivy League schools is around 1.8x2=3.6% of all students. Sounds a bit high. 50% means 1x2=2% of all students. Obviously we've gone down, but not unreasonable. 10% is .2x2=.4%, and this is a tab ridiculous. I'd say we're talking 50%, because 90 sounds unrealistic and 10% is unfeasible, from a population standpoint.
I'd say D) Less than 10% myself, but failing that, 10%.
Simply because it is more likely to be part of subset A if you are in subset B doesn't measure up if the likelihood of subset B is infinitesimal.
For instance, 50% of my friends named Skye are female. What is the likelihood of a specific friend of mine is named Skye?
1967278
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1967209
Guys,
The answer is 10%, but the question doesn't illustrate the point I wanted to make, so I'll delete it later today & write a new post.
50% because of the cost prohibitive nature of ivy league schools.
Not enough information. By Bayes theorem you also need the probability of scoring 98%+ and the probability of getting into an ivy league school. But as per instructions A) 10%.
I would try and look up the information to try and make an accurate guess, if it wasn't obvious that you're not looking for that. (Hint: Look at the title.)
Judging by crap like Fifty Shades of Grey, I'd say that every undergraduate college has enough ivy around somewhere for all the students in America that are interested in ivy. If you write it, they will... arrive at the location suitable for reading.
EDIT: 1967287 Well maybe it wasn't so obvious, even though it's right in the title...
1967258
Well, 98th percentile isn't just 'doing well'; it's the top two percent. So, 20% of Americans go to college; 2% of those score in the top two percent; 10% of those go ivy; which works out to 1 in 2500 Americans, which still seems high.
And anecdotally, I was 98th percentile myself, and I wasn't particularly close. So yeah, I'll say A).
Didn't see the poll at first. B - 50%....kinda.
Time for huge guesses! Taking numbers from here: The total undergraduate enrollment of Brown is 6,316. They offered 2,619 spots for the class of 2018 and expect an incoming class of 1,560. Extrapolating those numbers says that a freshman class should be around 25% of the undergraduate population. Amazing how back of the napkin math confirms the obvious!
The total undergraduate population of the 8 Ivy League schools is 59,561, for a current freshman class of 14,890 (25% of the current student body).
The current freshman class would have taken the SATs in 2013. The data for 2013 shows that 1,660,047 students took the SAT. The 98th percentile would be 2% of them, or 33,200 people. That means that the ratio of people who are in the 98th percentile to those who attend Ivy League schools is about 45/100.
Of course, that doesn't say anything about the likelihood of going to an Ivy League school if you're in the 98th percentile, but if you don't just state "you have a 1 in 2 chance" and don't give people a chance to think about it too closely nobody will notice.
Obvious problems:
- The numbers only work if everybody attending an Ivy League school are in the 98th percentile or higher.
- The numbers assume that everybody who placed in the 98th percentile or higher applied to Ivy League schools.
- The SATs have different categories that one could be higher or lower in.
- SAT score is not the only factor accounted for during the admission process.
1967287
I am curious where you're going with this.
Specifically, are you going to be talking about the process of writing fetishes, or "writing fetishes"?
1967307
Dammit, you pointed out a flaw in my reasoning: Not all college freshmen took the SAT. I was saying "98th percentile of those who took the SAT" and meaning "98th percentile".
1967313 I want to talk about features that good writing has. But I am going nowhere with this post, because I realized after posting it that it is wrong.
1967287
10%? Really? Huh, I thought Ivy schools had a bigger presence than that.
1967335 Not really; turns out it's 20% of those who took the SAT, which is half of all students. I was trying to say, "What's the odds that someone in the 98th percentile went to an ivy league school?", but the data I have doesn't let me compute that, except that it's between 10% and 20%.
Like 1%.
100,000 people take sat
2,000 in 98+%
1,000 apply to ivy.
ivy takes about 10%, so 100.
so 100/100,000
1967340
Ah, I see. Unclear data is the death of easy communication, eh?
Imma gonna be pants-on-head retarded and admit that when I saw the blog title, I was like, "Wowee. Bad Horse has tips on writing fetish smut. Wait, what?! There's something intelligent to be said about smut?"
And then I clicked and stared in horror at all the putrid numbers. And reasoning, which completely flies over my head (durr).
I don't understand any of this. I was lured in by false advertising. Or my own failure at seeing anything other than smut whenever the word "fetish" appears, which I will furiously refuse to believe.
Bad Horse strikes again(?)
The answer is C. Whatever.
1967805 Yes. I lured you into math. Deliberately.
25 times the probability that a randomly-selected student attends an Ivy League school.
1968231
*gasp*
You caught my attention, gently shaking a bag of Wiskas cat treats in hoof. I padded over and begged, no idea that your followers had jammed staples into each and every tasty meat morsel, not even realizing their part in your scheme.
You teasing architect. You conductor of numbers. You hoofed scoundrel.
For being so bad, you get some pretentious Starbucks pastry. It's too rich in every way for my tastes.
i.imgur.com/ivWq2xY.jpg
Horse shaking a Wiskas treat bag... that's going in the big pile of amusing Bad Horse imagery I have building up.
Oh, I almost forgot:
Error of the zeroth type: Getting the right answer to the wrong question to have asked in the first place.
Ordinary people don't read your blogposts, only the extraordinary. For the most part, that's a positive thing. (With me, it's like having a collie nose a dictionary open on the coffee table, sure, but I'm the outlier.) It doesn't help you get 'ordinary' reactions, though.
I actually did score in the 98th+ percentile on my SATs
I then promptly went to the local community college
didn't even apply for anything else
1970000 That's approximately right, BTW.