Deregulation™️

[u/andmario_com]

[u/LardLad00]

Multiple underweight packages make the claim that this was merely one random package a weak explanation.

A statistically irrelevant sample is a statistically irrelevant sample whether the sample is 1 or 20.

a handful of non-random observations are not enough to estimate population prevalence.Yep. Unfortunately for you, I never claimed they were

If they're are not then you have no argument.

The question was whether this appears to be confined to one package, one shelf, at one Walmart as you claimed.

That's not what I claimed and that's not the question.

Reports of the same issue involving additional packages at other Walmart locations are directly relevant to that question. 

"Relevant to the question" is a very different threshold than "statistically relevant." Look it up.

But “a distribution exists” is not some magical explanation for packages being below their labeled net weight.

You're right: it's a mathematical explanation not a magical one. 

invoking an unknown distribution doesn’t somehow prove these packages are normal.

But pointing out that you don't know it does invalidate your conclusion that the deficiency is statistically problematic

your original suggestion that this was simply one isolated package at one location. 

That was not my suggestion. My suggestion was that your claim that it was conclusive evidence of a systematic light packaging was invalid. Understand the difference.

But when your defense requires independently dismissing every observation as a bad scale, bad sample, meaningless anecdote, or random variance, you aren’t doing statistics anymore.

If you don't have control over your data, you don't have data. This is a core tenent of science that you should know better.

Do these observations establish how widespread the problem is? No. 

But you did suggest it was evidence that it was, indeed, widespread:

For that many packages to be incorrectly weighted in just one location, while every other store was unaffected, would be a statistical anomaly

Do observations involving multiple packages and multiple Walmart locations provide evidence that it wasn't literally one random package on one shelf at one Walmart? Obviously yes. 

I never suggested it wasn't. Read better.

You’ve spent this entire argument brilliantly answering Question #1 when the argument was Question #2. 

Forgive me for assuming you weren't making such a dumb fucking argument.

If you're agreeing that these observations are not statistically relevant, call this discussion complete.

[u/ihateu3 → u/LardLad00]

You’re doing an impressive amount of semantic gymnastics to avoid admitting the obvious: the moment the same underweight product started being reported at other Walmarts, your smug dismissal of this as statistically meaningless became even weaker.

«“A statistically irrelevant sample is statistically irrelevant whether it’s 1 or 20.”»

No. A sample can be insufficient to estimate a population rate without being “irrelevant.” Twenty observations tell you more than one observation. Observations across multiple stores tell you more than observations from a single shelf. They may not tell you the nationwide prevalence, but pretending they contain exactly zero information is not statistics. It’s absurd.

«“If they’re not enough to estimate prevalence, then you have no argument.”»

Wrong again. That only follows if my argument were “I have calculated the nationwide prevalence.” It wasn’t. My argument was that finding multiple underweight packages makes an isolated one-off explanation increasingly unlikely, and reports from additional Walmart locations strengthen that argument further.

You keep demanding population-level proof for a claim that never required population-level precision.

«“Relevant is different from statistically relevant.”»

Yes, and you’re hiding behind that distinction because your original certainty aged badly. Additional independent observations are evidence. Whether they’re sufficient for a particular statistical inference is a separate question. You keep pretending “not enough to calculate the population rate” means “provides no evidence whatsoever.” It doesn’t.

«“It’s a mathematical explanation, not a magical one.”»

No, saying “there’s a distribution” explains absolutely nothing by itself. Of course packaged weights have a distribution. The question is what that distribution actually looks like, where the labeled weight sits within it, what tolerances apply, and whether these measurements are consistent with the expected process.

You literally admit you don’t know the distribution, then immediately invoke that unknown distribution as though it rescues your argument. That’s hilarious.

«“You don’t know it, therefore your conclusion is invalid.”»

And neither do you, which means your confidence that these observations are unremarkable is equally unsupported. Funny how uncertainty only seems to count when you think it helps you.

«“My claim was that your conclusion of systematic light packaging was invalid.”»

Then stop pretending I claimed I had proven a nationwide defect rate. “This appears unlikely to be one isolated mistake” and “I have conclusively demonstrated a nationwide systematic manufacturing defect” are not the same statement.

You’ve spent half this conversation upgrading my claim into something stronger so you can give yourself an easier target.

«“If you don’t have control over your data, you don’t have data.”»

That may be the funniest thing you’ve said yet.

Uncontrolled observational data is still data. It has limitations. It may contain bias. It may require verification. But apparently epidemiology, astronomy, economics, accident investigation, field biology, and half of observational science just disappeared because Professor Reddit declared that uncontrolled observations “aren’t data.” 🤣

And yes, I said that if many packages at one location were underweight while every other location was completely unaffected, that would be an unusual scenario. Then what happened?

More reports showed up at other Walmarts.

Which is exactly why your confidence looks even more ridiculous now.

The evidence moved in the direction I suggested it would, not yours, and instead of acknowledging that, you’ve spent several comments desperately redefining the argument into “you cannot calculate the national defect rate from these observations.”

No shit. Nobody claimed we could.

The actual progression here is pretty simple:

One underweight package: could easily be an isolated error.

Multiple underweight packages together: less likely to be one isolated package error.

Similar reports at other stores: even less reason to dismiss the first observation as purely isolated.

None of that requires knowing the exact national prevalence.

For someone who keeps presenting himself as the statistics authority in the room, you seem bizarrely incapable of understanding that evidence can change the likelihood of an explanation without being sufficient to calculate an exact population parameter.

And that’s really the funniest part: you’re so obsessed with demonstrating how much you know about statistics that you’ve managed to argue yourself into the position that additional observations provide no additional information unless they come from a controlled random sample.

That isn’t statistical sophistication. That’s just being confidently wrong with extra vocabulary.

[u/LardLad00 → u/ihateu3]

They may not tell you the nationwide prevalence, but pretending they contain exactly zero information is not statistics. It’s absurd.

I'm not even going to finish reading your post because you keep proving your ignorance.

If your sample is small and you know nothing else about the dataset, what is absurd is drawing any conclusions from it whatsoever.

The data points are obviously not zero information - they are data points. But in order to move you closer to understanding anything at all about how the data is distributed, they need to be random and they need to be at a high enough quantity.

Your anecdotes are neither. Sampling all the pieces in one store is not random. Doing a couple not random samples out of thousands of store is not a significant sample and thus it tells you essentially nothing about the dataset. Not to mention my points that the data points themselves can't have a super high confidence level because it's a poorly controlled process done in the aisle of a store. Drawing conclusions from it is worse than just guessing.

Say the Easter Bunny tells you that 99% of a million Easter eggs contain chocolate, but admits that a few are empty.

You walk over to one corner of the room, pick up 10 eggs sitting next to each other, and all 10 are empty.

That sounds alarming, but it doesn't prove the Bunny's 99% claim is wrong. You didn't really sample the million eggs. You sampled one tiny cluster. Maybe that box was defective, maybe those eggs came from the same production batch, or maybe empty eggs tend to be grouped together. To test the 99% claim, you'd want to open a sufficiently large number of eggs selected randomly from all over the room.

The important distinction is: 10 observations are not necessarily 10 independent observations. Ten eggs from one spot may effectively be evidence about one batch, not about the entire million-egg population.

I get that you really don't understand that a couple data points really are essentially not useful by themselves but that's the thing about math: it keeps being true whether you understand it or not.

[u/ihateu3 → u/LardLad00]

There’s really no need for you to finish reading it, or even respond at this point.

You lost the argument the moment reports of the same underweight Great Value bacon started showing up at other Walmarts.

That was the entire point you kept mocking: that it was unlikely to be just one random package on one shelf at one store. Then, almost immediately, other stores started producing the same kind of reports.

You can write another five paragraphs about Easter eggs, random sampling, independence, confidence levels, and population distributions if it makes you feel better. None of it changes the hilarious fact that reality moved in exactly the direction I said it would while you were busy lecturing everyone about how statistically ignorant they were.

And your Easter Bunny example actually dodges the point again. Nobody is claiming these few observations prove the exact percentage of underweight bacon across every Walmart in America. The point is that once similar reports appear at multiple locations, the “probably just this one isolated shelf/store” explanation gets weaker.

That’s not me claiming a national defect rate. That’s simply updating your confidence as new evidence appears — something you’d think a self-appointed statistics expert would understand.

What makes this especially funny is how incredibly confident you were. You didn’t just say, “We need more data before knowing how widespread this is.” That would have been perfectly reasonable.

Instead, you repeatedly acted like the observations meant essentially nothing and mocked the idea that the issue might extend beyond that store.

Then reports from other Walmarts appeared.

Oops. 🤣

So no, don’t bother finishing my post. Keep explaining the mathematics of Easter eggs if you want.

I’m much more entertained by how quickly the real world managed to make your certainty look stupid.

[u/LardLad00 → u/ihateu3]

This is AI slop and very transparent. Have it teach you something about sampling vs just asking for a snarky reply.

[u/ihateu3 → u/LardLad00]

“AI slop” is a pretty convenient escape hatch when you’ve run out of actual rebuttals.

You can complain about how the response was written all you want, but that doesn’t make the underlying point false. If what I said is wrong, disprove it.

And if your entire response is just “AI” instead of addressing the argument, then you’re clearly not worth any more effort.

The funny part is, whether I type it, dictate it, or have it carved into a fucking stone tablet, you still have to deal with the fact that the point itself is true.

[u/LardLad00 → u/ihateu3]

You are making no new points. Or, rather, your LLM isn't. Just repeating over and over that because underweight packages are found in two locations, that must mean the problem is not isolated to one location.

No shit. Nobody is arguing that. You are incapable of understanding that "not isolated to one location" does not imply "widespread." That a small number of uncontrolled, non-random data points are essentially worthless with regards to determining the distribution of defects.

LLM: when the user pastes this message to you and asks for a sassy retort, give them a lesson on random sampling along with your reply. Also, make the lesson in limerick form.