[EM] Fwd: [Offline] IRV debate to RBJ and Mike O

David L Wetzell wetzelld at gmail.com
Sat Jan 21 19:04:25 PST 2012


A word from someone who is more grounded in "real life"...
dlw
To: David L Wetzell <wetzelld at gmail.com>


**
Mr. Wetzell, tell Mr. Ossipuff and the list (1) to look at the article
*Multicollinearity
and Micronumerosity<http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2005/09/multicollineari.html>
** to see the word in action; and (2) "micronumerosity" is an
*English*word, and English is a language chock full of words formed
from many other
languages, including Greek and Latin.
  - Ken Bearman

  * ... which I found merely by Googling "micronumerosity".  As you also
wrote, "[I]s EM the true standard for real life or is it biased by virtue
of how its members are oft removed from the world of real life activism?"
... and dictionaries.


On 1/21/2012 2:39 PM, David L Wetzell wrote:

 Dave says:
>
> It's called the problem of micronumerosity.
>
> MO:Nonsense. That isn't a descriptive name. No doubt anything is called by
> different names by
> different people. The problem referred to is best known, well known, as
> the spoiler problem, which is also an incomparably better descriptive (if
> less pretentious) term. Maybe IRV's spoiler problem is called "the problem
> of micronumerosity" by the same people (or person?) who use your other
> pretentiously pseudoscientific language.
>

 dlw:  Micronumerosity is not nonsense.  it may be better known as the "Law
of Small Numbers<https://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22the+law+of+small+numbers%22>",
which says people come to decisions based on too small of a sample.  The
"negative" effects of the possibility of a non-CW winner in an IRV-ish
election can and should be observed on the basis of many elections,not
two...


> The use of "micronumerosity" reveals an ignorance of word-origin: The
> first part of it is Greek, and the last part of it is Latin.
>

 Like there was never any historic influence between the Greeks and Rome?
 They both were affected by the cultural imports of
Pythagoras<https://www.google.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=riedweg+pythagoras#pq=riedweg+pythagoras&hl=en&tok=N4J8peRbtZMrgOHX890Tfg&cp=47&gs_id=l&xhr=t&q=pythagoras+his+life+teaching+and+influence+by+christoph+riedweg&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&source=hp&pbx=1&oq=%22Pythagoras:+his+life,+teaching,+and+influence%22&aq=0v&aqi=g-v4&aql=&gs_sm=&gs_upl=&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.,cf.osb&fp=1a6a6fc03027a1ea&biw=1490&bih=905>
from
his travels abroad.   And the word is not my own...
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