• DrMango
    link
    fedilink
    282 years ago

    No, this is how a graph showing quartiles will always look because quartiles, by definition, always include a fixed percentage of the studied population under them.

    In this case the lower quartile will always have 25% of the population under it, 50% under the second quartile, and 75% under the third quartile.

    Quartiles break a population into 4 equal portions.

    • @aesopjah@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      142 years ago

      While that’s true, the actual empirical curve does not have to be smooth. Or gaussian.

    • Spendrill is not misunderstanding the OP. He’s just saying that if intelligence could be measured by a better metric, then distribution of that metric among the population would not look as smooth as the one in the OP.

      • @steakmeout@aussie.zone
        link
        fedilink
        32 years ago

        Not if you’re breaking the data into quartiles. Holy shit, do you really think the curve will be any different? Really? All that will happen is that some people will move around in the distribution. And the smoothing does not at all relate to how intelligence is measured but rather how it’s reported - in this graph.