Can people please stop calling a Poisson distribution a "bell curve"?

[Recursion]

More to the point, can everyone please stop sharing articles that refer to the curve in the graph as a "bell curve"? It's not a bell curve. It's not Gaussian. A time series can't be Gaussian. It's a Poisson distribution and is completely different.

[lapfog_1]

1. pitchforks meet ocean...

unfortunately your plea will fall on deaf ears...

[Hoyt]

2. That's been bugging the hell out of me too. :)

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

3. Dunno. This "Poisson" theory seems fishy to me. nt

[DFW]

21. C'est vrai

J'allais dire la même chose!

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

33. I thought the Poisson curve was defined by ...

la forme de la poêle

[DFW]

35. Et ses dimensions

évidamment.......

[canetoad]

4. K&R

Every second thread I open is 'Poisson' this or 'Bell Curve' that. It's stressful.

[hlthe2b]

5. Maybe when even some physicians stop conflating anesthetic machines providing PASSIVE OXYGEN

with MECHANICAL VENTILATORS. And it is Dr. Birx, not Brix! And RT-PCR detects viral nucleic acid, NOT antibodies. And maybe some of the amateur epidemiologists can stop conflating CASE-FATALITY with MORTALITY RATES.

I've got a lot of them building up, but...deep breathing...

[jberryhill]

6. One man's meat is another man's Poisson

[boston bean]

7. Who cares what they call it as long as people understand it's meaning.

[PCIntern]

8. Because words matter in science and math.

The distinctions become important. If you’re gonna write/expound on it you may as well get it right.

[boston bean]

9. Get a grip.

[PCIntern]

10. You get a grip.

No wonder nobody gets anything right. Nothing matters.

I’d like to go into your workplace and use misnomers for everything all day. I’m sure you’d be pleased...

[boston bean]

11. I have a grip.

[Codeine]

28. From here on out all teeth are bicuspids.

As long as we know what tooth we’re talking about who cares what we call it?

[PCIntern]

32. Great!

😁😁😁😁 or 😷😷😷😷

[PJMcK]

15. You're right and you're wrong

Words don't mean much of anything anymore. Trump and the Republicans have turned language upside down in Orwellian ways.

But it's not just in politics. Recently, there was an article in Vox about the Chinese lunar rover that is exploring the side of the Moon that faces away from the Earth. (I suspect you know that the Moon is tidally locked to the Earth and the same side always faces us.)

The author referred to that side as "the dark side of the Moon." When I pointed out to him that the Moon rotates and all of it gets sunshine so he should have called it "the far side of the Moon," he excused himself by saying it was a colloquial expression. When I responded that he was writing a SCIENCE column, he responded, so what? Even NASA refers to the far side in colloquial terms.

Words lose their meanings when they are constantly misused.

Here's one that pisses me off: The misuse of "skim" and "scan." Too often, people will say, "I didn't read the whole thing. I scanned it." Those two statements are mutually exclusive. To skim means to skip over the top, like skimming the cream off the top of un-homogenized milk. To scan means to peruse in great detail, like the computer device known as a scanner.

It drives me crazy because it shows that people don't know what words mean. Or it means that words have no meanings. If that's true, then how do we communicate?

[Codeine]

16. To be fair, if they don't even know what it is

they don’t likely understand it.

[boston bean]

20. They understand the point of the curve and the importance of flattening it.

It doesn’t mean a damn thing to harp on proper word for the curve.

People who study curves have at it.

[yardwork]

18. But that's kind of the point. The two distributions mean different things.

[boston bean]

19. They understand the point. The word for it is of less importance.

Sort of like when gun bumpers harp on people for not knowing the difference between a magazine and a clip.

[yardwork]

24. It's different, actually. The distributions mean different things.

This is quite different from using a different word for a part of a gun.

These words mean different things. A Poisson distribution is different from a bell curve distribution.

Misstating scientific facts misleads people, like saying a set of things add up to ten when they actually add up to one hundred.

[boston bean]

27. What the hell difference does it make at this time?

This is the absolute least of our worries. Correcting people on the proper verbiage, is a waste of time and effort.

People know what it means to flatten the curve nor matter if they add bell before the word curve in error.

[gibraltar72]

12. I swear I never will again. Huh?

[Laelth]

13. I am open to being educated.

What's the difference between a bell curve and a poisson distribution?

Looks like a bell curve to me, and the point of social distancing is to flatten that curve so that health care delivery systems are not overwhelmed.



-Laelth

[Recursion]

14. A bell curve is symmetrical and extends infinitely in both directions

A Poisson distribution has a beginning point in time. Also they're just different curves; it's like the difference in a triangle and an octagon -- they're just different things.

[RobinA]

17. Funny

I thought this the first time I saw it but went, that's not a bell curve, but OK. I didn't know anything about a Poisson distribution, now I can learn something!

[DFW]

23. This is what poisson distribution looks like in real life

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

C'est compris maintenant?

[Codeine]

29. Your explanation is a bit fishy. nt

[DFW]

34. I gotta spend more time in Paris

And less in Marseille..........

[Happy Hoosier]

22. Correct, but no one will care...

I share you chagrin!

[Yavin4]

25. The masses think that the "bell curve" is the only distribution because of the Charles Murray book.

The Poisson distrubution:

In probability theory and statistics, the Poisson distribution (French pronunciation: ​[pwasɔ̃]; in English often rendered /ˈpwɑːsɒn/), named after French mathematician Siméon Denis Poisson, is a discrete probability distribution that expresses the probability of a given number of events occurring in a fixed interval of time or space if these events occur with a known constant mean rate and independently of the time since the last event.[1] The Poisson distribution can also be used for the number of events in other specified intervals such as distance, area or volume.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisson_distribution

[Ms. Toad]

26. Did this just start happening today?

I can't say I've seen any labeling the curve.

[Tipperary]

31. Me either.

Strange that.

[rzemanfl]

30. Okay. now I know something I never needed to know in 72 years on the planet.

Let's see if I remember it....

[GemDigger]

36. Because most people know what a bell curve is and if you said Poisson they would say wtf is that.

Don't let it get your BP up, it isn't worth it.

[USALiberal]

37. FFS, this is what bothers you? Nt

[greatauntoftriplets]

38. No problem for me.

I never distribute dinner plates of fish. Vile stuff, IMO.