Comment by golem14

10 hours ago

"random" != "uniformly random", if you want to be pedantic.

But "is far more likely to fall near the present" = "is far more likely to fall near the present". The author makes the claim about probability distribution themselves, then does the opposite.

  • You're right, yet I agree with the website's approach. The goal of this site is to educate users about how people lived, not educate them about stats. IMO. I would have chosen the same algo.

    It's clear to me that an even bigger HC crowd would howl "Oh, how boring, look at him choosing pretty much only still alive people" if he had done the 'uniformly random" selection. C'mon!