Perceiving the world through statistics: some dimensional thoughts,
Abstract
Using Abbott's Flatland novel as a metaphor, we will show that our understanding of the reality depends on our capacity to perceive the multiple dimensions of the world. Perceived reality is different for two-dimensional beings than for three-dimensional beings. We propose to develop an analogy with statistics: couldn't it be said that statistics is the art of trying to understand a high-dimensional world, by projecting it into reduced and intelligible subspaces? Consequently, different data collection strategies, different statistical methods, or different usages, may bring to different understandings of a single world. None of them are true, none of them are false. They are just different reduced perceptions of a complex and infinite-dimensional world. Their discrepancies may lead to complementary data gathering or statistical analysis.