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Wiggling into Correlation
Into Correlation Jeff Kaufman shared some data around contra dance attendance as a function of requirements on wearing surgical masks. He compares this data to survey data, which is a useful way to validate in both directions.
I would entertain arguments that this is a sensible procedure, because it’s likely dances close in time share other common factors that affect popularity, so this could be said to give an apples-for-apples comparison. This we will call the total variation, and to get it we will censor each data point such that we don’t know whether it belongs to a mask-required or mask-optional dance. Assuming the coefficient of determination really is 5 %, and we are aiming for a traditional significance level of 0.05, the sample size curves tell us we would need over 80 dances to be sure of the effect of masking.
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