• TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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    20 hours ago

    Yet it’s one single sample, and possibly not a great one. Few things could cause the shape seen like sample selection of healthy people ignores a lot more of the 65+ community than the younger, and also stuff like those born around the 50’s have higher lead levels could cause more of a dip, or like… plenty of stuff. After some repetitions sure but even then… that’s 11% hell I could probably put in an exponential with a negative exponent and be as accurate or better.

    • Don Piano@feddit.org
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      16 hours ago

      Sure, you could do some wild overfitting. But why? What substantive theoretical model would such a data model correspond to?

      A more straightforward conclusion to draw would be that age is far from the only predictor of flexibility etc., but on the list nevertheless, and if you wanna rule out alternative explanations (or support them), you might have to go and do more observations that allow such arguments to be constructed.

      • TowardsTheFuture@lemmy.zip
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        11 hours ago

        I mean, that shape is mostly a cone (oop realize I said negative exponent not negative with an exponent but, yeah that plus some other stuff to actually shape it a bit better), just showing… as you get older it could either get worse (if you essentially stop using it) or better (if you continue to use it). But I mean that idea is certainly less provocative than what they’ve got.