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ospc-org / ospc.org

Source code for PolicyBrain, ospc.org, and related assets.
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precision on og-usa output page #136

Open MattHJensen opened 8 years ago

MattHJensen commented 8 years ago

What do you think about providing tenth of a percent precision rather than hundredth of a percent precision on the OG-USA output?

cc @talumbau @rickecon @kerkphil @jdebacker

rickecon commented 8 years ago

I think a hundredth-of-a-percent precision is best. I think the source of @MattHJensen 's question actually reveals a bug. I don't believe that all the output from the recent runs really has all zeros in the hundredth-of-a-percent position. We should look into this. @talumbau @jdebacker

MattHJensen commented 8 years ago

I think the source of @MattHJensenhttps://github.com/MattHJensen 's question actually reveals a bug. I don't believe that all the output from the recent runs really has all zeros in the hundredth-of-a-percent position.

My suggestion is actually unrelated to this bug.

I was just thinking that all the decimal points oversell the precision of these models, even when the models are working perfectly. I can see that hundredths is probably best in an academic paper where the goal is to show what the model is doing, but this is a different setting where the goal is to offer a prediction of economic outcomes stemming from some policy changes.

On Jan 22, 2016, at 1:40 AM, Richard Evans notifications@github.com<mailto:notifications@github.com> wrote:

I think a hundredth-of-a-percent precision is best. I think the source of @MattHJensenhttps://github.com/MattHJensen 's question actually reveals a bug. I don't believe that all the output from the recent runs really has all zeros in the hundredth-of-a-percent position. We should look into this. @talumbauhttps://github.com/talumbau @jdebackerhttps://github.com/jdebacker

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/OpenSourcePolicyCenter/webapp-public/issues/136#issuecomment-173825408.

rickecon commented 8 years ago

@MattHJensen makes a good point that I agree with. Let’s go with tenth-of-a-percent reporting on TaxBrain.

talumbau commented 8 years ago

@MattHJensen @rickecon yep this is a bug, in the sense that it is rounding to the nearest tenth of a percent and then displaying hundredths of a percent. I will fix the formatting so that it only displays to a tenth of a percent.