On: Millions of Americans skipping payments as wave of defaults and evictions looms

[aphextron]

>"Deaths are up, but as another poster pointed out it's hardly statistically significant. The rolling 7 day average is 2.2/1m now, vs 1.7/1m on May 1st."

How is a 34% increase not statistically significant?

[bitbuilder → aphextron]

Because we're talking relatively small numbers. It's easy to create large movements in small numbers.

If one person in my town is murdered this year, and 2 are murdered next year, that's a 100% year over year increase in the homicide rate. But it's obviously a meaningless increase.

2.2 out of a million is a small number. More people in NC are dying every day from cancer or heart disease.

[thephyber → aphextron]

That's a statistical/maths term[1], not an opinion of the number.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_significance

[mikem170 → aphextron]

>How is a 34% increase not statistically significant?

Because going from a daily death rate of 0.00017% to 0.00022% is still such a very small number, what might be called statistical noise.