When Information Overwhelms Facts

Alexander Micek on last week’s report on laptop reliability from SquareTrade:

When you only have two data points to model, however, two things happen: (1) you can easily model the two points with a linear curve that perfectly fits the data (R2=1). (2) Your model is capable of predicting nothing. So, the SquareTrade authors have formed an inappropriate model based on sloppy data to make fallacious projections.

★ Tuesday, 24 November 2009