Post #4605851 · Elektrine

2026-08-24 19:59 UTC

You did your subtraction very well, but why you subtracted one number from the other, and the conclusion that it meant anything at all, was wrong. Let’s look at a simple example. Two parents have five children together. The three eldest children are estranged from the mother. That means that 50% of the parents are estranged from a child, and 60% of the children are estranged from a parent. Following the logic of your post, you’d subtract 50 from 60 and get 10. Okay…exactly what would this 10 represent? You seem to think that it would say something meaningful about 10% of the parents, which is nonsensical.

Replies (1)

@14th_cylon@lemmy.zip 2026-08-24 20:33

i see what you are trying to say and it makes theoretical sense, however, this is not a survey on the complete population. this was online poll on a sample of ~4400 people. yougov.com/…/52733-family-estrangement-how-often-… …yougov.net/…/Family_Estrangement_poll_results.pd… there would have to be impossibly huge number of siblings in that random sample so the difference could be explained that way. say we simplify the sample to 2200 parents and 2200 kids. 220 parents (10% will say they are estranged from their kid). estrangement is symmetric relation, so you should get the same answer from ~220 kids, but the poll got that answer from 220*1.6 = 352 kids. that would be 132 kids having sibling in that group of 220. in a random sample of 4400, that is just not possible (if the sample is truly random). some parents are so delusional they don’t even realize their kids are not talking to them is much more logical explanation.

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