Talk:Will Rogers phenomenon

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Attribution: see this thread on Google Answers; the attribution to Will Rogers is wrong.

Why is this considered a paradox? It seems mathematically obvious that moving a value from a set in which it is the lowest to a set in which it is the highest will raise the average of both sets. If you chop the left-hand side off one tree and nail it onto the right-hand side of another tree, then both will tend to fall over towards the right. 143.252.80.110 15:50, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there's anything paradoxical about it either, it's just common sense. But the same could be said of many other things people think of as paradoxes. -- Coffee2theorems | Talk 21:15, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I felt the same way. I know the joke of course (the local variant involves Limburg and the Netherlands) but I've no idea why this is an "apparant paradox". Wouter Lievens 09:04, 23 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Over a year later, here's my guess -- I think its a simple mix-up of averages and totals. If you chop off part of one tree and add it to another, you obviously haven't increased the volume of both trees. Similarly, the movement of a group of people from one area to another can't decrease or increase the total "intelligence" (which I guess would be the sum of IQ test results, or something). Either it's that, or it's that people forget that the average intelligences of the two locations are meant to be understood as different at the outset.

\sim

Lenoxus " * " 20:04, 16 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When the phen. is expressed in the abstract with-out details, it appears paradoxical because it sounds like you are getting some-thing for/from nothing: By "reducing," I actually increase. Kdammers (talk) 12:33, 7 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

It has been claimed that there are no paradoxes at all, and that all seemingly paradoxical situations go back on a lack of thought and understanding. While no friend of categorical statements, I have never seen an indisputable counter-example. (I admit that the WRP would be a comparatively shallow pseudo-paradox, compared to e.g. "This statement is a lie".)188.100.205.18 (talk) 00:05, 21 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]