Quote:
Originally Posted by EVmetro
This is good stuff. Confirmation bias is what initially directed my attention to the Prius, and confirmation bias is what causes Prius fans to oppose an idea in a thread that attacks the Prius. In my case, my dislike of the Prius and the research that I do anyway that studies the waste of kinetic energy in automobiles is the perfect storm. You are quite right that people see what they want to see, which is why Prius fans will block the science of what I am saying without conceiving the actual resistance in traffic flow phenomenon. I see what I need to see in my kinetic energy waste research, but the traffic flow phenomenon that the Prius introduces is not the main purpose of my kinetic energy research. The main purpose of my research is the development of efficient EVs, but it also makes it really easy to satisfy my confirmation bias about the Prius.
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Whoa! Hold up there, cowboy. The other posters here aren't calling your anecdotal evidence into question because they like the Prius; they're calling your anecdotal evidence into question because it is anecdotal evidence.
Say it with me now: Anecdotal evidence DOES NOT EQUAL statistically-viable sampling.
Again: Anecdotal evidence DOES NOT EQUAL statistically-viable sampling.
You're looking at cars you see in your regular driving, which likely includes many of the same people who also live in your area and travel the same routes regularly. When you remember seeing Priuses holding up traffic "all the time," there's a pretty decent chance you're only seeing the same handful of cars over and over; if you think you aren't, you need to produce some evidence that convincingly demonstrates otherwise. That said, we also don't know anything about how you are recording your encounters with said cars holding up traffic.
Are you recording them in some way? Or just relying on your fallible human memory?
To recap, the problems with your argument are:
1) No sampling methodology beyond "whatever cars happen to be travelling the same stretch of road as I am right now." You may see the Prius holding up traffic in front of you and miss ten cars of other makes doing the same thing within a one-mile radius at exactly the same time, or in the spot where you were but ten minutes later.
2) Poor sampling methodology means your sample is not representative of the population as a whole, so any results you get cannot be generalized.
3) We don't know if you have any system for recording the incidences of cars holding up traffic at all, let alone how detailed it is if you do. If you do have a system in place, you should have no trouble answering the question of how many cars you observed driving the speed limit or below on March 7 of this year, how many of them were Priuses, how many cars you observed driving above the speed limit on the same day, and how many of them were Priuses. And without that information, your evidence is meaningless, even completely disregarding the sampling error.
Once more, for old times' sake: Anecdotal evidence DOES NOT EQUAL statistically-viable sampling!