Talk:missingness
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Apart from the capitalisation, is there any substance in this entry? - Algrif 13:44, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
- Does seem to be real. Corrected plural, removed encyclopedic stuff, added reference, moved to lowercase. SemperBlotto 15:01, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
cited 2 new senses, one "absence", in theology, philosophy, etc. Cited statistics sense is incompatible with "missing data" sense. "Missingness" seems to be about the way in which data is missing. It is not the missing data itself or the holes in the data set. DCDuring 16:29, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
- Evidence on the existence of the plural is thin. The word is awkward to begin with and still often appears in quotes. The pluralization seems to worsen the awkwardness. OTOH, there was one good g.b.c. hit (statistics sense), 2 groups (absence sense)(0 scholar, news). The statisticians do seem to compare one type of missingness with another pretty regularly, so you would expect them to compare "missingnesses" eventually. DCDuring 16:36, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Good work, O Citer, and thanks, but doesn't the stats sense just mean "absence" (and not "the way things are absent")? Seems that way from the quotations. (If so, and the "missing data" sense is trashable, then this word would definitely seem to be uncountable.)—msh210℠ 21:54, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
- The overall context for the "missingness" citations shows that the mathematicians are discussing alternative probability models to characterize the way in which the data are missing. (I should make it a practice of including links to the overall context where available.)
- "uncountable" seems so prescriptive for Wiktionary. I find that 80-90% of the uncountability claims (at entry level, not sense level) in Wiktionary entries are contradicted by the facts of usage. The ease of saying "uncountable" at the entry level (2 keystrokes) relative to doing so at the sense level (13 keystrokes per sense) seems to serve as a persistent bias toward such claims. A better label would be "rarely plural" even for most of the senses that are claimed to be "uncountable". BP? DCDuring 15:20, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
- I've got a better idea: why don't we just have a bot go through and delete all the entries for words that are taggeed as uncountable and then you can go through and enter them correctly. That would be much more efficient. It's not like this is a wiki project where we expect other people to work on articles and add data if they can think of an obscure countable use. (Please pardon my sarcasm.) And by the way: you are being prescriptive in interpreting uncountable to mean "you may NOT use this as a countable word, it is prohibited" when it was entered as the descriptive "we don't have a citation as a countable word and haven't thought of a countable use yet and but we'll change it when we find some".) RJFJR 15:36, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not sure I understand what you are objecting to.
- I am relating a summary of what I have found in reviewing entries.
- I have made some changes to uncountability claims that I would be prepared to cite in response to an RfV for the plural forms or whatever other procedure would be appropriate at the sense level.
- I have stated my belief that there is a template-caused bias in the process.
- I have stated an objection to an aspect of terminology.
- Where have I gone wrong? DCDuring 16:22, 7 December 2007 (UTC)